Date published: 2005/03/21
The BBC says:
The fourth and final test of a GM crop grown under UK farm conditions has highlighted the detrimental effects the novel plants can have on wildlife.
The tests of a winter-sown oilseed rape showed the management of the biotech crop could reduce the weeds and seeds available to some birds and insects.
And scientists found these effects could linger in fields year after year. But they also stressed the picture was complex and there were circumstances in which GM might be beneficial as well.
The results for three other types of engineered crops (a spring-sown oilseed rape, a sugar beet and a maize) were published in October 2003.
The £6m UK Farm-Scale Evaluations (FSEs) of genetically modified (GM) plants have been described as the biggest ecological experiment in the world and a model for measuring the impact of new farming techniques on the environment.
And scientists believe they have raised major questions about how we farm and manage the countryside - over and above what type of crop technology is used in the field.
"The FSEs have drawn attention to an issue of balance," said Professor Chris Pollock, the chair of the FSEs' Scientific Steering Committee.
"They've highlighted that what's good for the farmer is not always good for the population of weeds, insects and birds that share that space.
"It is the way in which different forms of agriculture affect this balance that is exposed so clearly in the FSEs."
"What's good for the farmer is not always good for the population of weeds, insects and birds that share that space." Give these guys a gold medal for such brilliant observations. The whole study is absurd and was carried out only because the UK government was trying to find an excuse for not allowing GM crops to be sowed. If what is "good for weeds, insects and birds" is going to be the prime determinant of UK policy then the government had better stop all human activity in the British Isles and make it one big nature reserve. And of course no matter what these studies show, the anti-GM fanatics would not care. Their objections are religious. (They had one of the usual suspects on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning and when pressed whether he could say anything positive about GM he said no. So it is as black and white as that. This is a technology, perhaps the only technology, for which there is no good and only evil.)
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