Objectors to clog path to
 crop trials

 Ministers face further GM revolt with crop
 trials stalled by appeals system and risk of
 giant US salmon breeding with British
 species  

 The Guardian
 GM food: special report

 James Meikle
 Wednesday April 12, 2000

 Campaigners against genetically modified crops
 are planning to clog the government machinery
 for approving the new technology by taking
 advantage of rarely used official procedures.

 Ministers may have to sanction scores of local
 hearings on plans to sell GM seeds to farmers - a
 process which will fuel the revolt against
 modified foods that has already prompted
 supermarkets to drop GM ingredients in many
 products and sparked direct action, with
 protesters trashing trial sites in the countryside.

 Yesterday, it emerged that after strong local
 protest, one farmer - Richard Thompson, who
 applied to grow GM sugar beet near Tittleshall,
 Norfolk - pulled out of the national crop trial,
 saying he felt it was wrong to force the
 experiment on the community.

 Government technical committees have already
 passed one GM seed type as posing no threat to the
 environment.

 But GM opponents believe that widespread use of
 the process will prove a time-consuming
 bureaucratic nightmare for the government,
 drawing detailed challenges to safety decisions
 made in private.

 Friends of the Earth said last night it was entering
 "a new uncharted area of democracy", and said
 that though it could not pay the fees of thousands
 who might want to lodge individual objections, it
 would encourage those who wanted to make the
 challenge.

 Members of the public have until April 25 to
 register objections to ministers' proposals to
 allow a form of GM maize, used for animal feed, on
 to the national seed list.

 An approval would mean the product has just one
 more legal stage to pass, although the
 manufacturers have agreed, under a voluntary
 code, not to use the product commercially until at
 least the spring of 2003, after completion of the
 farm trials.

 Civil servants have already notified 4,000 groups
 and individuals. They admit the appeals system,
 which allows written objections costing UK pounds 30 a
 piece, public hearings costing UK pounds 60, and further
 appeals costing UK pounds 10, could prove lengthy.

 They cannot yet assess how it would work in
 practice and the fees would only cover a small
 part of the total cost to the government.

 Aventis is the first company to apply for national
 listing for a GM seed, for which it already has EU
 marketing approval.

 Pete Riley, FoE's biotechnology campaigner, said:
 "Anyone with a concern for the rush towards
 commercialisation of GM crops should take up this
 statutory opportunity."