http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=426530

The Independent

Sceptics unconvinced as agribusiness welcomes opportunity to move forward

By Michael McCarthy
22 July 2003


Reaction to yesterday's GM review, powerful though the report may have
seemed, was expressed largely on what one might term party lines.

While the GM companies, including Monsanto, warmly welcomed its conclusion
that risk to human health from eating GM products was very low, sceptics
concentrated on its concerns about the environment, and farmland wildlife in
particular.

The Agricultural Biotechnology Council, which represents the six main GM
agribusiness firms in Britain, said it hoped "that this in-depth review of
the science will now provide confidence for the UK to move forward with
those other major developed and developing countries in the rest of the
world that are already enjoying the benefits of this key technology."

The Royal Society, Britain's national scientific academy which has
disparaged claims for food risks from GM produce, also welcomed the food
all-clear. "The Royal Society supports the report's findings that the risks
associated with GM in terms of food safety and the creation of so-called
superweeds are minimal," said Professor Jim Smith, who chaired the Royal
Society working group on GM foods.

"The report shows that recent attempts to create public anxiety about GM
food safety, supported by sections of the media that are openly campaigning
against GM, have been ignoring the scientific evidence. Of course, the
safety of each novel food, whether GM or otherwise, needs to be assessed on
a case-by-case basis."

The questions about wild plants and animals were the main point of the
report for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which pointed out
that the review had endorsed "fears that GM crops could accelerate the
decline of some of our most popular songbirds". The report, it said, "backs
warnings from the RSPB that the cultivation of GM crops, and particularly
their management with broad-spectrum weedkillers, will deprive farmland
birds of much essential food."

Michael Meacher, the long-serving environment minister sacked in Tony
Blair's last reshuffle and now a critic of the Government's intention to
commercialise GM crops, said the review revealed the uncertainties around GM
crops. "To introduce GM crops which no one wants, and for which there is no
market, at the expense of organic, which people want more and more, would be
ludicrous, bizarre and perverse," he said.