GM trials cancelled!
Jim | 15.08.2002 23:13 | Bio-technology
The governments GM trials have been abandoned after major GM contamination was revealed. Parties to celebrate will be held on existing trial sites around the country.
GOVERNMENTS FARMSCALE GM TRIALS ABANDONED!!!
CELEBRATIONS ANNOUNCED
The final stage of the GM trials has been cancelled as news breaks that unapproved GM seed varieties had contaminated
GM trials for the last three year.
Anti-GM campaigners has announced that parties to celebrate the end of the trials will be held on the existing trials sites where crops are currently still in the ground.
Contact your local GM group for details or organise your own party...
Contacts from www.geneticsaction.org.uk
or ToGG on www.togg.org.uk
Articles from tommorows papers...
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=324776
Ministers suspend GM crop-testing
By Paul Kelbie and Marie Woolf
The Independent, 16 August 2002
The Government's controversial GM crop-testing programme was thrown into disarray yesterday after it emerged that a number of fields had been contaminated with unauthorised seeds since the trials began three years ago.
Ministers ordered the suspension of the final phase of the farm-scale trials, which had been scheduled to begin next week, after a variety of unauthorised genetically modified oilseed rape was grown in 14 fields in England and Scotland. It had been mixed illegally with other GM seeds which were being sown to test their effects on the
environment.
Government inspectors visited Aventis, the biotechnology company responsible for producing the seeds, in April, but failed to detect the problem. It was spotted during a routine inspection by the Scottish Agricultural College of the experimental crops in Scotland.
The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the contamination did not present any danger to public health. But the affair will undermine confidence in the regulatory safeguards and monitoring structures of the trials.
The unauthorised variety of oilseed rape, which is not licensed for sale or planting in Britain, contains an extra gene which has been modified to make it resistant to at least two types of antibiotics. The European Union has called for all GM plants containing this antibiotic-resistant marker gene to be phased out, because of fears that animals and humans eating such GM food could eventually develop immunity to drugs.
Defra admitted yesterday that the discovery of the wrong GM strain was a "very serious breach" of GM regulations.
The seeds in question were sown as part of the Farm Scale Evaluations in England in 1999 at three sites, in 2000 at six sites and are currently being grown at 12 sites in England and two in Scotland. Aventis informed the Government of the contamination on 7 August, and a
committee of government experts was asked to investigate the same day. The company could face prosecution with unlimited fines or five-year prison sentences if found guilty of breaching the rules.
Environmental campaigners suggested that other "alien" GM seeds could have crept into the trials without being noticed, rendering the field trials invalid.
---
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=324772
Analysis: Test genes are being phased out - but for now the trial will be abandoned
By Steve Connor Science Editor
The Independent, 16 August 2002
A single gene that confers resistance to two antibiotics is at the heart of the scandal over the contaminated oilseed rape. As a result of the mix-up these particular field trials will have to be abandoned and the crops destroyed.
Scientists have in the past used antibiotic-resistance genes when they genetically engineered crops because it helped them to determine whether the transfer of other commercially important genes had taken place.
However, because of the wider concerns over the dissemination of antibiotic resistance in the environment the practice had gradually been phased out.
Most GM crops have antibiotic-resistance genes - an historical remnant from the way the crops were originally created - but in this particular set of field trials the Government did not approve the GM variety of oilseed rape which included the antibiotic resistance trait.
Nevertheless, it appears that Aventis had accidentally introduced a variety of oilseed rape containing an antibiotic-resistance gene called nptII, which confers resistance to two closely related antibiotics, neomycin and kanamycin.
Neither of these antibiotics is widely used in human medicine and the Government's scientific advisers on the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (Acre) said that there were no risks to human health or to the environment.
When scientists originally made the GM oilseed rape they would have inserted the nptII gene along with the other commercially important genes that make the crops resistant to herbicides. This would be done in the laboratory on single groups of cells which would then be grown in a culture medium containing the antibiotics. Only those cells which had taken up the nptII gene - along with the other genes - would therefore survive the treatment and grow into adult plants to become the original stock for the GM crop.
Acre scientists said that the nptII gene is not considered harmful because it will only be transferred from GM plants into soil bacteria at very low rates, if at all and in any case the gene is naturally present in a wide variety of bacteria.
Acre also pointed out that the antibiotics are of little clinical importance. "As a result of these considerations, Acre concluded that the presence of the additional transformation events did not pose any additional risks to human health or the environment," the committee said. "In the light of this conclusion and the imminent harvest of the trials, Acre advised that the currently growing plants should be harvested on a date that would minimise seed shed, and that no changes to the conditions on the consents concerning post-harvest monitoring were required."
The committee has asked Aventis to give "urgent attention" to the "robustness" of its quality control. It also said that it was disappointed that the contamination had gone on for a number of years without being detected.
The incident has caused severe embarrassment for the company and the Government.
CELEBRATIONS ANNOUNCED
The final stage of the GM trials has been cancelled as news breaks that unapproved GM seed varieties had contaminated
GM trials for the last three year.
Anti-GM campaigners has announced that parties to celebrate the end of the trials will be held on the existing trials sites where crops are currently still in the ground.
Contact your local GM group for details or organise your own party...
Contacts from www.geneticsaction.org.uk
or ToGG on www.togg.org.uk
Articles from tommorows papers...
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=324776 Ministers suspend GM crop-testing
By Paul Kelbie and Marie Woolf
The Independent, 16 August 2002
The Government's controversial GM crop-testing programme was thrown into disarray yesterday after it emerged that a number of fields had been contaminated with unauthorised seeds since the trials began three years ago.
Ministers ordered the suspension of the final phase of the farm-scale trials, which had been scheduled to begin next week, after a variety of unauthorised genetically modified oilseed rape was grown in 14 fields in England and Scotland. It had been mixed illegally with other GM seeds which were being sown to test their effects on the
environment.
Government inspectors visited Aventis, the biotechnology company responsible for producing the seeds, in April, but failed to detect the problem. It was spotted during a routine inspection by the Scottish Agricultural College of the experimental crops in Scotland.
The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the contamination did not present any danger to public health. But the affair will undermine confidence in the regulatory safeguards and monitoring structures of the trials.
The unauthorised variety of oilseed rape, which is not licensed for sale or planting in Britain, contains an extra gene which has been modified to make it resistant to at least two types of antibiotics. The European Union has called for all GM plants containing this antibiotic-resistant marker gene to be phased out, because of fears that animals and humans eating such GM food could eventually develop immunity to drugs.
Defra admitted yesterday that the discovery of the wrong GM strain was a "very serious breach" of GM regulations.
The seeds in question were sown as part of the Farm Scale Evaluations in England in 1999 at three sites, in 2000 at six sites and are currently being grown at 12 sites in England and two in Scotland. Aventis informed the Government of the contamination on 7 August, and a
committee of government experts was asked to investigate the same day. The company could face prosecution with unlimited fines or five-year prison sentences if found guilty of breaching the rules.
Environmental campaigners suggested that other "alien" GM seeds could have crept into the trials without being noticed, rendering the field trials invalid.
---
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=324772 Analysis: Test genes are being phased out - but for now the trial will be abandoned
By Steve Connor Science Editor
The Independent, 16 August 2002
A single gene that confers resistance to two antibiotics is at the heart of the scandal over the contaminated oilseed rape. As a result of the mix-up these particular field trials will have to be abandoned and the crops destroyed.
Scientists have in the past used antibiotic-resistance genes when they genetically engineered crops because it helped them to determine whether the transfer of other commercially important genes had taken place.
However, because of the wider concerns over the dissemination of antibiotic resistance in the environment the practice had gradually been phased out.
Most GM crops have antibiotic-resistance genes - an historical remnant from the way the crops were originally created - but in this particular set of field trials the Government did not approve the GM variety of oilseed rape which included the antibiotic resistance trait.
Nevertheless, it appears that Aventis had accidentally introduced a variety of oilseed rape containing an antibiotic-resistance gene called nptII, which confers resistance to two closely related antibiotics, neomycin and kanamycin.
Neither of these antibiotics is widely used in human medicine and the Government's scientific advisers on the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (Acre) said that there were no risks to human health or to the environment.
When scientists originally made the GM oilseed rape they would have inserted the nptII gene along with the other commercially important genes that make the crops resistant to herbicides. This would be done in the laboratory on single groups of cells which would then be grown in a culture medium containing the antibiotics. Only those cells which had taken up the nptII gene - along with the other genes - would therefore survive the treatment and grow into adult plants to become the original stock for the GM crop.
Acre scientists said that the nptII gene is not considered harmful because it will only be transferred from GM plants into soil bacteria at very low rates, if at all and in any case the gene is naturally present in a wide variety of bacteria.
Acre also pointed out that the antibiotics are of little clinical importance. "As a result of these considerations, Acre concluded that the presence of the additional transformation events did not pose any additional risks to human health or the environment," the committee said. "In the light of this conclusion and the imminent harvest of the trials, Acre advised that the currently growing plants should be harvested on a date that would minimise seed shed, and that no changes to the conditions on the consents concerning post-harvest monitoring were required."
The committee has asked Aventis to give "urgent attention" to the "robustness" of its quality control. It also said that it was disappointed that the contamination had gone on for a number of years without being detected.
The incident has caused severe embarrassment for the company and the Government.
Jim
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
Aventis Crop Science ?
16.08.2002 03:02
seed
Aventa, Agrevo, AventisCropScience, Bayer??
16.08.2002 08:36
Bayer itself is already in a bit of a financial state with it's share price very low after a series of compensation claims made due to deaths caused by one of it's drugs which they have now had to withdraw.
More info about Bayer can be found on www.bayerhazard.com
jim
Homepage:
http://www.bayerhazard.com
Abandonned?
16.08.2002 23:29
Where is the evidence that the trials are being abandonned?
Is there something on, for example, the DEFRA website which confirms this?
gmfreeman
Seeds of doubt
17.08.2002 08:16
The real danger is not GM foods, but ignorance and fear
It matters little that just 2.6 per cent of genes in the genetically modified crop trials in England and Scotland were rogue. It matters even less that the added chance of passing the gene, neomycin phospho transferase (ptIII), to human beings through GM foods is negligible; it is already naturally present in a wide variety of bacteria. And it matters not at all that the antibiotics to which the gene is resistant, neomycin and kanamycin, are rarely used in human medicine. But the error by the biotechnology company Aventis has played into people’s worst fears, however ill-founded, about GM foods.
Concerns that antibiotic-resistant genes might be passed on to humans through the food chain are common and generally misguided. No matter that the risk is theoretical and unlikely, or that the seed mistakenly planted in British test sites has been grown commercially in Canada for years with no discernible detrimental impact upon human, animal, or environmental health. The appalling achievement of Aventis has been to lend a veneer of credibility to a suspicion which until now existed only in the dark corners of people’s minds and the furthest reaches of television fantasy.
The very fact that people do not understand the science behind GM foods means that their fears cannot and should not lightly be dismissed. Professor Vivian Moses, the chairman of CropGen, a body of scientists and academics established to promote the benefits of GM technology, was wrong to dismiss the error by Aventis as an irrelevant technicality. Most ordinary seed is only produced at 98 per cent purity, the professor said. “It’s almost like saying, you’ve got a parking sticker for a blue car, you’ve got a red car,” he told the Today programme.
Except that few people fear that the wrong parking sticker might kill them. Professor Moses’s arrogance does neither CropGen nor the science of biotechnology any favours. The seed may have been 97.4 per cent correct, but Aventis is no less than 100 per cent at fault for planting the wrong one. The fact that the company introduced the unapproved variety of oilseed rape into the trials accidentally, rather than as part of a murky corporate conspiracy to seize control of the food chain, does nothing to lessen its responsibility. If the biotech companies researching and developing GM foods cannot be trusted to manage and monitor their own science, then they will rightly lose what little confidence the public still has in them.
GM crop trials are carried out under the authorisation and scrutiny of the Government, a regulatory regime which the public is expected to trust. Yet for three years, despite numerous inspections, this batch of seed has been sowed and grown, undetected, in test sites in Britain. The error was eventually noticed, not by the Government or Aventis but by a Scottish agricultural college which was carrying out a small-scale trial. The system of “paper” inspections, under which the Government accepts Aventis’s word as to what has been planted, has been shown to be seriously flawed.
Some people do not trust GM technology, do not trust companies developing it, and do not trust food containing it. The victims of this lack of understanding will be the developing world. It is farmers in developing countries for whom GM technology represents the biggest opportunity to break out of a dismal cycle of failing crops and poverty. Unjustified hysteria among wealthy nations about GM will deny farmers from poorer countries the opportunity to export to them. The Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, last month said that the Government would lead a national debate on GM. The debate is happening without them. Once again it is focusing not upon the potential benefits of GM technology, but upon the worst fears of the scaremongers.
THE TIMES
bullshit
18.08.2002 11:15
This is a myth.
1. There is enough food in the food to feed its people already. The problem is with how food and wealth are currently distributed. GM is not needed to solve this problem.
2. In the hands of capitalist companies whose motivation is
profit, GM technology would never be used to the benefit of
the worlds starving. It would be used to whatever ends profit those companies ie to seek complete control over the
food chain in order to sell as many seeds, chemical etc
as possible.
Surely this is patently obvious?
gtr
Link and More ill informed articles
18.08.2002 14:44
was it a times story ???
2) There are two more articles in the Independent on Sunday regarding GM crops.
Pages 7 and 24
Both of these are still refering to Aventis, which has nothing to do with GM. They sold of Aventis Crop Science to Bayer in June this year .
So the Science editor, connor sumting or other , the environment editor Geoffry Lean , + the two who wrote the original article are all very much out of touch with what is going on.
This is quite normal for the corporate press who seem to employ people who know F all about shit ..
It makes it easier for them to hide the truth.
Bod