Aventis

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The Herald, 2 December 2001 MONSANTO BIDS TO PUT GM FOOD BACK ON SHELVES Vice-president flies to Britain for debate this week By Rob Edwards Environment Editor Monsanto, the US biotechnology giant, is launching a new bid to put genetically modified foods on supermarket shelves in Britain, despite massive opposition from a public alarmed at the risks. The company's move, backed by other GM multinationals, comes amid mounting controversy surrounding the trials of GM crops at farms in Scotland and England. There are also renewed fears about environmental risks following the discovery that maize in Mexico has been genetically contaminated. Hugh Grant, chief operating officer and executive vice-president of Monsanto, said it was 'time to put GM foods back on the shelves'. He is flying from Monsanto's headquarters in St Louis, Missouri to lead a major debate in London this week. He is backed by Aventis, the French company behind GM crop trials in Britain. 'There are no good reasons why GM foods should not be on the shelves,' said Aventis spokesman Julian Little. 'The food has been passed as safe to eat and the crops that produce the food are safe to grow. So the food should go back on the shelves.' But the suggestion has appalled environmental groups such as the Soil Association, which campaigns for organic food. 'They are launching a charm offensive and waging a war of attrition,' said Soil Association director Patrick Holden. 'But I think the power of the public in Europe is far more powerful than the power of Monsanto. We needn't fear. Public opposition to GM agriculture is not going to fail.' Holden is to oppose Grant at a public debate organised by The Grocer magazine this Tuesday. Monsanto declined to comment in advance on exactly what Grant would be saying, but an advert for the company in The Grocer makes the agenda very clear. Environmentalists, it claims, want us to believe that GM foods are 'a chilling step by sinister corporations into a potential Doomwatch scenario.' Yet it says 'there is still no hard evidence that GMs pose any risk to human health whatsoever'. The advert continues: 'Highly respected voices have been heard to describe [GMs] as bringing many advantages to food supply, not least the possible elimination of world hunger. So is it time for a calmer, more rational assessment of GM foods and, in fact, time to put them back on the shelves?' A study published in the scientific journal Nature last week revealed that maize in the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca region of Mexico had been contaminated with genetically engineered segments of DNA from plants grown 60 miles away three years ago. Scientists at the University of California in Berkeley were concerned that the contamination posed a threat to the natural genetic diversity of maize, which originally came from Mexico. 'This is a catastrophe,' said the Soil Association's Patrick Holden. 'The prospect is irreversible contamination of a genetic seed bank which we have had in that country for generations.' The events in Mexico prompted the SNP to lodge a motion in the Scottish parliament calling on Ross Fin nie, the environment minister , to ban GM crops. The SNP also congratulated the Highland Council for giving planning permission for protesters to occupy a site next to a GM trial crop in Munlochy, Ross-shire. Green MSP Robin Harper claimed that the Aventis GM oilseed rape crop at Munlochy was severely stunted. 'This strange phenomenon certainly calls the trial into question, and possibly all the other trials in Britain,' he said. 'Either the genetic modification has affected plant growth in some strange and unpredictable way, or the trial is not properly designed.' GM trials in England have come under fire for alleged law-breaking. Friends of the Earth has urged the government to prosecute Aventis, claiming a field of GM weeds was growing illegally in Lincolnshire. 'The biotech industry has gone too far too fast, and is now out of control. GM organisms have already contaminated wild plants in Mexico,' said Pete Riley, GM campaigner for the environmental group. 'Now Aventis has allowed uncontrolled GM oilseed plants to flower in the UK. It's time the government called an immediate halt to this dangerous experiment.' Aventis's Julian Little said that company scientists and the department of the environment had launched an investigation into the Lincolnshire trials.

 

 

 

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