Study proves growing GM crops has negative impact on wildlife

• Scientific study finds GM crops inhibit weeds affecting natural food chain

• One company withdraws EU GM crop application following result

• Scientists collected 1m weeds, 2m insects in world's biggest ecological study

Key quote

"The trials demonstrate the government’s precautionary approach on GM crops and our firm commitment to case-by-case decisions are underpinned by sound scientific evidence" - Elliot Morely, environment minister

Story in full A MAJOR study has confirmed growing genetically modified crops can harm wildlife.

Government-commissioned scientists compared GM winter-sown oilseed rape with a conventional version of the crop, and found that fewer broad leaved weeds and their seeds were present in fields where the GM herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape was grown. Flowers of such weeds are important as food for insects, while the seeds are a major source of sustenance for farmland birds.

The study, published yesterday, found fewer bees and butterflies in the GM crop compared with the conventional oilseed rape.

More grass weeds and some soil insects were discovered in the GM fields but could not make up for loss of the broad-leaved weeds.

The latest results come after the last of four major farm-scale trials into the potential impact of growing GM crops commercially in the UK. Results for the three other crops, spring-sown oilseed rape, beet and maize, were published in October, with the first two crops also shown to be harmful to wildlife.

The work was conducted by an independent consortium of research institutes and overseen by a scientific steering committee chaired by Professor Chris Pollock.

It was the biggest ecological experiment in the world, involving the collection of more than one million weeds and two million bugs over a four-year period, with a team of 150 people and costing about 6 million.

The results will be passed on to the government’s statutory advisory body - the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE).

The environment minister, Elliot Morely, said: "I am very pleased that all results of this study, the biggest of its kind conducted anywhere in the world, are now available.

"The trials demonstrate the government’s precautionary approach on GM crops and our firm commitment to case-by-case decisions are underpinned by sound scientific evidence.

"I look forward to receiving ACRE’s advice on the final results which we will consider very carefully."

Friends of the Earth Scotland said the biotech giant Bayer has now told the EU it wants to withdraw an application to cultivate the variety of GM winter oilseed rape grown in the trials.

Dr Dan Barlow, the head of research for Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "These results are yet another major blow to the biotech industry. Almost every EU country has raised serious concerns about the impact that this crop could have on our environment and health.

"Bayer should now scrap the whole application - including its intention to import it into the EU as food."

Mark Ruskell MSP, the Green Party’s spokesman on the environment, said: "Yet again the risks of GM crops are all too apparent. This time the damage is clear but similarly flawed trials cannot be used as the basis for deciding the future of Scottish agriculture, food production and our environment.

"The only way to keep these biotech giants at bay, in the absence of an effective measure from the Executive, is to create a strict liability law that would make them pay for the damage they would cause."

Mr Ruskell has lodged a bill proposal in the Scottish Parliament to make the biotech companies strictly liable for economic damages that could occur as a result of contamination.

The Scottish Executive last year agreed to a so-called "voluntary ban" on GM crops, but opponents maintain that cross-contamination would still be inevitable, and only liability would make GM crop cultivation in Scotland unviable.