Date published: 2007/05/05
The Cambridge Evening News says:
Trials of genetically modified potatoes have begun in a field near Cambridge despite protests.
German company BASF is hoping new variants of potato are more resistant to late blight and has planted thousands in a field between Girton and Histon.
The National Institute of Agricultural Botany, based in Cambridge, has provided land for the five-year trial and its experts will assess the plants' progress.
Campaign group GM Free Cambridge held a public meeting last month and 60 people joined a protest walk from Histon to Girton.
Meanwhile the Green Party criticised the trials this week, saying big business was steamrolling the interests of local people.
Protests have also been held in Hedon, Yorkshire, where BASF is hoping to hold a second trial of the potatoes after a Derbyshire farmer pulled out of the scheme.
Jim Jepps from GM Free Cambridge said: "The technology has unintended consequences. These tests could be conducted in a laboratory or inside a factory setting but they've decided to put them in the open air which means they could contaminate other organisms.
"They've put a 20-metre exclusion zone around them but we don't think that's enough. Bees travel up to three miles so it jeopardises the organic status of anyone producing organic honey.
"Once they've developed this new brand of potato they will be able to patent it. It ends up being the intellectual property of a corporation rather than something anyone can use."
The anti-GM brigade indeed have two main objections to GM crops. Firstly, they have a religious objection to corporations. Secondly, they have a religious objection to almost any technology that is not at least a hundred or preferably two hundred years old. The idea that a bee sucking on a flower of a GM plant allegedly renders the honey from that bee not to be "organic" shows what a nonsense the "organic" label is. Presumably the bee better also not suck flowers near roads, or flowers near chemical plants, or flowers near "non-organic" farms. This protest is all about religion, not science. It's interesting that the Cambridge Evening News says the trials have begun "despite protests". Why should society be held up to blackmail by these people? Is the Cambridge Evening News suggesting that even if one person objects to any trial for anything, that that trial should stop? Of course, the anti-GM brigade has shown in the past that it is perfectly willing to use criminal tactics to get their way, and rip up crops. So it is irresponsible of the authorities to even have let anyone know that this area is being used for trials. And if the anti-GM brigade so object to patents, then they should donate money to researchers to do the work on the basis that the IPR is given away for free.
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