Memorandum submitted by Scientists for
Global Responsibility (SGR)
GM GOVERNMENT DECISION
1. Scientists for Global Responsibility
(SGR) is an organisation of about 500 British scientists who believe
that the applications of science and technology should be environmentally
sustainable and socially just.
2. The first item for discussion by the
Committee, as listed on your website, is the separation distance
required between maize crops in order to prevent hybridisation
above a given level. We have done original research on precisely
this question and submitted the results to the GM Science Review
Panel. In their second report, the Panel commented that this research
should be published. It may be found on our website, www.sgr.org.uk,
on the "Genetic Modification" page under the title SGR
Response and Annexe to the GM Science Review—First Report
(October/November 2003), where the Annexe presents our method
for calculating separation distances and some results, including
comparison with results from a previous paper commissioned by
MAFF. The results are mostly similar. This fact confirms the statement
made in the "SGR Response", that several highly influential
factors have been ignored hitherto when separation distances are
estimated, and that these distances may therefore be grossly underestimated.
3. Our conclusion that the results of predictions
are unreliable and excessively small has recently been confirmed
by a dramatic demonstration in the United States of how maize
hybridisation can occur over large distances. A farmer in Illinois
grew a rare variety of blue maize last year; and three neighbouring
maize farmers complained that the blue maize had contaminated
their crops. Even at a distance of two and a half to three miles,
the contamination was "quite noticeable", perhaps as
much as 1%. This incident is described on our website, in the
"Letter to Mrs Beckett MP—New Evidence of Long-Range
Pollination by Maize (6 February 2004)". It is worth noting
that the seed company for which one of the neighbouring farmers
grows maize requires a separation distance of at least five miles
from any farm growing GM maize.
4. The "SGR Response" mentioned
above also points out that irregularities in pollen density as
carried by the wind may cause some cobs of maize to be much more
highly hybridised than others. It may therefore happen that some
ears of "corn on the cob" may be much in excess of the
legal limit for contamination by a GM variety even if, over the
field as a whole, the maize conforms to the legal limit. That
such irregularities in pollen density exist was found in another
research project we have undertaken, which was summarised for
the Chardon LL Hearing and appears on our web site as "Report
III: A Model for Pollen Transport by Wind".
Experiments, such as those of Jones and Brooks
(see the Annexe cited above), confirm that pollen deposit in highly
uneven.
5. Summaries of the research described above
will be found in each of those studies as posted on our website.
Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR)
April 2004
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