Monsanto has stopped the commercial development of Genetically Modified (GM) wheat worldwide. The announcement was greeted with jubilation by environmentalists who were already celebrating the decision by BayerCrop Science to abandon its GM operation in the UK where it had planned to grow GM maize for animal feed. This means that, effectively, there is no prospect of GM crops being grown commercially in Britain in the next decade.
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Dr Mae Wan Ho, Director, Institute of Science in Society and editor of their journal

Key players in the UK’s anti GM campaign celebrated their success at a scientific meeting organised by the Institute for Science and Society at the House of Commons. Dr Brian John of GM-Free Wales, which played a pivotal role in getting Bayer to pull out of Britain, said: ‘We ought really to be celebrating. What we’ve achieved so far is a fantastic amount. We’ve actually forced the government, though they’re not admitting it, to back off from the commercialisation of Chardon LL maize. They were forced to back off because they knew they would never get the consent of the Welsh Assembly for national listing of Chardon LL as it had been solidly against it.

‘It’s an enormous success in terms of democracy because it’s really to do with people power. We’ve had a whole series of grass roots organisations right across the country, including a lot of quite mainstream ones, trade unions, the Women’s Institute and consumer groups, as well as the usual bunch of suspects in terms of environmental protestors. It’s been a huge coalition of interested bodies using different areas of expertise because we’re all good at different aspects of the problem. We’ve given the government a very bloody nose because they have been seeking to persist with this GM enterprise come hell or high water, knowing that George Bush is watching them from a distance and the World Trade Organisation are threatening all sorts of nasty things, keeping their eye more on transatlantic political relations than on the interests of the British public. It’s a wonderful example of the British public saying, We’re fed up with this, we don’t want anything to do with it’.’

Dr Mae Wan Ho, Founder Director of the Institute of Science in Society and Editor of their Journal, Science in Society, said: ‘I think we are winning. The industry is definitely retreating.’ But she warned that we have to watch out because the biotech companies have new tricks up their sleeves.
‘The next generation of GM crops will concentrate on growing pharmaceuticals. These are very serious because they are dangerous proteins. There are immune suppressives, vaccines, all kinds of viral pods which will contaminate our food crops for sure if we let them.’

Dr Mae Wan Ho, author of Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare? has probably done more than any other scientist in the world to alert people to the dangers of genetic modification. Her Institute of Science in Society website is getting 26,000 hits a day.

‘The nice thing about the web is that there is nowhere for companies to hide. Our site is used by countries all over the world. This is how we get all the information out. I suggest people contact their policy makers and challenge them using our free website information. Say we don’t want GM crops at all. We want a GM-free world and we want support for all forms of sustainable, non-GM agriculture. There is plenty of evidence of successes in all these sustainable, agricultural methods all over the world.’

The Institute is writing to the European Food Safety Authority and governments saying that GM products are illegal under existing EU legislation because they are not stable. Molecular analysis by French and Belgian government scientists found that the structure of every single one of the GM samples changed from the structure claimed by the company. If you take different samples of the same GM variety results will vary so these crops are illegal under their own rules.
Labour MP, Alan Simpson, made three points at the House of Commons meeting: ‘This is not a movement that is anti-science. It is pro-science. It’s in favour of good science ñ the science of scrutiny before you make huge steps into the unknown,’ he said. ‘I went to do some work with some of the farmers in India who were part of the Cremate Monsanto Campaign. I was asking what we could do in solidarity in the North with those in southern India that were part of that campaign and they said, Just refuse to buy. If you refuse to buy, we will not be compelled to grow. The presumption is that we are going to be required to grow, not to meet our own needs, but to provide your export demands. If you just refuse to buy, it will give us the breathing space to make different food choices.’

This sense of solidarity was rein-forced when someone from Monsanto rang him and said; ‘The boycott on purchasing GM foods has been very effective but what the company really fears is the consumer boycott being extended into animal feed, then the market would be gone. To take that argument into supermarkets in a way that Marks and Spencer’s and the Co-op are now starting to do, providing meat and dairy produce free of GM animal feed, that would really pull the final rug from under them.’

Mr Simpson said we have the most amazing opportunity to deliver a new food fusion, which we can already see in other parts of Europe. He explained: ‘For the last four years, I have been a member of the Italian Slow Food Movement. You go to towns and you talk to people, walk around with the Mayor. The diversity of produce, the freshness, the richness of the food that the seasons will deliver and the pride you see on the faces of the consumers and the farmers who supply the foods. If we can do that in other parts of Europe, we can do it here. We just have to have the courage to get up and make it the reality of our own sustainable future.‘
FURTHER INFORMATION : Institute of Science in Society, P.O. Box 32097, London, NW1 OXR
Tel: 0207 383 3376
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