It means that farmers are free to use broader-spectrum herbicides.The three previous farm-scale trials into crops investigated spring-sown oilseed rape, maize and beet. Although they found similar overall numbers of weeds in the two types of crop, broad-leaved weeds such as chickweed were far fewer in the GM plots. The scientists counted fewer bees and butterflies in the GM plots compared to plots of conventional oilseed rape.Les Firbank, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, who led the study, said that there was about one-third fewer seeds from broad-leaved flowers in the GM plots compared to fields with conventional oilseed rape.”These differences were still present two years after the crop had been sown … These showed that growing GM rape and GM beet did more harm to wildlife than their conventional counterparts.”All of the evidence that we’ve got from the farm-scale evaluations points out that differences between the treatments are due to the herbicides. Scientists then carefully monitored wild flowers, grasses, seeds, bees, butterflies and other invertebrates.
Over the course of the three-year experiment, the scientists counted a million weeds, two million insects and made 7,000 field trips. There are a few birds that will take grass seeds but, by and large, it would be hard to see how the loss of broad-leaved weeds would be beneficial to them,” Dr Gibbons said. “Broad-leaved weeds are particularly important to farmland birds and the widespread cultivation of this crop, in this way, would damage hopes of reversing their decline.”The trial of winter oilseed rape involved planting conventional and GM forms of the crop in adjacent plots at 65 sites across Britain. That followed the withdrawal from Europe of the world leader in GM crops, the American biotech giant Monsanto, which also seemed to have tired of the struggle.Since then, the GM industry in Britain has withered on the vine, despite the fact that some members of the Government, and Tony Blair in particular, were privately great supporters of it from the outset. See .
Professor IAN SMALLEY
Geography Department
Leicester University
Seasonal sounds
Sir: I can confirm that spring has officially sprung. This morning I heard the
call of my local ice cream van.
FRANK CHURCHILL
Witney, Oxfordshire
Tony, Gordon and taxes
Sir: I am always ready to believe the worst about the Government, but am
having difficulty reconciling two current rumours.
One is that their next
Budget would need to raise taxes severely. The other is that Tony Blair
intends to move Gordon Brown away from the Treasury ahead of this unpopular
task.
JOHN RISELEY
Farnborough, Hampshire
Cardinal error
Sir: I am impressed to hear that Will Self had cardinal knowledge of a girl in
his distant youth (“Psychogeography”, 19 March). Did he wear a red
hat and threaten her with excommunication if she revealed all? I think we
should be told!
ANTHEA MAYBURY
Ely, Cambridgeshire. Litter on beaches has risen by 82 per cent in the past decade, according to the Marine Conservation Society. Yet another nail was hammered into the coffin of the GM food industry in Britain yesterday when the final trial of a four-year series of experiments found, once more, that genetically modified crops can be harmful to wildlife.
The study was the fourth in a series that has, in effect, sealed the fate of GM in the UK – at least in the foreseeable future. So please take your rubbish back home with you and ensure that on your next visit it is only sand that squeezes through your toes and not something else.”The Government’s recent Charting Progress report, which assessed the current state of the UK’s coast, acknowledges that Beachwatch “provides the only long-term database” for beach litter in the country.The report stated: “The current levels of beach litter are high,” and “marine litter remains a problem for coastal communities and the marine environment”..
