Hundreds of EU farms hit by rogue seeds

The GM seed was sown on more than 13,000 hectares at more than 500 farms in Britain, the government confirmed. Advanta said the material had also been planted on 500 hectares (1,235 acres) in Sweden, 600 hectares in France and 400 hectares in Germany, where the contamination problem was first detected early in April. "To the best of my knowledge those are the only countries" affected, Advanta spokesman Paul Lees told AFP, adding that the GM seed comprised less than one percent of the produce in the rogue batches.

Sweden said Thursday it was mulling over whether to order farmers to destroy the affected crops, but was waiting to hear from experts before taking a final decision. "The Board of Agriculture considers this a serious matter, not because of any danger to human health, our animals or to the environment, but … because we must be able to trust that products grown and sold as `GMO free’ really are just that," said agriculture board director Ingbritt Irhammar.

British Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said the seed was produced in Canada in 1998, and sown in Britain over the past year and a half. "I regret these developments but I repeat that there has been no threat to health or the environment," he told parliament. In Berlin, German Agriculture Minister Ursula Horzetzky asked experts to look into the incident. But the country’s agriculture ministry later announced it had lifted an alert over the crops after finding that the plants concerned were only slightly affected by GM seed contamination. German rapeseed crops were in any case almost entirely used for organic diesel fuel, a ministry spokeswoman added.

Genetically-modified crops have emerged as a hugely controversial issue in recent years. Advocates point to the potential boon of tampering with a plant’s genes to make it more nutritious or pest-resistant. But opponents argue that the impact on humans, the environment and the food chain has yet to be accurately assessed, and that man should use science to understand nature, not to pervert it. Europe has therefore banned commercial cultivation of GM crops, but Britain has authorised trials of the crops on specific sites, while maintaining a commercial ban on the produce.

Activists have warned however that governments cannot ring-fence nature, arguing for example that wind and bees will cross-pollinating seed regardless of whether it is GM or not. Environmentalists charged earlier this week that batches of honey had already become contaminated, and on Thursday warned that the situation was now getting out of control following the revelation of the unwitting cultivation of GM produce. "It makes a mockery of the whole government research," said Friends of the Earth campaigner Adrian Bebb.

"The government has sat on this for a month. As soon as they heard about this they should have issued a warning and had a product recall on those bags of seeds. "It seems the government is losing control." Greenpeace Germany’s Jan van Aken was more succinct, calling on governments quite simply to "get rid of this stuff from the field." Reuter