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LONDON, July 10 (Reuters) - Long delays in marketing genetically
modified (GM) sugar, due to resistance from environmental and
consumer groups, raise questions about its future viability.
GM sugar beet has been approved for growing in the United States
but farmers are stalling because soft drinks, food and other
industrial users are concerned about growing consumer doubts over
its safety.
"U.S. (beet) farmers got cold feet just before the planting
season last year," said Lindsay Jolly, an economist at the
London-based International Sugar Organization (ISO).
However, GM maize, soybeans and other oilseeds, including rape
and cotton, have been grown and marketed in the U.S. since the
mid-1990s and exported to other countries.
In Europe, environmental and consumer concern surfaced much
earlier and was much stronger than in the U.S., with the result that
it is far behind in the marketing of GM food crops.
In addition to the U.S., China is expected to start growing GM
beet soon and Australia and South Africa could follow with GM cane.
In Britain, controversy surrounds the potential damage by GM
crops to the countryside, prompting the ministry of agriculture to
review distances separating them from conventional crops.
"We are concerned about the risk of contamination on
neighbouring farms," said Robin Maynard, acting campaigns
director of the Soil Association, Britain's organic certification
body.
In Britain, two GM herbicide-resistant beet varieties -- Monsanto
Plc's "Roundup Ready" and Novartis AG's "Liberty
Link" -- have been tested for many years but not yet cleared
for food use.
EU GRINDS INTO GM QUAGMIRE
The European Union is still laboriously trying to agree rules for GM
crop production and marketing, the next EU legislative milestone
being the completion of a review of an environmental impact
directive, scheduled for summer 2001.
An EU novel feeds directive also still has to be approved.
"It's a legislative labyrinth. EU rules are in flux while in
the U.S. and rest of the world things are romping away," said
Colin Merritt, Monsanto Plc's biotechnology development manager.
GM supporters argue that if other sugar-producing countries grow
GM sugar, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) dismantles import
barriers, then British and other EU farmers will no longer be able
to compete.
But they say rational debate within Europe has become difficult
and the health, environmental and regulatory issues have become
muddled.
"GM hysteria has overtaken any rational debate over the
merits of GM foods," said the ISO's Jolly, author of a recent
report on GM beet and cane. Consumer resistance made the longer-term
potential for GM crops uncertain, he added.
Green groups say consumers do not want GM beet. They say the initial
beneficiaries would be herbicide producers, seed breeders and
growers, and criticise the British government's GM farm trials
programme as a threat to the countryside.
"The trials are a smokescreen for commercial cultivation and a
risk to the environment," said Adrian Bebb, Friends of the
Earth food campaigner.
However, Peter Sandbach of Novartis said GM beet would require 30
percent less herbicide. Maynard said the National Pollen Research
Unit had recommended a far bigger safety barrier to prevent
cross-pollination and the spread of "super weeds"
resistant to herbicides.
RESEARCHERS ASSESS TRIAL PROGRAMME
But researchers at Europe's largest sugar beet research centre at
Broom's Barn in eastern England said the danger was to wild beet
found near the coast, far from beet crop trial sites.
Broom's Barn, part of the Institute of Arable Crops Research (IACR),
is taking part in a three-year government farm trials programme to
assess the environmental impact of GM beet.
"Clearly, it is wise for Europe to take a careful, rational,
science-based look at all the agricultural and environmental issues
involved," Broom's Barn's Alan Dewar said.
Dewar said in the quarterly Sugar Beet Review that if it was
possible to produce GM sugar at less cost without damaging the
environment, and sell it to the public, then it would become the
mainstay of future world production.
Marketing of GM crops in Britain is delayed until the farm trials
have ended, probably in 2002, and the green light given.
The number of sugar beet, fodder beet, oilseed rape and forage maize
trial sites has fallen to 48 from 57 following attacks by
environmental activists.
"They are on very thin scientific ice in terms of proving
anything from these scientific trials," said Maynard at the
Soil Association.
If one more dropped out in oilseeds or maize then they would fall
below the scientifically valid level, he added.
"The number of sites has fallen but for the moment there are
enough for the scientific work which is continuing," said a
spokeswoman for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the
Regions (DETR), responsible for the GM trials.
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