Independent.co.uk
Benn gives go-ahead for new GM potato trial
By Geoffrey Lean
Sunday, 11 May 2008
http://tinyurl.com/5wlebl
Ministers have given permission for thousands of GM potatoes to be
grown in Britain, a decision that is bound to provoke a new
confrontation with environmentalists.
Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for the Environment , has agreed
to let scientists at Leeds University cultivate the potato, which has
been engineered to resist eelworm, in a trial over the next three
years in a test field near Tadcaster, North York****re. The GM Freeze
protest group is considering taking legal action.
The move follows repeated clashes over a different experimental GM
potato, modified against blight, in Britain last year. Trials had to
be abandoned following protests by environmentalists and local
farmers.
The scientists, from Leeds University's Faculty of Biological
Sciences, are to grow around 1,200 potato plants at Headley Hall farm,
near Tadcaster. They have added a gene to the potato's roots that is
designed to give it resistance to eelworm – which costs British
farmers around £645m a year in lost yields and pesticide costs.
Pete Riley, of GM Freeze, is particularly worried about the inclusion
of a gene that confers resistance to the antibiotic neomycin, which he
says could interfere with its medical effectiveness.
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