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Web version of a letter dated 19th April 2004 by Eva Novotny, SGR
19th April, 2004
To: Gavin Devine, Clerk of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
1. Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) is an organisation of about 500 British scientists who believe that the applications of science and technology should be environmentally sustainable and socially just.
2. The first item for discussion by the Committee, as listed on your web site, is the separation distance required between maize crops in order to prevent hybridisation above a given level. We have done original research on precisely this question and submitted the results to the GM Science Review Panel. In their second report, the Panel commented that this research should be published. It may be found on our web site, www.sgr.org.uk, on the ‘Genetic Modification’ page under the title ‘ SGR Response and Annexe to the GM Science Review — First Report (October/November 2003)’, where the Annexe presents our method for calculating separation distances and some results, including comparison with results from a previous paper commissioned by MAFF. The results are mostly similar. This fact confirms the statement made in the ‘SGR Response’, that several highly influential factors have been ignored hitherto when separation distances are estimated, and that these distances may therefore be grossly underestimated.
3. Our conclusion that the results of predictions are unreliable and excessively small has recently been confirmed by a dramatic demonstration in the United States of how maize hybridisation can occur over large distances. A farmer in Illinois grew a rare variety of blue maize last year; and three neighbouring maize farmers complained that the blue maize had contaminated their crops. Even at a distance of 2 ½ to 3 miles, the contamination was ‘quite noticeable’, perhaps as much as 1%. This incident is described on our web site, in the ‘Letter to Mrs Beckett MP - New Evidence of Long-Range Pollination by Maize (6th February 2004)’. It is worth noting that the seed company for which one of the neighbouring farmers grows maize requires a separation distance of at least 5 miles from any farm growing GM maize.
4. The ‘SGR Response’ mentioned above also points out that irregularities in pollen density as carried by the wind may cause some cobs of maize to be much more highly hybridised than others. It may therefore happen that some ears of ‘corn on the cob’ may be much in excess of the legal limit for contamination by a GM variety even if, over the field as a whole, the maize conforms to the legal limit. That such irregularities in pollen density exist was found in another research project we have undertaken, which was summarised for the Chardon LL Hearing and appears on our web site as ‘Report III: A Model for Pollen Transport by Wind’.
Experiments, such as those of Jones and Brooks (see the Annexe cited above), confirm that pollen deposit is highly uneven.
5. Summaries of the research described above will be found in each of those studies as posted on our web site.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Eva Novotny
Co-ordinator for GM Issues
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For further information contact Dr Eva Novotny, SGR Co-ordinator for GM Issues Send correspondence about the web-site to This page last modified: 3rd June 2004 © SGR 1997-2004 |
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