Court judgment likely to decide future of GM foods

The future of radical but controversial genetically-modified (GM) food production within Ireland will be largely determined by the outcome of a High Court case in Dublin today.

The judicial review was sought by Ms Clare Watson, a foundermember of the environmental group Genetic Concern, in an action against the Environmental Protection Agency.

The group was challenging the EPA's decision in May 1997 to grant permission to the US biotechnology company Monsanto to test its variety of GM sugar beet on Teagasc-owned land at Oakpark in Carlow over a threeyear period. This was the first crop trial sanctioned in Ireland, though the EPA this year allowed four more crop trials to be conducted in counties Cork, Meath and Wexford. A challenge to the 1998 permissions is dependent on the outcome of this hearing. Judgment is to be delivered by Mr Justice O'Sullivan following a 10-day hearing which concluded in July.

The judicial review centred on whether the EPA adopted correct procedures and applied correct criteria under the 1994 Genetically Modified Food Regulations. Monsanto pointed out that the field test under review was a controlled trial on an area of less than half an acre, to see how a new variety of beet would grow in Irish conditions. The beet has an extra gene incorporated into it to make it resistant to a herbicide.

The company, which is to the forefront of GM food technology globally, said it was a scientific trial, none of the beet was intended for the food chain, and even if environmental vandals had not destroyed the beet last year, it would have been destroyed when the crop trial was completed.

Monsanto said the sugar produced from its beet - modified to resist the effects of RoundUp (glyphosate), one of the best-selling weedkillers on the Irish market - was indistinguishable from the sugar consumed daily in every Irish home.

It strongly defended its environmental record, the safety of its GM products and the record of the biotechnology sector. There had been 4,000 such trials in eight European countries "without any evidence whatsoever of environmental or human health damage".

Genetic Concern strongly disputed this interpretation of a technology which it contended was largely untried and unpredictable. The proven phenomenon of genes jumping between species in a haphazard manner, known as "horizontal gene flow", was cited to underline the environmental group's case.

It claimed that neither Monsanto nor the EPA was monitoring risks to soil micro-organisms, including the possibility that they could be subject to such gene flow.

In addition, the group claimed insufficient evaluation was done on potential threats to ecosystems including insects, adjoining non-modified crops and plant life. All that was tested was "the ability of their genetically-engineered beet to withstand spraying with their Round-Up weedkiller", it said.

Genetic Concern questioned the way the EPA had evaluated Monsanto's application and grant ed consent to proceed. It also criticised the process for handling objections to the crop trial.

In its defence, the EPA denied it failed to comply with its duties, and said it had expressly evaluated and assessed the risk to public health and the environment from the proposed deliberate release of genetically-modified organisms. The agency said it had reached an independent conclusion on the application.

Monsanto, for its part, admitted this case could have a critical bearing on crop trials throughout Europe, particularly if approvals were suspended in Ireland.