The environmental campaign group, Voice, has accused Fianna Fail of doing a U-turn on the issue of genetic engineering since it came into Government. The chairman, Father Sean McDonagh, said the Government's failure to ban field trials of genetically modified crops ran counter to a Fianna Fail statement in April 1997 which said it was "premature to release genetically modified organisms into the environment".
The criticism follows this week's decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to allow the US company, Monsanto, to carry out field trials of genetically modified sugar beet at five sites.