Inquiry call into genetic engineering tests at farms

GREENPEACE Ireland has called for a public inquiry into plans by Monsanto, a US multinational chemical company, to carry out trials on genetically modified sugar beet in Co Carlow, Cork and Co Kilkenny.

Monsanto has applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for permission to release the engineered organism to test its tolerance to a herbicide, Roundup Biactive, which the company also manufactures.

Some of the tests are to be carried out by Teagasc.

The field trials of Monsanto's sugar beet are to be carried out on two farms - one at Knocknacappa, near Killeagh, in east Cork - where another US chemical company, Merrell Dow, once planned to establish a factory - and the other at Newtown, Co, Kilkenny.

Public notices by the EPA in local newspapers in connection with the proposed "deliberate release of a genetically modified organism into the environment" specify February 6th as the deadline to submit representations on the matter. So far, two objections have been received.

Companies involved in genetically engineering crops generally claim they are doing this to "improve" on nature by making fruit vegetables and other crops bigger and better or more resistant to disease.

Greenpeace insists however that these claims are dangerously misleading. "In fact, the main beneficiaries of these so called improved" products will be the companies who make them. Monsanto's soybean is designed to be resistant to Monsanto's own herbicide, which will theoretically kill the weeds in field while leaving the soya to survive."

Greenpeace maintains this would "guarantee higher profits to Monsanto as farmers who plant the Monsanto bean will use the Monsanto herbicide" - Roundup Biactive.

It says this experiment with nature is "a huge gamble" which could possibly endanger whole eco systems.

"Many of the genes which multinational companies want us to eat are from plants or animals or other substances not normally part of the human diet - scorpions, moths, bacteria, viruses, rats and mice," according to its briefing document on genetic engineering.

It says the dangers to human health of inserting such foreign genes into the food chain "are simply not known".

One attempt to genetically engineer soya using a gene found in Brazil nuts had to be halted when it triggered allergies in people who were allergic to nuts.

The Greenpeace document notes that Monsanto was the company which produced Agent Orange, the defoliant used by the US army during the Vietnam War, as well as rBGH, a genetically engineered growth hormone for cows which the EU has banned until the year 2000.

Since the late 1970s, Greenpeace estimates, Monsanto has spent $2 billion on research and development in genetic engineering.

However, a spokesman for the company in Britain told the Sunday Tribune that the Irish public had nothing to fear from its tests here.

It is understood that Monsanto's application is the first involving an experiment on genetically modified organisms to be considered for licensing in Ireland.

The EPA has three months to deal with the application and must take into account any representations received from interested parties.