Yesterday saw GM-sceptic group ‘Take the Flour Back’ hold its mass demonstration in Hertfordshire against an open-air trial of genetically modified wheat, which has sparked much debate in past weeks. The group claimed 400 campaigners from across Europe attended the protest in Harpenden though large numbers of police, who claim there were only 200 attendees, meant the protestors did not enter the Rothamsted site.

St Albans council were permitted to use extra police powers and enforce special measures forbidding assembly at Rothamsted Research Institute, where the protest was intended to be held. After mustering nearby, the protesters marched to the site where they were blocked by up to 500 police officers.

It had been speculated that anti-GM campaigners would attempt to destroy the trial at yesterday’s gathering. Taking no chances, the trial site was patrolled by both police and private security guards at the behest of Rothamsted’s researchers.

Instead, the protesters gathered in a nearby park and listened to speakers including a previous director of Elm Farm Organic Research Centre and Gathuru Mburu, co-ordinator of the African Biodiversity Network, who said, “Experimenting with staple crops is a serious threat to food security. Our resilience comes from diversity, not the monocultures of GM. Beneath the rhetoric that GM is the key to feeding a hungry world, there is a very different story – a story of control and profit. The fact is that we need a diversity of genetic traits in food crops in order to survive worsening climates. Above all, people need to have control over their seeds”

Take the Flour Back spokesperson Katie Bell said after the event, “We wanted to do the responsible thing and remove the threat of GM contamination; sadly it wasn’t possible to do that effectively today. However, we stand arm in arm with farmers and growers from around the world, who are prepared to risk their freedom to stop the imposition of GM crops.”

One protestor, Tom Fenton explained the groups’ stance, “When it comes to feeding the globe, studies have proven again and again that it’s not just about increasing yields, it’s about resource distribution, it’s about access to land and we waste a third of our food from field to plate. We think the feeding the world idea is just a smokescreen.”

Rothamsted research’s director Professor Maurice Moloney said, “To be perfectly honest we would have preferred to spend the money on research, but we have been forced into this position. Our local constabulary have come out – not to support us – but to make sure everybody plays nice and keeps the peace.”

Debate continues over merits of Rothamsted research

The turmoil began in April when, following successful laboratory tests, though subject to controversy from the outset, the wheat was planted in the Rothamsted grounds. The plant releases a hormone that aphids read as an alarm signal and scientists at Rothamsted believe will attract their natural predators. Rothamsted researchers have claimed the risk to the environment is minimal and pointed out that the trial was deemed to be safe by ACRE (the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment).

However, protesters have claimed that the wheat risks outcrossing into the surrounding environment in the same way as a 2006 GM rice trial in the United States, which affected conventional commercial rice being grown nearby. The protesters claim that previous experience has also shown organic and GM agriculture cannot coincide.  

The scientists said that, without pursuing research into GM it will never be known whether the technology can provide benefits and contribute towards achieving food security. They also claim that their wheat could result in reduced use of pesticides in agriculture, which have been shown to be responsible for huge biodiversity losses in recent years.

However, the protesters amassed in Hertfordshire yesterday dismissed the pesticides argument as an old tactic which has proven to be unfounded. They warned that the research is driving agriculture in the wrong direction and suggested funding should be put into low-input methods which can maintain ecosystem health and resist the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change.

Rothamsted appeal: a ‘Kony 2012’ PR tactic?

Although the researchers at Rothamsted have benefitted from increasing media support, recent polls show the UK public remain ambivalent or sceptical over the issue of GM crops. Furthermore, the researchers’ tactics have come into question in the past week.  

Rothamsted director Professor Moloney, who made his name in GM research in Canada before taking the post in Hertfordshire, has stated that the wheat being trialled is bound to remain open source, as his research has been publicly funded. However, in previous interviews, the professor said agribusinesses are “Very interested” in his trial and speculated that “It could be that we generate very good intellectual property for commercial development in the interests of the UK and European agriculture and business.”

Even Rothamsted researchers’ video address to protesters, released in advance of Sunday’s gathering, wherein scientists asked the protesters to leave their trial unmolested, has been traced to a PR-guru working with a lobbying organisation. Although there appears to have been an increase in support for the Rothamsted researchers following a break in earlier this month by a lone farmer who spread seed and removed the tops of plants to jeopardise the trial, it goes to show that in today’s mediatised climate, events are not always as clear cut as they appear.

Writing in the Independent last week, author Joanna Blythman commented on the furore around the Rothamsted trial, which risks overshadowing the greater debate about food security. She averred, “GM increasingly looks like an inherently risky old-hat technology left behind by more advanced approaches that can boost yields more effectively and without the associated risks…For all its swaggering claims to feed the world, the reality is that GM hasn't delivered on its promise of higher yields and less pesticide.”

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