Rothamsted researchers today announced a High Court Injunction has been filed to protect their open-air trial of genetically modified wheat, which has proven acutely controversial. The news follows a protest at the Hertfordshire insitute on Sunday at which between two and four hundred demonstrators gathered to protest the trial, and which researchers feared would lead to the destruction of their experiment  

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The injunction was filed by the landowner Lawes Agricultural Trust on behalf of Rothamsted. In a statement released today, Rothamsted researchers said the injunction was a response to the continued risk that activists may ‘decontaminate’ the trial site.

It follows a temporary order granted by the Home Office which was in force for one day during Sunday’s protest.

Philip Brook Smith QC, representing Rothamsted, said “Trampling on crops in fields corrupts the scientific objective of the studies being pursued,” but claimed that his clients “had no wish to stifle free speech or protest;” he qualified his statement by adding, “The respondents can still protest, just not on land over which they have no right of entry.”

The wheat being grown at the Rothamsted Institute has been engineered to exude a hormone which aphids read as an alarm signal; it is hoped the chemical will deter the pests and attract their natural predators, ladybirds and wasps. However, protesters claim the trial represents the first such experiment using a synthetic gene in the UK and warn the crop risks contaminating surrounding plants.

The war of words between the two camps has expanded in recent weeks to include the use to which the wheat, presuming it is deemed a success, will be put. Although researchers at Rothamsted have claimed in recent weeks that their publicly funded trial will remain free of patents in the public domain, Rothamsted’s head of Chemical Ecology Professor John Pickett has previously said in interviews with the farming press that “Companies are very interested and they are keeping a watching brief” and 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.”

The Rothamsted researchers claim their wheat may reduce the need for pesticides and have hailed the ‘whiffy wheat’ as the world’s first GM crop to deter, rather than poison would-be pests. However, activists have said the research money, £1 million in all, could have been better spent on investigating low-carbon environmentally sensitive agroecological methods instead of technologies which support a form of agriculture which is unsustainable in the long term.

In the lead up to the ‘Take the Flour Back’ protest held at the Institute last week, researchers had been careful to present a meek but reasonable public image, guided by PR gurus working with the lobby group Sense About Science.

Rothamsted and Lawes spokesperson Stephen James said of today’s injunction, which covers land used by the Institute in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, "Our application sought only a very limited restriction to public access to the land. The use of nearby footpaths and access to nearby beauty spots is in no way hampered. But the wheat crop and the barrier of barley that surrounds it, is very fragile and as even a very limited intervention could seriously undermine the scientific credibility of the site so it is imperative that the immediate area be protected to avoid destruction.

“If the crop were destroyed the outcome could be disastrous for Rothamsted Research and the credibility and reputation of science in the UK would be damaged. Scientists would be increasingly cautious about conducting innovative experiments in the UK, which will have knock-on effects."

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