Farmers Told GM Crops Are 'Too Dangerous to Insure'
Subject: Farmers Told GM Crops Are 'Too Dangerous to Insure'
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 23:15:30 -0500
From: Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (http://www.getipm.com/)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State
of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Dear
Mr. Helliker, I thought you might like to read an article entitled:
Farmers Told GM Crops Are 'Too Dangerous to Insure'.
The Sunday
Herald (Scottish Media Newspapers Ltd.) | By Rob Edwards March 10, 2002
Insurance companies brand genetically engineered plants as risky as war and
nuclear accidents Genetically modified crops, like war and nuclear accidents,
have been deemed too dangerous to insure against, the Sunday Herald can
reveal.
Insurance
companies have decided not to provide farmers, their neighbours or anyone else
with cover against the risks of GM contamination.
This means
that there will be no pay-outs for anyone whose health is harmed by GM food,
and organic farmers put out of business by genetic pollution will get no
compensation. As a result, leading land agents are advising their clients not
to get involved with GM crops. The revelations come amidst growing alarm about
the dangers to human health and the environment posed by genetically
engineered plants in Scotland. Doctors say GM food is a "gamble",
while conservationists fear GM crops could breed "superweeds"
resistant to herbicides.
Despite all
this, the Scottish environment and rural development minister, Ross Finnie, is
still backing the 14 farm-scale trials of GM oilseed rape in Aberdeenshire,
Ross-shire and Fife (see map). The trials have provoked widespread opposition
which will come to a head this week when protesters travel to Edinburgh to
deliver a petition to the Scottish Parliament.
The protest is
being led by the villagers of Munlochy in Ross-shire, where a GM trial has
been under surveillance from a 24-hour vigil since last August. "The
community is fundamentally against it and Finnie is riding roughshod over
their opinion," said Anthony Jackson, one of the protesters.
Now their
fears, and those of many others, have been endorsed by insurance companies,
the commercial experts in risk assessment. The two standard exemption clauses
in insurance policies - for damages caused by war or nuclear accidents - have
been joined by a third: the dangers posed by GM crops.
"These
are a new and unknown quantity and until there is more scientific evidence and
legal information it is impossible for any insurance company to provide
cover," a spokesman for NFU Insurance, a leading insurer for farmers,
told the Sunday Herald.
"We
believe that the companies that are in control of the trials should be
responsible for the crops that are grown and we advise farmers to ensure that
these companies accept any liabilities."
Major rural
land agents like Smiths Gore and Finlayson Hughes warn farmers off planting GM
crops because of the potential liabilities. "If you cannot get cover,
you'll have to think long and hard about it," said Richard Thompson from
Smiths Gore.
Anti-GM
campaigners and farmers reacted with anger. "These are appalling risks
for Scottish farmers to take and their worries about this have been ignored by
Ross Finnie. Farmers can go out of business and lose their livelihoods without
any recompense," said Jo Hunt from Highlands and Islands GM Concern.
"The
Scottish Executive must move quickly to control these risks by requiring
experimenting companies to provide full insurance cover and protect the 99.99%
of Scotland's farmers who are not willing to take environmental risks which
are unknown and uninsurable."
Peter Erskine,
who runs an organic farm producing grain, grass and potatoes near Crail in
Fife, is 16 miles from a proposed new GM trial at Newport on Tay. "I am
not ecstatic about someone wantonly introducing a factor that could seriously
affect my business and is uninsurable," he said.
The GM trials
would reduce the value of the land and inevitably cause contamination in years
to come, which could lead to the withdrawal of organic certification.
"It's an appalling Pandora's Box that you can't put the lid on," he
added. "It's grim."
Such concerns,
however, are dismissed by the French multinational behind the GM trials,
Aventis CropScience. Despite the large number of trials throughout Britain
since the late 1980s, the company said that there had never been an occasion
when any identifiable damage had been established, or anyone's organic
certification had been removed.
"When it
comes to insuring something new, insurance companies don't like it,"
observed Julian Little from Aventis. "If legal liability is established
we would pay up. Of course we would. It's how you do business."
Last week
Charles Saunders, chairman of the British Medical Association's public health
committee, called for the GM trials to be halted until scientists can prove
they are safe. "We simply do not have enough reliable scientific evidence
on their safety to be able to make a valid decision as to whether there are
potential health effects or not," he was reported as saying.
Meanwhile,
Brian Johnson, the scientist from English Nature leading investigations into
GM by the government's conservation agencies has warned about the risks of
"superweeds". Research in Canada has shown that GM oilseed rape can
produce seeds which accumulate resistance to more than one herbicide.
This
phenomenon, known as "gene-stacking", could lead to rape plants,
which cannot be controlled by normal weedkillers, interfering with other
crops.
"There
are serious implications for GM contamination of conventional food," said
Johnson.
Protesters
will be urging the Scottish Parliament this week to back the suspension of all
the GM trials in Scotland. As well as being uninsurable and potentially
hazardous, they will argue that the Munlochy trial is illegal because it could
damage a nearby conservation area, the Inner Moray Firth, which is protected
under European law.
"The
risks of GM are many and potentially huge, and are taken by every person
living within a 9km radius of the site and in the resulting food chain,"
Highlands and Islands GM Concern will say. "The benefits are few and
potentially very small or negative, and accrue to only one trans-national
company, based in another country. GM crops are not worth the risk
Well
Mr. Helliker, all over the world people are saying "NO!" to your
"registered" POISONS and frankenfoods. Are you listening?
Respectfully, Stephen
L. Tvedten
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