Friends of the Earth 

Environmental Group Seeks UK Biocrop Criminal Charges

Dow Jones Newswires 11oct00

LONDON -- The U.K. environmental group Friends of the Earth is calling for a criminal investigation into a gene-modified crop trial that took place in the southwest in 1998, the group said in a press release Tuesday.

FOE submitted a dossier to the U.K.'s Director of Public Prosecutions that alleges "possible criminal offenses" by a manager from seed marketing company Advanta, and by an officer from the National Institute for Agricultural Botany.

FOE said illegally planting a GM crop, making a false statement and perjury may have been committed.

The charges stem from the FOE's belief that Advanta and NIAB officers made statements that misled the public into thinking all of the GM trial site in Devon was destroyed, following the destruction of part of a site in 1998 by protesters.

FOE believes that Advanta and NIAB officials planted a decoy site to attract the attention of protesters and that the real test site was kept secret.

Part of the crop trial which remained intact is now being used as evidence in public hearings for the inclusion of Chardon LL in the U.K.'s seed list, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food announced last week.

NIAB and Advanta conducted the tests in a Devon farm on behalf of the MAFF to determine whether a seed belonging to biotech company Aventis CropScience, the U.K. operation of France's Aventis S.A. (F.AVE), could be included in the U.K.'s National Seed List.

A MAFF spokeswoman said that because the allegations have been handed to the Director of Public Prosecutions they had been advised by lawyers to not comment on detail.

But the MAFF spokeswoman said "as far as we are concerned, there was no decoy site. There was only one site with six plots."

Advanta issued a statement saying it believes the company behaved properly.

"Advanta is aware of the allegations made by Friends of the Earth and is consulting its lawyers. It is confident that neither the company nor any of its staff behaved improperly," a company spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday.

The National Institute of Agricultural Botany wasn't immediately available for comment.

If Chardon LL is included in the National Seed List, it would be the first genetically modified seed to be on it, meaning it can be marketed in the U.K.   However, Chardon LL couldn't be sold or commercially cultivated until 2003, when the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food's genetically modified farmscale evaluation program reaches its conclusions.

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