Farmers told GM crops are 'too dangerous to insure'
Insurance companies brand genetically engineered plants
as risky as war and nuclear accidents

The Herald (UK) 10mar02

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.''

source: http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=020310003802&query=Genetic+engineering#docAnchor020310003802  13mar02