Revealed: GM firm faked test figures
Poor crop results were replaced by a forgery, Ministry's internal paper
shows
Special report: GM debate
by Antony Barnett Public Affairs Editor
Sunday April 16, 2000
Results from vital Government-backed crop trials to assess
genetically-modified seeds have been falsified, The Observer can reveal.
Internal minutes from the Ministry of Agriculture, obtained by this
newspaper, show that an employee at a Suffolk-based firm, Grainseed,
manipulated scientific data to make certain seeds in the trials appear to
perform better than they really did.
This will cast a shadow over the Government's programme of GM trials, and
further undermine public confidence in the controversial crop technology.
MPs and environmentalists want the trials suspended.
Crucially, the trials involving Grainseed are being relied on by the
Government to enable the first GM crop in Britain to be made commercially
available to farmers.
Earlier this month, the Government proposed that a GM maize known as Chardon
LL, which will be used as an animal feed, should be put on the National List
of Seeds which farmers may buy.
MPs and environmentalists have already objected to this listing on the
grounds that its potential environmental impact has not been properly
assessed, and it could cross-pollinate with other crops. They say it has not
been tested for food safety on cattle.
Labour's Alan Simpson said: 'This is confirmation of all our worst fears
that the Government's GM policy is being driven by bad or fraudulent
science. They are reliant on the industry that wants to sell these seeds to
monitor the trials. This is insane, and criminally irresponsible. If data
from one company has been falsified how do we know others have not been up
to the same.'
The minutes give precise details of how the Grainseed employee manipulated
his data. When the harvest showed that some crops were not doing as well as
was hoped, he simply forged the results. It was only after an investigation
by firm's managing director that the full extent of the fraud came to light.
The employee boosted the amount of the crop's 'dry matter' - a crucial
measurement which shows how effective the maize would be in animal feed: the
more dry matter, the better the crop.
The Ministry documents - taken from a meeting on 11 February, said: 'An
employee of Grainseed altered the data from the... trials at Crewe so that
they appeared to be within protocol for dry matter content at harvest.
'It appears that he then went on to manipulate the data on individual
varieties which had the effect of increasing the dry matter yields of some
and decreasing those of others.'
While the company's data from the 1999 trials have now been excluded,
environmentalists are concerned that Grainseed's 1998 GM trial results are
still being relied on by the Government.
Friends of the Earth believes all the data involving the GM maize should now
be discarded. Pete Riley, the group's food campaigner, said: 'The whole
process must be suspended and the trials declared null and void.
'How can the public have any confidence in a Government decision which is
based on scientific data from a company which has been shown to produce fake
data.'
An official at the Cabinet Office, which runs the Government's GM policy,
said: 'We have a robust system in place to ensure we base decisions on sound
science. This includes routine tests to double-check all data.
'Irregularities were identified in the data supplied by Grainseed. All of
the affected data from this year was discounted... and had no bearing on the
proposed list[ing] of Chardon LL.'
In the trials Grainseed was acting as an agent for the British Plant
Breeders Society. This body is run by Roger Turner, who is a senior figure
in SCIMAC, the key organisation responsible for commercialising GM
technology and for finding trial sites.
Nobody at Grainseed was prepared to comment.
antony.barnett@observer.co.uk