“BE IMPRESSED. Be very impressed.” This was the message last week from Joe Perry, a pugnacious member of the scientific steering committee that oversaw the British government’s farm-scale trial of genetically modified crops. And no one could disagree that the trial was impressive: over four years, researchers made 4000 visits to some 283 trial fields and collected and analysed 1,000,000 plants, 750,000 seeds and 1.5 million invertebrates caught in traps and sucker machines.
The trial was the largest scientific investigation of farm ecology the world has seen. It was launched in 1999 to address fears expressed by…
