Please find an attached paper: 'Sensitive dependencies and separation distances for genetically modified herbicide tolerant crops' (140kb) published last year in Proceedings of the Royal Society, 269, 1176-1179, The key points are that the following factors may inform a decision to substantially increase separation distances. (1) There may be limited space to grow organic and GM crops simultaneously; (2) this would conflict with current Government policy on co-existence.

The paper alludes to related work in which three further points are made: (3) the decline in cross-pollination may take a different form at longer distances; (4) a small amount of insect-mediated or weather-mediated pollination may have a relatively large effect, and it might require separation distances of the order of kilometres to force thresholds down to low levels such as 0.1%; (5) a decrease in the threshold for cross-pollination by whatever factor is chosen increases the costs of testing by bapproximately the same factor. The work underlying these further points is described in a chapter of a book which is in press: Perry, J.N. (2003) GM crops and the environment. In: Proceedings of the Cambridge Society for the Application of Research, Symposium on GM Food, Churchill College, Cambridge, 23 March 2002, edited by Brian Ford (in press). For the text of this paper please see the attached document (160kb).

These issues formed part of the oral evidence that I gave to the AEBC in Edinburgh on 12 September 2002, 'GM crops and the environment'.

and the full transcript of which is also available by following the link to www.aebc.gov.uk/aebc/meetings_110902_transcript.html

Joe Perry

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Professor J.N. Perry DSc FIBiol
Plant & Invertebrate Ecology Division
Rothamsted Research
Harpenden
Herts AL5 2JQ
UK

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