Against the background of the Phillips report into the conduct of the Government during the BSE crisis, the Natural Law Party today used the Public Hearing on the proposed addition of Chardon LL Maize (a GM variety developed by Aventis) to the National Seed List to serve notice on the Government that it will not be able to plead "ignorance" in defence of future claims of personal injury or environmental damage arising from the introduction of the new technology.

Placing a massive quantity of evidence (76 references altogether), before the hearing Richard Johnson, Chairman of the Natural Law Party, said: "The extensive body of research clearly shows that there are significant risks for health and the environment from the introduction of this new technology. Just like the phenomenon of new variant CJD, the controversy surrounding the use of recombinant DNA in the food supply is also centred on the breaking of biological boundaries between unrelated species. The difference is that this time, through this Public Hearing and other inquiries, scientists and concerned members of the public have placed all the evidence on public record and the Government cannot later say they were unaware of the potential problems."

Mr Johnson pointed out that in 1995 the Government interpreted scientific advice of a very small risk of BSE passing to humans as no risk at all. On 5 December 1995, Minister of Agriculture, Douglas Hogg said publicly: "There is no scientific evidence of any link between BSE and CJD. All the emerging evidence points the other way."

Emphasising that even a small risk is still a risk, Mr Johnson said that pressing ahead with Chardon LL and other GM food technology is absolutely wrong. "The Goverment's insistence on doing so can only be explained by an overriding pressure from the biotechnology industry, putting money before life," he said. "This is especially evident in the light of the fact that there are readily available and perfectly adequate natural means to produce healthy, nutritious food for everyone."

The Natural Law Party's Statement of Objections to the Hearing includes numerous carefully argued scientific and legal points on the basis of which Chardon LL should not be added to the National Seed List. These include the fact that the Ministry of Agriculture's own protocol for the required field trials, which have been carried out in Britain and France, have not been adhered to in either country. In the case of the French trials this has even been admitted by MAFF itself (see their press statement of 31 October). Furthermore, none of the trials have included use of the glufosinate herbicide regime for which Chardon LL is designed, in spite of the fact that a study in Hungary by a subsidiary of Aventis indicates substantial limitations in its use.

Mr Johnson called as a witness to the hearing, Dr Michael Antoniou, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Genetics from the GKT Medical School at Guy's Hospital, London. Dr Antoniou gave a detailed explanation of the methods currently used in the genetic manipulation of agricultural produce and their inherent limitations and dangers.

Dr Antoniou told the Hearing that the biochemical analytical data on Chardon LL maize as submitted by Aventis clearly show that it is substantially non-equivalent to the parental line from which it is derived. "It is statistically significantly different in its fat, carbohydrate, amino acid, and lipid composition," he said. "One plausible explanation for these unpredictable differences is the general inherent imprecision of GM technology as it is used in agriculture today."

He emphasised: "The latest advances in our understanding of gene organisation and function indicate that the manner in which GM technology is being used in agriculture is conceptionally flawed. It would therefore make good common sense to stop all environmental releases of GM plants."

The second witness called by the Natural Law Party, physicist and Party Leader Dr Geoffrey Clements took the discussion to a yet deeper level and considered the process of genetic engineering from the "quantum mechanical" as opposed to the "classical" level of physics. Dr Clements said that an over simplified model of the DNA is used in the case of genetic modification, thus denying the usual scientific process of testing for inadequacies. For example, the use of the principle of "substantial equivalence" denies even the possibility that unexpected outcomes may occur.

Dr Clements argued that the potential outcomes of genetic modification must be assessed from the deepest level of nature's functioning known to modern physics - the perspective of the Unified Field of Natural Law, the unified level of all the fundamental forces and particles of nature that structure the DNA and all aspects of like. The conclusion of such an investigation is that the number of possible unexpected outcomes of the process of genetic engineering is virtually unlimited.