Scientist admits maize blunder

The Government's senior adviser on genetically engineered food yesterday admitted that mistakes had been made in allowing genetically modified maize into Britain from the United States.

''We missed a trick,'' Professor Derek Burke told a major government conference on the public acceptability of the revolutionary new gene technologies.

''We could have spotted the problem a year before it happened and we didn't,'' added Prof Burke, a former vice chancellor of the University of East Anglia who chairs the Government's Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes.

The maize, genetically altered to make it resistant to an insect pest, was grown in bulk for the first time in the US last summer - then mixed freely with normal maize and exported to Europe.

The crop was imported at the end of last year, even though the European Union was still trying to decide at the time whether it should be used in foodstuffs and animal feed. Professor Burke's committee had advised the Government against it, because there was a very slight risk that the maize could give harmful bacteria resistance to an antibiotic. But the European Commission subsequently decided the maize was safe for Europe.

The episode showed how global free trade could bypass Britain and the EU's laws and licensing system for the introduction of genetically modified foods.

Once the US government had decided to authorise the maize, and the American producers had decided not to keep it separate from the conventional crop, the only way for Europe to keep it out would be to ban all US maize imports - thereby starting a major trade dispute.

None the less, Austria has banned imports of the maize while France has refused to allow the crop to be grown within its borders.

Genetically modified soya beans were also imported in bulk from the US for the first time late last year, mixed in with a conventional crop. These beans had, however, been approved by the EU authorities.

Maize and soya products are used in an extremely wide variety of processed foods. Because of the mixing of genetically modified crops with conventional ones, it is much more difficult for manufacturers and retailers to put labels on food declaring that they are made from genetically engineered crops.

Professor Burke, a biologist, told the London conference: ''We have to move the regulatory system further away from government.'' More representation from consumer organisations was also needed. He said people found it impossible to believe that a person in his position had sufficient independence from government. He also doubted that the Government's proposed new Food Council, which will advise on a broad range of food safety and quality issues, would have sufficient powers or ''teeth.''

Many speakers emphasised the public's confusion and fears about the technology, which can insert genes from one organism into another quite unrelated one to give it new properties.

Robin Grove White of the University of Lancaster said people felt unease, ambivalence and fatalism, and there were ''chronic mismatches'' between the present system of regulation and public concerns.