● Scary messages from anonymous anti-biotechnology protestors have been circulating around email networks. They are aimed at UK farmers growing or planning to grow GM crops. One particularly obnoxious message starts off with an admission that the sender was involved in sabotaging farm machinery belonging to Bob Fiddeman, spokesperson on biotechnology for the UK lobby group, the National Farmer's Union. Four of his tractors and his combine harvester had wires cut, locks glued, and corrosives poured over connections. The aim, says the e-mail, was not to cause damage but to send the message that if farmers continue in “complicity with the corporations, [their] business and private property WILL be attacked.” The message continues, “Your security preparations will do you no good. . .Floodlights, alarms, dogs, security guards—it makes no difference to us—we are committed. … If you have crops in the ground- plough them up. If you have not yet planted—don't start. YOU DO NOT WANT TO ENTER THIS CONFRONTATION. … If you do not wake to the public's hatred of GMOs and to your responsibility to the living earth; you will instead wake to your machines and property in pieces.”

● Taking a leaf out of Arpad Pusztai's studies, researchers at the University of East Anglia have published work on the impacts of GM crops “without doing any experiments.” Computer modelers Andrew Watkinson and colleagues at East Anglia modeled the effects of GM herbicide tolerant beet on the population dynamics of a weed that is an important food source for farmland birds (Science, 289, 1554–1557 2000). The model predicts that bird populations will be low where weed densities are low, and that the use of GM herbicide tolerant crop will reduce weed populations. They extrapolate that GM crops will reduce bird populations. However, among the real-life facts the model ignores are field studies showing that herbicide-tolerant beets allow farmers to maintain weeds longer (because they can be treated after crop emergence not before), and the possibility that greater efficiency of GM crops may allow more land to be “set aside” for wildlife.