A LOCAL group campaigning for an environment free of genetically-modified organisms in Herefordshire and its borders is holding a public meeting on Friday, May 26, writes Roy Lewis.

The group, GM-FREE, says the meeting will inform people about the controversial GM farm-scale trials now being held in and around the county.

A spring-sewn oil seed rape farm-scale trial is being held just over the Herefordshire border at Kempley, near Much Marcle, and there are two farm-scale trials for fodder beet and forage maize at Preston Wynne, near Hereford.

Sarah Blenkinsop, media officer for the group, said the public meeting in Upton Bishop Village Hall at 7.30pm will hear from well-known speakers from the Soil Association, the National Friends of the Earth and the Women's Environmental Network. A speaker has been invited from the GM industry body, SCIMAC.

She said: "GM-FREE is a group of local consumers, beekeepers, smallholders and organic farmers who have been drawn together by their mutural concern over GM crop trials at Kempley and Preston Wynne.

"We are concerned over the wider implications of GM crops all over the UK but these trials in particular affect our immediate environment and in some cases threaten our very livelihood - all without any democratic consultation."

She went on:"There has been no consultation about the siting of these farm-scale trials, or indeed whether people actually even want them at all."

She said that the Department of the Environment seemed unwilling to inform the public by holding a local meeting about the trials in the area, so the group had been forced to arrange one.