BBC News Farmers advised to destroy GM crops
"The government has advised farmers who accidentally planted GM crops to destroy them or dispose of them after they have been harvested."

"Advanta disclosed last week that some of its conventional rape-seed "sold and sown" in the UK during the past two years actually contained genetically-modified seed."

"One farmer, who sowed GM contaminated seed and stands to lose up to £10,000 because of the mix-up, said he was too frightened to identify himself for fear of being targeted by environmentalists.''

The Sunday Times GM crops 'planted for years by mistake'
"FARMERS in Britain may have been unwittingly planting a range of genetically modified crops for several years, according to a seed-testing laboratory in the United States.

Genetics ID, based in Fairfield, Iowa, screens agricultural produce for genetic modifications, including seeds exported to Europe. Its latest tests show that more than half of 20 random samples of what are supposed to be conventional seeds contain some level of GM produce. "

The Third Culture An Open Letter to Prince Charles
"The large, anonymous crowds in which we now teem began with the agricultural revolution, and without agriculture we could survive in only a tiny fraction of our current numbers. Our high population is an agricultural (and technological and medical) artifact. It is far more unnatural than the population-limiting methods condemned as unnatural by the Pope. Like it or not, we are stuck with agriculture, and agriculture - all agriculture - is unnatural. We sold that pass 10,000 years ago."

"The human brain, probably uniquely in the whole of evolutionary history, can see across the valley and can plot a course away from extinction and towards distant uplands. Long-term planning - and hence the very possibility of stewardship - is something utterly new on the planet, even alien. It exists only in human brains. The future is a new invention in evolution. It is precious. And fragile. We must use all our scientific artifice to protect it.

It may sound paradoxical, but if we want to sustain the planet into the future, the first thing we must do is stop taking advice from nature. Nature is a short-term Darwinian profiteer. Darwin himself said it: "What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature."

HMS Beagle Genetically Modified Foods
[requires 'free' registration]
"The use of molecular engineering to manipulate the qualities of food crops is one of our most volatile public issues. The controversy over agricultural biotechnology, as it is commonly known, has motivated protesters to destroy fields of engineered plants and to demonstrate peacefully at international meetings. It has moved nations and groups of nations to pass laws and adopt policies, multinational corporations to alter their way of doing business, and scientists and advocates the world over to sign petitions, hurl accusations, and declare that it's time for researchers to become more like the activists who challenge them.

What is the best existing scientific evidence that documents any effects, related to either environmental alterations or food safety, from genetically modified (GM) foods? How does society most stand to benefit from GM foods? Which of these effects represent new or increased risks, over and beyond those risks presented by foods that are derived through conventional technologies and agronomic practices?"