Smoking Grass; A U.S. study of Frankenfood crops spells trouble for Europe.

Byline: Carla Power (With Emily Flynn in London, Tracy McNicoll in Paris and Stefan Theil in Berlin)

Wind blows pollen. That's not news, unless the pollen in question happens to be genetically modified and blowing across Europe. In that case, GM pollen is politically explosive stuff, apt to be seized upon by both sides in the region's ongoing GM food war. Wandering pollen hit the headlines last week when the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a U.S. journal, published a study carried out on genetically modified bentgrass in Oregon. The study showed that genes from the grass, developed by Monsanto and Scotts for use on golf courses, were found in test plants around 20 kilometers away--a spectacular distance, and much farther than observed in any other GM-crop study.

The Oregon study may just turn the debate over GM crops on its head. The news sent shivers through Brussels, where bureaucrats fear it could wreak havoc with the EU's newly muscular policy on biotech. Indeed, the findings come just as the EU is trying to clear the way for the first new GM food imports in six years and defend itself against charges of obstructing trade before the World Trade Organization. Environmental organizations pounced on the study, claiming it as proof that GM crops are a Pandora's box. Once the crops are planted in Europe's fields, they argue, the foreign genes, borne by pollen, will insinuate themselves into every furrow and seedling. There'll be no such thing as a non-GM crop.

The pollen study has given Europe's environmental activists plenty of grist, but it may wind up undercutting their argument. The fear that genes engineered into crops could escape into the environment, perhaps combining with other species to form super-weeds or contaminating non-GM crops, has --been the environmentalists' most potent argument against GM crops. One potential implication of the study, though, is that this threshold may already have been crossed--the GM genie may already be floating free. Pollen-borne genes can travel for immense distances. (The 20-km range was the maximum measured in the Oregon study; it's likely, say scientists, that grass pollen could travel even further.) Sand from the Sahara Desert can easily make it into Europe, note biotech researchers. Given the right atmospheric conditions, "even the Atlantic might not be big enough" to keep out pollen floating from the United States," says Vivian Moses, biology professor at the University of London.

Don't look to scientists to settle the political questions just yet. For one thing, scientists have known about so-called gene flow--the transfer of genes from one species of crop to another--for decades. And they caution that one can't generalize too much from the new study. Bentgrass, even your ordinary garden variety, has notoriously light pollen, and is prone to pollinating species at great distances. The region of Oregon where the study was conducted is extremely dry, which would cause the pollen to travel farther than it would in a relatively wet region like Germany. Furthermore, the area studied is subject to strong winds out of the Rocky Mountains, which can carry pollen greater distances than the gentle breeze off the Italian Riviera. A pollen study on grass in Oregon has virtually nothing useful to say to corn farmers in Brittany or Thrace.

The facts have done little to bridge the divide. ...