With reference to your report in last week's Stratford Journal, we felt we had to comment on Julian Little's remarks.

He thinks that those who protested at the trials of genetically modified oil-seed rape in Long Marston should welcome the trials. However the trials are inadequate to demonstrate that the farming regime will not harm soil micro-organisms, earthworms or aquatic life. Safety in human and animal food has also not been adequately demonstrated. Therefore the trials cannot answer the questions that should be asked and their only beneficial effect is as a means of delaying commercial growing.

He claims that the system (out of which his company hopes to make a lot of money) reduces the need to spray. But this gain may be only temporary as the resistance to one or possibly several herbicides gets transferred to other plants. Mr Little says that his company wants to market the modified seed to save farmers money, however the public does not want to buy food produced by genetic engineering. This was demonstrated in America and Canada where farmers who have gone along the GM route have lost their export markets, over-produced food and lost money. Farmers would be well advised to avoid trying to get GM crops on to the supermarket shelves.

We are appalled at the lack of inadequate notification and lack of consultation of these trials. Although we were not brave enough to join the protesters in ripping up crops, we do have some sympathy in how they feel when they have already gone along the verbal and written protest route and their pleas have gone unheeded.

John and Mrs. Sheila Spittle, Long Marston, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire.