PROTESTERS fighting the testing of GM crops have vandalised crops at a farm near Tadcaster over the weekend.

Members of a group called Beat the Beet attacked crops being grown at Headley Hall Farm, near Tadcaster, on Friday night.

The farm, which is owned by the University of Leeds, has been targeted before by protestors in April last year, when it was being used to test oilseed rape by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany.

A university spokesman said an area of around ten square metres had been damaged at the site, which was hosting a Government-funded trial comparing conventional sugar beet and genetically-modified sugar beet.

"It was a fairly small part of the crop and was not enough to disrupt the trial," he said.

A spokesman for the group claimed the crop attacked this weekend was a government "farm trial" of sugar beet which was modified to be resistant to a particular herbicide.

He said: "This is not a test site. It is important that people realise these crops are cross-pollinating and entering our food supply now. Trial is the wrong word - by the time we know the result, it will already be too late."

The protesters had hoped their vandalism would prevent the crops from being harvested in the winter.