TIMBER smuggling is one of today’s meanest evils. Not only can it damage the livelihoods of poor communities, it also drives to extinction severely endangered timber species. So it heartened me to read a news item in New Scientist about a team led by Rémy Petit at the National Institute for Agriculture Research at Gazinet, in France. They have devised an ultra-sensitive method of wood “fingerprinting” which will make it much harder to smuggle lumber (11 May, p 14). I asked ministers at the Department for International Development what they knew of it.
Hilary Benn, a junior DFID…
