A farmer has abandoned plans to stage Sussex's first trial of genetically modified crops, saying protesters could infect his 300 dairy cows with foot-and-mouth disease.

Jeremy Courtney decided to pull out of the proposed trial after a dozen people descended on Crouch's Farm in East Hoathly on Tuesday evening.

He said: "I will debate with people for hours and hours, but they know going near livestock units is wrong. it is not just me at risk but the whole of Sussex."

Mr Courtney was discussing the trial at the annual meeting of East Hoathly with Halland Parish Council when protesters arrived at his farm. He said 12 or 13 people knocked on his farmhouse door and talked to his wife about the trial, coming within 20 metres of his cowshed.

He said: "I can't do it. I can't have these people walking in here with foot-and-mouth going on.

"I can't have anyone coming anywhere near my dairy herd. I can't take that risk."

Mr Courtney had been preparing to plant three hectares of GM oilseed rape in the next three weeks as part of a nationwide series of Government-sponsored trials into the controversial technology.

Herbicide resistant oilseed rape was to be planted alongside the same amount of conventional oilseed rape to test the effect of GM crops on wildlife and the environment.

Protesters claim the trials, involving a much larger area than earlier tests, should not go ahead until laboratory experiments are complete.

They also claim the six metre wide grass barriers that would have acted as a buffer around the crop would not have stopped GM pollen escaping into the surrounding area.

Only four out of 60 people at Tuesday's occasionally stormy meeting voted in favour of the trial.