Green group says UK not checking GM crops properly
Date: 19-Sep-02
Country: UK
The green group said it consulted lawyers after seeing a copy of a monitoring report submitted by Aventis CropScience Ltd - now Bayer CropScience - about the winter oilseed rape farm scale trials in 2000/01.
It said the report, which covered 28 different sites, was just two sentences in length.
No-one at Britain's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was immediately available to comment.
The group said it has written to farm minister Margaret Beckett, raising concerns about the biotech industry monitoring reports accepted by her department, after advice that they do not meet the legal requirements.
It said that crucial information on the performance of GM crop trials could be being overlooked because of shortfalls in monitoring.
"A report like the Aventis report is not a legally adequate discharge of its licence and statutory obligations, and the Secretary of State is acting contrary to law in accepting such reports as compliant," a statement from the group's lawyers said.
Aventis was criticised last month over the disclosure of small impurities in its field trials for oilseed rape, which were part of the government's three year test programme on the environmental impact of such crops.
Friends of the Earth said that key issues relating to the legal conditions in the farm-scale trial consent issued by DEFRA, such as cross-pollination of neighbouring crops, are scarcely reported on by biotech companies.
It called for clear guidance to be issued, setting out the type of information that the biotech companies need to provide in their monitoring reports.
"DEFRA has let the biotech corporations get away with the barest minimum of reporting. But the legislation clearly requires evidence that monitoring has taken place," the group said.
"Without that information it is impossible for the Secretary of State properly to evaluate the risk posed by the crops to human health and the environment."
