§ Mr. BreedTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many GM crop trials there were in each constituency in each year since 1990. [34873]
§ Mr. Meacher[holding answer 11 February 2002]: Since the Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) Regulations (1993) came into force in the UK, a total of 193 consents have been issued to release GM crops to the environment for research purposes. These include the farm scale evaluations, national list trials and a number of other research trials. Releases have taken place at about 1,000 different locations as most consents permit trials at more than one release site. We do not have the figures available in the form requested. However, the DEFRA website contains extracts from the public register, which list the locations by grid reference of all releases as part of experimental trials since 1993 and all sites in the farm scale evaluation programme.