§ Jackie BallardTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how growers of organic crops six kilometres or less from unpublicised genetically modified plantings can find out the location of such plantings in order to assess the threat to their organic status. [123078]
§ Ms QuinReleases of genetically modified (GM) plants for research purposes under Part B of EU Directive 90/220 are advertised locally and placed on the public register of releases before sowing. The locations of these plantings are also published on the DETR website (www.environment.detr.gov.uk).
Plants with a Part C marketing consent under Directive 90/220 have undergone a detailed safety assessment and been approved for commercial release across the EU. The directive does not require the disclosure of plantings with Part C approval, but where they are part of the Farm Scale Evaluation (FSE) programme details are published on the DETR website, and where they are part of National List trials the locations have been made available at civil parish level as set out in the table.
I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) on 15 June 2000, Official Report, column 675W. Other trials of GM plants with a Part C consent—for example, experimental work carried out by the companies concerned—do not need to be notified to the Government. 142W However, we understand that only four such trials have been undertaken this year, and that these have been small in scale. Three were co-located with other publicised trials, and all were conducted under the same guidelines for GM cropping as in the FSE trials, including the application of separation distances between the GM plants and equivalent non-GM plants.
The industry's agreement with the Government lays down that there will be no commercial growing of GM crops until the FSE trials have been completed and evaluated.
Locations of 2000 national list trials of GM maize with Part C consent County Parish Oxfordshire Stoke Talmage Somerset Brockley Yorkshire Bramham cum Oglethorpe Cambridgeshire Histon Shropshire Ercall Magna