§ Mr. Roger WilliamsTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether the Government will allow immediate commercial growing of those GM crops currently being assessed under the farm scale trials programme if the crops are found to be associated with environmental benefits and without any determinable drawbacks. [128697]
§ Mr. MorleyNone of the crops being assessed in the farm scale evaluations yet have all the required authorisations to permit commercial growing in the UK.
To be authorised for commercial cultivation in the European Union (EU), a GM crop would need to be granted a consent on safety grounds under Part C of EU Directive 2001/18. Decisions under this Directive are taken collectively by the European Commission and EU member states on a case-by-case basis. No GM crop would be granted a Part C consent unless it passed a detailed assessment indicating that it posed no unacceptable risk to human health or the environment, and complied with the other requirements of the Directive. To date, only one of the four crops in the farm scale evaluations, a herbicide tolerant GM maize, has a Part C consent.
The UK will ensure that the results of the farm scale evaluations are taken into account in collective EU decisions on whether or not to grant Part C consent to each of the crops that do not yet have such authorisation—sugar beet, fodder beet and oil seed rape. In the case of the GM maize that already has a Part C consent, the results will inform us on whether the assessment underpinning that consent remains valid.
GM crops are also subject to other EU legislation. Before any new variety of a crop, including GM varieties, can be grown commercially in the UK, that variety must be entered on either the UK national seed 388W list or the European common catalogue of seeds. To date, none of the GM crops in the farm scale evaluations has such listing.
In addition, if a crop was intended for use with a certain weed killer—as is the case with all four crops in the farm scale evaluations—it would need a consent under EU pesticides legislation before it could be used in conjunction with that weed killer. To date, none of the four crops concerned have such consent.
Furthermore, if a GM crop was intended for food use, it must also have a consent under EC novel foods legislation.