§ Andrew GeorgeTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many(a) acres and (b) hectares of land have been used for GM crop trials in each of the last five years for which records are available (i) as part of the Government's farm scale evaluation, (ii) for other experimental purposes and (iii) for other purposes. [173017]
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§ Mr. Morley[holding answer 13 May 2004]: The available information is as follows.
(a) Farm-scale evaluations—approximate areas Area (acres) Area (hectares) 2000 and 2001 2,433 985 2002 1,171 474 2003 249 101 Total 3,853 1,5060 (b) Research and development trials
Accurate information is not available on the areas of research and development trials. Under the legislation the notifier is only required to give the size of the release site which is usually larger than the area used for growing GM crops. However, most of these releases are very small, in the region of 0.1–0.2 ha.
(c) National List trials—each site on average less than 0.1 ha Area (acres) Area (hectares) 1999 3.7 1.5 2000 4.0 1.6 2001 1.2 0.5 2002 1.5 0.6 2003 <0.1 <0.1 Total 10.4 4.2
§ Andrew GeorgeTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on how many sites GM crops have been grown in the UK in the last five years for which records are available; and how many were(a) part of the Government's farm scale evaluation and (b) for other purposes. [173018]
§ Mr. Morley[holding answer 13 May 2004]: In the five years to the end of 2003, there were 565 releases of GM crops for research purposes. Of these 273 were used in the farm-scale evaluations on 264 sites, as nine maize sowings were on fields reused from the previous year. The remaining 292 releases were for National List trials or other research work and in many cases several different releases were located at the same site.