Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Eleventh Report


Summary


The Government has announced in principle that it will permit the commercial cultivation of GM crops in the United Kingdom. However, the details of the regime which will allow GM and non-GM and organic crops to co-exist, and of liability for contamination or admixture, still have to be worked out. The Government has said that it will launch a consultation to determine such details.

The Government may hope that now that the decision in principle has been made it will be easier to finalise the details of a planting regime. But it should be under no such illusions: it is apparent that the prospect of agreement is remote.

In this report we examine the areas in which consultation should concentrate. These are primarily, at what level the threshold for contamination or admixture of GM in non-GM or organic crops should be set and how liability should be approached.

The Government will no doubt proceed with great caution. There is no immediate prospect of commercial cultivation of GM maize, so the Government is no longer under tight time constraints. There is also no appetite at all amongst consumers for GM products, so again there may not be pressure for rapid resolution of these issues. But now that the Europe-wide moratorium on new GM food, feed and crops has been lifted, it is important to establish co-existence and liability regimes.


 
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