The Government's announcement
4. On 9 March 2004, the Secretary of State for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs announced that the Government would "agree
in principle" to the cultivation of a GM herbicide-tolerant
maize, Chardon LL.[6] However,
it placed two conditions on its approval: that the crop must be
cultivated in the way it had been in the field-scale evaluations;
and that the consent holders (Bayer CropScience) should provide
further scientific evidence if the existing European Union marketing
consent was to be renewed in 2006. The Government also said that
it would define a regime to permit the co-existence of GM and
non-GM crops in advance of the first likely planting of the crop,
in Spring 2005.[7]
5. On 31 March 2004 Bayer announced that it would
not in fact try to cultivate Chardon LL on a commercial basis
in the United Kingdom. It said that because details of the conditions
to be applied to cultivation were not yet known there would be
"yet another 'open-ended' period of delay. These uncertainties
and undefined timelines will make this five-year old variety economically
non-viable".[8] The
Government confirmed that the decision made by Bayer meant that
the commercial cultivation of GM crops had effectively been shelved
"for the foreseeable future".[9]
Our inquiry
6. Before the Bayer announcement we had already said
that we would set up a Sub-committee to undertake a short inquiry
following the Government's decision and following the earlier
inquiry by the Environmental Audit Committee.[10]
We set out terms of reference (below) which dealt exclusively
with GM maize.[11] Once
Bayer's position became clear we decided to extend the scope of
our inquiry to address the principle of the Government's
decision, and thus to look at GM crops more generally. By that
stage it was clear that the primary focuses of those submitting
evidence were, in any event, issues of co-existence and liability
more generally, rather than the specifics of GM herbicide-tolerant
maize.