DEFRA set to decide on Aventis GM action
DEFRA set to decide on Aventis GM action
By Alistair Driver
BIOTECH company Aventis is waiting to learn whether it faces legal action after allowing genetically modified plants to grow on a former GM trial site.
The GM oilseed rape flowered in Lincolnshire fields used in 2001 farm scale evaluations months after the main crop was harvested.
DEFRA officials are scrutinising a report, due to be published early next week, by the governments GM watchdog before deciding what action to take. The GM Inspectorate asked Aventis to destroy the plants growing at Witham-on-the-Hill, near Grantham, after visiting the site earlier this month.
A DEFRA official refused to comment on whether the government will pursue the matter through the courts. Calls for the government to prosecute Aventis are being led by conservation group Friends of the Earth, which made the initial complaint in November.
"Quite obviously these sites have not been properly monitored by Aventis, even though it is legally responsible. The government must now show how seriously it views this incident by prosecuting Aventis," said FoE campaigner Pete Riley.
Aventis has now ploughed up the plants. But Paul Rylott, the firms head of bioscience, told farmers weekly: "We do not think we have done anything wrong at all. We do not think we have breached the trial rules and there are no implications for other plants."
FoE said the plants were "volunteers", grown from seeds spilled at harvest time, which were illegal and could contaminate other plants. But Dr Rylott said the plants resulted from the regrowth of stubble left in the field since the harvest. Most were in fields where non-GM oilseed rape had grown, he added. *