GM breach costs firms 42,000

17 February 1999

GM breach costs firms £42,000

By FWi staff

TWO companies were handed fines and costs totalling £42,000 this morning after pleading guilty to breaching the regulations that govern genetically modified (GM) crops grown on trial sites.

US agrochemical giant Monsanto and feed merchant Perryfield Holdings pleaded guilty in the first UK prosecution for breaching GM regulations.

Caistor Magistrates Court fined Monsanto £17,000 and ordered the company to pay £6159 costs. Perryfield Holdings was fined £14,000 plus £5000 costs.

Simon Parrington for the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) told magistrates that the prosecution followed a random inspection of a oilseed rape feed trial at Rothwell in Lincolnshire last year.

The site was being managed by Joseph Nickerson Farms but the two defendant companies had ultimate responsibility, said Mr Parrington.

Andy Tommey, the HSE inspector, said a specified six-metre border of non-GM rape around the trial plot – designed to stop pollen escaping – had been partially removed.

The strip had been mowed to create better access for field workers and “to improve the appearance of the trial,” he said.

The court was told that no Monsanto representatives had ever visited the site to check that the conditions attached to the trial were being observed.

Perryfield Holdings had visited just once, after the trial site had been sown.

Rhodri Price Lewis, counsel for Monsanto and Perryfield Holdings, said the firms accepted responsibility for ensuring compliance with the conditions and regretted the incident.

One employee had been unaware of the trial conditions: “It was not a deliberate or reckless flouting of the controls,” he said.

Seven other breaches of GM regulations have taken place in the UK during the past two years, although none are likely to result in prosecution, according to HSE information.