In total 718 inspections of GM release sites have taken place since January 2000.
The Central Science Laboratory’s GM inspectorate has made 341 growing season inspections since it assumed its responsibilities in June 2000. Each part B trial site is inspected at least once when the crop is in the ground, but additional inspections may be undertaken at sowing or at harvest, or where an incident has occurred at the release site. The reports can be found on the internet at:
http://www.gm-inspectorate.gov.uk/deliberateRelease/exptreleases.cfm
In addition the GM inspectorate has made 337 inspection visits following completion of trials. I have arranged for copies of the reports from these visits to be placed in the Library .
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) was responsible for all inspections prior to 1 June 2000 and since then has retained responsibility for inspections of GM clinical trial applications. I have also arranged for copies of HSE’s 40 inspection reports to be placed in the Library.
There has been no commercial cultivation of GM crops in England, but maize variety T25, which has a Part C consent, was one of the crops grown in the farm-scale evaluation (FSE) research trials. There were 68 plantings of T25 as part of the FSEs after January 2000, of which 23 were vandalised.
My Department has received 205 post-release monitoring reports from consent holders since January 2000. These are available for inspection on the GMO public register held in DEFRA’s library. I have arranged for copies of them to be placed in the Library of the House.