Bayer CropScience was hoping to be allowed to keep the exact locations of their field trials secret by only naming the county in which trials were hold. The Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett however insisted on making the specific information publicly available as before.

According to the EU regulation on deliberate release countries are obliged to monitor field trials and to make publicly available where they are. In the past protestors have used this information to visit the fields, to raise public awareness, to make farmers aware of the danger to their neighbouring crops, to squat fields so that planting could not take place in time, to protest on and around the fields, and to de-contaminate fields from GE crops.

Of course companies would have prefered to be secretive about it, to avoid discussions with the public, to avoid high costs for protection of their fields, and to gain research results.

Besides the fact that the public in general has a right to this information, farmers need it, because field trials can contaminate other fields just as well as commercial fields. Contaminated products have to be labelled, can not be sold as organic, and in case the contamination comes from a crop that is not approved (as it is generally the case with crops in field trials) selling the contaminated crop might not be allowed at all under the newest EU regulations.

It is not a "backdoor maratorium" as an industry source states. It also does not mean that field trial are not allowed anymore.
It is the aknowledgement that it is not the task of the state to protect companies so that they can go ahead in secrecy with a product development that the public clearly does not want.
It is a victory to liablilty and accountability that the UK authorities value the public right to information higher then the companies risk that the field trials might get destroyed.


"Top GM food company abandons British crop trials":  http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,9061,1051427,00.html

www.biotechimc.org