FoE seeks judicial review to overturn GM trials

20 August 1999

FoE seeks judicial review to overturn GM trials

By Isabel Davies

FRIENDS of the Earth has launched a legal challenge against the governments policy on GM crop testing.

The environmental pressure group is seeking a judicial review in order to overturn the governments decision to increase the amount of land involved in field scale GM trials.

FoE claims that the government has bent its own rules to allow biotechnology giant AgrEvo to press on with the trials.

It claims that government officials also agreed to allow AgrEvo to change the GM crop being tested without submitting a new application – a decision which should have been made by the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE).

FoE policy director Tony Juniper said: “We have caught the government red-handed. They have tried to bend the law to suit a giant GM company in a hurry to get its crops into the UK market.

“The government needs to learn that if it tries to get round the law to suit the convenience of its friends in the biotech companies, it will be caught, exposed and then stopped.”