The High Court has ruled that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) did not act unlawfully over the recent GM rice contamination incident – but that it did make mistakes.
Friends of the Earth took the FSA to court over its failure to act when illegal GM rice entered the food chain last year.
The FSA were clearly rattled. If contamination occurs again they will certainly behave very differently.
The FSA also committed themselves to a review of their handling of the incident. This would have been unlikely to happen if we hadn’t taken them to court.
We will now push for the review to be open and transparent - involving external stakeholders, and published on their website.
An experimental GM rice from the US contaminated long grain rice in UK supermarkets and around the world late last year.
It was the most significant GM food contamination incident ever to affect the UK.
In January we found contaminated rice still on sale in London two months after the FSA said none was left on the market.
Please write to the FSA and the supermarkets to help prevent any more incidents like this using our new short action guide (PDF†).
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