Last week the State Government tabled its audit of commercial GM canola farms in Western Australia.
The audits were done to see if genetically modified canola growers were sticking to their compliance rules.
Thirty three per cent of farmers who planted commercial GM canola crops were audited.
These audits were done independently by the Department; there was no involvement with the GM seed owner Monsanto.
Department of Agriculture and Food development officer Rosalie McCauley says all audited growers were compliant with the 23 criteria.
"In the licensing and stewardship agreement there are mandatory requirements and there's also industry best practice requirements. Mandatory requirements include things like having a five metre and a 400 metre buffer zone and industry best practice requirements include things like adequately cleaning out your equipment. Our auditor sat with the growers and looked at all of those points."
Ms McCauley concedes that it's not compulsory for all growers to be audited, and that they have the right to refuse.
"But we found that growers volunteered to be audited, they were happy to have it done, and I think that reflects that growers are really keen to keep having access to this technology."
The Department has recommended that the grains industry considers carrying out the audit process in future.
The audit criteria is detailed on less than one A4 page, and the key outcomes and observations from the exercise only run over one page.
Ms McCauley denies that the audit was done for appearances only.
"No, I think the Department did the audits because we felt it was really important to assess the compliance of the growers, so we weren't just going through the motions, we put the effort in and did a really thorough job."
© 2011 ABC.
