Environmental lobby group, Biowatch, has said that the Department of Agriculture has flouted its own rules by simultaneously awarding Syngenta the go-ahead to carry out field trials of GM maize seed and commercially release the crop. "The simultaneous application … does not meet basic practice procedures for biosafety and undermines the primary purpose of field trials," said Haidee Swanby of Biowatch SA. The dual application also violated the environmental impact assessment provisions of the National Environmental Management Act and was at odds with the objectives of South Africa's Genetically Modified Organisms Act, she said.