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EU approves biotech seed for planting (Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004 -- CropChoice news) -- Jeremy Smith, Reuters, 09/08/04: The European Commission also dropped a proposal on how much GMO material may
be tolerated without labelling in batches of conventional seed -- a
controversial law that has bounced between the Commission's various
departments for over a year. It authorised 17 different seed strains of maize engineered by U.S. biotech
giant Monsanto Before Wednesday's decision, the GMO seeds only had national authorisations
issued by France and Spain. The EU's ban meant that only farmers in those
countries could buy and plant them. "The maize has been thoroughly assessed to be safe for human health and
environment," Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne said
in a statement. "It has been grown in Spain for years without any known problems," he said,
adding that it would be clearly labelled as GMO maize to give farmers a
choice. Under an established legal procedure, once an EU state gives the green light
for a seed to be sold on its territory -- and assuming all EU legislation is
complied with -- the Commission is obliged to extend that authorisation to
an EU-wide basis. The 17 seeds will now be entered into what is called the Common Catalogue,
the EU's overall seed directory that includes all national seed catalogues.
The parent maize seed, known as MON 810, has been engineered to resist
certain insects. GREENS ANGRY
The move angered greens, who say it is irresponsible to allow the widespread
use of GMO seeds while many EU countries have no laws on how farmers should
separate organic, GMO and conventional crops to minimise
cross-contamination. So far, the Commission has insisted that EU states should be responsible for
how their farmers segregate the three farming types: an issue known in EU
jargon as coexistence. Environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth (FoE) described the decision
as "a recipe for disaster", saying it would cause widespread contamination
of Europe's food, farming and environment and remove consumers' ability to
avoid GMOs. Polls show that more than 70 percent of European consumers oppose biotech
foods because of health and environment worries. "European member states must step in where the Commission has failed and ban
these GM seeds," said FoE's GMO campaigner Geert Ritsema in a statement. "And without coexistence rules, the widespread contamination of conventional
crops is highly likely, posing a massive threat to Europe's food, farming
and environment," he said. SEED PURITY PROBLEM The Commission said it had failed to reach consensus on the purity of seed
batches containing GMOs and it would probably be the next executive taking
office in November that would decide. Spokesman Reijo Kemppinen said there were divisions within the 25-member
college over thresholds -- the proposal would have allowed maize and rapeseed, the only two GMO crops authorised, to contain 0.3 percent GMOs
before being labelled as biotech. "It's not very likely that this Commission will have time to return to this
issue," he told a news briefing. Green groups, who say thresholds should be set at the lowest technically
feasible level of 0.1 percent, welcomed the delay. "It is a very good thing that the Commission acknowledged that their
proposal was not well thought through," Greenpeace GMO adviser Eric Gall
said in a statement. The seed proposal is widely seen as the last piece in the EU's complex
jigsaw of GMO laws. The aim is to kickstart more approvals of live GMO crops
after the bloc allowed imports of a GMO maize in May: the formal end of the
biotech ban. | |
