EU May Allow First GMO Seeds for Sale Across Bloc
Date: 07-Sep-04
Country: NETHERLANDS
Author: Jeremy Smith
No biotech seeds have so far been approved at EU level, but some national authorizations exist in countries such as France and Spain. This means that only farmers in those countries can buy and then plant the approved seeds.
However, 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 eventually to extend that authorization onto an EU-wide basis.
At a meeting on Wednesday, the EU executive will discuss entering 17 different strains of Monsanto's 810 maize into what is called the Common Catalog - the EU's overall seed directory that includes all national seed catalogs.
The parent maize seed, engineered to resist certain insects, won EU approval for cultivation just before the bloc began its ban on new GMO approvals in 1998 that lasted nearly six years. At present, very few "live" GMO crops may be grown in the EU.
"Failure to undertake the inscription now would mean the 2005 growing season could be lost and leave the Commission vulnerable to a Court challenge for failure to act," said a note obtained by Reuters to be delivered by EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne on Wednesday.
CONTROVERSIAL LAW
Wednesday looks certain to be a busy GMO day for the 25-strong group of EU commissioners, several of whom are lukewarm, at best, on pressing ahead with more GMO approvals.
Also likely to be on their agenda is a draft law on how much GMO material may be tolerated without labeling in batches of conventional seed - a highly controversial law that has bounced between the Commission's various units for more than a year.
The law's latest version calls for a GMO content threshold of 0.3 percent for maize and rapeseed, the only two biotech crops so far authorized. Batches of conventional seed with GMO material below those levels would not have to be labeled.
Germany's Agriculture Minister Renate Kuenast said she would have preferred a threshold of 0.1 percent, a level greens say is the lowest technically feasible. But the latest draft law was still an improvement on earlier versions, she told reporters at a meeting of EU farm ministers in the Netherlands.
Despite the high likelihood of the 17 Monsanto seeds winning European approval, green groups say allowing the widespread use of GMO seeds is irresponsible while most countries have no proper rules on how farmers should separate organic, conventional and GMO crops to minimize 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.
"These proposals by the European Commission are a recipe for disaster," said Geert Ritsema, GMO campaigner at Friends of the Earth, referring to the draft seeds law and Commission proposal to approve the Monsanto seeds.