Greens Slam EU Commission's Views on GMO Crop Law
Date: 13-Mar-06
Country: BELGIUM
Author: Jeremy Smith
In a report published by its agriculture department, the Commission says there is no immediate need for EU-wide rules to separate traditional, organic and GMO crops, since countries need much more time to develop their own national crop laws.
Its conclusion is a turnaround from repeated Commission comments over the last year that some kind of legal framework could be envisaged in 2006 setting parameters for governments to set up crop-growing laws to minimise cross-contamination.
Green groups said it showed an approach that could cause the irreversible contamination of EU food, seeds and environment.
"The EU Commission approach is clearly a failure," said Helen Holder at Friends of the Earth Europe, attacking the EU executive for a "wait-and-contaminate" approach on GMO crops.
"It must stop dodging its responsibility and introduce an EU law that prevents contamination of our food, farming and environment," she said in a statement.
Only a handful of EU countries have specific crop separation laws in place - four, as of the end of 2005 - based on a set of broad non-binding guidelines issued by the Commission in July 2003, although many others are now debating draft laws.
Some of the laws favoured non-GMO farmers over those who wanted to experiment with biotech crops. Most of them placed the burden of separating crops on the GMO farmer, the report said.
And some countries appeared keen to restrict GMO farming as much as possible, it said. In these cases, the Commission has usually sent a draft law back to the country concerned, with a veiled threat of legal action if changes are not implemented.
BIOTECH BULLYING?
By the end of 2005, 20 draft crop laws had been notified to Brussels. Half of these drew objections from the Commission, which attacked some of them for being overly restrictive and violating EU laws on the internal market and movement of goods.
Green groups said EU countries were entitled to restrict GMO crop growing on their territory if they wanted to, especially given the strong opposition to GMO foods among EU consumers.
"The Commission ... is now trying to bully with threats of legal action against any country or region that wants to defend the right of farmers and consumers not to plant GMO’s or eat genetically modified food," said Eric Gall of Greenpeace. The European biotech industry takes a very different view, saying GMO crops can easily exist alongside non-GMO varieties.
"EuropaBio considers that existing national laws on civil liability already provide the necessary mechanisms to determine fault and assess liability and the need for compensation," said European biotech industry lobby group EuropaBio.
"Additional Community (EU) or member state liability legislation or funds that single out GMO’s are not necessary, and would thus be disproportionate and discriminatory," it said.