Europe: Rules on GMOs lack safeguards, say environmentalists

by Brian Kenety

Brussels, 26 Jul 2001 (IPS) - The European Commission’s proposed regulations for tracing and labeling genetically modified (GMO) food and feed fall dangerously short of preventing their unauthorised release into the European Union (EU) market, environmentalists warned Thursday.

They were reacting to Commission proposals Wednesday to lift a 1998 moratorium on new approvals of GMO plant varieties while setting out what it called the “world’s most stringent” rules on controlling and monitoring their release.

The new regulations would set up a centralised approvals process for authorising GMOs and a detailed system to trace them throughout the food chain, from the farm to the grocery store.

Labels would be placed on goods to the effect that: “This product does not contain but is derived from GMOs.” That could apply, for example, to eggs from chickens and milk from cows that consume GMO feed.

EU Food Safety Commissioner David Byrne said the rules would allow consumers to choose whether or not to eat food derived from GMOs. Consumers, he added, “can be assured that any GMOs in their food have been assessed strictly for their safety.”

The environmental group Greenpeace welcomed the introduction of a more thorough labeling regime, which includes products derived from GMOs such as oil and starch in food, as well as animal feed, which is the bulk of present GMO imports into the EU.

But the group said the new regulations include a “dangerous loophole” with respect to cross-pollination and contamination of non-GMO and organic crops.  This is because the Commission proposed to set a 1% tolerance threshold not only for authorised but also for unauthorised GMOs. Below that threshold, their presence in a product would not need to be approved or labelled.

To take effect, the plan must be approved by the 15 EU member states and the European Parliament.

“If the European Parliament and Council endorsed this provision, EU member states would in fact give up their sovereignty over the regulation of GMOs to some extent,” said Greenpeace.

Another leading pressure group, Friends of the Earth (FoE), described the rules as a concession to the biotech industry, giving it “licence to pollute” to the detriment of European citizens.

“All [that] companies have to do now is to say that the GMO contamination they created was ‘accidental’, and they get away with it,” said Gill Lacroix, biotechnology coordinator at FoE Europe. “It’s the thin-end-of-the-wedge syndrome - they will contaminate our agriculture and food supply and that contamination will self-perpetuate as time goes on.”

Lacroix said the biotech industries have convinced the Commission “to legislate on how to accommodate GMO pollution, rather than to act on how to prevent it.”

The Commission has proposed applying these exemptions only to those GMOs that have already received a favourable risk assessment by the EU scientific committee but that lack final market approval from the member states’ competent authorities and ministers.

Scientists as well as politicians and NGOs have frequently questioned the scientific committee’s favourable opinions on GMOs over the past years.  Greenpeace charged that the committee’s conclusion, that ‘zero tolerance’ of seed contamination from unauthorised GMOs is unworkable in practice, was based on political and commercial assumptions rather than on scientific criteria.

Pioneered in the US and on the market since the early 1990s, GMOs have been treated with extreme caution by the EU until now.

The concept of modifying plants to make them immune to herbicides or to control the ripening process has raised fears in Europe that ‘superweeds’ could spread out of control and that modified products - not yet thoroughly tested - could have catastrophic effects on public health.

The industry is so new that the full implications of the new biotechnology are not known and much of Europe is against even carrying out controlled tests on GM crops.

But European and international companies producing genetically altered corn, potatoes, tomatoes and other foods have eagerly awaited - and lobbied for - regulatory approval.

In February, the European Parliament argued that Europe needed to lift the moratorium - while putting in place controls on GMOs - in order to be competitive in biotechnology.

“Industry cannot wait forever. We must keep Europe in the fast lane on biotechnology,” said Euro-parliamentarian David Bowe, author of the body’s proposal to monitor GMOs, much of which has been incorporated into the Commission’s proposal presented Wednesday.

However, Greenpeace European Unit political advisor Brigid Gavin argued that the Commission’s proposal to set a 1% tolerance threshold not only for authorised but also for unauthorised GMOs is the “wrong reaction” to increased pressure and threats from the US administration and GMO-producing companies like Monsanto, Aventis, Syngenta and DuPont.

“If the EU sets clear and uncompromising safety standards, the market will adapt to them,” she said. “Opening loopholes like this, however, invites them to continue with their present strategy of sneaking unwanted and dangerous GMOs into our food chain.” – SUNS4946

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