Tag: GMO

The European Food Safety Authority has defended its independence from the biotech industry following renewed accusations from environmentalists that the EU agency ignores evidence of the potential health risks of genetically modified products. 

French President François Hollande will face judicial problems over the ban on the cultivation of genetically modified plants, and this has widespread implications for science-based risk assessment in the EU, argue Marcel Kuntz, John Davison and Agnès E. Ricroch.

The European Parliament's environment committee yesterday (12 April) backed proposals by the EU executive to give member states a choice of whether to ban cultivation of GM crops on their territory, adding environmental impacts to a list of grounds on which restrictions could be imposed.

In a bid to resolve a deadlock over the approval of new genetically-modified (GM) crops, EU environment ministers yesterday (14 March) discussed the grounds for allowing member states to decide individually whether or not to ban the cultivation of transgenic crops on their territory.

European Union governments have signalled their strong opposition to proposals allowing member states to decide whether to grow or ban genetically modified (GM) crops, a Belgian EU Presidency source said on Thursday (29 July).

The European Commission will tomorrow (13 July) propose an overhaul of the EU's policy for approving genetically modified (GM) crops, which will allow countries more freedom to ban cultivation on their territory while retaining an EU-wide authorisation system.

Europe faces a major overhaul of the way it deals with genetically modified (GM) crops, after the European Commission sparked controversy with new plans to circumvent its cumbersome legislative review process.

In a controversial move, the European Commission yesterday (2 March) gave the green light for the first genetically-modified potato to be cultivated in the European Union.

Big-name retailers like Tesco and Carrefour should help prepare consumers for innovations in the food sector, according to the top civil servant in the EU executive's directorate for health and consumer protection.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel yesterday (14 September) urged member states to draw up rules by the end of 2009 to restore soybean imports from the United States and secure adequate supplies of animal feed, despite a zero-tolerance policy towards unapproved genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in imported products.

After a debate on environmental risks related to the cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Austria is now calling for an opt-out clause to be introduced to related EU legislation to allow individual member states to decide on cultivation.

As the world's population approaches ten billion, issues like climate change, growing scarcity of oil and availability of quality land and water are challenging the planet's capacity to produce enough food for everyone - a paradigm shift that could potentially pave the way for a new global 'food crunch'.

Attempts by the European Commission to force Austria and Hungary to allow the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) maize on their territory were rejected yet again by EU environment ministers yesterday (2 March).  

A European Commission expert committee on GMOs yesterday failed to reach agreement on lifting French and Greek national bans on GM crop cultivation, leaving the decision to the EU Council of Ministers, which has only once found a qualified majority on the issue so far.

EU envrionment ministers continued to disagree on whether member states should be allowed to establish GMO-free zones for sensitive areas, although they did concur on the need for better long-term environmental risk assessment of GMOs.

While the Union's cautious approach to granting market authorisation to new technology applications like GMOs or products derived from nanotechnology has meant that EU has not suffered from any major backlash, it could also mean the bloc is missing out on major opportunities to improve its competitiveness, argued a policy analyst from a Brussels-based think tank in an interview with EurActiv.com.

Responding to Commission President José Manuel Barroso's request, the EU executive's ethical advisory body will issue an opinion on modern agricultural technologies by the end of 2008. 

The Commission has referred a number of pending GMO approvals back to the EU's food safety agency (EFSA) for further review of scientific evidence of the GMOs' potential effects on the environment and human health.

The world's 6.5 billion inhabitants can only be fed with the help of genetically modified crops, according to the father of the "green revolution" Norman Borlaug, quoted by political advisor and author Paul Driessen in an April editorial for Institut économique Molinari.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on 11 January 2008 that his country would invoke an EU safeguard clause enabling it to suspend the marketing and growth on its territory of a GM crop that has EU-wide authorisation.

Amid persistent hostile European public opinion towards GM food, the executive director of green biotechnology at EuropaBio, Nathalie Moll, argues that GMOs should be authorised based on science and not public perception, and that member states need to avoid mixing authorisation of a product and people's right to choose whether or not to buy it.

Following a Council of Ministers stalemate, the Commission has announced that it will approve a genetically modified potato for use in industrial processes and livestock feed. NGOs have reacted critically, arguing that the safety of the new crop cannot be assured.

The EU-27's agriculture ministers have agreed to new organic food production and labelling standards from 2009, but green groups say that the rules are lax and will allow widespread contamination of organic products by genetically modified organisms.

A Greenpeace petition has called for the EU to change its GMO-labelling rules to include milk, eggs, meat and other foods derived from animals fed with genetically modified products.