EU urged to impose GMO limits on ‘clean seeds’

The European seed industry yesterday (2 March) called on the European Commission to come up with a “long-awaited” proposal for thresholds to label the accidental presence of GMOs in conventional seeds, arguing that their presence is in any case “unavoidable”.

The lack of thresholds, the industry argues, has lead to an “inadequate patchwork of different rules in different countries” and thus to the absence of a EU single market for seeds. 

The Commission’s in-house experts, farmers and EU agriculture and environment ministers have all concluded over the past ten years that there is a need to establish thresholds. But while the EU executive has initiated drafts on the issue, it has yet to table an official proposal. According to sources, this is due to the personal resistance of Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas to “everything that is related to GMOs”. 

The “continuous failure” of the Commission to present a proposal on the issue “deprives Europe’s seed industry of legal certainty, the single market and its economic future,” according to the European Seed Association. The organisation further argues that the lack of thresholds for seeds is “illogical” as limits have been established for conventional food and feed products. 

“Adventitious presence (AP) of GMOs in conventional seed is technically inevitable and unavoidable,” said Olivier Lucas, head of scientific affairs at RAGT, a French breeding and seed production company. “Meanwhile, most member states apply [the principle of] zero tolerance to the presence of GMOs in conventional seeds,” he added. 

In the current situation, “our company works in total legal uncertainty,” Lucas said, adding that the analytical process for detecting hazardous GMOs in traditional seeds is extremely expensive, further hampering his company’s business. 

Asked what kind of threshold the industry could accept, Lucas explained that the current unavoidable presence ranges from 0.1% to 0.9%. If all seeds currently produced were made legally marketable, the threshold would need to be around 0.9%. In the Commission’s first draft proposal, dating from 2003, this level was considered far too high by environmental NGOs, which asked for no more than 0.1%. 

While most member states apply the zero tolerance principle, in practice they apply different AP tolerance levels, Lucas continued. “The levels accepted are 0.1% in France, 0.5% in the UK and 0.9% in Romania,” he explained. 

Unless the EU clarifies what a “clean seed” stands for, we will have a “civil war in rural areas” over the issue, warned Thor Kofoed, chair of the Copa-Cogeca working group on seeds. 

Kofoed added that if no threshold was set, certified seeds bred and produced by seed companies would become so expensive that farmers would start producing their own, without any traceability or certification on their quality or GMO content. 

Last December EU Environment Ministers concluded that long-term environmental risk assessment of GMOs should be improved and member states allowed to establish GMO-free zones (EURACTIV 09/12/08). Furthermore ministers agreed on the need to set Community thresholds for the presence of GMOs in conventional seeds and asked the Commission to adopt appropriate thresholds “as soon as possible”. 

The Commission is currently finalising impact studies on the establishement of seed thresholds.

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