Tropes

Nature 00120.txt

European disarray on transgenic crops: Nature Newseurope has failed to reach a decision on whether France and Greece should be ordered to lift their national bans on cultivation of a genetically modified maize (corn) known as MON801, the only GM crop so far approved for use at the European level. The failure of France, Greece, Austria and Hungary to adhere to European union (EU) legislation threatens a political crisis in the EU, which is under pressure from the World trade organization to live up to its laws in this matter. The European Food safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma, Italy, which is responsible for scientific risk assessments on GM CROPS in Europe, has reported that there is no case against MON801, which has been modified to be resistant to insects. But on 16february, a committee of experts appointed by each of the 27 EU countries was unable to muster the'qualified majority'--one that represents 62 %or more of the Union's population--needed to decide whether to lift the bans. The result echoes a similar impasse last December, when the committee failed to reach the qualified majority needed to order Austria and Hungary to lift their bans on the crop. The World trade organization claims that the EU is out of line with its own legislation and that the national bans are effectively denying countries that use biotechnology in agriculture the access to the European market they are allowed under trade rules. A series of looming decisions on these issues is set to bring the matter to a head over the next month. Most of Europe's citizens, and many of its governments, have long been hostile to agricultural biotechnology. A number of member states did not implement the EU's decision to approve MON801 in 1998, and this led the European commission, the EU's executive, to develop a new legal framework that ensured the tightest possible safety controls based on transparent risk-assessment analysis. That framework, which finally came into force in 2004, allows the EU to approve GM CROPS when there is no scientific evidence of danger to health or environment; once approved the crop may be cultivated in all 27 member states. It also includes provision for revisiting an approval if new scientific evidence of possible danger should come to light. Seven countries in the EU now grow MON801, and in most others farmers are free to do so should they so wish. But Austria, Greece and Hungary have refused consistently to allow cultivation, claiming that the risk assessment needs to be updated. Last year, France, which had been one of the EU's largest users of the technology, joined the refuseniks. It sent the EFSA a thick dossier of new data that it argued raised safety concerns. But the EFSA concluded that none of the supposedly new scientific evidence provided by these four countries would invalidate the previous risk assessments of maize MON810. Given the committee's failure to make a decision, the dossier on France and Greece will now have to be considered by the environment ministers of the EU nations within the next three months. The ministers will also consider the cases of Austria and Hungary when meeting in council on 2 march. If the council of ministers fails to reach a qualified majority in favour or against, the commission itself has to make the decision. Ad infinitum, ad absurdum, says an insider at the environment ministry. The legal framework is based science yet getting a decision is very difficult. Natalie Moll of Europabio, the biotech industry lobby group in Brussels, says that the regulatory committee's failure to bring an end to cultivation bans gives the usual European mixed signal that we have the toughest scientific approval system in the world, but we don't trust it. In the meantime, the EFSA is working through its backlog of applications for the cultivation of 13 other GM CROPS. It has approved already two more insect-resistant maizes--BT1507, which is owned jointly by Pioneer and Dow Agrosciences, and BT11, owned by Syngenta. Both approvals will be discussed by the regulatory committee on 25 february. As the timetable for key decisions tightens, many politicians are entrenching their positions. After a risk-analysis report by The french food safety committee giving MON810 a clean bill of health was leaked to the press last week--it had previously been suppressed--prime minister Francois Fillon rushed to Brussels to insist that France would maintain its ban whatever the EU decided. At the same time the state government of Bavaria stopped all field experiments on GM CROPS, confining them to greenhouses, and the Bavarian environment minister Markus Soder announced his intention to block cultivation of GM CROPS in the state. Meanwhile, public opposition to GM CROPS may be slipping. In a Eurobarometer public-opinion survey published last year, the percentage of those who said they were against GM CROPS fell from 70%to 58%.

< Back - Next >