Large trade item gets GM clearance
- January 20th, 2007
- Posted by EUEditor
The latest installment in the story of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) entering Europe has seen the lifting of strict checks on corn gluten feed and brewers’ grain being imported from the United States.
A requirement was imposed in April 2006, that all imports be certified free of the unauthorized GMO Bt10, and that EU member countries then monitor stocks; after American authorities reported that a shipment had been inadvertently let through.
One shipment was detected, in May 2005, and according to the European Commission the company developing Bt10 has now moved to stop it being propagated.
While the emergency measure has been dropped, as announced 17.1.07, random checks will continue for six months.
The European Commission is open to rigorous scientific justification of imports and cultivation of GM products, in the face of instinctive and scientifically-based consumer resistance – and it wants uniform standards.
In 2004 it announced it had invited the scientific evaluation body, the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), to liaise “more fully” (sic) with national scientific bodies, and “to provide more detailed justification, in its opinions on individual applications, for not accepting scientific objections raised by the competent national authorities”.
Picture: stock.schng