www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

EU environment ministers will rekindle Europe's simmering row on genetically
modified (GMO) foods next month when they tackle three different strands of
the debate, including whether to authorize a "live" biotech crop, January
2007 by Jeremy Smith.

All three GMO items, to be debated when the ministers meet on February 20,
have already undergone a lower-level process when EU experts failed to reach
a required majority consensus. Under EU law, those items now pass to
ministers for approval.

Two of them look set to be highly controversial: a draft order for Hungary
to lift its ban on a GMO maize and a proposal to let farmers grow a GMO
potato, the EU's first attempt in eight years to approve a biotech crop
designed for cultivation.

The third item relates to imports of carnations whose color has been
genetically modified. Had the experts agreed, it would have been the first
new approval of a GMO plant in eight years.

Privately, EU officials expect another voting stalemate on the potato and
carnation, with no consensus agreement either to accept or reject the draft
authorizations. If that happens, the drafts go to the European Commission
for a default rubberstamp.

But to order Hungary to lift its GMO ban may be a completely different
matter since such a command touches on national sovereignty. In the past,
this has been the only area where EU governments agree on biotech policy:
They don't like it at all.

Hungary, one of the bloc's biggest grain producers, became the first country
in eastern Europe to ban GMO crops or foods when it outlawed the planting of
MON 810 maize seeds, marketed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, in January
2005.

Just last month, EU ministers slapped down an attempt to order Austria to
drop its bans on two GMO maize types: a second stinging rebuff to the
Commission which had tried to do exactly the same thing 18 months earlier.
One maize type was MON 810.

"There will be three GMO items to be discussed at the February council (of
EU environment ministers) -- the carnation, the Hungarian ban and the
potato," one EU official said.

"It could be that they (ministers) show solidarity (on the Hungarian GMO
ban), the same way that they did with Austria. It's a very sensitive issue,"
she said.

Still split on GMO policy

So far, there have been no signs that the EU has changed tack on biotech
approvals after the World Trade Organization ruled last year that the bloc
was illegally blocking GMO foods.

Observers say the Commission's attempts to overturn national GMO bans is
meant to demonstrate to the complainants in the WTO case - Argentina, Canada
and the United States - that it is taking action to facilitate more GMO
approvals.

The European Union has long been split on GMO policy and the EU's countries
consistently clash over whether to approve new varieties for import, but
without reaching a conclusion.

In Europe, consumers are well known for their skepticism, if not hostility,
to GMO crops, often dubbed "Frankenstein foods". But the international
biotech industry says its products are perfectly safe and no different to
conventional foods.

Blue flowers

The potato, engineered by German chemicals group BASF to yield high amounts
of starch, would be grown only for industrial processing to make items such
as paper. It is not designed to be consumed by humans or used in animal
feed.

If the ministers agree to an approval, which is not expected, it would make
the potato - known as Amylogene - the first GMO product for growing to gain
approval since 1998.

The carnation is marketed by Florigene, one of Australia's first biotech
companies and part of the privately owned Suntory group. Known as Florigene
Moonlite, the flowers are modified to produce blue pigment and also carry a
herbicide-resistant gene.

[today.reuters.com]

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