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

European biotech industry leaders announce a Green Biotechnology Manifesto
today in Lyon, France at BioVision where industry, politicians and NGOs are
gathering to discuss how biotechnologies can meet the Millennium Development
Goals and the needs of developing countries, March 2007.

Agricultural or "green" biotechnology is being adopted at record speed
around the world - in 2006, 10.3 million farmers in 22 countries cultivated
genetically modified (biotech) crops on 102 million hectares. Of the 10.3
million, 90% or 9.3 million were small, resource-poor farmers from
developing countries whose increased income from biotech crops contributed
to alleviate their poverty.

Planting in Europe has been much slower, but is accelerating as farmers
start reaping the benefits of biotech crops. The number of hectares of
biotech crops in Europe, although modest, is also growing significantly.

The Green Biotechnology Manifesto is a European perspective on green biotech
and advocates five main policies to support agricultural biotech in Europe.
The industry calls on decision makers to

* Fully implement the biotech crop authorization process
* Enable a European single market in seeds
* Respect other countries' freedom to trade in commodities
* Promote coherence of policies and public information on green biotech
* Promote policies that respect developing countries

Launching the biotech manifesto, Dr Bernward Garthoff, Chairman of the
Agrifood Council of EuropaBio said: "The application of biotechnology to
plant breeding has yielded benefits to farmers, the economy and the
environment which are simply not possible with the more traditional
approaches. These new possibilities are making an essential contribution not
only to the food and animal feed security of a growing and increasingly
prosperous global population, but also to the sustainable supply of
renewable raw materials for industry and energy such as transport fuels."

EuropaBio Chairman, Dr Hans Kast said: "Agricultural biotechnology offers
tremendous opportunities. We have the products in place, we have the
solutions to offer, but we need political action from European leaders to
open the European market and offer real choice, otherwise Europe will not
benefit from this technology and will be left behind."

Link to Green Biotech Manifesto - www.greenbiotech-manifesto.org

For more information, please visit -
[www.europabio.org]

[www.europabio.org]