By Jeremy Smith
BRUSSELS - Europe's environment chief faces a showdown this month with
his colleagues in the EU's executive Commission over biotech foods and
crops, officials say. The root cause is a potato.
Since July, the biotech industry has been waiting for the Commission
to authorize an application by German chemicals group BASF for a genetically
modified (GMO) potato for use in industry rather than as food.

The application for a potato, engineered to yield high amounts of
starch has triggered controversy far exceeding the usual European consumer
wariness over GMO foods.

If, or rather when, it is approved by the Commission, the EU's
executive arm, it will be the first GMO product to be passed since 1998 that
is designed to be grown in Europe's fields.

It is not intended for human consumption but rather for use in
industries such as paper-making.

BASF, which would like to start commercial cultivation next year, has
made a separate EU application for the same potato under a different legal
process to use its pulp, known commercially as Amflora, as animal feed.

EU farm ministers discussed the BASF application in mid-July but
failed to reach agreement. As a result, the decision over the potato has
landed on the Commission's plate.

And that, unless new data, doubts or scientific opinions emerge, is
almost certain to mean eventual approval.

Hot Potato

Officials said the Amflora application would probably be discussed at
a full meeting of the 27-member Commission in mid-October, a debate that is
likely to be heated.

In Amflora's case, there has been little movement on an authorization
from the responsible Commission department, that headed by EU Environment
Commissioner Stavros Dimas -- known as one of the Commission's more
biotech-wary commissioners.

It is also not the first time that Dimas has been reluctant to move on
GMO dossiers, diplomats say.

"He (Dimas) is sitting on it but he can also be forced to act by the
President (of the European Commission)," one Commission official said. "The
regulation says that we have to act in 'a reasonable time' -- but what is
'reasonable'?"

The biotech industry, which insists that its products are as safe as
non-GMO equivalents, has long vented its frustration over what it sees as
the EU's delay in approving GMOs, saying it loses time and money in not
being allowed access to EU markets.

That frustration has been expressed in legal challenges, which have
also encouraged the Commission to re-examine its internal policy on biotech
crops and foods.

The most famous example was when Argentina, Canada and the United
States filed against the EU executive at the World Trade Organization over
the EU's de facto moratorium on new GMO authorizations, which ran for some
six years and ended in 2004.

The WTO found that the EU's effective blockade on new GMO imports
constituted "undue delay" and violated trade rules.

More recently, in May, Pioneer Hi-Bred International -- a subsidiary
of DuPont Co -- filed a lawsuit against the Commission over its alleged
delay in submitting the company's application for EU approval of its
modified 1507 maize product.
[www.reuters.com]