By Laura Crowley
The Codex Alimentarius Commission is to create guidelines for
assessing the risk of imported food made with non-approved genetically
modified plant material, which would help relax trade barriers. The EU
currently applies a zero-tolerance policy for non-approved genetically
modified organisms (GMOs) in food and feed imports.
According to the Commission report, most of these GMOs have suffered
delays in the approval system but have received regulatory approval in
countries outside the EU or have a positive safety assessment from the
European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).



Because of the differences in the GMO authorisation regimes between
the EU and exporting countries, conflicting authorisations of GMOs have
occurred. Codex said these could become more frequent and affect a greater
range of crops in the future.



Codex establishes food standards, ensures fair trade practices in the
food trade and promotes the coordination of all food standards work
undertaken by international organisations on behalf of the UN's Food and
Agriculture Organisation and World Health Organisation.



It has decided to advance a proposal that addresses the risk
assessment of low-level presence of biotech plant materials, found in food
or feed, which have been authorised in one or more countries but not yet in
the importing country. This decision followed negotiations by members of the
Codex ad hoc Task Force last week in Chilba, Japan.



Codex's proposal will be submitted to the Codex Commission next July
for approval, and will subsequently be incorporated in the Codex Plant
Guidelines as an annex including information-sharing mechanisms.



This system would not substitute the full food safety assessments
under the Codex Guidelines for products to be marketed in an importing
country. It will also not address risk management measures, so individual
countries will need to decide when and how to use the guidelines within the
context of their regulatory systems. No country would be obliged to adopt
the document.



Codex's decision has been welcomed by European industry
representatives, according to EuropaBio, the European Association for
Bioindustries.



"The delays in approval of biotech products in Europe compared to the
rest of the world as well the absence of a science-based approach to address
low level presence is already leading to trade disruption and seriously
impacting the supply of feedstuffs," said Johan Vanhemelrijck, secretary
general of EuropaBio.



"Moreover, this unresolved issue that bears no relationship with
safety is having a damaging effect on public confidence towards biotech
products. In light of the Codex decisions, we hope that the EU will revisit
its zero tolerance policy towards low level presence, speed up its approval
process and define the appropriate science-based approach so that European
food and feed supplies are secured."



Europabio says this issue should be addressed in a globally consistent
way to ensure that all countries have an equal opportunity to trade food and
feed materials freely with one another.



However, some have criticised Codex's proposals, disagreeing with only
applying regulations to new foods merely because a certain technique has
been used.



Henry Miller, a delegate to the task force in Japan, wrote in The
Washington Times: "It is one thing to regulate new foods with traits that
are of potential concern, but quite another to regulate new foods merely
because a certain technique has been used, especially when that technique is
state-of-the-art and superior to its predecessors? Virtually everything in
our diets has been genetically improved by one technique or another."



Organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are entirely
against genetic modification. Clare Oxborrow from Friends of the Earth told
FoodNavigator: "We are concerned by attempts to legalise contamination of
unapproved GM ingredients through Codex. The GM industry has failed to
control contamination of the food chain, as last years GM rice contamination
incident highlighted.



"It is outrageous that instead of tightening up controls to prevent
this contamination happening in the first place, the US is attempting to
legalise such contamination. Governments must uphold European legislation
which has a zero tolerance approach to unauthorised GMOs to ensure that
consumers and the environment are protected."



GM crops are increasingly cultivated in major crop exporting
countries. The adoption rate of cultivating GM crops has seen double-digit
annual growth since 1996. In 2006, 10.3m farmers in 22 countries cultivated
biotech crops on 102m hectares. Ninety per cent of farmers who benefited
from these crops were from developing countries, according to the
commission's study.




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