Groups Attack Proposed EU Law on GMOs
For years, I have read about the opposition that environmental organizations and grassroots groups have voiced against biotechnology and genetically modified foods and have heard about the number of demonstrations these organizations have held protesting against the technology and the products all over the world. So, it did not surprise me that green groups recently attacked a draft European Union (EU) law on labeling organic produce (Green Groups fear GMOs creeping into EU Organic Law, CheckBiotech, 12/23/05).
According to the news article, the European Commission recently proposed new regulations on organic farming that would allow products with up to 0.9 percent of genetically modified content-acquired through accidental or unavoidable contamination-to retain a label of “EU organic.” However, any producer who knowingly used genetically modified materials in their processed food or feed, even from a product supplied by a third party, would not be allowed to use an organic label.
Environmental organizations and green groups were outraged by the proposal, saying that it threatened to allow genetically modified content to creep into what should be completely biotech-free farming. According to the article, the European Commission is likely to present the draft law to European Union agriculture ministers in January although a decision on the proposed law is not expected for several months.
“Genetic contamination of organic food is completely unacceptable to consumers throughout the European Union,” said Helen Holder, GMO campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe. “The European Commission should be protecting organic farmers and consumers with laws that prevent organic farming from being contaminated by genetically modified organisms.”
The London-based GM Freeze Campaign slammed the Commission’s proposal as the “thin end of a wedge which will allow the creeping contamination of organic food all across Europe.”
While green groups and GMO wary European Union governments would like to see very low thresholds of genetically modified organisms permitted for traditional farming, and preferably zero for the organic sector, according to the article, both Commission and biotechnology industry experts say this is impossible to achieve. The best that can be hoped for, the article states, would be to aim for 0.1 percent of genetically modified content, known as the “detection level,” which scientists say is the minimum genetically modified organism presence that they can identify.
The European Union’s looming debate on organic labeling is expected to form part of a long-running discussion over how to separate genetically modified organisms, traditional, and organic crops: a concept known as coexistence in European Union jargon, according to the article. Several countries, including Austria and Luxembourg, want hard and fast legislation on genetically modified products. European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has often said she may consider a legal framework, possibly in 2006, for how European Union governments should deal with coexistence and minimize crop cross-contamination.
Debate and protest over genetically modified foods has been in existence since the first foods were created over ten years ago. Countless tests and trials of these foods over the years have proven time and time again that these foods are safe. Although environmental and grassroots groups will continue to voice their opposition because of their fear over the technology, the opposition will eventually diminish as more and more people use genetically modified products and consume foods created through biotechnology around the world.
