NEWS: Agricultural Biotechnology: EU may miss “invisible revolution” because of biotech policy
Budapest Business Journal
March 15, 2007
Excerpt…
The European Union operates an effective ban on new gene-engineered seeds and risks missing out on the “invisible revolution” that's developing crops for cleaner fuels or washing detergents, the industry says.
Innovation by companies such as BASF AG and Bayer CropScience AG in developing nutritional changes to corn, plants for use in biofuels as well as food and feed crops that resist drought or disease is changing the market for genetically modified technologies. The EU has yet to approve new seeds for cultivation since lifting a five-year-old embargo in 2004. “The moratorium is still in place because no approvals for cultivation have been given” by European governments, said Hans Kast, CEO of BASF Plant Science.
“We have a go-slow situation in the EU, and the process needs to be accelerated because there's a long queue of applications,” he said in a telephone interview from Lyon, France. In the last three months, EU governments have refused to strike down Hungarian and Austrian bans on imports of Monsanto Co. and Bayer biotech corn varieties. They also blocked a BASF request to allow farmers to grow a potato genetically modified to boost its starch content, in the first EU vote on permission for planting of a biotech crop in eight years.
In September, the World Trade Organization ruled that the ban was illegal and declined to find the embargo has been lifted. The European Commission, the EU's executive in Brussels, is trying to persuade governments to drop their opposition to the technology on environmental or human health concerns. While biotech crops were planted in 22 countries last year, generating sales of about €4.66 billion ($6.15 billion) for farmers, just six of the EU's then 25-nations planted biotech crops in 2006, led by Spain with 60,000 hectares (152,400 acres), the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications said.
Meanwhile US farmers planted three times more biotech crops last year than their counterparts in Argentina, the second-largest user of the technology, according to the January ISAAA report. The area sown with biotech crops rose 13 percent last year, to 102 million hectares, the report said. The organization, which is funded by the biotech industry, predicts that the total area planted with such crops may double to 200 million hectares by 2015. “People don't realize there's an invisible revolution going on,” said Bernward Garthoff, chairman of the German Association of Biotech Industries and a board member of Bayer CropScience, the world's biggest developer of seed protection products….
Read the full article at Budapest Business Journal.
