GMOs: Political battle or health controversy?

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are organisms such as plants and animals whose genetic characteristics are modified artificially. Food and feed which contain or consist of such GMOs, or are produced from GMOs, are called genetically modified (GM) food or feed.

Most developed nations do not consider GMOs to be safe.

In more than 60 countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Union, there are significant restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMOs. The European Union has some of the strictest regulations in the world for GMOs, requiring extensive testing, labelling and monitoring of all food products whose DNA has been manipulated in labs. The debate intensified this year with the EU and the United States negotiating a free-trade agreement that will eventually allow American GMOs into the European Union.

The current situation regarding GMOs is that the EU allows 2 GMO crops for cultivation: MON810 maize and Amflora Potato.

The EU authorisation system is aimed at avoiding adverse effects of GMOs on human and animal health and the environment while establishing an internal market for those products. The Council of Ministers decided in December 2008 that it should be possible to combine an EU authorisation system for GMOs based on science, with freedom for Member States to decide whether or not they wish to cultivate GMO crops on their territory. They also demanded the reinforcement of the environmental and sanitary assessments and of the monitoring by the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA).

The EPP Group underlined that the existing legislation is not well implemented notably regarding the sanitary and environmental risk assessment. This Directive already allows the ban on the cultivation of GMOs on health and environmental grounds, but the EPP Group supported the idea of extending the criteria to ban the cultivation, allowing Member States to use ‘other’ reasons to restrict or ban the cultivation of GMOs that have received authorisation at EU level.

The key amendment in the EP Report is to introduce the possibility for Member States to use environmental risk assessment - such as pesticide resistance, invasiveness of crops or the need to maintain biodiversity - to refuse the cultivation of GMOs on their own territory. At the moment, this situation is also reflected at Council level. At this preliminary stage, three clear blocks of Member States (anti-GMOs, pro-cultivation of GMOs and a big group in the middle) are not really convinced that the EC proposal will solve the difficulties met in GMO cultivation in the EU. The main concerns shared by a majority of Member States are: World Trade Organisation compatibility, legal certainty, Single Market concerns, practicability and feasibility of such national measures, and the opportunity to re-nationalise EU provisions.