Europe gives green light to three genetically modified corn varieties
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GMO cornfield near Ontario, Canada
The European Commission decided Friday to authorize the importation of three types of genetically modified corn which are mainly used in animal foods.
When European agriculture ministers met October 19 to consider importation of three types of genetically modified (GMO) corn they failed to produce an agreement. Instead, the ministers forwarded the issue to the European Commission for a final decision, says French daily Liberation.
The varieties concerned are two Monsanto products, MON 88017 and MON 89034, and one from Pioneer Hi-Bred (a Dupont company). They are now cleared for legal importation into Europe over the next 10 years for use in animal foods and their transformation in other food products, but growing them remains unlawful.
All three products had already been cleared by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
The decision represents a victory for European agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, who had been campaigning for their authorization for a long time.
Boel has always insisted upon the risks of severe corn shortages in Europe, noting that entire shiploads of corn had been refused at European ports after minute traces of unauthorized GMO corn had been discovered in them.
She reminded the Commission that not only is Europe heavily dependant on American corn imports, most notably during winter, but unfavorable world corn market conditions are not helping the situation. For example, Argentinean corn production dropped 30 percent this year due to a drought.
These are not the first GMOs to be authorized for use in Europe, but European public opinion has traditionally been hostile towards their use, resulting in a limited number of authorized GMO products.
Only one GMO seed variety, Monsanto’s MON 810, has ever been authorized for both cultivation and use in food products in Europe, and several more are present in test field-growing conditions. Farmers testing them often take great pains to conceal their activities due to the likelihood of their plants being destroyed if discovered by anti-GMO protest groups.
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The power of the European Commission is immense.
Still, the Commission is necessary, because individual countries here cannot stand up to the power of USA or Asian countries' economies and trading practices.
The GMO debate here is stuck between what is quite rightly a very wary approach on one hand, and a paranoiac and populist outright refusal to consider research into possible future benefits of GMO use on the other.
Because if future benefits there shall be, Europe will be paying other countries for those benefits, as usual.
It's hard to find the right balance between the two approaches.
:)
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