Agriculture ministers must vote on GM maize
The decision will be extra difficult for Ireland’s minister, Mary Coughlan, who is under pressure from Fianna Fáil’s Green Party colleagues in government, including her junior minister, Trevor Sargent.
The European Green Party is urging member states to vote against the authorisation, claiming there are “serious and legitimate health concerns about the GM maize”.
Some members, such as Britain, Finland and the Netherlands, almost always vote in favour of approving new GMOs. They are offset by a group of GMO-sceptic states like Austria, Greece and Luxembourg, which vote against and force a stalemate.
Last week, a panel of EU food safety experts failed to agree on allowing Herculex imports in food, animal feed and also in industrial processing, and returned no definitive decision either for or against a GMO maize type, sending the application to agriculture ministers for debate.
The European Commission must now transmit the dossier to agriculture ministers. If they do not reach a position within three months, the proposal is sent back to the commission for final adoption. This is a likely scenario, and in such cases the commission usually issues its own approval of the product under a legal default process.
Last week’s vote was one of the EU’s closest in recent years for authorising a new GMO application, with the 27 experts being closer than expected towards reaching a consensus majority in favour. France, Ireland and Italy abstained.
IFA president Padraig Walshe said he had received assurances from the Agriculture Department ahead of the recent meeting of the EU Standing Committee on Food Chain and Animal Health that Ireland would be voting in favour of allowing the importation of maize into Europe. He said the Irish decision to abstain was annoying, as Ireland had raised the issue with the EU Commission in the first place.
Herculex RW was designed by Dow Chemical Co and DuPont to withstand corn rootworm. It was cleared for use in the US in late 2005, and in Japan earlier this year.
Herculex RW was first made available to US farmers for the 2006 growing season.
The European Commission-backed advisory group, European Food Safety Authority, said in April it is safe for the EU market.
