GM move by EU may mean lower feed prices in 2011
Animal feed imports to Europe were disrupted last year, when several US grain and soya shipments were blocked, having been found to contain minute traces of unapproved GM material.
The 0.1% limit would have enabled some of the blocked shipments to enter the EU.
However, after an inconclusive Brussels meeting last Monday, a final decision is unlikely before January at the earliest. The European Commission proposed allowing some unapproved GM material provided the GM crop in question has been approved in the exporting country, and there is a valid EU testing method for it.
Last Monday, some member states asked the Commission to include food imports in the proposal, presumably in response to warnings from EU importers and the EU’s main trade partners that it is impossible to separate the global grain supply chain into food and animal feed. The Commission has said it wants to address feed imports first, because they have the greatest economic impact.
If approved in January by a committee of member state experts, the proposal must be considered by EU ministers and the European Parliament within three months – so it could be finalised in the first half of 2011.
Either way, the EU’s zero tolerance of unapproved GMOs will remain in place for food for human consumption.
In response to the GM tolerance proposal, the Friends of the Earth Europe environmental group said the commission was bowing to the biotech industry and opening markets to unauthorised GM food and feed. The COPA-COGECA umbrella group of EU farming organisations said the EU’s zero tolerance policy is unsustainable. “It stops imports coming in, which means that feed prices go too high for livestock,” said a spokesperson.
In the latest EU survey, 61% of respondents said GM food should not be encouraged, with only 23% support for the technology.
