Save our Seeds

Leaked documents suggest the European Union is planning to loosen its zero tolerance ban on genetically modified plants. [...] "This is based upon the false argument that international trade is severely disrupted when shipments of feed containing unauthorised GM feed are rejected," the FoEE said. The campaigners claimed that no shipment from any feed importing country (US, Argentina or Brazil) was rejected at a European port in 2010.

French retailer CARREFOUR has launched a new label "Nourri sans OGM" ("fed without GMOs"), which will be displayed on 300 different animal-based products, including pork, veal, poultry, eggs and farmed fish.

The company said studies found 63% of customers would stop consuming food products if they knew the products came from animals fed with GMOs.

The environment council discussion about the EU Commissions proposal to change the GMO legislation allowing member states to take national decisions on the issue of GMO cultivation is video recorded at:

http://video.consilium.europa.eu/index.php?sessionno=3110&pl=2〈=EN

You can click on the positions of each member state and select a language they are translated to.

Eu Commissioner John Dalli proposes to accept in feed imports to the EU up to 0,1% of GMOs, which have not been approved in the Union. For food imports a zero tolerance was to remain in place. The proposal has been criticised by exporting countries as well as environmental watchdogs within the EU.

EU farm ministers are gathering in Brussels today (27 September) to debate a proposed rule change that would allow officials to accelerate authorisations for 15 new transgenic crops while letting those who want to keep them off their territories do so. The idea has attracted controversy for being the first time that the commission is overtly handing back a power to member states. "To put it bluntly, no member state has yet come up with a convincing reason based on science for blocking GM cultivation on its territory," Dalli's spokesman Frederic Vincent insists. For Mute Schimpf, an expert with Brussels-based campaigners Friends of the Earth Europe, consumers are being sold a dummy. She maintains that "the idea is to press ahead with the next batch of authorisations." "The difficulty is that this is virgin territory, the commission doesn't want do the full legal analysis" other countries would like performed before voting, admits an EU official.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world's best-selling weedkiller Roundup, causes malformations in frog and chicken embryos at doses far lower than those used in agricultural spraying and well below maximum residue levels in products presently approved in the European Union. This is reported in research (1) published by a group around Professor Andrés Carrasco, director of the Laboratory of Molecular Embryology at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School and member of Argentina's National Council of Scientific and Technical Research.

Human failure caused the contamination of the Amflora field in Sweden with the experimental GM potato Amadea, reports the European Commission. Yesterday BASF had to justify to Brussels authorities. However open questions had not been fully clarified. Next week experts for the EU and member states will visit BASF research facilities in order to resolve open questions.

One week after the harvest of the GM potato Amfora began in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (Nothern Germany) it was aborted by Till Backhaus, the provincial minister of Agriculture. On the basis of the contamination of the Amflora field with the experimental, genetically modified potato Amadea in Sweden, the confidence in the BASF quality management has been shaken, so Backhaus. BASF had to admit that Amflora seed potatoes planted in Germany derived from Sweden. This Wednesday the European commission is calling BASF to Brussels to clarify this issue.

The GM potato Amadea has been illegally grown within a field of the approved GM potato Amflora in Sweden, reports Greenpeace today. The unapproved experimental variety, Amadea, has not be fully tested for environmental and health impacts. The European Commission has asked BASF to explain why an unauthorised genetically modified variety of potato has been planted in Sweden.

Two large Romanian farming unions are calling for the introduction of GMOs and recently are mobilizing Romanian farmers to participate in demonstrations in Bucharest on the second of September. Several organizations in Romania express worry on the recent development in the attached press release.