Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
EU legislation follows the approach recommended by the World
Health Organisation (WHO), Codex Alimentarius, Food and Agri-
culture Organization (FAO), and the Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD). It also adopts the requirements of
the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, 15 which the United States, Canada,
and Argentina have refused to ratify. The EU approach enables each
member-state to exercise its sovereign right to make its own decisions
on GMOs in accordance with the values prevailing in its society. As a
result, ten years after the first commercial release, 95 percent of GMOs
remain cultivated in six countries, none of which are EU member-states:
the United States (50.6%), Argentina (16.7%), Brazil (13.2%), Canada
(6,1%), India (5.4%), and China (3.3%). 16
The EU has never officially introduced a moratorium, but between
1998 and 2004, no new GMOs were approved for planting or use in the
EU by the EU Commission. What caused this de facto moratorium were
factors such as the diversity of approaches to safety that exist at national
levels, pressure from opposition groups, inability to cope with segregat-
ing and labeling GM food and feed, and demand for protecting consumer
freedom of choice. Indeed, at the EU's Environment Ministers Coun-
cil meeting in June 1999, Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and
Luxembourg issued a declaration that they would effectively block
approvals pending legislation for traceability and labeling of GM crop
plants and derivative products.
To address these concerns of its member-states, the Commission
tightened up its regulatory process to pave the way for ending the
national bans and safeguard clauses, and established in 2003 a 0.9 per-
cent labeling threshold for the adventitious or technically unavoid-
able presence of authorized GMOs in food products, and traceability
15 Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2000). Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity: text and annexes. Montreal,
Canada. ISBN 92-807-1924-6.
16 C. James. Global status of commercialized Biotech/GM crops: 2007. ISAAA Brief No.
37. ISAAA Ithaca, NY. ISBN 978-1-892456-42-7.
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