Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
and Luxembourg, and finally by the EU Commission. 30 The proximate
trigger for the moratorium was the highly publicized shipment of GMO
maize by Monsanto to a European harbor.
Since 1998, the EU has been tackling the issue along three lines:
developing specific GMO regulations; reinterpreting the precautionary
principle; and improving transparency and public trust through institu-
tional changes. In 2003, it adopted more stringent regulations concern-
ing authorization procedures, and the labeling and traceability of food
components. The precautionary principle was extended from environ-
mental protection to consumer and health protection. The most impor-
tant innovations in the 2003 regulations include: explicitly incorporating
“consumer choice,” by making the labeling and traceability requirements
mandatory; formalizing the distinction among risk assessment, risk man-
agement, and risk communication; and recognizing that risk communica-
tion means a two-way dialogue with a goal of making the general public
an active participant in both the technical and policy discourse. 31 These
reforms were enacted after extensive informal consultations with numer-
ous stakeholder groups.
Some have also sought to create an effective barrier between GM and
non-GM crops by creating GMO-free zones. For example, one proposal
would create a GMO-free zone in the Alps region of Upper Austria,
Biosphere Reserve, for the following reasons:
The active promotion of alternative technologies, as opposed to fol-
lowing a single direction of technological innovation (like the case of
nuclear energy)
30 R. Von Schomberg, 1998, An appraisal of the working in practice of directive
90/220/EEC on the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms: final study,
European Parliament, DG research, Directorate B: the STOA programme, Luxem-
bourg; S. Lieberman & T. Gray, The So-called 'Moratorium' on the Licensing of New
Genetically Modified (GM) Products by the European Union 1998-2004: A Study in
Ambiguity, 15 Environmental Politics 592-609 (2006).
31 See Borras, supra.
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