Brussels, 29/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - Greenpeace has welcomed as very good news, the fact that the European Parliament has rejected the European Commission's draft proposal to introduce “à la carte” legislation on the use of legally imported GM products for human food and animal feed.
The environmental NGO is convinced that the Commission's draft proposal offering the possibility of introducing nation wide restrictions or bans on these GMOs is deceptive because, “they will not help improve protection of citizens and the environment against GM-related crops”. It immediately welcomed the vote to reject this proposal on Wednesday 28 September in Strasbourg (see EUROPE 11420).
Franziska Achterberg, director of the Greenpeace Europe Office and a specialist in EU food policy, said that “this is an unambiguous rejection of the Commission proposal to give EU governments the illusory right of preventing the use of GM foodstuffs and animal feed on their territory”.
She pointed out that the Juncker Commission had promised to make the authorisation procedure for GMOs more democratic but said that this promise had not been kept at all, “the Juncker Commission has not even come close to reforming the authorisation rules because it has kept disproportionate rights for itself to approve GM crops on the basis of an incomplete risk assessment and despite very strong opposition among the public and member states”. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)