Brussels, 05/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has exceeded the 30 June deadline by which it was supposed to revise requirements on toxicity tests on animals fed on GMOs, as part of the authorisation procedure for GMOs for food use. EuropaBio, the European Association of Bio-industries, expressed its unhappiness on Monday 4 July.
EuropaBio expected the Commission to abandon the 90-day trials on rodents that are required under the authorisation procedure for GMOs for food and feed use, studies which the association considers to be “totally unnecessary”.
“The European Commission is missing another major opportunity to ensure that European regulatory decisions are based on science. Whereas last month the Commission had the opportunity to choose to reduce unnecessary testing requirements during the GMO risk assessment process, it seems to have chosen to ignore the science that proves - yet again - that some of the testing requirements are in fact not required”, said Beat Späth, Director of agricultural biotechnology at EuropaBio, in a press release.
The 90-day trials on rodents that form part of the risk assessment on GMOs for food and feed use were imposed in 2013 in the wake of the Séralini study (EUROPE 10794) by means of an implementing regulation (Regulation 503/2013 of the Commission on applications for authorisation of genetically modified food and feed in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003).
This regulation states that the Commission must: 1) monitor the outcome of the EU research project GRACE “in which an independent academic consortium concluded in November 2015 that there is no scientific justification for a mandatory 90-day feeding study”, states EuropaBio; 2) publish a review of “the testing requirements on the basis of this new scientific information” by 30 June 2016, something the Commission has not done.
EuropaBio wants the risk assessment for GMOs to be done on a case-by-case basis and “only request studies with scientific added value depending on the properties of each individual GMO”. It continues: “Mandatory feeding studies do nothing to ensure safety or build trust in the EU's authorisation systems, and they add further to the well documented unnecessary delays in the GMO approval process for imports, such as those recently confirmed by the European Ombudsman's Decision of 15 January 2016”. The association adds that the failure to act would seem to be out of line with Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes which stipulates stipulating a clear requirement to replace, reduce and refine the use of animals for scientific purposes. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)