Brussels, 16/04/2004 (Agence Europe) - The two new regulations on GMO labelling and marketing procedures, adopted by the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, come into force on 18 April (see details in Europe of 23 July 2003), namely Regulation 1829/2003 on GM food and feed and Regulation 1830/2003 on traceability and labelling of GMOs and the traceability of food and feed products from GMOs. Regulation 641/2004 on the detailed rules for the implementation of Regulation 1829/2003 was published in Official Journal L102 of 7 April 2004.
The Regulations stipulate that it is not necessary to mention the accidental presence of unauthorised GM material on food labels as long as it does not exceed 0.9% per ingredient. The legislation sets out that derived GMO products, like highly refined oil or starch, which no longer contain modified DNA, and seed for food purposes will have to be labelled in line with the same rules. It will be possible, however, to set a lower threshold in the future, through the comitology procedure. In line with the EU's general labelling rules, the Regulation does not require the labelling of products like meat, milk or eggs obtained from animals fed GMOs.
Products made from 16 GMOs can be legally marketed in the EU, namely a variety of soya and a variety of corn approved by Directive 20/220/EEC (before the entry info force of the regulation on novel food); transformed food made from 7 varieties of genetically modified oilseed rape, four varieties of genetically modified corn and oil from two types of cotton seed and eighth GM animal feed varieties have also been authorised - four varieties of corn, three of colza and one variety of soya.
This decisive stage in the saga of GMOs has been greeted with anger by environmental organisations like Greenpeace, which fear that the new rules coming into force will lead to a lifting of the moratorium. Greenpeace feels the legislation does not go far enough, being simply a sham with the aim of allowing mass release of GMOs onto the market, without consumers being aware of this.