Brussels, 04/05/2004 (Agence Europe) - The organisation "Save Our Seeds", which groups together over 300 farming, ecological, unionist organisations or distribution co-operatives (including Greenpeace, the European Environment Bureau, the European Farmers Co-ordination, the Confederazione nazionale Coldiretti and Euro Coop) has rallied against the European Commission's plans to authorise the accidental presence of genetically modified organisms (GMO) at a level of 0.3 to 0.5% in seeds (yesterday's EUROPE, p.11). This initial draft proposal is described as "illegal, unscientific, unfair and completely superfluous" by the collective, which presented a petition signed by 200,000 EU citizens calling for the purity of seeds to be respected to Commissioner Margot Wallström on Monday.
The draft directive being developed by the Commission, which representatives of "Save Our Seeds" handed out to the press, plans to tolerate the accidental or technically unavoidable presence of GMOs to a level of 0.3% in rapeseed and maize, and 0.5% for beetroot, potatoes and cotton. The draft text does not mention soya, for which the European Scientific Committee on Plants proposed a tolerance threshold of 0.7%. "This proposal is not the final version", said Ms Wallström's spokesperson. The organisation believes that the very idea of tolerance is wrong, and that GMOs present in seeds should be labelled as such, "from the detection limit".