Brussels, 26/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission could adopt the long-awaited proposal to fix limit values for the accidental presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in seed at a meeting on 8 September. According to the latest draft (EUROPE of 5 May), the Commission plans to tolerate the accidental or technically inevitable presence of GMOs up to 0.3% in colza and maize seed, and up to 0.5% for beetroot, potatoes and cotton. The draft text does not mention soya, for which the European scientific committee for plants had proposed a tolerance threshold of 0.7%.
In this context, a coalition of 40 European farming organisations - among them Coldiretti, Coordination paysanne européenne (CPE), the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements, the Confédération paysanne française and the Deutscher Bauerbund - recently wrote to the European Commission to demand that labelling threshold be fixed at the lowest rate of detection possible (0.1%). “We call on all the Commissioners to reject the current draft” they say in the letter.