Brussels, 02/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - The Greens/EFA and European Parliament group considers that the Commission is still on the wrong track with its decision of 30August to authorise imports and marketing of Monsanto GT73 genetically modified colza (EUROPE 9017). Marie-Anne Isler Béguin of France says in a press release that the decision does not come as a surprise in that the Commission still places blind confidence in the opinions of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and even more in the results of so-called scientific studies by multinationals such as Monsanto.
The Commission continues to play the same tune on a partition full of wrong notes, was how Marie-Hélène Aubert, also of France, put it. Amongst these wrong notes one can identify the weakness of the scientific argument developed by Monsanto, for which nothing proves that the genes resistant to the antibiotics streptomycin and spectinomycin used in the colza processing vector will be present in the final product, while these anti-biotic-resistant genes have been banned by the EU since 31 December 2004.
For several months, the Greens/EFA have constantly requested the Commission to postpone its decisions on GMOs and to ensure that the EFSA provides opinions of a more strictly scientific kind than those issued since its creation in 2002. The Greens call on the 25 EU Member States to ban this genetically modified colza by invoking the safeguard clause foreseen (Article 23 of Directive 2001/18), and by urging the EP to take the decision to conduct its own scientific GMO expert analyses.