Brussels, 09/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - The EU Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health is to give its opinion, on Wednesday 10 October, by qualified majority, on the European Commission's proposal aimed at authorising the EU to use a genetically modified potato from the company BASF for animal feed (EUROPE 9457). The committee will, on the same occasion, give its stance on how appropriate it is to agree that an accidental presence of this transgenic potato in conventional food may be tolerated up to 0.9% - a threshold fixed by Community legislation for accidental contamination that requires no specific labelling for foodstuffs reputed for being without GMOs but containing an inadvertent amount of GMOs.
The request for authorisation for this transgenic potato was introduced by BASF under the Novel Food/Novel Feed regulation relating to genetically modified food for humans and animal feed (Regulation 1829/2003/EC).
This event has caused some distress to GMO adversaries, alarmed at the idea that member state representatives can give their approval to a genetically modified food that could find its way into the human food chain when another authorisation dossier, for the same product but intended for another application, is currently blocked at the Commission.
The same BASF genetically engineered potato has already been the subject of a request for authorisation for crops intended for starch with a high amylopectine content for industrial processing purposes. The proposal of authorisation was presented by the Commission under the environmental legislation (Directive 2001/18/EC on voluntary dissemination of genetically modified organisms into the environment and to the procedures for marketing approval of GMOs). In July, the EU Council failed to take a stance for or against authorisation (EUROPE 9469). The European Commission is empowered to take its own decision. It tried to do so on 3 October but came up against a refusal from Stavros Dimas, Environment Commissioner. The dossier is therefore blocked until further notice. Questioned on what the Commission will do if there is a favourable vote by the committee on Wednesday, the Commission spokesman refused to “speculate” on the outcome of the vote. “The two applications are parallel to each other”, he simply said. Regarding the crop potato, the “Commission will take its decision in coming weeks”. (an)