Brussels, 25/04/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 23 April in Strasbourg, the European Parliament was divided over the link of cause and effect between the EU's strict policy for authorising genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the difficulties currently encountered by farmers raising cattle, pigs and poultry for obtaining animal feed.
Speaking on behalf of the committee on agriculture and rural development, British Conservative Struan Stevenson (who replaced the committee chairman, Neil Parish, at the beginning of the oral question) stressed that pig and poultry farmers are not subsidised by EU farm aid and that it is therefore necessary to ensure they have access to competitive feed around the world at competitive prices. In Europe, “we take over two years on average to license a perfectly safe GM product”, he bemoaned, citing the example of Herculex maize for which it took 33 months to conclude Community marketing procedure compared to 15 in the United States. “There is no excuse for this. With food prices and costs for the poultry and pig industry both rising, we cannot afford this time delay in licensing feed. We have to speed things up”, he said.
Mr Stevenson denounced the EU's “zero tolerance” policy on the chance presence of GMOs which has resulted in “dramatically reducing the amount of non-GM feed coming into the EU”. He took the example of a cargo of non-GMO soya loaded onto a vessel in Brazil to be transported to the EU. There is the risk that a tiny trace of transgenic soya contaminates the crates of GMO-free soya at the time of loading in the port in Brazil. Once the vessel arrives at the EU port, although this tiny trace of GMO soya is in the soya cargo that is not supposed to contain GMOs, the whole cargo is sent back to Brazil, Mr Stevenson explains.
Unlike Esther De Lange of the Netherlands, who spoke on behalf of the EPP Group, Bernadette Bourzai (PES, France) challenged the link of cause and effect established between the zero tolerance principle on GMOS and the considerable rise in the price of foodstuffs.
Speaking on behalf of the PES, she said this considerable rise in foodstuff prices is due to several factors combined: a fall in supply due to extreme climatic incidents and the development of biofuels, a rise in demand from emerging countries, and, above all, the unprecedented development of stock exchange speculation on farm markets. “Furthermore, this rise concerns all countries including those that have very flexible legislation on GMOs such as the United States”, she commented. It is, however, true that European farmers are experiencing “great difficulty” due to the EU's “great dependence” on massive imports of animal feed. In order to reduce this dependence, Ms Bourzai suggests two roads of action: 1) “do everything” to safeguard the last European crops of dried fodder and high protein crops; 2) reflect on ways to diversify supply sources. There is a supply of non-GMO feed in third countries. “I would finally like to point out that most European citizens are asking for the right to procure food products free of GMOs”, she concluded, requesting modification of the labelling rules for meat from animals fed with GMO feed in order to respect consumers' rights.
Caroline Lucas, of Britain, said on behalf of the Greens/EFA Group, that the attempt to establish a link between the rise in feed and EU rules on GMOs is “completely false and disingenuous”. She sought to give reassurance by referring to a report from DG Agriculture which, according to the worst scenario, provides for Brazil to rapidly market a variety of transgenic soya which is not approved in the EU. There is no proof that Brazil is contemplating doing this, however. Jean-Pierre Audy (EPP-ED, France) pointed out that the EU is greatly dependent on imports of protein-rich feed. He also said that the “quality of our customs system (…) has deteriorated greatly”.
The Commission acknowledges that “asynchronous approvals of GMOS can represent a problem for the availability and cost of feed imports”, said Androulla Vassiliou, European Health Commissioner. The Commission's efforts are targeted at addressing some of the key factors behind this issue, both at internal level, through the authorisation of new GMOs in the full respect of the EU legislative framework, and at international level, through discussions with major trading partners.
The Commission recalled that it had recently adopted the authorisation of GA21 maize, which will facilitate imports with the advantageous presence of this GM even from Argentina. Also, the Commission is to suggest that the Council accept a genetically modified soya that should open the way to further imports of cattle feed.
“Would the Commission be prepared to move from zero tolerance to something higher?” The Commissioner reminded MEPs who put this question that “we need the support of member states” in order to change matters. Experience has shown, in various committees, that member states only rarely reach qualified majority on this. Furthermore, the Commission is discussing with the European Food Safety Authority on the possibility of finding “efficiency gains” in the GMO authorisation procedure. Ms Vassiliou concluded that the approval process could be significantly shortened if the Commission had greater support from member states in the comitology process for the authorisation of GMOS. (L.C.)