Press release - July 10, 2003
Government officials and farmers leaders in the region of Piemonte Northern Italy are meeting today to decide what to do with 400 hectares of GE contaminated maize and how to prevent further contamination from the maize which is due to flower soon. Over 100 farmers in Northern Italy have discovered that the seeds they bought and planted as non-GE maize were in fact already contaminated by GE maize even before they planted it.
The situation has come to light following routine seed tests by
the national authorities, however the testing was carried out after
the seeds had been planted. The seeds were reportedly sold by the
company Pioneer Seeds. Whilst the exact details of the GE
contamination have not yet been made public, local reports and
previous experience suggest that GE varieties produced by Monsanto
may be the source of the contamination. As well as selling
conventional non-GE seeds, Pioneer also act as a sales agent for
Monsanto GE seeds in many countries.
Coming less than one week after new EU legislation on labelling
and traceability of GE food and animal feed this case highlights
two of the major loopholes still existing in European legislation
and that are already acknowledged by many EU governments, i.e. that
there is an urgent need for legislation that prevents seed
contamination and which ensures strict liability for the GE company
responsible when contamination does occur.
Greenpeace spokesperson Federica Ferrario said; "It is one thing
to have in place good labelling laws which make sure food products
and animal feed require to be labelled if they do contain GE
ingredients but if Monsanto and its sales agents such as Pioneer
seeds are allowed to continually contaminate normal non-GE seeds
then that will make an absolute nonsense of the new legislation
because it will entirely deny any choice for farmers or for
consumers."
Greenpeace is calling for a full investigation of this
contamination and also of what appears to be Monsanto's policy of
deliberate contamination of non-GE seeds and farming.
"With such cases happening on a regular basis the question has
to be asked whether this is either gross negligence or whether
contamination of conventional seeds is part of a deliberate
strategy of companies who sell GE seeds. In either case legislation
and legal action are required to make those responsible pay for the
costs associated with their contamination and to prevent more such
contamination in the future," concluded Ferrario