Greenpeace today welcomed the results of the vote at the
European Parliament for tightening European regulations on
labelling and traceabilty of genetically engineered (GE) food and
feed. The result paves a way for Europe to adopt the world's
strictest regulations for labelling of genetically modified
organisms (GMO), which will enable European consumers and farmers
to exercise fully their freedom to choose what products to eat and
use. For the first time, GE feed will be labelled in the European
Union. All GE food, including highly processed ingredients such as
sugar, oil, starch, produced from GMOs, will have to be labelled.
The new regulation will set up a thorough tracebility system in
order to follow food and food ingredients produced from GMOs across
all stages of food processing till the final product.
Greenpeace welcomed especially the following points:
1) The attempt to undermine the GMO labelling proposal put
forward by the European Commission was defeated. All food and feed
will have to be labelled, if they come from GMOs, on the basis of
the new traceability system.
2) The EU Commission's proposal to allow up to 1 % accidental
contamination in food and feed from GMOs that have not been
authorised in the EU was rejected. Zero tolerance remains the EU
policy for non-authorised GMOs.
3) The European Parliament demanded that accidental
contamination from EU approved GMOs in conventional food and feed
should be below 0,5%, above which the products will have to be
labelled. The Commission had proposed to decide later about this
threshold in a technical committee with the intention to allow a
limit of 1% or more.
4) The EU Commission proposal to centralise the authorisation
procedure for GE food and feed was amended: the national biosafety
agencies will have to be involved in the risk assessment, contrary
to what the Commission had proposed.
Greenpeace regretted the rejection of all the amendments aiming
at imposing labelling of products derived from animal fed with GE
feed, such as meat, milk and eggs, and urged the producers to
voluntarily inform the consumers about whether GE feed has been
used.
The GE producer countries, the US, Canada, Argentina and
Australia, have already presented to the WTO their objection
against the EU regulations on labelling and traceablity. The vote
of the European Parliament strengthens the legitimacy of the EU
Commission to respond adequately and clearly reject these
objections. Greenpeace called for the EU Council to support the two
proposals as amended now by the European Parliament.