media advisory
friends of the earth international
europe moves to restrict us maize
imports
friends of the earth calls for industry
to pay the costs
brussels (belgium), 13 April 2005 -- The
European Union’s executive Commission should
immediately halt all imports of maize from
the United States, said Friends of the Earth
today.
Late on April 12 European member states
agreed unanimously to a proposal demanding
that all shipments from the US are certified
free of an illegal genetically modified (GM)
maize - a de facto ban on the import of US
maize-based animal feeds. The Commission is
likely to make the decision in the coming
days. (1)
The agrochemical firm Syngenta admitted
three weeks ago that it had sold unlicensed
GM seeds to US farmers for four years.
Syngenta has since refused to make public the
information needed for governments to test
food and feed imports for the illegal GM
maize.
Whilst Friends of the Earth is backing the
European Union (EU) proposal, it is urging
the European Commission to go further
and:
-
Immediately halt all shipments of
imported US maize food and feed products
unless they can be certified as not
containing the illegal GM maize;
-
Insist that Syngenta sets up a
compensation fund to pay for the testing of
maize products worldwide;
-
Urgently review the EU's monitoring
system to guarantee public protection from
unapproved GM products.
The incident was first made public through an
article in Nature on 22 March (2). Between
2001 and 2004 Syngenta sold several hundred
tonnes of a GM maize seed, called Bt10, to US
farmers, mistaking it for another GM maize,
Bt11. Unlike the Bt11 maize, Bt10 has not
been approved for human consumption anywhere
in the world. It has been estimated that
around 1000 tonnes of the illegal GM maize
entered the European food chain and was even
planted at test sites in Spain and France.
Syngenta claimed that the Bt10 maize was
"physically identical" to Bt11, a view
initially endorsed by governments and the
European Commission. Friends of the Earth
disagreed, pointing out that the unapproved
GM maize also contained a controversial
antibiotic resistance gene, which confers
resistance to an important group of
antibiotics. Syngenta finally admitted that
this was indeed the case (3).
Adrian Bebb, GM campaigner for Friends of
the Earth said:
"EU countries have now given the European
Commission the green light to introduce
strict restrictions on US imports. The
Commission must act quickly to protect the
public from this unlicensed and untested
genetically modified crop."
"The failure of Syngenta to provide the
basic information needed to test for their
contamination is a disgrace. The Commission
must insist that this secrecy ends and
Syngenta sets up a fund to pay for testing.
The polluter must pay, not the public."
"The inability of the biotechnology
industry to control its own products makes a
complete mockery of the EU's monitoring
systems. The European Commission must order
an immediate review to ensure that the public
is never again exposed to unapproved
genetically modified foods."
Contact:
Adrian Bebb, + 49 1609 490 1163 (mobile)
(1) Member states met in the Standing
Committee on the Food Chain and Animal
Health
news:
On April 13 th , the
European Union introduced emergency measures
restricting the import of animal feeds from
the United States. EU member states voted
almost unanimously for proposals that only
permit shipments that are certified free of
an illegal GM maize. With no means to test
reliably for the contamination, and no
segregation from the US, the measures are
likely to result in a
de facto
ban
on the import of US maize-based animal feeds
for the foreseeable future.
(2) read more
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58449-2005Mar22.html
(3) Bt 10 contains the amp gene, which
confers resistance to the ampicillin family
of antibiotics. In recent guidance, the
European Food Safety Authority stated that
GMOs containing this gene should not be
approved for cultivation and their use
restricted to field trials.
|
