BRUSSELS, March 13 (Reuters) - Only 15 of the European
Union's 27 countries have agreed laws for separating organic,
traditional and biotech crops, with several reluctant even to
debate such a sensitive issue, the EU's farm chief said.
EU countries have been encouraged to make their own laws to
facilitate cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops if
farmers want to grow them, under guidelines published in 2003.
But those recommendations are not legally binding and most
countries have been slow to draft or adopt national laws on what
is known in EU jargon as coexistence.
Some haven't bothered.
Biotech industry figures show that only a tiny fraction of
the EU's overall arable area is sown to GM crops; the only one
that is as yet authorised for commercial cultivation on EU soil
is a biotech maize developed by U.S. company Monsanto.
But many biotech companies have applied for EU approval.
"We are progressing," EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann
Fischer Boel said in an interview on Friday. "A number of
countries are trying to find political agreement internally on
this issue. We know that in some states it's very touchy."
For some countries, to open an internal debate on GM crop
cultivation and separation "would be politically very
sensitive," Fischer Boel said. EU states consistently clash on
biotech policy, with a small group of GM-wary states managing to
drive every decision on new GM product approval into a deadlock.
The 15 countries that now have rules on coexistence are:
Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, the
Czech Republic and Netherlands.
It now looks difficult for the EU to apply common rules for
coexistence, Fischer Boel said, despite conflicting signals from
the Commission over the years that had suggested this might be
needed, as well as urgent calls from countries like Austria.
"The reason for the Commission's reluctance to enter into
this issue is ... you don't have the same growing conditions in
Finland as you have in the southern part of Spain," she said.
"To decide on distances (between crops), which is one of the
major issues, it would be very difficult to introduce common
rules for Europe," she said.
The Commission has pledged to compile far more specific
growing guidelines for farmers, envisaging more technical detail
on crop segregation. It is also due to publish a report next
month on how well EU coexistence laws have been implemented.
Content Provided by
Reuters Reuters is the largest international news agency -- providing professionals around the world with stories that move the markets.
- 
- 
- 
Welcome,
Guest!
News
