GM Crop Ban Proposal is “An Empty Offer” says Friends of the Earth

03 Mar 2014 --- Friends of the Earth Europe has branded new proposals about genetically modified (GM) crops “an empty offer”. The European Council discussed proposals yesterday to grant national governments more say over cultivating genetically modified (GM) crops on their territory. But the proposals, if agreed, provide little legal basis for countries who oppose GM crops, and extreme bias to companies who profit from GM technology , according to Friends of the Earth Europe.

Mute Schimpf, GMO campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said: "National governments need solid legal grounds to ban genetically modified crops. Instead, the European Commission is offering a poisoned chalice – giving more powers to biotech companies and opening up governments who oppose GMOs to legal challenges. This is no way to keep Europe's fields free of these unwanted crops."

Under the current proposals, national governments who oppose GMOs would be forced to ask biotech companies, like Monsanto and Syngenta, to exclude them from authorization applications. This puts governments and citizens who oppose GM crops on the back-foot against the biotech industry's desire for profit, according to the organization.
 
The proposals also offer vague, non-scientific legal grounds upon which to ban GM crops, opening up countries to legal challenges from biotech companies. There is overwhelming public and political opposition to GM crops – last month, 19 European countries opposed a new GM maize from Pioneer, a move supported by the European Parliament and the majority of EU citizens.
 
Mute Schimpf continued: "For more than 15 years national governments have fought against new GM crops and strongly defended their rights to ban them. Nobody needs GM crops except the companies that push them. We need to change farming so it can provide sufficient food for the future whilst protecting nature and revitalizing rural communities."
 
The European Commission must ban the new controversial genetically modified (GM) maize and provide genuine powers to national governments to keep their fields GM-free, he said.

Meanwhile in other news today, a new study of global food supplies confirms that human diets are increasingly relying on a short list of major food crops, such as wheat, maize and soybean, along with meat and dairy products.

"One of the dangers of a more homogeneous global food basket is that it makes agriculture more vulnerable to major threats like drought, insect pests and diseases, which are likely to become worse in many parts of the world as a result of climate change," said Luigi Guarino, a study co-author and senior scientist at the Global Crop Diversity Trust, headquartered in Germany. "As the global population rises and the pressure increases on our global food system, so does our dependence on the global crops and production systems that feed us. The price of failure of any of these crops will become very high."
 
The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, suggests that growing reliance on a few food crops may also accelerate the worldwide rise in obesity, heart disease and diabetes, which are strongly affected by dietary change and have become major health problems. The study calls for urgent efforts to better inform consumers about diet-related diseases and to promote healthier, more diverse food alternatives.

By Sonya Hook