MEPs reject changes to novel food law

Date: 14/03/1996

ATTEMPTS by the European Parliament's environment committee to widen the scope of new EU legislation on novel foods suffered a humiliating defeat in Strasbourg this week.

A report drafted by German Socialist MEP Dagmar Roth-Behrendt and approved earlier by the committee included 48 amendments to strengthen the draft rules for assessing the safety and approving the sale of foods such as genetically-modified tomatoes.

In the event, only one emerged intact after securing the necessary support of over half the assembly's 626 MEPs. This would bring the legislation into force 90 days, instead of 12 months, after being approved.

The most significant of the handful of changes eventually accepted by MEPs was tabled not by the environment committee, but by the Christian Democrat group. This would increase the amount of information manufacturers would have to supply to consumers about the contents of their products.

Before the vote, Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann tried unsuccessfully to defend the government-approved text on labelling, warning against over-extensive labelling and “absolute gobbledegook”.

EU governments want additional specific labelling requirements to be limited to cases where the novel food is significantly different from existing food. MEPs extended this obligation by deleting the word 'significantly'. The two will now have to iron out their differences in a conciliation meeting in the coming weeks.

The lack of support for Roth-Behrendt's arguments emerged during the debate before the vote as MEPs, with the exception of Greens and Socialists, firmly opposed efforts to inject new consumer guarantees into the text already agreed by governments.

The German MEP also failed in her bid to extend the legislation to include food obtained from genetically-modified organisms. As a result, it will only cover food and food ingredients which actually contain genetically- modified material.