Commission rejects MEPs’ 12-year GMO safety review

Date: 18/02/1999

By Renée Cordes

THE European Commission will continue to argue for the safety of products containing genetically modified organisms to be reviewed every seven years, despite last week's vote by MEPs in favour of a laxer regime.

The European Parliament called for licences to be reviewed every 12 years, although it also demanded tougher rules on labelling and measures to make GMO manufacturers liable for any damage caused by their products.

But officials working for Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard said this week that she would stick to her call for seven yearly reviews. "For the time being we think that the seven-year fixed deadline is the right approach," a Commission official said. "We have not seen any convincing arguments to make it longer."

It is difficult to predict how EU governments will respond to the Parliament's calls for changes to the proposals: a package of measures to revise a 1990 directive on the deliberate release of GMOs into the environment commonly known as 90/220.

Several member states are understood to support 'time-limited consents' of anywhere between ten and 12 years, arguing that this would strike the right balance between consumer concerns about the safety of GM products and the industry's fears of a burdensome regulatory regime.

But others, such as the UK, where the debate on GMOs has been ignited over the past week by calls from 20 scientists from around the world for more research into GM food, may take a more cautious approach.

The Commission announced last week that a request from the Netherlands for a genetically modified potato variety to be approved for sale in the EU had been withdrawn, and that applications for licences for two varieties of genetically modified cotton marketed by the US-based Monsanto company had failed to win support from member states.