EU environment ministers will rekindle Europe's simmering row on genetically modified (GMO) foods next month when they tackle three different strands of the debate, including whether to authorise a "live" biotech crop. All three GMO items, to be debated when the ministers meet on Feb. 20, have already undergone a lower-level process when EU experts failed to reach a required majority consensus. Under EU law, those items now pass to ministers for approval. Two of them look set to be highly controversial: a draft order for Hungary to lift its ban on a GMO maize and a proposal to let farmers grow a GMO potato, the EU's first attempt in eight years to approve a biotech crop designed for cultivation.

The third item relates to imports of carnations whose colour has been genetically modified. Had the experts agreed, it would have been the first new approval of a GMO plant in eight years. Privately, EU officials expect another voting stalemate on the potato and carnation, with no consensus agreement either to accept or reject the draft authorisations. If that happens, the drafts go to the European Commission for a default rubberstamp.

But to order Hungary to lift its GMO ban may be a completely different matter since such a command touches on national sovereignty. In the past, this has been the only area where EU governments agree on biotech policy: They don't like it at all. Hungary, one of the bloc's biggest grain producers, became the first country in eastern Europe to ban GMO crops or foods when it outlawed the planting of MON 810 maize seeds, marketed by US biotech giant Monsanto, in January 2005.

Just last month, EU ministers slapped down an attempt to order Austria to drop its bans on two GMO maize types: a second stinging rebuff to the Commission which had tried to do exactly the same thing 18 months earlier. One maize type was MON 810. "There will be three GMO items to be discussed at the February council (of EU environment ministers) -- the carnation, the Hungarian ban and the potato," one EU official said.

"It could be that they (ministers) show solidarity (on the Hungarian GMO ban), the same way that they did with Austria. It's a very sensitive issue," she said.

Still split GMO policy
So far, there have been no signs that the EU has changed tack on biotech approvals after the World Trade Organisation ruled last year that the bloc was illegally blocking GMO foods. Observers say the Commission's attempts to overturn national GMO bans is meant to demonstrate to the complainants in the WTO case -- Argentina, Canada and the United States -- that it is taking action to facilitate more GMO approvals.

The European Union has long been split on GMO policy and the EU's countries consistently clash over whether to approve new varieties for import, but without reaching a conclusion. In Europe, consumers are well known for their scepticism, if not hostility, to GMO crops, often dubbed "Frankenstein foods". But the international biotech industry says its products are perfectly safe and no different to conventional foods.

Blue flowers
The potato, engineered by German chemicals group BASF to yield high amounts of starch, would be grown only for industrial processing to make items such as paper. It is not designed to be consumed by humans or used in animal feed. If the ministers agree to an approval, which is not expected, it would make the potato -- known as Amylogene -- the first GMO product for growing to gain approval since 1998.

The carnation is marketed by Florigene, one of Australia's first biotech companies and part of the privately owned Suntory group. Known as Florigene Moonlite, the flowers are modified to produce blue pigment and also carry a herbicide-resistant gene.
(Por Jeremy Smith, Planet Ark, 16/01/2007)