Greenpeace urges Ministers to reject GM maize Bt-11

Our EU unit has today released a report criticizing the new EU GMO evaluation procedures as inadequate and urges European Agriculture Ministers to reject a Commission proposal to allow the import and marketing of a GM sweet corn for human consumption.

The EU Agriculture Council on 26 April in Luxembourg will consider a European Commission proposal to allow the marketing of Bt-11, a genetically modified sweet maize variety, produced by Swiss firm Syngenta. This is the first time EU ministers will vote on a GMO application since the Environment Council set in place a de facto moratorium on new approvals in June 1999. If Ministers do not reject the proposal with a qualified majority, the Commission can authorise the maize regardless, and has already said it intends to do so.

We are calling on Ministers to vote against the Commission proposal and not authorise Bt-11 for the European market. Bt-11 maize has been genetically modified to produce a toxin that is naturally found only in bacteria. Its EU scientific risk assessment was undertaken according to outdated rules, and serious questions remain concerning both the quality of the data provided by Syngenta and the assessment of the EU's Scientific Committee on Foods.

"To lift the moratorium now by authorising a highly controversial GMO with a flawed risk assessment is no way to win the trust of a public who are massively opposed to the use of GMOs in food and agriculture," warned Eric Gall from our European Unit.

"Ministers should reject Bt-11 authorisation and instead take action to tighten up evaluation procedures which are clearly opaque and inadequate. Consumers and the environment deserve better."

Our report scrutinizes the evaluation done by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on GM oilseed rape GT73 and GM maize NK603 and concludes that the EFSA evaluations are not satisfactory and open to the same criticisms as the old evaluation procedures.

The inadequacy of EFSA evaluation procedures was confirmed today by revelations published in Le Monde. The French newspaper obtained confidential documents from the Biomolecular Engineering Commission (Commission du Génie Biomoléculaire, CGB), one of the official bodies in charge of GMO evaluation in France, indicating that numerous anomalies were observed in rats fed with GM maize MON 863 from US firm Monsanto.

Despite these anomalies, both the French Food Safety Authority (AFSSA) and the EFSA gave a green light to this GM maize (on 6 November 2003 and 19 April 2004, respectively).

"If the Bt-11 maize risk assessment represents the new European standard in GMO safety evaluations, we should be worried, as it makes no improvement on the old system, the inadequacy of which led Member States to put the moratorium in place," said our science expert Janet Cotter. "It is also of deep concern that the EFSA does not seem to be contributing to a higher standard of GMO risk assessment"

More information:

Read our brief on the EFSA: Failing Consumers and the Environment

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