Save Our Seeds Petition

The Save Our Seeds coalition, which includes Greenpeace, today presented EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström a petition demanding that all seeds containing even the smallest Genetically Engineered Organisms (GMOs) be labelled.

The petition has been signed by 200,000 European citizens and is supported by more than 300 farmer, consumer and environmental organisations, trade unions, food companies, scientists, churches and other civil society groups with more than 25 million members.

It was organised as a response to a Directive, which is due to be adopted by the European College of Commissioners at the end of May. The proposed directive would allow for 0.3-0.5 percent of GMOs to be present in all conventional and organic seeds, without farmers even knowing about it. Under the envisaged comitology procedure it could only be prevented from entering into force by a qualified (2/3) majority of EU member states.

This means that around 500 genetically modified maize plants and more than 2,000 GE oilseed rape plants would be allowed to grow on every hectare (10,000 square metres) of supposedly GM-free fields in Europe.

"This Directive would make a mockery of all the Commission's promises of transparency, precaution and freedom of choice for consumers and farmers," said Eric Gall GMO policy advisor from our EU unit. "It gives the impression that Commissioner David Byrne, who initiated the legislation, has a hidden agenda - to obstruct the implementation of his own GM labelling and traceability regulations."

"As seeds can reproduce and spread into the environment, we are not talking about farmer information alone," explained Mauro Albrizio of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). "Unlabelled seed contamination would also seriously hamper the appropriate monitoring and recall of these crops should anything go wrong."

Legalising GMO contamination of the seed stock at the very beginning of the food chain would substantially drive up the costs of GM-free food and agriculture. The costs of GMO contamination - via segregation, extra testing, etc. - would fall to all the other food chain actors, right down to consumers.

"Basically this Directive is the Trojan horse of the GM industry," said Benedikt Haerlin, co-ordinator of the Save our Seeds initiative. "It would allow them to intentionally withhold crucial information from their customers, only to reveal later that GMOs are everywhere and can no longer be avoided. The thresholds would be far less stringent than the purity standards currently observed by industry."

Seeds tested by national authorities to date usually contain no GMOs at all and certainly never reach the high contamination levels now proposed by the Commission - even when they come from GMO-growing countries like the United States.

More Information

- Read our Save Our Seeds briefing

- Visit the Save Our Seeds website

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