GMOs in Malta and Europe

The mad cow disaster left many Europeans with a distrust of official policies on food safety and a desire to know where their food comes from.

At a recent meeting held for farmers in Rabat the Minister for Rural Affairs and Environment said he thought it would be presumptuous for a candidate country to vote against GMOs.

The Association of Farmers met in Rome last month for discussions on the effects of GMOs on the agricultural sector. Association president Peter Axisa discovered some disturbing facts:

"GM pollen travels for such long distances that natural and conventional crops of related families can be eradicated though cross-pollination making it impossible to return to endemic species." Apparently it is also a myth that GM crops need fewer pesticides and weed-killers. "This could have been so in the early years of production but, as always happens, the weeds and pests eventually built up resistance."

Mr Axisa described the legal battles farmers are having to deal with.

"I have managed to acquire a copy of the terms and conditions regarding an agreement Monsanto (the world's largest GM seed company) is dishing out to farmers. This has to be seen to be believed - what is in it and what the farmers are reduced to." Why do farmers sign such an agreement? "Because they are scared that their crops will be contaminated by traveling pollen from neighbouring GM crops."

The farmer is subject to heavy fines for "stealing" the patented genes. An estimated 400 farmers have received threats of legal action from Monsanto over alleged patent infringement.

Some organic farmers have lost their organic status because of the presence of GM genes in their crops.

Mr Axisa said that organic growers should have a right to survive especially after the European Commission has preached about their benefits. He said that the Italian Agriculture Minister had indicated his intention to vote against GMOs in an upcoming vote to be taken at the Euro-Parliament.

It seems that GM crops do not produce higher yields than conventional crops after all. "The theory of feeding the world thanks to GMOs is being seriously questioned," said Mr Axisa, who advocated a huge campaign launched by consumers and agricultural organisations. "Knowing what is in the can is a fundamental right which should not be taken away from us."

He told how the European Commission under the GM seed directive had proposed to allow up to 0.7 % contamination by genetically-modified seed mixed in conventional seed without the need for labelling.

"This would result in massive and uncontrolled releases of GMOs into the environment, even if farmers planted non-GM crops." If accepted this would make it very difficult for GMO-free agriculture and food to survive.

Geert Ritsema, GMO campaign co-ordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe, has also been very critical of the Commission's highly controversial plans to allow GMOs in seeds.

"FoE believes that these plans, if adopted by the member states, will be the backdoor through which GMOs are introduced in European diets, in spite of huge consumer resistance."

Last Monday the European Commission decided to delay the decision on seed purity rules. It was put off until 2004 in the hopes of "plugging some legal loopholes" in GMO legislation. Setting levels for permitted GMO content in seed for organic and conventional crop cultivation is one of the last obstacles to the EU before ending its unofficial five-year ban on biotech crops.

Critics suspect that the industry has already flooded the world market with genetically altered seeds to pre-emptively settle the question of whether to adopt biotechnology.

Biotech blitz

Two years ago biotech giants launched a -5 million GM publicity campaign to persuade Europeans that genetically-engineered crops are safe. Yet a survey commissioned by the European Commission, released last March, has shown that at least half of all Europeans won't eat GM food.

Neither the biotech companies, governments nor the EU has been willing to be held liable for GM compensation. UK insurance underwriters are now refusing to cover farmers considering growing or seeking to protect their crops from GM.

A UK public debate held this summer, involving 675 public meetings, revealed a deep hostility to GM technology. The more people found out about GM, the more their attitudes hardened against it. Ninety-three per cent of respondents believed GM technology was driven more by the pursuit of profit than the public interest.

In the European Union a total of 13 GM varieties have been in regulatory limbo since 1998 when six EU governments said they would not allow any new GMOs in until tough rules on testing, labelling and tracing were put in place.

The United States has been strongly critical of the labelling proposals, calling them "unworkable and discriminatory". The US Food and Drug Administration has warned companies making GM-free milk products to stop labelling them as such.

The benefits from GM crops are much lower than can be obtained with either conventional breeding or agroecology-based techniques. The Food Ethics Council in Britain has rejected claims that it is in the interests of the world's poor to spend more public money on GM research.

One study that found genetically-modified crops can benefit the environment was part-funded by Monsanto. Last month Monsanto pulled out of the European cereal business after it failed to introduce GM wheat to Europe.

GM trials fail

Last month the final results of farm-scale evaluations, the first serious ecological trials of genetic engineering, were leaked to The Guardian newspaper. The evaluations were commissioned by the UK Government in 1999 following intense public hostility and concern from its own wildlife advisors about the effects of introducing GM herbicide-resistant crops.

Will the US force GM foods onto European markets? Ministers in the Blair government are under pressure to find some way of giving a green light to the technology. GM maize, grown in the UK as a fodder crop, may still be given the green light under strict guidelines, as a concession to the GM companies and the US, where a trade war looms.

In May the US declared that the current EU moratorium on the commercial development of GM foods is an "illegal" trade barrier under World Trade Organisation rules. The move could bring the full force of WTO sanctions to bear in order to force GM food into European markets regardless of the wishes of European consumers. WTO rules are hostile to the fundamental precautionary principle.

The Association of European Consumers has commented: "We cannot accept that our European legislation is seen as a 'trade barrier' by the WTO. If our democratic European decisions do not suit the US, then they will have to change the way of interpreting democracy and their way of doing business."

GMO-free zones

In September the European Commission stopped farmers in Upper Austria from applying a ban on GMOs. The farmers wanted to protect organic and traditional agricultural production and avoid the risk of cross-fertilisation between GM and non-GM plants.

In a ruling, which could have implications for the whole of Europe, the EU executive said that EU law only allowed such a move if there was new scientific evidence or a specific justification concerning the area involved. Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström has indicated that the existing legal framework still allows for a ban to be imposed by appealing against individual crop licenses rather than a country-wide ruling.

The Welsh Assembly, the Lake District National Park Authority, and more than 30 local councils in Britain are counting on Article 19 in the European Deliberate Release Directive to make their GMO bans legal.

The Green MEP for South-East England, Dr Caroline Lucas, urged Britain's government to seize the moment and declare the UK a GM-free zone. Almost all of northern Europe, with similar farming conditions, would be expected to follow any British ban. European Health Commissioner David Byrne said that a threat to British wildlife from GM crops would be sufficient grounds for the UK government to ban the growing of such crops.

However the Blair government looks set to back the "co-existence" of GM with conventional crops. British ministers are against plans by Brussels to bring in a comprehensive regime for labelling GM foods as they fear "negative fallout" from Washington.

The Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission is still wrestling with the question of distances required between GM and conventional crops to avoid cross contamination and compensation schemes for injured farmers if all goes wrong.

Drawing the line

Malta has yet to sign and ratify the Bio-safety Protocol which provides for bans whenever governments fear imported GMOs may have an adverse effect on biological diversity or human health. The protocol is part of the Biodiversity Convention and must be ratified by Malta before May 1.

Recently issued Maltese regulations which were meant to transpose the directive (LN 228 2003 under which GMOs now fall), appears to have shed some of the originally intended force. The Control of Major Accident Hazards Directive (COMAH) 96/82/EC gives equal importance to safeguarding the environment on the same level as human health and safety.

The legal notice which was meant to transpose this directive only covers "biological agents harmful to man", dropping any reference to harm done to the environment. "We had to draw the line somewhere", admitted the head of technical operations at the Occupational Health and Safety Authority.

A shred of hope for a GMO-free Malta lies in Legal Notice 170 of 2002 on deliberate release which assures "a high level of safety for the general population and the environment".

The Minister for Environment and Rural Affairs declared recently at a meeting with the Farmers Association that Malta would not be voting against GMOs. The fate of Maltese fields and the farmers in the face of the GM threat will lie with the Biosafety Co-ordinating Committee. Applications to plant genetically-modified crops in the Maltese Islands must be passed by the committee, made up of representatives from health, agriculture, biodiversity and science.

The committee could choose to exercise the precautionary principle, bearing in mind the results of the British trials. Before authorising the release of genetically modified seeds in the Maltese countryside the committee could insist that the applicant shoulder the obligation of proof that the GM crop will not harm Maltese biodiversity. Will the Maltese government and its institutions apply this policy?

The Malta contact for the Intergovernmental Committee for the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is an environment officer at MEPA whose job it is to monitor bio-safety in the Maltese Islands. Any approvals for GM plantings must be reported to other EU states. The Aarhus Convention, which Malta signed and ratified in 2001, binds MEPA to make environmental information available to the public within a month of requesting it.

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