GENETICALLY modified crops are everywhere, it seems - even in Europe. Strict laws designed to keep the European Union free of unauthorised GM crops and products are not working, and are posing problems for the EU’s €150 billion livestock industry, according to farmers’ representatives. They say that supplies of animal feed for poultry and pigs are being refused entry at European ports when found to contain even trace amounts of unauthorised GM material.
Under Europe’s “zero-tolerance” laws on GM contamination, introduced in 2007, the presence of even a few seeds of unauthorised GM material will rule out an entire shipment. The animal feed industry says that the laws are unworkable because GM material is almost ubiquitous, given today’s global supply chain.
“Though we understand the consumer concern in Europe, we don’t understand zero tolerance because it closes down trade,” says Pekka Pesonen, secretary general of Copa-Cogeca, a coalition of groups representing 15 million EU farmers in total. He claims that European pig and poultry farmers will go out of business unless the EU adopts a more pragmatic screening approach by setting a threshold - say 0.5 per cent - beneath which GM contamination is tolerated.
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