GENETIC ENGINEERING : DIMAS RELUCTANT TO SET THRESHOLD FOR GM SEED CONTAMINATION.

Europe Agri, July, 2006

Several EU member states, notably France and Germany, piled pressure on Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas at the Environment Council meeting in Luxembourg on 27 June to outline a threshold for the adventitious contamination of conventional seeds by genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). The Commissioner maintains that the absence of a threshold does not result in any legal vacuum. He is sceptical of all the proposals and evaluations that he has thus far received. He believes the current situation, whereby the threshold for detectability of about 0.1% (the lowest practical level at which GM contamination of seeds can be detected) represents an implicit limit for the labelling of seed batches, is appropriate.

In spite of repeated debates, reports and...

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