On Wednesday 8th September the Commission met to discuss a proposal that establishes labelling thresholds below which adventitious or technically unavoidable presence of traces of authorised genetically modified seeds in conventional seed lots would not have to be labelled.
The threshold of the initial proposal was 0.5%.
However no agreement was found, as some Member States decided that there wasn’t enough scientific evidence. This Commission will not look further into it and new evidence will have to be presented to the next Commission.
In the debate, David BYRNE, Health Commissioner, supported a threshold of 0.7%. While his Environmental colleague, Margot WALLSTRÖM, supported a 0.3% level.
Despite the lack of agreement on the threshold levels, the Commission positively decided backing the commercial sale of GM seeds.
17 varieties derived from MON 810 maize have been added to the Common EU Catalogue of Varieties of Agricultural Plant Species. GM varieties can only be inscribed if they have already been evaluated and authorised in accordance with the EU legislation on GMOs, Directive 2001/18/EC.
MON810 is modified to be resistant to the European corn borer, a damaging insect pest.
Regulation (EC) No 1830/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 September 2003 concerning the traceability and labelling of genetically modified organisms and the traceability of food and feed products produced from genetically modified organisms and amending Directive 2001/18/EC
