Slow Biotech Crop Acceptance in the EU, says Report

Biotech crop acceptance in the European Union is still characterized by indifference, as manifested in the slow approval process, says the EU Agricultural Biotech Annual Report published by USDA FAS GAINS. Seven EU countries including France, Germany and Hungary have banned commercial planting of biotech crops but Portugal and Spain have shown increased adoption. An example is the planting of MON810, an old biotech insect resistant corn that has been grown in many countries already and replaced by much more convenient and profitable stacked herbicide and insect tolerant traits in many countries, but is not acceptable to a number of EU countries.

In addition, a number of trade barriers have been developed in the EU preventing GE products imports including: (1) delays in the approvals of new events has resulted in asynchronous approvals; (2) reformulation of EU food industry and supermarket chains to exclude potential GE ingredients since the EU regulation on traceability and labeling was implemented in 2003-2004; (3) inclusion of socio-economic criteria in addition to scientific criteria to review GE products in the EU; and (4) EU-wide approvals for planting GE crops are circumvented by national bans in seven MS (Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, and Hungary).

For more details, see the full report at http://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Agricultural%20Biotechnology%20Annual_Paris_EU-27_8-3-2012.pdf.