Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-24-Speech-4-133"
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"en.20021024.6.4-133"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, when we debated the seed directive here in Parliament in the mid-1990s, I acted as rapporteur for the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. At the time, we successfully applied for the final vote on the issue of genetically modified organisms to be deferred. I then negotiated for two years on behalf of the Committee on Agriculture. The issue at stake then was not whether genetic engineering should or should not be used; the issue at stake was labelling and the inclusion of this seed directive and its methods in the release directive, which at the time was still Directive 90/220.
We achieved this. At the time, the scientists still insisted that genetically modified crops could coexist alongside non-genetically modified crops; they excluded the possibility of contamination. This stand has now been overtaken both by events and by opinion within the scientific community itself. Now those who wish or rather who, under the bio regulation, are legally obliged to farm – be it conventionally or organically – without using genetic engineering, face the problem of unwanted contamination.
Now the Commission wants to set a threshold below which no labelling is required. This is where the figures start to get confusing. Once upon a time there was talk of 1% contamination; now we are down to 0.3 and 0.5%. But the fact remains that genetically modified organisms are being released unintentionally in huge quantities. If we relate this to an area of seven-and-a-half or eight million hectares of rape or corn, 7 million plants seed every year. This is not going to be negotiated with Parliament, not even in the Standing Committee on the release directive, which has now been renewed; it is to be decided in the Standing Committee on Seeds, where a ruling is to be laid down under the comitology procedure which, if implemented as it stands, contradicts Parliament's figure of 0.5% in the food labelling directive.
If we approve seeding in these quantities without labelling, then we must assume that the other value will be exceeded during seeding and that even those who do not use any form of genetically modified organism will be forced to comply with labelling and testing requirements. We need a ruling here which clarifies once and for all – and this is also the position which the Committee on Agriculture has just adopted – that there has to be coexistence, that those who wish to use genetically modified organisms must ensure that those who do not are not brought into contact with them. That applies both to the 70% of farmers in Germany who do not want GMOs and to about the same percentage of consumers who do not want GMOs.
So there is no point in starting from a specific threshold because, if it is exceeded, the risk and the individual costs will be impossible to bear under compensation rules. So we need a ruling whereby those who are to blame can be held to account under the polluter-pays principle. This process, these rulings are no simple matter, Commissioner, and cannot be decided under the comitology procedure or in the standing committee and technical annex; they need further debate and another vote, with codecision by Parliament. We should also hold science to account and organise hearings in order to clarify how coexistence which is really worth its name, can be applied. All this takes time and must not, under any circumstances, be rushed. Until then, the rule must be that uncontaminated seed can be guaranteed for those who do not want to use genetically modified organisms."@en1
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