Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-16-Speech-2-276"
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"en.20060516.36.2-276"2
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".
The Member’s question gives the impression that the Commission has proposed to increase the acceptable level of adventitious contamination of organic products with GMOs from 0.1% to 0.9%. I am very happy to have the opportunity to clarify this matter, because the issue has been raised both with myself and with my services on many occasions and in many different fora. In my view, the concerns are based on a misunderstanding of our proposal and of existing legislation regarding organic products and GMOs. To read our proposal as ‘to allow 0.9% of GMO content in products labelled organic’ is a clear misinterpretation. I should like to explain why.
Not all consumers are aware of this, but currently there is no specific legislation on permissible GMO thresholds in organic products, there are no permissible GMO thresholds in organic products. The existing organic production rules ban the deliberate use of GMOs or GM-derived products without laying down any threshold for the unintended presence of traces of GMOs. There is, therefore, no question of these rules ‘already permitting a 0.1% contamination of GMOs in products labelled organic’, as the honourable Member stated in her question.
These rules date from a period when GMOs were not generally cultivated or imported. This situation has obviously now changed. The proposal of the Commission maintains the ban on the deliberate use of GMOs or GM-derived products. However, we propose that an operator may rely on GM labels when assuring that no GMOs enter his/her production.
These labels provide for effective evidence as, today, GMOs or products derived from GMOs generally have to be labelled as GM according to Community legislation. This de facto means that the same 0.9% threshold for the unintended presence of GMO traces applies to organic products as to other products.
We believe that if we tried to impose a stricter labelling threshold for organic products, this would simply make life much more difficult for organic producers, because we realise that complete purity is unattainable in practice. Even so – and I would like to stress this – it does not mean, as the honourable Member states, that the proposal ‘increased the level of permitted GMO contamination to 0.9 %’. The operator will have to continue to take all appropriate steps to avoid the presence of GMOs!
What, on the contrary, would really change under our proposal is that a product labelled as GM could no longer be labelled as organic at the same time if the 0.9% threshold is exceeded, which is in fact possible today under the present legislation.
On the health aspects, it has to be considered that GMOs may only be placed on the market following a specific case-by-case authorisation procedure. The European Union has arguably the most stringent and tough risk assessment and authorisation procedure for GMOs in the world, and that covers both environmental and health aspects. For this reason, the discussion about unintended presence of GMOs does not relate to safety issues.
In conclusion, I really must emphasise once again that in relation to the adventitious contamination of organic products by GMOs, the proposal under discussion at present amounts to a very important tightening-up of the rules and not, as it has often been suggested, a weakening. This is very important. It is really a tightening-up of the situation."@en1
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