Critics pan draft EU rules on GM contamination

The EU plans to allow up to 0.1 percent of unapproved genetically modified (GM) material in imports of animal feed but not human food, draft proposals showed, an idea grain exporting countries called unworkable.
The proposals from the European Commission, seen by Reuters on Friday, are designed to avoid a repeat of last year's disruption to EU animal feed supplies, when US soy cargoes were blocked after traces of unapproved GM material were found.
But importers and the European Union's major trade partners criticised the proposals for only covering imports for feed, and not food, which they said would not work in practice and could undermine the supply of agricultural raw materials to Europe. The zero tolerance policy will remain for food.
"Grain shipments from third countries are indistinguishably used for food and feed purposes in the EU," said a letter sent to the Commission this week by ambassadors of the United States, Brazil, Canada and Argentina. "Any attempt to separate (shipments) into 'food-only' and 'feed-only' would pose insurmountable difficulties for trade operators and EU food and feed processors," the letter, seen by Reuters, added.
Environmentalists said the EU should maintain zero tolerance of unapproved GMOs in food and feed, and that exporters in other parts of the world should work harder to avoid contamination. "I don't see why the customer - in this case the EU - should accept a diktat from the seller to allow contamination with products that have not been approved as safe in Europe," Greenpeace agriculture campaigner Marco Contiero said.
The Commission proposal said the need for a solution to the problem of traces of GM material contaminating imports was most pressing for Europe's feed and livestock sector. "Potential trade disruptions would much more affect the feed sector than the food sector. It appears therefore appropriate to limit the scope of this regulation to the methods of sampling and analysis ... to be used in official controls of feed," it said.
The Commission's "technical solution" sets new rules for EU customs authorities on how to interpret tests on grain cargoes. It said GM contamination of 0.1 percent or over was the lowest level at which test results were "satisfactorily reproducible" between laboratories. The tolerance margin will only apply to GMOs that have been approved in the exporting country and for which EU approval is pending.
Europe's seed crushing industry has an annual turnover of about 20 billion euros ($28 billion), and last year imported some 13 million tonnes of soybeans, producing 10 million tonnes of animal feed meal and 2.5 million tonnes of oil, almost half of which was used in food. The head of EU seed crushers' association Fediol, Nathalie Lecocq, said that for her industry the food and feed market are completely interlinked, so a feed-only solution would fail.
"It would put at risk the market for oil, and potentially the whole of our soybean imports. If you can't rely on 40 percent of your outlet for oil, you would have to consider if it's economically viable to continue crushing in Europe," she said. The Commission is believed to have excluded food from the proposals due to opposition from some EU governments such as Germany, which are mindful of consumer opposition to GM in food.