UK scientists pronounced some genetically modified (GMO) crops harmless on Monday but European Union experts demurred, declining to approve another new GMO product for the eighth time in a row. The lack of agreement underscores lingering European distaste for "Frankenstein" foods just six months after the bloc ended a five-year blockade on authorising new GMO products.
UK scientists revealed that after four years of study they had found no evidence that GMO herbicide-tolerant varieties of sugar beet and rapeseed harmed the environment and added that the controversial technology could even save growers money.
The UK findings might further inflame environmentalists eager to keep the controversial products that have swept North and South American fields off European shores.
In Brussels, an environmental group on Monday accused Europe's top food safety agency of repeated bias in favour of GMO foods and links with the biotech industry.
But the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) denied the allegations of bias made by Friends of the Earth Europe.
FoE said the EFSA's GMO panel, charged with delivering independent authoritative advice on such issues as GMOs, had not made a good start.
"In just over a year it has published twelve scientific opinions, virtually all favourable to the biotechnology industry," the report said.
The European Union experts failed to agree on the fate of a different GMO crop, maize, made by US giant Monsanto. EU nations remain as divided as their citizens.
Eight countries - Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Portugal and Estonia - voted in favour of approving MON 863 maize, while 12 voted against and five abstained. It was their second stab at this product and the decision now passes to national environment ministers.
The German parliament, attuned to the sensitivity of the issue with the public, passed a law on Friday laying down strict rules on the cultivation of GMO plants, drawing praise from environmentalists and complaints from farmers.
The law, set to take effect January 1, includes provisions making farmers using GMO plants legally responsible for the contamination of non-GMO crops and obliging them to enter all land used for GMO cultivation in a public register.
The EU's divisions go well beyond GMO crop cultivation for human food, reaching into feed and imports of tinned products.
Yet more thorny is whether the EU should order the five member states which banned certain gene crops and foods between 1997 and 2000 to lift those bans. The products had been approved for use across EU territory at the time.
The European Commission wants these bans scrapped within 20 days, in proposals that are up for debate at Monday's meeting.
For Brussels to order an EU government to do this could be extremely unpopular, especially in countries such as Austria, where opinion is strongly opposed to biotechnology in foods and there is a movement to establish GMO-free zones.