French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday defended banning a strain of GM corn, as a high-profile activist ended a hunger strike in response and farmers complained politics had trumped science. Sarkozy said the decision announced late Friday placed France "on the forefront of the environmental debate".
"It does not mean that France does not participate in GMO research. It does not mean that there will not be GMOs in the future," he said at a meeting of his Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP). "It simply means that with the principle of precaution at stake, I am making a major political decision to carry our country to the forefront of the debate on the environment."
Opponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) - a fiercely contested issue in Europe - welcomed the French government's decision to invoke a European Union procedure to bar the Monsanto 810 maize. It is the only GM crop grown in France.
Anti-globalisation activist Jose Bove ended a hunger strike begun January 3 to press for a year-long ban on GM crops, eating from a bowl of soup at a news conference in Paris on Saturday.
But France'sppalling" decision. "It was not taken with sufficient hindsight, and I have serious doubts about its objectivity," said Jean-Michel Lemetayer, head of the National Federation of Agricultural Workers' Unions.
A federation of agricultural companies said "demagoguery has triumphed over agricultural innovation". US agricultural giant Monsanto, which produces the strain, has 15 days to present its defence.
The French government acted after a watchdog authority said it had "serious doubts" about the product in a report that has been controversial even among the scientists who put it together. France's Provisional High Authority on GM Organisms on Wednesday pointed to what it described as "a certain number of new scientific facts relating to a negative impact on flora and fauna".
Chairman Jean-Francois Le Grand, who also holds a seat in the Senate, said evidence had emerged that Mon 810 had an could travel further than previously thought, possibly hundreds of miles (kilometres), said Le Grand. However, 12 of the 15 scientists who compiled the report issued a statement Thursday complaining that Le Grand had misrepresented their findings.
They said their initial report had not used the words "serious doubts" or "negative" concerning the latest evidence on GM crops. They also complained they had not been allowed time to carry out a "fuller expertise" of Mon 810.