Italy reaffirms its GMO-free status, joining 18 other countries that have made the same choice by issuing national bans prohibiting cultivation on their territory. The 3 October deadline for formally notifying the European Commission has now passed.
Good news from the GMO front in Europe. Two thirds of European Union countries, using the procedures set out in Directive 2015/412 approved during last year's Italian presidency, have notified the European Commission of their intention to ban the cultivation of genetically modified organisms on their national territory. The 19 countries are: Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, and Hungary, while the United Kingdom has applied on behalf of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Belgium on behalf of Wallonia.
The request, which could be submitted until 3 October, concerns four varieties of GM maize: Monsanto Mon810, Pioneer TC1507, and Syngenta GA21 and Bt11.
Cultivation of Mon810 had until now been blocked by the so-called safeguard clause in only nine countries: Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg and Poland.
According to Coldiretti, this represents "a confirmation of the growing opposition to genetically modified organisms in agriculture across Europe, where it concerns the vast majority of countries, because they have not kept their miraculous promises. The areas sown with transgenic crops in the European Union are not only entirely marginal compared to the total, but actually declined in 2014, with a decrease of 3 per cent, confirming the growing mistrust towards a technology that does not deliver on its promises, according to the analysis in the 2014 annual report of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications. The GMO area in Europe in 2014 today amounts to just 143,016 hectares of Bt maize cultivated in only 5 of the 28 countries that make up the Union. Moreover, as much as 92 per cent of European biotech maize is grown in Spain, where 131,538 hectares were sown, while the areas under cultivation are residual in Portugal, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania."
On 26 October the European Parliament will vote on the Commission's proposal to give member states the option of introducing an opt-out clause for the import of GM animal feed as well, even where it has been approved by Efsa, the European Food Safety Authority.