Reuters | October 20, 1999
BRUSSELS - The European Union's top scientific experts were cited as rejecting on Wednesday evidence submitted by Austria claiming a link between a widely-used variety of genetically modified maize and environmental damage.
The story says that the new report by the EU's advisory Scientific Committee for Plants is likely to increase the pressure on the EU from the biotechnology industry to approve new strains of so-called Bt-maize, developed to be resistant to the corn borer pest.
The European Commission asked the committee to investigate whether evidence submitted by Austria threw into doubt an earlier decision to approve a Bt-maize variety developed by Monsanto Co (MTC.N and, by extension, two other Bt-maize plants marketed by Novartis AG.
Austria has a unilateral ban on the products, citing potential health and environmental risks. Its domestic ban will also now be called into question, EU officials said.
Austria banned the Novartis maize in December 1996 and the Monsanto maize, known as Bt-Maize MON-810, on May 27, 1999. It sent the evidence sent to the commission in June this year.
A committee report published on the Internet was quoted as saying, "The scientific committee concludes that the information submitted by Austria does not constitute new significant information that was not already considered in its original risk assessment. ... The committee concluded that it is not possible to extrapolate the results of this initial laboratory study to the field situation."
