Reuters | October 20, 1999 | Michael Mann
BRUSSELS - European Union governments are, according to this story, set to vote on Thursday on plans to define which foods must be labelled as containing genetically modified (GM) ingredients.
The story says that the European Commission wants to exempt foods where none of the individual ingredients contain more than one percent of GM material from the obligation to carry a label warning consumers of the presence of modified substances.
If accepted by member state food experts, the plan would end months of legal uncertainty and allow EU states to introduce a more consistent food labelling policy.
Most processed foods contain soya or maize, much of which has traditionally been shipped from countries such as the United States where GM crops are more widespread than in Europe.
Officials stressed that the plan would not give anyone the green light to label their foods as "GM-free." The definition of GM-free will be the subject of a separate plan still being drawn up by the Commission.
Luc Veron, the Commission's spokesman for enterprise policy, was quoted as saying, "This would not grant the right to apply a GM-free label, that we have to make very clear. At this point, this is about exemptions from the requirement to label as containing GM material."
The story notes that the EU has not approved any new GM crops since April 1998, amid growing consumer concern about the safety of foods derived from crops modified by biotechnology. The Commission believes clear labelling would help to allay some of these fears.
The halt to approvals has raised the spectre of another damaging trade dispute with the United States, which has been angered by difficulties in exporting commodities to the EU.
The proposal to set the threshold at one percent for each ingredient is an attempt to accommodate the possibility of small traces of GM material entering the food chain during processing and manufacturing.
Countries must decide whether to approve the plan by "qualified majority," a system of weighted voting with votes weighted by country size.
Separately, governments will vote on October 29 whether to approve three new genetically modified organisms held up in the logjam of applications.
