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| European commissioner splits EU by decreeing go-ahead for GM potato |
| Pallavi Aiyar / Brussels Mar 05, 2010, 18:00 IST |
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In India, the road to GM (genetically modified) crops may have hit a bump, with Bt brinjal getting the amber light. But, in traditionally GM-sceptic Europe, the path towards a genetically modified future for crops could have just opened up. This week, the European Commission cleared a GM potato for cultivation, the first such approval in over a decade. The move has unleashed a furious debate, with some EU (European Union) member-states declaring they’d ban the potato, regardless of the Commission’s go-ahead.
The product in question is called the Amflora potato and developed by chemical giant BASF to produce more starch. It is expected to be grown mostly in Germany, for industrial purposes like the paper industry, but not food. The Amflora’s extra starch gives paper a higher gloss and makes concrete and adhesives stay wet for a longer period of time, reducing the consumption of energy and raw materials. BASF has said cultivation of the new GM potato could begin as soon as this year.
Austria has denounced the EC decision, declaring that Vienna would move to immediately ban this potato, while Italy’s agriculture minister has warned that the Commission overstepped its authority in granting the approval.
Some groups caution that the potato carries an antibiotic resistant gene that could cause problems if it were to enter the food chain, through feeding of the industrial pulp from the potatoes to livestock.
Currently, the only other biotech crop grown in Europe is a type of maize produced by Monsanto, approved in 1998.
The Commission first forwarded an application to grow the Amflora potato to EU member-governments in 2004. Since then, divisions between the 27 member-countries have prevented the European Council from reaching the qualified majority needed to approve the application, despite the European Food Safety Authority having given its go-ahead in 2006, 2007 and again in 2009.
So, to give the potato the green light, the EC had to invoke its power to grant its approval by a form of fiat, a rarely taken measure. For the biotech industry, this decision, handed down by the new European commissioner for health, John Dalli, could mark the emergence of a powerful advocate for GM products in Europe.
Dalli has also said he’d present a proposal this summer to give national governments more authority to decide whether to allow GM crops to be grown within their borders. That could make it easier for biotech-friendly nations like Britain to go ahead with cultivating certain GM crops, even when other countries disapprove.
The fear that Europe’s shying away from GM technology might hurt the region’s ability to innovate appears to have fuelled Dalli’s decision. “It is innovation that will give our citizens the best guarantee of safety and the strongest impetus for economic growth,” he said at a press conference here.
Allowing more gene-altered products in the EU would also help remove an irritant in trade relations with the United States and other countries that use these, including India.
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