Italy sets new hurdles for GM crops

The US and the EU may have put on a joint face at this month’s collapsed World Trade Organisation talks in Mexico, but disputes between them over genetically modified crops are deepening. Italy won the right to impose an emergency ban on genetically modified food products when Europe’s highest court intervened in the bitter dispute between Rome and US biotechnology companies. But Italy’s victory was not clear cut and could be short-lived. The European court of justice said that Rome would have to provide ‘detailed’ evidence that GM products posed a risk to human health before any emergency ban was imposed. The court was asked to review a decision by Rome in August 2000 to temporarily ban flour used in animal feed that came from genetically modified corn produced by Monsanto Europe S.A., Syngenta AG and Pioneer HiBred International Inc. The court also warned that it could not rely on hypothetical evidence or supposition. Products containing minute traces of GM material could not be automatically banned, the court ruled. The ruling came at a key time for the EU which is trying to introduce a strict regulatory framework for the introduction of new GM crops. The matter will now be referred back to the Italian courts which will have to decide whether or not the Italian government had been justified in 2000 in banning several varieties of GM maize that were sold elsewhere in the EU. Both the Italian government and the biotech industry claimed victory after the court’s decision, but anti-GM campaigners stressed that the main thing was that the Italian ban would remain in place. “The court recognises that member states have a right to protect consumers’ health, a right that clearly prevails over the freedom of trade principle,” said Roberto della Seta, a spokesperson for the Italian environmental group Legambiente. Geert Ritsema, GMO campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said: “There is huge skepticism in Italy about GM technology.” But industry groups took heart from the court’s insistence on solid justification for even a temporary ban. “We hope that this sets the basis for more clarity,” said Adeline Farrelly, spokeperson for Europabio, which represents the biotech industry in Brussels.