More than 200 small- and medium-size breeders, farmers, and the organic and non GMO sectors have come together to call on the institutions to stop the de-regulation of new GM plants and ensure GMOs remain covered by an assessment of the risks and monitoring, identification and detection methods, and traceability and labelling along the food chain.
The signing organisations representing European farmers and small and medium size breeders, the food sector and civil society are deeply worried by the attempts to rush an agreement in the Council and negotiations between the Council and the Parliament in light of the potential risks of new GMOs for human health and nature and of the many outstanding unresolved issues on the table, i.e. patents, identification and detection methods, price of seeds, seed diversity, coexistence, negative socioeconomic impacts and risk of further corporate control of the food chain. There is great concern that the solutions proposed by the European Parliament and the Belgian and Polish Council Presidencies on patents are not solving the patent problem.
We call on European countries to protect their farmers and breeders, as well as citizens and nature. All new GMOs must remain covered by an assessment of the risks and monitoring, identification and detection methods, and traceability and labelling along the food chain. Countries must be able to ban or restrict their cultivation in their territory. We call on European countries to stop the de-regulation of new GM plants
Read the full Statement here
