Hundreds of food producers and retailers have handed a petition to Hungary’s agriculture minister István Nagy calling for strict labelling requirements for new-generation genetically modified (GM) crops, Euronews reported.
The GE debate centred around a proposed deregulation that has split European Union (EU) governments, the 4 September report said.
In the open letter to Nagy, retailers warned that without labelling requirements for food made from a new class of ‘GMO-lite’ crops, consumers would be deprived of choice and the organic sector could face an existential threat, Euronews wrote.
Negotiations on the proposed New Genomic Techniques (NGT) regulation had stalled after Hungary reopened a debate on the question if crops whose genome was ‘edited’ using cutting-edge laboratory procedures should be treated as broadly equivalent to conventionally bred crops – including the issue of whether food should be clearly labelled, the report said.
Nagy accepted an open letter signed by 376 companies - including Spar Austria, Germany’s second-largest supermarket chain REWE, French organic food retailer Biocoop, and health food and cosmetics chain DM – in Budapest on 4 September, five days before agriculture ministers were due to convene in the Hungarian capital for an informal EU Council summit.
Calling for “freedom of choice through transparency”, the letter urged ministers to align with the position of the European Parliament, which had agreed that all products containing NGT plants should be clearly labelled, the report said.
“Customers want to be free to choose whether or not they want this technology on their plates,” Götz E Rehn, founder of the German wholefoods chain Alnatura, was quoted as saying.
“This requires clear rules on co-existence in agriculture, complete transparency and a declaration on all products.”
A lack of labelling posed an existential threat to the organic food sector as it would prevent customers from differentiating between conventional and GM foods, according to Heinz Kaiser, head of production at dairy firm Schwarzwaldmilch.
“We need compulsory national and regionally adapted co-existence measures to ensure fair competition,” Kaiser said.
Biocoop vice-president Fréderic Faure said modern gene-edited crops shared some of the drawbacks of conventional GMOs, which he listed as “patentability, additional dependence of farmers on the seed and pesticide industry, outcrossing into the environment and the resulting negative impact on biodiversity”.
Faure’s view was shared by several governments, highlighted in the week before the report when the EU Council published statements from 15 member states in response to Hungary’s reopening of the NGT debate, the report said.
Spain – the only EU member state with a significant level of cultivation of GM crops – said a February compromise text drafted by the previous Belgian presidency of the EU Council, which would not require labelling of NGT food products, should remain the basis for further talks to “avoid a repetition of previous debates”.
The Czech Republic and Denmark – which said the failed Belgian compromise “represents a robust and equitable resolution” – were also against reopening the debate.
Similarly, Finland said it could accept the criteria on the equivalence of new generation GM crops with traditional strains.
However, some countries which had opposed the Belgian formula, including Austria and Greece, agreed that all GM products should be subject to mandatory labelling from farm to fork, Euronews wrote.
The cultivation of GM crops is banned in Hungary under the constitution drafted by the incumbent Orbán government.
