Government must protect organic food and consumers
The Soil Association today welcomed the fact that the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC) has in its report given the Government clear recommendations about what it needs to do to protect organic food and farming from GM contamination.
"The Commission has put the choices we face clearly in front of the Government," says Peter Melchett, Policy Director of the Soil Association. "The Government can allow GM crops to be grown with no controls at all so that everyone has to eat some GM food whether they like it or not. Or legally enforceable rules can be introduced to protect non-GM food.
"Some members of the Commission recommended that the GM industry or Government must pay in the event of GM contamination. The Soil Association believes the GM industry must pay. The alternative view put forward by some of the commissioners, that organic farmers must bear the cost, would mean that people buying organic food would pay more."
The Soil Association welcomes the AEBC's view that a legally enforceable, statutory set of rules are needed to protect non-GM and organic crops. These rules would cover issues such as ensuring that there are suitable separation distances between GM and non- crops, and insisting that neighbouring farmers must be notified if GM crops are to be grown. However, pro- GM members of the AEBC have said they would only agree if 'making the necessary legal arrangements did not cause significant further delay in GM crops being made available to farmers'.
"Protecting non-GM food means ensuring no GM contamination down to the level of detection - 0.1%," says Peter Melchett.
In 1999, Food Safety Minster, Jeff Rooker said that the Government would not allow public money used to support organic farming 'to be put at risk by a cross-contamination of GM crops'. "The Government should keep their word," says Peter Melchett.
Contamination
The report makes clear that it is not just organic organisations such as the Soil Association that want to keep GM contamination out of food. The Commission says 'British supermarkets are working at or towards a 0.1% threshold for their own brand non-organic products, as well as for organic food': this shows that the EU's current threshold of 0.9% is not acceptable.
But the Commission says 'some of us strongly suspect on the basis of the available evidence that successful co-existence at 0.1% would be unachievable if there were significant areas of GM crop cultivation', and for this reason 0.1% should be rejected.
The report states, 'the opposing view is that organic producers are responding to consumer demand for as little GM material as possible in their food and that 0.1% is a rational and reasonable threshold to set in response to this consumer demand. Organic farming is established and growing and there is little or no appetite for GM products in the UK: the onus should be on GM cropping to take place, if it takes place at all, in a way that respects the 0.1% standard adopted in organic agriculture. The EU coexistence guidelines ought to recognise this'. (paragraph 163)
The report goes on, 'The bottom line is that given market circumstances and consumer attitudes, we should not attempt coexistence without at the very least making compensation available for farmers suffering an economic loss in relation to a 0.1% threshold, for both organic and non-GM crops. Growing GM crops should be constrained as required to achieve that, including if necessary ruling out their cultivation altogether.' (paragraph 164)
Compensation
The Commission is divided on compensation, with some believing that it should be available for economic loss arising from breaches of the 0.1% threshold. The Commission recommend that there should be special arrangements for compensation for farmers suffering financial loss, but add, 'our understanding is that the agricultural biotechnology industry would be unwilling to underwrite a compensation scheme for any losses related to 0.9% and even less willing to do so for breaches of thresholds lower than this'. (paragraph 301)
Peter Melchett says, "Not surprisingly, the Commission was divided, because its GM industry representatives knew that commercialisation of GM crops will lead to contamination of organic food. This report makes clear they won't even agree to compensate non-organic farmers whose non-GM crops are contaminated above EU limits, and have to be labelled as GM. Their arrogant determination that they should get their way whatever the cost to others is breathtaking."
