contamination

On 10 October 2007, the EU standing committee on GMOs came up with a decision that takes some time to digest - literally.

Once again, Greenpeace found GM contamintion in random samples from supermarkets - in pet food in the Netherlands this time. What's amazing are the high percentages of contamination that were found. Nine of the 17 samples contained up to 40 and 60% of GM maize or soy (see list.

After years of arguments the German government finally decided on changes on a number of regulations for GM crops. What's hailed as an improvement in fact makes matters worse and some of the pressing issues have still not been tackled. What made it to the main TV news was that GM maize now should be planted 150 m away from conventional maize, or 300 m from organic maize. Or less if the GM farmer makes an agreement with his neighbours. It doesn't take much imagination to picture the pressure that can mount in a village if one farmer wants to grow GM maize... But it also means that their neighbours will have to label any kind of GM contamination, even below 0.9% because agreeing to a lesser safety distance clearly could technically been avoided.

Only less than two months after Greenpeace had detected illegal contamination of maize pellets in the harbour of Rotterdam, the EU commission tried to solve the problem by approving the maize Herculex RW (59122) as feed and food. The Standing Committee however did not agree with that on Monday.
In April, illegal contamination was detected in US maize in the harbours of Rotterdam and Dubin: maize feed was contaminated with the GM maize Herculex RW (DAS-59122) that is not approved in the EU. Contamination with this maize is therefore forbidden - no matter how big that contamination is.

Gentechnisch veränderter Reis ist in den Handel gelangt, obgleich er weder in den Vereinigten Staaten noch in der Europäischen Union eine Zulassung besitzt. Wie es dazu kommen konnte, ist derzeit noch nicht geklärt.

Food in the EU doesn't have to be labeled as containing GM ingredients if it contains material of less than 0.9% content as long as it is "adventitious" or "technically unavoidable". But companies have to label it, if they have done nothing to avoid the contamination. The clause "adventitious" or "technically unavoidable" in the EU Regulation 1829/2003 on GM labelling is not a simple threshold.