Roche urged to reject EU plan to end GM bans

TDs and senators have urged Minister for the Environment Dick Roche to reject a plan by the European Commission to stop member states from banning individual genetically modified (GM) products.

Mr Roche and other EU environmental ministers will vote on the issue when the Council of Ministers meets tomorrow.

The European Commission is seeking support to revoke national bans on individual GM products that were approved for marketing in the EU between 1996 and 1998. The bans are being implemented by Austria, France, Germany, Greece and Luxembourg.

Two Oireachtas committees - European Affairs and the Environment - met yesterday to consider the issue. There was cross-party support that member states should have the right to ban specific GM products.

Fianna Fáil deputy Michael Mulcahy said this State was in danger of "sullying its reputation" as a green, natural food producer if it allowed GM material in food production. "I have yet to meet a consumer who wants to eat GM food. They don't exist."

Oisín Coghlan, director of Friends of the Earth Ireland, said the commission's plan to remove the GM bans "fly in the face of European public and political opinion". He said 70 per cent of Europeans did not want to eat GM foods.

John Heney, rural development chairman of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association, had not noticed a "great groundswell" from farmers wanting to use GM technology.

Chairman of the Joint Committee on Rural Affairs John Deasy said it was "pretty clear" that committee members supported the right of member states to invoke GM bans.

But farmer and PD senator John Dardis said people had to ask which was better - to use chemicals, fungicides and seed dressings or to use GM technology so that these additives were no longer needed?

Dr Tom McLoughlin, of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said there was no such thing as "zero risk, but the risk has to be managed". The EPA was "neither for nor against" GM technology. Its role was to ensure such technology was used safely.

Meanwhile, Pat O'Mahony, of the Food Safety Authority, warned that some producers were misleading consumers by using GM-free labelling as a marketing ploy.