EU feed industry fears EU decision on GM crops

The EU Food and feed chain partners urged European Commission President Juncker this week to reject any attempt to renationalise EU market authorisations of genetically modified crops for feed and food use.

Properly implementing the existing legislation should be the main priority for the Commission before starting further reflections on changing the current market authorisation procedure.

Speaking on behalf of the EU Food and Feed Chain partners, Pekka Pesonen, Copa-Cogeca Secretary General warned the European Commission about the severe economic and social impact of this proposal, which will severely jeopardise the Internal Market for food and feed products, leading to significant job losses and lower investment in the agri-food chain in “opt-out” countries. This would cause severe distortions of competition for all EU agri-food chain partners.

The EU food and feed chain partners call on the Commissioner College to fulfil their role as ‘Guardians of the EU treaties’ and reject this approach which would reverse the economic achievements of the European Customs Union and the Single Market.

The announced initiative fails to meet the basic requirements of the EU treaties and strongly calls into question the new Commission political priorities on ‘jobs & growth’ and the ‘better and smart regulation agenda’. The proposal is due to be officially released by the EU Commission on 15 April.

[Source: Fefac]

Read more about this topic in the April edition of AllAboutFeed, where Fefac president Ruud Tijssens explains his views about this topic.