Europe yesterday delayed deciding whether to allow farmers to grow more genetically modified crops (GM), a move likely to anger some of its top trade partners including the United States, the world's leading GM crop grower.

The EU has not approved any GM crops for growing since 1998.

After hours of debate, the European Commission asked the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to carry out more work on three biotech crop products whose developers want to grow them in Europe's fields and which EFSA has already cleared.

For months, the EU executive had been due to debate the issue, hoping to end a policy vacuum and show Argentina, Canada and United States - which won a trade dispute over EU biotech policy in 2003 - that Europe is open to GM products.

EFSA will again assess the risk of growing two GM maize crops and a potato modified to produce extra starch, a process that could delay EU approval by months or years, officials say.

The EU's 27 states are split over the issue and regularly clash over whether to approve new varieties for import without ever reaching a conclusion.

"The Commission will adopt the pending decisions if and when EFSA confirms the safety of the products," Commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger told a news conference.

One type has been engineered by Swiss agrochemicals company Syngenta. The other was developed jointly by Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a unit of DuPont Co, and Dow AgroSciences unit Mycogen Seeds.

The high-starch potato, made by German chemicals group BASF, is designed for use in industrial processing but its by-products can be used in animal feed.

Laitenberger said the Commission was "reaffirming its confidence" in EFSA. But green groups - which say EFSA's opinions are flawed - strongly disagreed.

"Asking Europe's underfunded and inadequate food agency to look at the safety of these crops for the third time is like putting a fox in charge of a hen house," said Marco Contiero, Greenpeace EU GMO campaign director.

In Europe, consumers are well known for their skepticism, if not hostility, to GM crops, often called "Frankenstein foods".

But the biotech industry says its products are as safe as non-GM equivalents. It is frustrated over what it sees as the EU's delay in approving GM products to deny it market access.

The Commission also decided yesterday to order Austria to lift longstanding bans on importing and processing two GM crops - MON 810 maize made by US biotech company Monsanto and T25 maize by German drugs and chemicals group Bayer - although their cultivation will continue to be prohibited.

Austria is the only remaining EU country cited in the World Trade Organization case in 2003 where national bans on specific GM products are still in effect.

Agencies

(China Daily 05/08/2008 page10)