The approval process for GM crops has ground to a halt in Europe despite a clear regulatory path. Crops must first be deemed safe by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma, Italy. The European Commission must then produce a draft decision within three months, to be voted on by representatives from EU member states before approval can be finalized. The EFSA has deemed eight crops as safe, some as long ago as 2005. But political disquiet over the cultivation of GM crops, including bans in some EU countries, has meant that the commission has not moved forward on any of them. Four crops in limbo — three varieties of maize (corn) and one of soya bean — are Monsanto products. The company, which is based in St Louis, Missouri, also has five GM crops still under review by the EFSA: four maize varieties and one sugar-beet variety. Monsanto says that it will abandon applications for all of them except for one GM maize, MON810. This is already grown in the EU, but is now up for its ten-year reapproval review. That reapproval has already been passed to the commission by the EFSA. Monsanto will now focus its European efforts on its conventional agriculture business and on enabling the import of GM crops for use as animal feed, a widespread EU practice that is less controversial than cultivating the crops in European fields.
Source: Nature news, 23 July 2013
http://www.nature.com/news/monsanto-drops-gm-in-europe-1.13432?WT.ec_id…
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