In less than a month, Canadian canola growers may be closer to re-entering the long-closed European market.
Conor Dobson of Bayer CropScience said even a hung jury at the European regulatory committee meeting on Dec. 5 would be progress, because genetically modified organism approvals in Europe always follow a tortuous path.
“Let’s not be surprised if this one goes through the same process” as Monsanto’s GT73 GM, which was recently approved at a higher level than the committee, said Dobson.
“The good thing is, things are moving. A couple of years ago they would never even get to the council because they would just refuse to look at them.”
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Monsanto’s Roundup Ready canola varieties are approved for sale to the human consumption market in Europe, but no Canadian canola seed is being sold in Europe because two Bayer genetic alterations – what regulators call ” GM events” – are not approved, and the Canadian grain handling system does not segregate canola by variety.
Until Bayer’s two GM events, MS8-RF3 and T45, are approved, the European market will remain closed, as it has been since the mid-1990s.
To be approved in Europe, a GM event must first be passed by Europe’s food safety regulators.
Bayer has won this approval for MS8-RF3 which gives tolerance to Liberty herbicide in hybrids. But T45, which gives Liberty tolerance in open pollinated varieties, has not been approved at this level.
MS8-RF3 now needs approval from the regulatory committee, which brings together food safety regulators from all of the European Union’s member states.
This should be an easy approval, Dobson said, because the committee is merely supposed to approve the scientific basis of the EU’s food safety experts, but “politics often comes into it.”
To be approved or rejected at the committee level, a majority vote is needed, but Dobson said this often doesn’t occur.
There are many abstentions, so the GM event gets kicked upstairs to the council of ministers from the EU nations that oversee the committee.
If the ministers also can’t come to a majority decision to accept or reject, as happened with Monsanto’s GT73, it gets booted even higher, to the European Commission, which is the EU’s executive level.
The EC is likely to then accept what its food safety experts determined at the beginning of the process and approve, Dobson said.
“If they can’t get some sort of clarity out of the member states, they are willing to make the move and utilize legislation and approve the products if their agencies have said they’re safe.”
If the committee can’t make a majority decision on MS8-RJ3 in December, the council will probably consider the matter in January.
If that does not go well, the commission will probably deal with it by spring 2006, Dobson said.
“We’re quite hopeful. We can see light at the end of the tunnel.”
That still leaves T45 to approve, and that’s farther behind. It is still being reviewed by the European food safety regulators and Bayer does not know when that review will be complete.
T45 is used in open pollinated varieties that are being phased out, but it didn’t get into the European regulatory system until after MS8-RF3, which was put forward in the late 1990s.
If both GM events are approved, Canada will be legally clear to export canola seed to the EU again.
However, market access problems may remain. Just because the EU approves something doesn’t mean individual countries have to open their borders. Each nation makes its own decision on that.
