By this time next year growers will likely be cultivating the first genetically modified crop grown on European soil in a decade.
The European Commission is poised to give final approval to BASF’s Amflora potato by the end of summer.
On July 16 the Council of Agricultural Ministers failed to reach a definitive decision on the GM spud, a starch potato that will be used to make paper, textiles and adhesives.
The decision now lies in the hands of the commission, which has already shown support for Amflora based on a positive evaluation by the European Food Safety Authority. The agency has three months to make its final ruling.
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Chantal Sicotte, trade policy analyst with Agriculture Canada, said it would be unusual for the commission to reject the GM potato after it has passed the health and safety tests.
If BASF gets the go-ahead, it plans to begin commercial cultivation of the crop with the starch industry and its contract farmers in 2008. It will be the first GM crop grown in the EU since 1998, when a de facto moratorium was implemented.
Sicotte said the commission’s decision will not have a direct impact on Canadian canola seeking unfettered access to the European market, but it demonstrates a softening stance on GM crops in that important region of the world.
“It shows movement on the part of the EU on processing applications for GMOs, so that is good news,” she said.
Canola growers are not interested in what the Europeans are growing so much as what they are importing. The market has been closed to Canadian canola since the 1997-98 crop year.
But Canada has made headway on the regulatory approval for the importation and processing of GM canola. All that remains is getting approval of a long obsolete Liberty Link event called T45.
“Once this one is approved, then we would be able to ship,” said Sicotte.
She said the EU is facing internal pressure from its farmers to accept GM crops.
“They are worried about their feed supply for their herds.”
But that doesn’t mean Europeans have suddenly embraced biotechnology. It is still a sensitive political issue.
