BASF mag gen-aardappel introduceren

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Wat zegt het EU-parlement hierover? Geen zeggenschap?

In 2008 was dit al een hot-potato, en toen was de reden voor introductie
het hogere gehalte aan zetmeel voor papierproductie en veevoer (nu
ineens de resistentie tegen antibiotica?).

Zeer dubieuze beslissing.

Groet / Cees

Fiat voor genetisch gemodificeerde aardappel
http://www.beursduivel.be/nieuws/82395/Fiat_voor_genetisch_gemodificeerde_aardappel
DINSDAG 2 MAART 2010, 13:39   |  143 keer gelezen
BRUSSEL (AFN) - De Europese Commissie heeft dinsdag de teelt van een
genetisch gemodificeerde aardappel goedgekeurd. Het is de eerste keer in
twaalf jaar dat dit gebeurt. Het gaat om een product van het Duitse
chemieconcern BASF. Volgens eurocommissaris John Dalli (Volksgezondheid)
is bij het besluit naar alle veiligheidsaspecten gekeken.

Milieuorganisatie Greenpeace noemt het schokkend dat een van de eerste
daden van de nieuwe Europese Commissie het toelaten van een genetisch
gemodificeerd product betreft dat een risico vormt voor milieu en
volksgezondheid.

BASF teelt de aardappel voor industriële doeleinden, maar resten mogen
ook als veevoer worden gebruikt. Het genetisch gemodificeerde gewas
bevat een gen dat resistent is tegen antibiotica.

De Europese Commissie gaf dinsdag ook groen licht voor het in Europa op
de markt brengen van drie genetisch gemodificeerde maïssoorten, maar die
mogen niet in de EU worden geteeld.


PARIS — Call it Europe's hottest potato.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/business/worldbusiness/17iht-potato.4.10123369.html
The Amflora potato looks like any garden-variety spud, but it has been
genetically modified by the German chemical giant BASF to be unusually
rich in starch. It also has aroused concerns that sick people and the
elderly could become more vulnerable to disease because there are fears
that the potato could trigger resistance to certain antibiotics in humans.

"The biotechnology industry threatens to set an extremely worrying
example if it wins approval for this potato," said Patrice Courvalin,
the head of the Antibacterial Agents Unit at the medical research center
Institut Pasteur in Paris. "We should keep trying to prevent
dissemination of antibiotic resistance rather than to allow products
into the food chain that could potentially make a bad situation even worse."

European Union governments are touchy about the potato, too.

On Monday, EU farm ministers are expected to hit a deadlock over whether
to authorize the potato, exposing a deepening rift between those
Europeans who say gene-altered products are a boon to farmers and to
industry, and those who say that the technology is potentially hazardous
to humans and could pose dangers to the environment.

Officials at the European Commission, the EU executive, already have
deemed the potato safe. These officials want to introduce more
gene-altered products into the EU to normalize trade relations with
countries like the United States, and to lower costs for farmers.

But many governments in Europe are extremely wary of continuing distrust
among those citizens who consider gene-altered products to be
"Frankenstein" foods. Experts say that some countries may even be
hardening their longstanding opposition to the technology.

"The debate in Europe appears to be heading toward stalemate,"
Jacqueline Mailly, senior European regulatory affairs adviser at the law
firm Hogan & Hartson in Brussels, said. "If you take the Austrians, for
example, they now appear to be standing firmer than ever against
biotechnology."

Mailly said countries like Austria originally opposed gene-altered
products on principle and for scientific reasons, but that they now were
backing increasingly vibrant traditional farming and organic producers
who see the introduction of gene-altered crops as a threat to their way
of life and brand identity.

BASF developed the Amflora potato to yield large quantities of starch
suitable for making glossy paper products and for feeding animals.

BASF worked jointly to develop the potato with the European starch
industry, which was seeking to improve its competitiveness.

The license fees for the potato eventually could earn BASF up to €30
million, or $44 million, annually if allowed onto the European market,
said Susanne Benner, a spokeswoman for the company. So far, she said,
Amflora has not been planted commercially anywhere in the world.

BASF included the controversial marker gene during the development of
the potato as a way of identifying plant cells that successfully
produced the desired type of starch.

EU officials recommended putting the potato onto the market after the
European Food Safety Authority, an agency in Parma, Italy, that reports
to the European Commission on food safety issues, said that antibiotics
affected by the marker gene - kanamycin and neomycin - had none, or only
a minor relevance to medicine.

On Friday, Mireille Thom, a European Commission spokeswoman, reiterated
that the "potato does not pose a problem to human or animal health or to
the environment." But scientists like Courvalin and the environmental
group Greenpeace said that the EU and the food safety authority were
badly out of step with other health bodies.

They pointed out that the World Health Organization in 2005 classified
the antibiotics affected by the resistance gene as "critically
important" and that last year the European Medicines Agency, a
regulatory agency for medicines based in London and also known as EMEA,
said that classifying the antibiotics "as of no or only minor
therapeutic relevance" was wrong.

In its conclusions, EMEA also noted that the antibiotics could become
extremely important in treating certain forms of tuberculosis.

Courvalin said he was concerned that if the gene passed to bacteria in
the environment or in the gut of animals that ate the potato and it then
evolved, antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains could appear with the
potential to have a negative effect on human and animal health.

Courvalin said that it had not yet been proven that such genes from
genetically modified organisms could transfer to human bacteria, but he
stressed that lack of evidence did not mean it would not happen.

He said environmental and gut bacteria can be responsible for human
infections in a growing portion of the population that includes people
having surgery, those with AIDS, those being treated with chemotherapy
and, most important, the elderly.

The biotechnology industry, which insists that its products are as safe
as non-gene-altered equivalents, has long been frustrated by delays in
approving such products that cost it time and money, and block access to
European markets.

Companies like BASF and Syngenta, which is based in Switzerland, say
that an unfavorable political climate for gene-altered technologies is
hindering the introduction of products that could make the region more
competitive.

"Biotech crops are grown on nearly 10 percent of the world's arable
land," Stefan Marcinowski, a member of the board at BASF, said last
week. "Only Europe is increasingly lagging behind."

The United States and Argentina have strongly backed the gene-altered
industry by bringing complaints against Europe at the World Trade
Organization - one factor that pushed EU officials to seek a way to make
it easier to market biotech crops and foods in Europe.

Some farmers and meat producers also are pushing EU officials to back
the technology as population demands, land scarcity and drought drive up
the price of animal feed on global markets.

On Monday, the ministers will consider applications for four
insect-resistant gene-altered types of corn used in food and feed, as
well as the BASF potato. But a clearcut decision is unlikely: EU
countries at similar meetings have failed to reach the majority needed
to vote through, or completely reject, new approvals of gene-altered crops.

In such cases, the European Commission then is entitled to give its
approval. That means that the potato could soon be on the market in
Europe - albeit through a highly circuitous regulatory process. Even
then, however, EU countries can invoke so-called safeguard clauses to
block the cultivation or sale of gene-altered crops.

Although BASF could get backing from countries like Britain and the
Netherlands that look favorably on gene-altered crops, it is unlikely to
be sufficient for approval on Monday.

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