France Reinforces Opposition to GM Crops

French Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, Philippe Martin, and Stéphane Le Foll, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, have reaffirmed the government position to maintain a moratorium on the cultivation of GM seeds.

A draft order submitted recently for public consultation, will come into force before the next planting season, preventing the single growing of GM maize MON810 currently authorized at European level.

Moreover, following the rejection of the bill in the Senate to ban the cultivation of GM maize, the Ministers welcomed the announcement by Bruno Le Roux, President of the Socialist group in the National Assembly, that he was putting forward a new bill to be discussed in April with the same objective.

The two devices of a Ministerial Order and a bill, reinforces France’s commitment to a moratorium on GMO crops.

Beyond these measures in the short term, France wants to see its European partners to propose a new Community framework for authorisation of GM crops.

This new framework should allow, following health and environmental assessment at European level, each Member State to determine the authorisation of the cultivation of GMOs according to its own criteria including the cost / benefit ratio.