BRUSSELS, Belgium ¿ Several European Union member states have indicated continued reluctance to lift the moratorium on approvals of genetically modified organisms.

At a meeting in Brussels last week with the European Commission, which wants the ban lifted, Austria, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg repeated the request they made in February 2001 calling for traceability and labeling rules to be in place before restarting the GMO approval process. The Commission organized the meeting to discuss its initiative to restart the GMO approval process based on voluntary agreements with industry.

Lifting the moratorium requires unanimity among all 15 EU member states, since each of them can veto the process. The moratorium was imposed more than two years ago by several member states that feared that the release of more GMOs under the regulatory system the EU set up in 1990 might provoke increased hostility among opponents of gene technology. As a consequence, 13 new GM crops and 11 new GM foods remain blocked in the EU regulatory pipeline.

The EU has in the meantime updated its 1990 rules, with a new directive in 2001 on the deliberate release into the environment of genetically modified organisms ¿ but this is due to come into force in the EU member states only in October 2002. The European Commission also presented two proposals in July this year, one requiring traceability and labeling of genetically modified organisms and traceability of food and feed products produced from genetically modified organisms, and the other for tighter regulation of genetically modified food and feed. And pending the adoption of the proposals, the Commission has been trying to persuade reluctant member states to lift the ban, at least for products for which the manufacturers agree voluntarily to abide by the upcoming new regulatory context.

European environmentalists say they are delighted at the continued resistance of member states to allowing new products on the market before the rules are changed. Friends of the Earth welcomed the position of the member states that still insist on the moratorium.

¿It¿s not surprising that countries see no good reason to relaunch the GMO authorization procedure at this stage,¿ said Gill Lacroix, of Friends of the Earth¿s European office. ¿As some of the member states pointed out [at the meeting], nothing has changed since the deliberate release directive was revised. At that time, the countries concerned stated that they wanted traceability and labeling rules in place before the moratorium is lifted. All we have so far are proposals from the Commission, which still have to be discussed and agreed by the European Parliament and the member states.¿

Lacroix said the Commission is pushing its voluntary-agreements initiative ¿under pressure from the biotech industry and to pacify the United States, which does not like proposed EU rules for traceability and labeling of GM products. The Commission suggests that until the traceability/labeling rules have been adopted and enter into force, i.e., sometime in 2003, member states should somehow ensure that it happens in the meantime. It just won¿t work.¿

OECD Conference On Living Modified Organisms¿

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will hold an international conference to assess the impact on the environment of organisms that have been modified by modern genetic engineering (LMOs).

The meeting, jointly organized with the government of the United States, and to be held in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Nov. 27-30, will bring together some 300 experts in environmental assessment from governments, academia, industry, environmental groups and intergovernmental organizations. The OECD says answers will be sought to questions about the current trends and future prospects for applications of LMOs, their potential benefits and risks, the current scientific data, information and hypotheses underlying the assessment of LMOs in the environment, and the particular issues in environmental assessment of transgenic crops and the similarities/differences with environmental assessments and other types of LMOs.