Poland's latest proposal on GMOs/NGTs ignores farmers' rights

Moreover, in this third proposal submitted by Poland since the beginning of its Presidency, the provisions on the verification procedure and transparency on patents, which had been introduced in the January proposal [1], are made optional or declarative only, further weakening a text that already did not address farmers' concerns at all.

Beyond this unacceptable risk of widespread biopiracy of all conventional seeds by a few multinationals, - the only ones with the technical and legal capacity to produce and market these "new" GMOs -, Poland also does not challenge the suppression by the Commission of health and environmental assessments and of labelling for consumers. It also does not challenge the impossibility of post-marketing monitoring and removal of these GMOs from the market, in the event of post-marketing health or environmental damage, impossibility which results from the lack of publication of detection and identification processes of these genetically modified plants. This calls into question the precautionary principle and the right of Member States to refuse these new GMOs.

ECVC calls on the Member States of the European Union to reject this new proposal, as well as the Commission's initial proposal, and to maintain the application of Directive 2001/18. It is the only legislation that is fit to guarantee the protection of conventional, peasant and organic agrarian systems, human health, the environment and food sovereignty against the risk of control of the entire food chain by the patents of 4 or 5 multinationals, which already control more than 60% of the world seed market.