French president defends ban on strain of GM corn
PARIS (AFP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday defended banning a strain of GM corn, as a high-profile activist ended a hunger strike in response and farmers complained politics had trumped science.
"It does not mean that France does not participate in GMO research. It does not mean that there will not be GMOs in the future," Sarkozy said at a meeting of his Union for a Popular Movement party (UMP), referring to genetically modified organisms.
"It simply means that with the principle of precaution at stake, I am making a major political decision to carry our country to the forefront of the debate on the environment."
Opponents of GMOs -- a fiercely contested issue in Europe -- welcomed the French government's decision, announced late Friday, to invoke a European Union procedure to bar the Monsanto 810 maize.
It is the only GM crop grown in France.
Anti-globalisation activist Jose Bove ended a hunger strike begun January 3 to press for a year-long ban on GM crops, eating from a bowl of soup at a news conference in Paris on Saturday.
Bove has kept up a steady campaign against GMOs and has been convicted of ripping up GM crops in southern France.
Some farmers' associations were in favour of the move, with France's third-largest agricultural union calling it a "wise" decision that "will go down in history".
About 400 people marched in the northwestern city of Brest, expressing their appreciation for the ban.
"It is the first step toward the recognition of the danger that GMOs represent," said Paul Hascoet, head of a regional federation of organic farmers.
But France's main agricultural union said it was an "appalling" decision.
"It was not taken with sufficient hindsight, and I have serious doubts about its objectivity," said Jean-Michel Lemetayer, head of the National Federation of Agricultural Workers' Unions.
A federation of agricultural companies said "demagoguery has triumphed over agricultural innovation."
The decision sparked criticism from within Sarkozy's party as well, with National Assembly president Bernard Accoyer saying the issue should be debated in parliament.
US agricultural giant Monsanto, which produces the strain, has 15 days to present its defence.
The French government acted after a watchdog authority said it had "serious doubts" about the product in a report that has been controversial even among the scientists who put it together.
France's Provisional High Authority on GM Organisms on Wednesday pointed to what it described as "a certain number of new scientific facts relating to a negative impact on flora and fauna".
Chairman Jean-Francois Le Grand, who also holds a seat in the Senate, said evidence had emerged that Mon 810 had an effect on insects, a species of earthworm and micro-organisms.
There was also concern that wind-born pollen from Mon 810 could travel further than previously thought, possibly hundreds of miles (kilometres), said Le Grand.
However, 12 of the 15 scientists who compiled the report issued a statement Thursday complaining that Le Grand had misrepresented their findings.
They said their initial report had not used the words "serious doubts" or "negative" concerning the latest evidence on GM crops.
They also complained they had not been allowed time to carry out a "fuller expertise" of Mon 810.
On its website, Monsanto Co. says Mon 810 was rigorously assessed for safety by authorities before being put on the market in 1997, and extensively studied by independent scientific experts.
Under European Union laws, a member state can invoke a safeguard clause enabling it to bar a GM crop that has otherwise been given EU-wide authorisation, provided it has scientific evidence to back this decision.
Six other EU members have already invoked this clause.
The maize, marketed as YieldGard, has been engineered to produce a naturally occurring toxin, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), that kills a pest called the corn borer.
As a result, it saves farmers money they would otherwise have spent on spraying insecticides.
Last year, 22,000 hectares (55,000 acres) were sown with the product -- less than one percent of the sown acreage for corn in France.
The government also announced Friday it was investing 45 million euros (66 million dollars) in vegetable biotechnology, an eight-fold increase over the current budget.
