An animal feed crisis is looming with the continued inability
of EU ministers to either approve or reject genetically modified
traits for import into Europe, agrochemical company
Monsanto has warned.
"The EU situation is 'chaos as normal'," Monsanto's Colin
Merritt told a
Crop
Protection Association-organised meeting of representatives
from food chain-related trade associations. "There is still the
absurdity of no GM trait goes through as a qualified majority."
The delay in approving traits being grown commercially elsewhere
in the world, combined with the EU's zero tolerance for importing
feed or food contaminated with unapproved traits, was putting huge
pressure on animal feed supplies, he said.
"A crisis is looming, driven by the contamination issue. It is
not just me saying this,
Mariann Fischer Boel used similar words recently," said Dr
Merritt.
Animal feed shipments containing just traces of an unapproved GM
trait have been turned away from ports this summer. "You only
need some
dust
from a previous shipment of maize containing one of those traits,
say, in a shipment of soya for it to be rejected because of the
extreme sensitivity of the testing," Dr Merritt told Farmers
Weekly. "But it doesn't add up to any significant level of GM
content. It just throws the system into chaos."
Once approval was given, then the contamination level in non-GM
feed for that trait was set at 0.9%, he explained.
Whether a crisis occurred or was averted depended on coming up
with a solution to zero tolerance, he said. "Talking to suppliers,
some are managing to find feed supplies, but with more and more
traits coming through, particularly in the US, if we don't get it
cracked, it will become increasingly difficult to source non-GM
feed."
Some
experts are suggesting there will be shortages by December,
although Dr Merritt is more circumspect. "It could happen in the
next year to 18 months, but I have been hearing that time-scale for
the past two years," he admitted.
Two solutions had been discussed, he said. "One is to redefine
the 0% threshold, the other, which we would prefer, is to make the
current system work according to the timelines set. If traits were
approved or rejected in those timelines on the basis of science,
rather than the political decisions we have now, there wouldn't be
a problem."