In Strasbourg yesterday, the EU Parliament signalled its support for plant biotechnology research when voting on a new proposed Regulation to implement the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (Sjöstedt report). The Protocol aims to set in place international rules for the "transboundary movement" (movement across international borders) of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
The Environment Committee had sought to impose rules additional to those detailed in the International Protocol, and especially for the export of research materials out of Europe. "Such rules would have curtailed the ability of European researchers to work co-operatively with third countries on projects of urgent need, in particular in the developing world and would have accelerated the trend for life science research to move outside of the EU," says Simon Barber, Director of the Plant Biotechnology Unit at EuropaBio - the European Association of Bioindustries.
A major policy thrust at the recent Johannesburg World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) called on the formation of co-operative public/private research projects, such as the project on Vitamin A rice between EU and third country institutions. The Parliament voted to ensure that such co-operative research between European public and private institutions and researchers in lesser developed countries can continue.
“The Protocol was designed to protect non-EU countries from EU exports of GMOs by ensuring that only countries that had regulations in place could be sent such exports or else the EU would provide assistance to countries to introduce new regulations. If research materials became part of this it would have severely hampered international collaboration on research. Golden (Vitamin A) Rice is an example where an EU company would not have been able to send seeds for test trials to, say, India. So this outcome is a victory for agbio research,” Adeline Farrelly, EuropaBio, explains.
EuropaBio is urging the Commission, the Council and the Parliament to agree a Regulation that is in keeping with the objectives of the Biosafety Protocol and which is supportive of European public and private research in modern biotechnology.
http://www.europabio.org

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