January 7, 2013
UK urges EU to expedite GM crop approvals
Britain''s farming and environment minister has called for the EU to speed up its approval process for genetically modified (GM) crops at the recent Oxford Farming Conference.
"I think we need to work with like-minded partners to move the legislation along at a European level because it is going grindingly slowly and we are getting further and further behind," Owen Paterson, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs told reporters on Thursday (Jan 3) at the Oxford Farming Conference.
There has been strong public opposition to GM crops across much of the EU, linked partly to concerns about their safety, which has helped to slow the approval process.
Mairead McGuinness, a member of the European Parliament''s agriculture committee, said that lobbying against GM crops had become less intense in the last couple of years but said opposition remained significant.
Paterson, in an earlier speech to the conference, said GM crops could offer benefits including a potential significant reduction in pesticide and diesel use while he also recognised the need for EU safety checks to reassure the public.
"This is not a frightening new spooky technology, this is something that is well established in very large parts of the world," he told reporters, saying that in 2011, GM crops were grown by 16 million farmers in 29 countries.
Paterson also cited benefits from GM crops such as golden rice which he said could have the potential to stop 400,000-500,000 young people going blind. Golden rice has been genetically modified to help combat Vitamin A deficiency which affects millions of children and pregnant women and can cause irreversible blindness.