Press release, 4 March 2008
The European Farmers Coordination (CPE) and COAG call for a European moratorium on all transgenic crops as off this year. After the decision of the french government to activate the safeguard clause on the cultivation of genetically modified maize MON 810 and the opposition by an increasing number of member states to GMOs cultivation, a moratorium is possible in 2008. The European Union has to make a clear decision. European farmers and consumers are in great majority opposed to the use of GMOs in agriculture and food. GMOs are used by large companies to privatise seeds at the expense of the food sovereignty of peoples and rural communities throughout the world. Their goal is to control people's access to food. An increasing number of scientific studies proove that GMOs are harmful to health and the environment and that, by contaminating other crops, they endanger the diversity of the flora. There is no possible co-existence between an agriculture with GMOs and a GM-free agrciulture.
The discours that one could choose, through labelling, whether to eat or not genetically modified food is misleading, since once GMOs are planted on some plots, contamination is inevitable. The European institutions have adopted a threshold of 0.9% below which consumers are not informed that food contains GMOs, including for products from organic farming. Unless there is a total ban on all GMOs in Europe, we will thus all be condemned to find GMOs in our fields and our plates.
It is urgent to stop contamination. It is urgent that the EU declares the moratorium!
Contacts:
CPE: Ingeborg Tangeraas: 0047 75587654
COAG: Andoni Garcia (in spanish): 0034 636 451 569
