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Italy: Super potato? No thanks!
28 third sector organisations from across Italy are campaigning against GM crops. They aim to collect 3 million signatures in sixty days and to veto GM crops in European soil
Twenty eight third sector organisations from across Italy have joined forces in the battle against genetically modified (GM) crops. The ?Italian Coalition for a GM free Europe? campaign, that will be launched on the 15th of September, aims to collect 3 million signatures in two months at a rate of 50 thousand signatures a day.
Why the rush? The EU is about to decide whether to allow GM crops, like the controversial ?super potato?, to be cultivated on European soil for the first time since the GM ban in 1998. At present the EU only allows GM products to be imported from abroad and no GM crops are actually grown in Europe.
Although public opinion is against GMOs ? the eurobarometer says that 62% of Europeans and 77% of Italians are worried about GM food products ending up on their plates ? it is likely that the EU executive will vote in favour the super potato in a meeting set for the 26th September. The EU ministers for Commerce, Peter Mandelson, for Agriculture, Mariann Fischer Boel, and for Research, Janez Potocnik are among those who most adamantly support the GM cause. EU commissioners for the Environment and for Health, Stavros Dimas and Markos Kyprianou will try and resist the onslaught of the pro-GM?s but it seems their chances are slim.
The super potato, designed by the German chemical multinational Basf to supply large quantities of starch for industrial use, is but one of the GM crops that may soon be allowed to grow on EU soil. Among the other candidates are American varieties of GM corn, like Monsanto's MON810xNK603 and the sweet beetroot called "H7-1" designed by Kws Saat Ag with Monsanto. The super potato has become most controversial due to its resistance to an antibiotic that the World Health Organisation considers highly important for human health. To make matters worse, the EU may authorise that the skins be used for animal feed, which goes against the Commission's earlier guarantees that GM foods should not enter into the food chain.
?This is the first time that civil society organisations from the agricultural and nutritional fields have united under a common objective: to ask institutions to place the agricultural system at the centre of the country?s development by choosing a model tied to quality, health safety, respect for the environment and, especially, free from genetically modified organisms? declared Mario Capanna who is the director of the Foundation for Genetic Rights.
Spokespeople from the organisations involved in the campaign stated their unanimous belief in the importance of telling the EU that people want a GM free Europe. ?Ours is not an ideological battle? specified Mario Capanna, ?but one wonders why, when it is clear that citizens do not want GM foods, the continue to be imposed on them?.
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