At a recent regulatory Committee meeting, the European Commission presented a draft regulation allowing the presence of non-authorised GMOs in feed up to a maximum threshold of 0.1 per cent, according to BPEX. The idea was to ease the EU zero tolerance for EU-unapproved GMOs materials being present in imported commodities, which cost the industry a fortune.

However, following the opposition of nine Member States – France being the leader – the Commission decided to postpone the vote to avoid a negative decision being taken. The plan is now to have discussions in the hope the proposal could be re-introduced at the Standing Committee on Animal Nutrition by the end of this month.

As usual, it shows the Commission's constant determination to introduce flexibility to the EU GMO policy is hampered by key Member States showing inflexibility on this issue, comments BPEX.