E.U. Clears Biotech Potato for Cultivation - NYTimes.

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March 3, 2010

E.U. Clears Biotech Potato for Cultivation

By JAMES KANTER

BRUSSELS — The European Commission began a new push Tuesday to allow farmers in Europe to grow
more biotech crops, clearing a genetically modified potato for cultivation despite persistent public
opposition to the technology.

In the first such step in more than a decade, the commission approved the Amflora potato produced by the
German company BASF for cultivation inside the 27-country European Union. John Dalli, the bloc’s health
commissioner, said the potatoes could be planted in Europe, with some conditions, as soon as next month.

The potato is engineered to be unusually rich in a starch suitable for making glossy paper and other
products, as well as for feeding animals.

Currently the only other biotech crop grown in Europe is a type of corn produced by Monsanto, which was
approved in 1998. On Tuesday, the commission also approved three additional types of genetically
modified corn by Monsanto for food and feed, but those are for import and processing rather than
cultivation.

For the biotech industry, the decisions handed down by Mr. Dalli, who took office last month, could signal
the emergence of a major new advocate for genetically modified products in Europe.

At a news conference in Brussels, Mr. Dalli, who is from Malta, also said he would present a proposal this
summer to give national governments more authority to decide whether to allow genetically modified crops
to be grown within their borders. That could make it easier for biotech-friendly states to go ahead with
planting certain new products even when other states disapprove of the technology.

“Responsible innovation will be my guiding principle when dealing with innovative technologies,” he said.

The bloc has long been divided over biotech crops, with countries like Britain favoring the technology and
Austria in fierce opposition.

“We feel encouraged by this decisive regulatory approach,” said Willy De Greef, the secretary general for a
group representing the biotech industry, EuropaBio. The “approvals represent a step in the right direction
and a return to science-based decision making,” he said.

The commission first forwarded an application to grow the potato to governments in May 2004. When a
number of countries raised objections, the commission sent the application to experts at the European

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E.U. Clears Biotech Potato for Cultivation - NYTimes.com

Food Safety Authority.

Experts at the authority approved the application for the potato in 2006 and 2007, and again in 2009. But
because member governments were repeatedly unable to reach a qualified majority to approve the potato,
the commission on Tuesday invoked its power to approve the application by a form of fiat.

That procedure had only been used once before to get a biotech seed to market for cultivation in Europe.
The seed, called Bt176 and produced by Syngenta, no longer is grown in Europe.

The Amflora potato looks like any garden-variety spud, but in developing it, BASF included a marker gene
as a way of identifying plant cells that successfully produced the desired type of starch. Some scientists have
linked the marker gene to antibiotic resistance in humans, raising concerns that the ill and the elderly,
especially, could become more vulnerable to disease.

Environmentalists reacted with fury to the decision, saying that Mr. Dalli had overstepped his mandate.

The commissioner “only needed weeks in his new position to show such flagrant support for industry
interests ahead of his own portfolio,” said Martin Häusling, a German member of the European Parliament
for the Greens.

Opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of European consumers are apprehensive about such
technology.

The European Commission, however, wants to allow more gene-altered products into the Union to remove
an irritant in trade relations with the United States and other countries that use them — and to lower costs
for European farmers and industry.

“The way is now clear for commercial cultivation of Amflora this year,” Peter Eckes, the president of BASF
Plant Science, said in a statement on the company’s Web site. “Amflora will strengthen the international
position of the European potato starch industry.”

Copyright 2010

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