Europe finds transgenic food hard to swallow

London

Transgenic food is unlikely to appear on European tables soon, analysts say — despite a vote by the European Parliament that opens the way for European nations to declare currently unlicensed varieties of the foods safe to eat.

On 2 July, the parliament passed a measure that would require food with 0.9% or more of genetically modified content to be labelled as such. Transgenic ingredients will have to be traceable to the farm on which they were grown.

The measure, which is expected to be approved by the Council of Ministers in the next few weeks and pass into law, should open the way for the approval of new varieties of transgenic crops.

About 20 varieties, including insecticide- and herbicide-resistant maize (corn), are currently awaiting approval by the European Union (EU). The process has been blocked by countries such as France and Germany, creating a de facto moratorium. They and others are expected to drop their opposition now that the new rules are agreed.

But even if the approvals process opens up, trade analysts say that sales are likely to be slow. Consumer surveys suggest that European shoppers won't buy food that is labelled as containing transgenic material, and several leading supermarket chains have refused to stock it and are expected to continue to do so.

Trevor Young, an agricultural economist at the University of Manchester, has analysed how much money consumers would need to save for them to buy transgenic crops. He says that no thorough trial has been conducted, but that preliminary studies by him and colleagues suggest that a reduction of around 40% would be needed. The cost savings associated with transgenic agriculture are unlikely to produce such big discounts.

US farmers' groups have also complained that the cost of implementing the EU's traceability rules will price their transgenic crops out of the market.

The European Parliament's vote was partly intended to stave off a pending US claim to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that EU restrictions on the sale of transgenic food are illegal (see Nature 423, 369; 2003). But US officials gave no indication that the case, which some observers interpret as a warning to nations outside Europe, including larger grain importers in Asia, will be dropped.