A senior MEP today welcomed a decision by MEPs telling the EU Commission to think again over plans to let member states unilaterally ban animal feed made from genetically modified crops.
Julie Girling MEP said the move by the European Parliament's Environment Committee was: "A blow for science and the single market over superstition and scaremongering".
Mrs Girling, Conservative environment spokesman, strongly criticised the Commission in April when it announced plans to give Member States freedom to restrict or prohibit the use of genetically-modified (GM) organisms in food or feed on their territory, even when those products had been approved as safe by the EU and its scientists. She accused the Commission of caving in to a minority of vocal member states and to the anti-GMO lobby.
"This is submission disguised as subsidiarity" she said at the time.
Today the committee voted to reject the Commission proposal and send it back to the Commission to be reconsidered. A similar vote was passed previously by the parliament's Agriculture Committee.
Mrs Girling, MEP for the South West and Gibraltar, said "The EU cannot produce enough protein feed for its livestock. We rely on imports of GM feed to maintain our livestock sector.
"The Commission proposal is dangerous. It pits politics against the agricultural sector.
"It side-lines science and the advice of the EU's own advisory agencies. It blasts a hole through the core principles of the single market.
"It swallows the rhetoric of anti-GM regions and conveniently ignores the fact those regions cannot keep their own livestock alive without GM feed.
"The Commission must now listen to the views of these two committees and scrap this plan in its current form."