Viewpoint: Europe’s GMO process-based crop regulations are a great way to kill innovation

In 2002, Europe establishing a new regulatory agency, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to resolve its regulation problems regarding GM crops and other food safety challenges. This new agency assesses the risk of the process used to create GM crops, rather than the products created by the technology. While EFSA undertakes the risk assessment, the approval of GM crops is a political one, made by the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed of the European Commission. To me, this decision has proven to be a disaster for Europe.

Since 2002, the Standing Committee has approved only one GM crop variety for production, a GM potato developed by BASF… in 2010….[It] took 13 years to receive approval …. The functional inability of the EU regulatory system to approve GM crops led BASF to move all of its plant biotech research to North and South America.

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By comparison, Canada has approved 85 new GM varieties since 2002. Why is Canada’s GM process so different from the EU? Canada regulates the product that will enter the market and doesn’t differentiate on what process was used to create the product….

Read full, original article: How to Kill Innovation Domestically