Discussion on Agriculture

Time-to-time the discussions of various topics use to be open in a well known place in Prague - Žofín -were people meet on large balls, meetings and celebrations. Agriculture was on schedule on March 10. Minister of agriculture and his correlate from opposition, presidents of the Agrarian and Food and Drink chambers were guests.

Due to the global financial turbulence, most time was devoted to the economy, EU situation, the position of "new" Member states comparing to "old" ones, etc. Specific Czech problems are low demand for milk products pushing down the prices farmers can get for milk. Similar situation developed in pork meat. It seems that people prefer chicken, rabbit, turkey and other so called "white meat". The position of beef is also very difficult.
Consequently, not too much attention was paid to problems of biotechnology. Standard theme was addressed - the role of agriculture in the production of "alternative energy sources". It is without doubt that the biogas from wastes and plant debris that have no other use is a useful way. However the fuel admixtures like bioethanol and methyl ester of rape-seed oil (MERO) are rather questionable. This has been several times discussed and no new views occurred.

More sensitive problem was open by the question about the position of Czech government to the banning of Bt maize by four European Member states - Austria in 1999 (repeatedly in 2000, 2004 and 2007), Hungary 2005, Greece and France 2007. All of them presented the banning as a safeguard measure invoked under Article 16 of Directive 220/1990/EEC or Article 23 of Directive 2001/18/EC.

The referred Articles say, that such temporal ban is legal „as a result of new or additional information made available since the date of the consent and affecting the environmental risk assessment or reassessment of existing information on the basis of new or additional scientific knowledge, has detailed grounds for considering that a GMO as or in a product...... constitutes a risk to human health or the environment. Therefore the notification to the European Commission announcing the ban was accompanied with documents supporting the ban by referring to certain published articles. The Commission then requests European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) a scientific opinion as to whether there is any scientific reason to deem that the placing on the market of Bt maize seeds is likely to cause any adverse effects on human health and the environment justifying the safeguard measure.

EFSA calls a panel composed of top European experts (usually 21) to study the documents and to present the view that is used as a bases for the EFSA's official opinion. In all four cases the conclusion stated: "The EFSA's Scientific Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO Panel) concludes that, in terms of risk to human and animal health and the environment, no new scientific evidence was presented that would justify a prohibition of cultivation of Bt maize". In fact it means that the ban is illegal and has to be removed.
Main fault of the written submissions provided by all four states was the violation of the precautionary principle. As defined by the Commission in 2000 it asks for assessing the risk/benefit ratio for the situation when the action is applied and compare it with the risk/benefit ratio that occurred with no action. None of the submissions presented the risk assessment to the environment - particularly to non-target organisms - after the ban of Bt maize. Naturally, farmers will control the pest by chemical insecticides. In the case of France it was estimated that more than 8000 litres of insecticide were applied to replace the 20 000 ha of Bt maize. But no single word about this was present in the French dossier.
This was the situation when the question of Bt maize bans came to the Council of Ministers of Environment and Agriculture. In the voting on March 2 Czechia voted in favour of the bans. That means against EFSA, against agreed rules, against the evaluation by 21 top European scientists and also against the rules of WTO.

Such position during the Presidency and internal discussion of the Lisbon Treaty is very serious political move. Minister of Agriculture in his answer explained it as a "liberal position" of the Czech Government aimed to idea that each country should decide which crops to grow.

In the frame of existing European legislation such idea is pure sci-fi. It can be documented e.g., by the case of the potato Amflora, that was agreed by EFSA and all Commissioners except Stavros Dimas so that the voice of one man prevents our farmers of growing this industrial variety.

The presenting the support of bans as "liberal" is false. In the preceding Commission the commissioner for agriculture Franz Fischler stressed many times that farmers must have the freedom of choice to use standard agriculture, an organic one or include transgenic crops. For this end he introduced the rules called "co-existence". Czech Ministry of Agriculture implemented these rules. Banning the Bt maize in fact abolished the freedom of choice. It is very strange to call the support of such freedom liquidation as a "liberal deed.

We have to wait for the next voting of ministers.

Author: Jaroslav Drobník