By Jeremy Smith
Reuters News Service via Checkbiotech.org

EU ministers and experts will this month consider two approvals for gene-spliced foods, just a few weeks after the bloc lifted a five-year biotech ban that had angered its top trading partners, officials said on Wednesday.

If authorised, the two products -- both marketed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto -- would be used in animal feed and industrial processing, not for growing in Europe's fields.

The first vote should be taken on June 16 by environment experts representing the EU's 25 member states for a rapeseed known as GT73, modified to resist the non-selective herbicide glyphosate to allow farmers to manage weeds more effectively.

Politically, the precedent now exists for more GMO approvals after the European Commission lifted the bloc's effective moratorium on allowing new GMO products -- not crops, so far -- by approving imports of a GMO canned sweet maize in mid-May.

This was a default decision by the EU executive, permitted under a complex decision-making procedure if appropriate committees have been consulted and EU ministers do not agree.

But the EU is now entering uncharted territory after it swelled its numbers from 15 to 25 on May 1. It is far from clear how the EU's new joiners, mostly ex-communist countries, will vote when it comes to the controversial area of biotechnology.

"This (June 16 meeting) will be important as it's the first meeting where the new member states will be able to vote. So we'll be able to see the lie of the land," said Geert Ritsema, GMO campaigner at green group Friends of the Earth Europe.

EYES ON SPAIN, ITALY

Before the Commission lifted the EU's biotech ban by authorising the sweet maize, known as Bt-11 and made by Swiss agrochemicals company Syngenta, the EU's last pre-enlargement vote revealed a number of significant changes.

Spain, whose new socialist government had just entered office, altered its usual "in favour" stance to an abstention, while Italy -- for years a staunch supporter of the EU ban -- surprised many observers by voting for an authorisation.

The Bt-11 vote was evenly split, as six EU governments backed an approval, six rejected it and three abstained.

"Spain's position will be interesting as they changed their position last time. But with Italy, for example, you never know," one Commission official said, adding that each new GMO application would still be treated on a case-by-case basis.

Later in June, EU environment ministers will discuss a possible second GMO approval at a meeting scheduled for June 28 in Luxembourg, after a similar committee of member state experts failed to agree on a Commission proposal for authorisation.

This GMO is another biotech maize called NK603, also modified to resist the glyphosate herbicide.

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