Jeremy Smith
Reuters via Agnet May 3/04 - II

Officials were cited as saying on Monday that EU governments, long split over the bloc's biotech policy, will soon discuss draft purity rules for genetically modified seeds, the last piece of a complex legal jigsaw.

The story says that the draft lists six crop types -- rapeseed, maize, sugar and fodder beet, potatoes and cotton -- with thresholds for permitted GMO (genetically modified organisms) content ranging from 0.3 to 0.5 percent.
Conventional seeds that contain genetically modified material below these thresholds would not have to be labelled.

The European Commission, reconciling its own internal divisions on the thresholds, is expected to submit its proposal to scientific experts from the EU's member states in June.

But the proposal, which aims to update EU seed laws dating from December 1998, promises to be given a rocky ride and a final decision is unlikely for several months after that.