Preparation of the Agriculture/Fisheries Council of April 26, 2005

Unauthorised circulation of the genetically modified maize Bt10

Source: European Commission

Commissioner Kyprianou will update Ministers on developments, including the Joint Research Centre’s work to check the validated detection method for Bt10 provided by Syngenta and the Commissioner’s discussions last week with his counterparts in the United States. The European Commission adopted on 18 April an emergency measure requiring imports of GM maize products (corn gluten feed and brewers grain) from the US to be accompanied by an analytical report from an accredited laboratory demonstrating, using a reliable and validated detection method, that Bt10 is not present. This measure, which was strongly supported by the Member States in the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health on 15 April, was adopted to uphold EU law and maintain consumer confidence in response to the possible presence of the unauthorised GMO Bt10 in imports of these products from the United States.

Brussels, Belgium
April 25, 2005

EU detection method for Bt10 maize validated

Source: European Commission, Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General

The event specific method for detecting the GMO Bt10 has been approved by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), which is the Community Reference Laboratory for GMOS. This method should be used for tracing the presence of Bt10 maize in commodities. Following the US authorities’ notification to the Commission that Syngenta’s unauthorised Bt10 may be inadvertently exported to the EU, the Commission took a decision on April 18 2005 to implement emergency measures requiring certain maize feed products from the USA to be certified as free from Bt10. Syngenta proposed the detection method to be used to test imports, which was then validated by Genescan and following in-house laboratory testing subsequently certified by the JRC to become the EU official method for BT10 detection.

Details of the detection method in PDF format:
http://gmo-crl.jrc.it/detectionmethods/Bt10%20Detection%20Protocol.pdf

JRC validation report in PDF format:
http://gmo-crl.jrc.it/detectionmethods/Bt10%20validation%20report.pdf

Press release on the EU Decision to take emergency measures to test US maize:
http://www.seedquest.com/News/releases/2005/april/11982.htm