2015 Logan County Farm Outlook Magazine Lincoln Daily News.com March 26, 2015 9
Sources show that a GMO must be approved in order
“to permit its entrance in the domestic market, both
for cultivation and/or for consumption.” If it is not
approved, the product cannot be presented to the
country.
As noted by Guillaume P. Gruère who works with
the International Food Policy Research Institute,
“Approval requirements vary widely across
countries, but there are two main approaches. One
is the EU (European Union) approach based on
the ‘precautionary principle’, which states that any
product produced with, or derived from, transgenic
crops is subject to specific regulations and the
consumer’s ‘right to know.’ The second is the US
attitude of ‘substantial equivalence,’ which exempts
essentially equivalent products from any specific
requirements.”
According to a recent article by Sonia Go´mez-
Galera et al., “EU regulations forbid member
states from preventing the import and marketing of
GMO-derived food products from overseas, which
means effectively that the EU is driving researchers
overseas so that products can be developed and
commercialized outside Europe and then imported
back into the EU at a much-inflated cost.”
Though part of the EU, France has more restrictive
rules concerning GMOs due to many anti-GMO
organizations. No GMO crops are
grown
there,
though they do import GMOs.
An update last spring from Foreign Law Specialist
Nicolas Boring explained that, “On May 5, 2014, a
judge from France’s highest court for administrative
matters rejected a request from corn producers to
strike down a government regulation prohibiting
the sale, use, and growing of MON810 genetically
modified corn. Furthermore, on that same date, the
French Parliament adopted a law banning that same
type of genetically modified corn.”
In addition to the EU, other major agri-food
importers like Japan (but not South Korea) display
affect
Continued to page 10
W
hen it comes to exporting GMOs, the regulations and standards
of other countries must be taken into consideration.
How
GMO
regulations
exports
