Council Meeting, 27-28 January 2003
The following is an extract from the minutes of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council Meeting, 27 and 28 January 2003
The Danish delegation, supported by the French, Italian, Austrian, Portuguese and Luxembourg delegations, drew the attention of the Council and the Commission to the conditions for further approval of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) since a political agreement had been reached at the Council on 28 November 2002 (14350/02) on the proposal for a Regulation on food and feedstuffs for animals genetically modified.
Some of these delegations supported in particular the view that no new procedure of authorisation for placing on the market new GMOs should be granted as long as this Regulation had not yet entered into force.
Commissioner BYRNE recalled that political agreements had been reached on a proposal for a Regulation on genetically modified food and feed at the Council (Agriculture and Fisheries) on 28 November 2002 and on a proposal for a Regulation concerning the traceability and labelling of GMOs and of food and feed products produced from GMOs at the Council (Environment) on 9 December 2002. He noted that the application for an authorisation regarding a GM product would be managed under either of these two Regulations. He mentioned that current application were managed under current EC rules prior to the approval of these two texts by the European Parliament in second reading.