OGM

The European Parliament has officially adopted its mandate for negotiations with Member States on the proposed deregulation of so-called new GMOs.The votes in favor were 307, 263 against and 41 abstentions.The vote of the Italian MEPs was decisive, with the conservative deputies in the majority clearly in favor of the measure.The front of the Socialists and Democrats and, therefore, the delegation of the Democratic Party were split in half.The only ones who were united and opposed were the deputies of the 5 Star Movement who once again followed the Green line.The ball therefore now passes to the Member States, whose Agriculture Ministers do not yet have a common position on the issue.At present, all plants obtained with new genomic techniques (NGT) are subject to the same rules as conventional genetically modified organisms, but the aim of this legislative process is to facilitate approval for at least part of the products obtained with these techniques. The criticism from environmenta...

The EU agriculture ministers did not reach the qualified majority to give the green light to new genomic biotechnologies, that is, the whole set of latest generation genetic modification techniques that the EU Commission would like to deregulate.At present these techniques are in fact treated on a par with traditional GMOs, but the objective of the EU executive is to change things and thus simplify the authorization procedures.For the moment, however, around half of the Member States have not agreed.Those who stood in the way were Austria, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Romania and Slovenia.Italy, for its part, voted in favor, maintaining its usual position aligned with the interests of large companies.Agriculture Minister Lollobrigida - commented the GMO-Free Italy Coalition - "has therefore once again preferred to chase the sirens of the agro-industrial, seed and agrochemical lobbies, in contempt of the precautionary principle and the rights of fa...