EU agriculture ministers are to decide today whether to lift a five-year ban on bio-engineered crops, when they rule on allowing the import of a type of genetically modified (GM) sweetcorn.
By allowing the Swiss firm Syngenta to import the sweet-corn, called Bt-11, the ministers would effectively scrap a moratorium on the import and cultivation of GM products imposed by the EU in 1999.
But the ministers are widely expected to refer the thorny issue back to the European Commission which openly supports lifting the moratorium to encourage the GM industry in Europe.
The freeze was imposed against a backdrop of public disquiet in Europe on the issue of so-called "Frankenfoods", at the initiative of Denmark, France, Luxembourg, Greece and Italy -- later joined by Austria and Belgium.
The US, which has the world's biggest biotech industry, is leading a group of 12 countries seeking to overturn the EU moratorium through the WTO.
The EU's decision on Bt-11 has already been repeatedly delayed and a clear majority looked unlikely to emerge from today's vote -- in which case the matter will be referred to the commission.
Just six countries -- Britain, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden -- voted to allow imports of Bt-11 sweetcorn at a meeting of the EU Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health in December.
Environmentalists oppose allowing Bt-11 onto the market, arguing that it has yet to be proven safe for human consumption, while the Greenpeace pressure group has condemned as "opaque and outdated" the tools used by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) to evaluate GM products.
New EU rules on labelling and tracing GM foods came into force on April 18, introducing rigorous consumer safeguards that could make it easier for Brussels to lift the moratorium.
Consumer rights and environ-mental groups have welcomed the rules, officially adopted last July, which require food and animal feed to be labelled if they contain at least 0.9 percent of GM ingredients.
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