Caroline Lucas: new GM laws offer ‘hope’

The leader of the Green party, Caroline Lucas MEP, writes in The Guardian on the new GM food laws in a debate that is still hugely contentious.

Despite more than 12 years of public resistance to GM, knowledge of its drawbacks – from the rampant growth of herbicide-resistant "superweeds," to the loss of insects vital to the food chain and unknown long-term risks to humans – the debate keeps returning.

Yesterday, the European commission (EC) approved changes to how GM food and organisms are regulated. The EC proposals aim to keep the current authorisation system for GM at EU-level, but would give member states the right to ban GM cultivation at a national level.

Caroline Lucas encourages the need for a government that has a zero-tolerance for GM contamination, as well for unauthorised GMOs. Opposition to GM crops is hardening in many European governments. For example, Germany banned all GM crops last year, and Austria, France, Greece, Hungary and others invoked a "safeguard clause" in EU legislation allowing them to ban them.