France confirms ban on GM corn

FRANCE has definitively banned the cultivation of GM corn.

The Senate yesterday passed legislation that permanently banned the cultivation of GM corn, the country’s highest administrative court rejected a bid to overturn an earlier temporary government ban.

France’s Senate approved a ban on the GM corn crop MON810, which had been adopted by the lower house of parliament last month.

The French ban, which says MON810 poses a risk to the environment, was passed even though it has been cleared at European Union level.

"This law aims to give a legal framework to our country, to ensure that a ban is applied," agriculture minister Stephane Le Foll told the Senate at the start of the debate.

On the same day, the Conseil D’Etat rejected a request from corn producers to overturn March’s ban, the only type of insect-resistant corn allowed in EU countries.

The court said the General Association of Corn Producers (AGPM) failed to prove the ban would result in an urgent economic crisis among producers.

The Conseil D’Etat had overturned two earlier bans on GM crops.

As well as stopping farmers growing MON810 in France, the new law applies to any strain adopted at EU level in future.

On Friday, activists targeted a field in southwest France whose owner had reported sowing the land with MON810 corn a few days before the decree banning it was published mid-March, the agriculture ministry said.