(source: Greenplanet.net) Laws must also be respected to avoid the risks of contamination in a country where 8 out of ten citizens (76 percent) oppose biotech in the countryside to defend the environment and distinctive agricultural production. This is what the main Italian agricultural organizations, starting with Colretti herself, have stated in reference to the destruction, which took place this week in Friuli, of the illegal cultivation of transgenic Mon 810 corn by the State Forestry Corps, in collaboration with the regional Forestry Department and on delegation of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Udine.
For Italy, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture - said the president of Colretti Moncalvo - do not only pose serious environmental safety problems, but above all they pursue a development model that is the great ally of approval and the great enemy of Made in Italy.
In the European Union, despite the action of lobbies that produce GMOs, in 2013 there were only five, out of twenty-eight, countries left to cultivate GMOs (Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania), with just 148 thousand hectares of MON810 transgenic corn planted in 2013, almost all in Spain (136,962 hectares). It is therefore in fact a single country (Spain) where a single product (MON810 corn) is cultivated.
In Italy, the decree law of 24 June 2014, n. 91, provided for sanctions against those who sow GMOs. They ranged from imprisonment for six months to three years with a fine that could reach up to thirty thousand euros.
An amendment to the 'Campolibero' plan for agriculture contained and approved in recent days within the 'Competitiveness' Decree has instead established that he no longer risks imprisonment for up to 3 years and a fine of up to 30 thousand euros but only a heavy financial penalty, which can range from 25 thousand to 50 thousand euros, those who sow GMOs in Italy in violation of the ban.
It will be up to the Regions to define, within their territory and on the basis of the surveys carried out by the judicial police bodies, methods and timing of the measures that the offender must take, at his own expense, to remove prohibited crops. The national provision is added to the political agreement reached in Europe by EU environment ministers who, after four years of debates, leaves member states free to cultivate or ban GMOs on their territory.
Here is the in-depth analysis of North East Other Agriculture.
