France's State Council, the country’s highest legal and administrative court, has overturned two Ministry of Agriculture bans on the planting of genetically modified maize owned by agrochemical giant Monsanto. The state council announced on Monday that it would repeal the bans from 2007 and 2008, as there was insufficient evidence that the biotech maize poses a risk to animal or human health and the environment.

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The French court ruled that, "Drawing on the consequences of the ECJ's ruling, the State Council finds that the agriculture ministry could not justify its authority to issue the decrees, failing to give proof of the existence of a particularly high level of risk for the health and the environment."

The decision comes just months after a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that French moratoriums on Monsanto’s MON810 maize, which exudes a toxin that is poisonous to pests, were based on the wrong legislation and were not valid. Two French government ministries, the Departments of Agriculture and Ecology, have been quick to announce their intention to renew the ban.

French ministries vow to renew ban

In light of the rulings, which came following complaints from Monsanto, planting of GM maize could resume next year in France, unless the government acts in renewing a ban. Both the Agriculture and Ecology Ministries maintained that their concerns about the impacts GM crops have on health, welfare and the environment persist.

Qualifying its stance, the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement, "These persistent uncertainties lead the government to maintain its opposition to cultivating MON 810 corn on French territory."

Achieving a repeal in France, which is one of Europe’s key agricultural producers, will be a boon for the biotech industry, which is seeking to speed up the approvals process and introduce genetically modified crops into the bloc. However, the technology remains controversial; most European consumers are openly hostile to GM.

Monsanto welcomed the ruling and stated its MON810 maize has been approved as safe for human consumption and used commercially around the world for 15 years. Nevertheless, many detractors remain opposed to the application of ‘intellectual property’ laws to life-forms.

In France, environmental groups had mounted serious pressure on the government to ban the controversial maize. Although the groups’ concerns were not upheld by the State Council, in the USA there is widespread concern over the increasing number of ‘superweeds’, which are found to have developed; these are resistant to commonly used herbicides and are thought to have stemmed from overexposure to glyphosate herbicides used on resistant GM crops.

Cables released earlier in the year by Wikileaks showed that US diplomats had been hired by large agribusinesses to promote GM crops in European states where the population remains staunchly anti-biotech, including France and Italy. Although MON810 maize was approved by the European Union in 1998 and France has repealed its own interdiction, the ban still stands in several other European states, including Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Luxembourg.

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