The European Union's de facto moratorium on genetically modified (GM) crop and food approvals has finally come to an end.

On May 19, the European Commission approved Syngenta's GM pest-resistant sweet corn (Bt-11) for food use in the European Union. This is the first new approval since mid-1998. The commission's ruling breaks the deadlock after both the European Union's GM Regulatory Committee and the EU Council of Ministers failed to reach a decision on the safety of Bt-11.

Despite the symbolic significance of the moratorium ending, the reaction from the biotech industry has been restrained.

“It is a step forward, but not really a very big one,” Johan Vanhemelrijck, secretary general of EuropaBio, the European Association for Bioindustries, told The Scientist.

Vanhemelrijck was keen to emphasize that this is simply an approval for food use of sweet corn already grown elsewhere. It does not approve any new crops for cultivation in Europe. He added: “This is only the first step on the road to unblocking the approval process.  We will have to wait to see whether further approvals, including those for cultivation, are forthcoming.” He stressed that it was too early to assess the eventual impact of this landmark legal decision on the development and use of GM crops in Europe.

“The significance of this for our business is negligible,” Andrew Coker, a spokesman for Syngenta, told The Scientist. “If the consumer demand was there, it would be a totally different ballgame. As it is, the demand is not there.”

Colin Merritt, spokesman for the United Kingdom's Agricultural and Biotechnology Council, told The Scientist that while the agricultural biotech industry generally welcomes the decision, they must await several other decisions expected over the next few months before assessing the true significance of this first new approval.

“It's a very important signal, but we are regarding it as just one step. We want to see consistency in the working of the new regulations before we can feel confident that the moratorium is really over,” said Merrit.

Some anti-GM campaigners share the reluctance to attribute too much importance to the decision. “We don't think it's a very significant event,” Pete Riley, a food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth told The Scientist. He said he was confident that European consumers would continue to be very unwilling to purchase GM products, so he was happy to leave the public to decide.

Riley added, however, that “given the division amongst member states about whether or not the data presented showed the product was safe, it is a bit of a slap in the face for the precautionary principle on which EU legislation on GMOs is supposed to be built.”

The same concern was expressed by Mae-Wan Ho, director of the Institute of Science in Society. She told The Scientist: “This is very bad, because the government scientists couldn't agree to give a positive opinion on this maize, because there are safety problems with it.” She cited a variety of concerns, including contamination, toxicity, and immunogenicity. “Unfortunately, a lot of the data is commercially confidential, so we cannot get access to it,” she added.