55 Amendments of Molly SCOTT CATO related to 2015/2225(INI)
Amendment 1 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation -1 (new)
Citation -1 (new)
-1 having regard to the TFEU1a, Art. 11, Art. 114(3), Art. 168(1) and Art.191; ___________ 1a OJ C 326, 26.10.2012, p. 47–390
Amendment 4 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 6 a (new)
Citation 6 a (new)
- having regard to Directive 2001/18/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the deliberate release into the environment of genetically modified organisms and repealing Council Directive 90/220/EEC6a; ___________ 6a OJ L 106 , 17/04/2001 P. 0001 - 0039
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 8 a (new)
Citation 8 a (new)
- having regard to the UN's International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development of the FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, the World Bank and WHO;
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 14 a (new)
Citation 14 a (new)
- having regard to the Scientific opinion8a addressing the safety assessment of plants developed through cisgenesis and intragenesis; ___________ 8a EFSA Journal 2012;10(2):2561 [33 pp.]
Amendment 12 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas the global population is expecstimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, meaning there will be around 2.4 billion extra people to feedhan today;
Amendment 14 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
A a. Whereas the EU's population is likely to remain stable;
Amendment 17 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas global food production must increase by 60-110 % to meet this demandthe UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has estimated that the predicted rise in the world's population to 9 billion by 2050 would require increasing food production and supply by approximately 60 %, and whereas on average at least one third of the food produced is wasted, reaching nearly a half in some sectors;
Amendment 22 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
Amendment 28 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
C a. whereas because short food chains are more resilient, the prevalent approaches to food security have evolved to rather empower different regions of the world to feed themselves;
Amendment 49 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G a (new)
Recital G a (new)
G a. whereas dominant losses of crop yield are mainly due to climatic factors, some of which may affect pest population dynamics; whereas pests are attracted to and become problematic in large expanses of monocultures, and continuous cropping builds up pest populations in the soil and vegetation year-on-year; whereas therefore climate resilience in biologically and structurally diverse agro-ecosystems is desperately needed to spread risk;
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H a (new)
Recital H a (new)
H a. whereas the EU faces a plateauing and drop-off in intrinsic productivity and fertility, caused by land degradation and loss of ecosystem functions such as topsoil formation, humification, pollination, water retention and nutrient cycling ; whereas there is a broad consensus that to resolve this and maintain and improve productivity, there is a need to increase delivery of such ecosystem functions inter alia to ensure resilience against climate change;
Amendment 57 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I
Recital I
I. whereas closing the EU's ‘yield gap’ poses a particular problem for the sustainable agriculture research agenda in the EU;
Amendment 65 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J a (new)
Recital J a (new)
J a. whereas precision farming may be an alternative to conventional herbicide application, yet it assumes a rather inert soil or highly impoverished communities of interacting species, or extreme stability and uniformity especially in crops; whereas an agro-ecological approach is based on a living soil, high species diversity and natural self-regulating processes that are able to buffer against and adapt to variations, meaning a healthy biodiverse agro-ecosystem is able to absorb shocks such as climatic volatility or nutrient fluctuations or growth of pest populations;
Amendment 69 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K
Recital K
K. whereas the approvals process, including the criteria for defining active substances, is becoming increasingly challenging for EU agricultureintensive, input-dependent agricultural model is becoming increasingly challenging, considering that the approvals process for pesticide active ingredients and products needs to ensure human, animal and environmental health;
Amendment 76 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L a (new)
Recital L a (new)
L a. whereas organic farming and other agro-ecological approaches represent a fusion of longstanding successful techniques with innovative ones, based on living, self-regenerating and self- strengthening biologically diverse systems;
Amendment 79 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L b (new)
Recital L b (new)
L b. whereas soil science shows us that healthy, living soils nurture and protect crops via beneficial species that defend against pathogens and pests and also provide plant crops with nutrients and water in exchange for sugars in plant root exudates; whereas biodiverse agro-ecosystems provide natural predators that regulate populations of plant pests;
Amendment 80 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L c (new)
Recital L c (new)
L c. whereas synthetic fertlisers will cause a growth response if applied to degraded soils in poor health; in a healthy living soil that is already optimally cycling its own nutrients, no growth response is elicited upon artificial fertilisation; whereas synthetic fertilisers, as salts, have an effect on soil microorganisms, notably inhibiting soil-bound nitrogen-fixing bacteria;
Amendment 81 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L d (new)
Recital L d (new)
L d. whereas most of the applied synthetic fertliser is lost via water, causing pollution via eutrophication of freshwater bodies and triggering toxic algal blooms in seawater, which impact coastal economies via fishkills;
Amendment 83 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph -1 (new)
Paragraph -1 (new)
-1. Notes that low technology techniques may be less capital intensive in the short and long term, more established, less risky, more reliable and achieve the same goals with less resources than high technology ones; given the high endebtedness and precarious market situation among farmers, where costs of production sometimes do not even meet farmgate prices, lower tech effective solutions should be equally promoted and supported.
Amendment 135 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9 a. notes that the most effective way to maintain genetic diversity in agriculture is by using it in vivo; notes that of the three "D.U.S." criteria applied to official EU seed catalogues, Uniformity and Stability are not natural characteristics in genetically diverse plants; notes that adaptation to climate change is dependent upon high genetic variation; notes the increasingly concentrated seed markets and decreased variation per variety; encourages the role played by farm seed systems and exchanges to empower farmers, and recognises participative breeding as a long tradition of innovation in rural communities;
Amendment 136 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Recognises the necessity of maintaining and using genetic resources for long-term food security and to broaden the genetic base of modern plant and animal breeding programmes; supports the concept of access and benefit sharing but urges pragmatic and enabling implementation of Regulation (EU) No 511/2014 and Implementing Regulation (EU) 2015/1866 so that, without exploiting or disempowering rural communities who have stewarded species and bred varieties throughout the years, breeders are not deterred by complexity and cost from using wild material to introduce new traits such as pest and disease resistance, nutritional quality and environmental resilience;
Amendment 144 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
Amendment 153 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11 a. acknowledges that new GMOs derived by techniques such as zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), CRISPR/Cas and oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis (ODM) do not yet have a long history of safe use, and that due care should be taken in approval processes for plants obtained using them;
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 b (new)
Paragraph 11 b (new)
11 b. notes that the so-called "new breeding techniques" are not yet as reliable as conventional breeding to achieve lasting desired phenotype changes, due to unintended changes in the genotype following introduction of genetic material, which can result in instability under high stress conditions, or unwanted side effects on proteins and metabolites based inter alia on a paucity of knowledge of plant repair mechanisms;
Amendment 155 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 c (new)
Paragraph 11 c (new)
11 c. notes the concerns raised about both off-target and also on-target changes with unintended effects on the whole genome, inter alia with regard to plant repair mechanisms and considerable knowledge gaps therein;
Amendment 160 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
Amendment 166 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 a (new)
Paragraph 12 a (new)
12 a. Emphasises that organisms resulting from the application of high-precision breeding techniques are subject to the requirements of Directive 2001/18/EC;
Amendment 169 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Considers it timely for the Commission to publish the final report of the ‘'New Techniques’ working group and to use its scientific findings as thea basis, among others, for clarifying the legal status of the breeding techniques currently under scrutiny;
Amendment 176 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Encourages open and transparent dialogue among all stakeholders and the public for the responsible development of high-precision, innovative solutions for breeding programmes, including those within the remit of Directive 2001/18/EC;
Amendment 182 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Stresses the urgent need to review the implementation of the regulatory framework for PPPs and to develop a coherapply the current regulations as intended by the legislators so as to make the approvals system coherent, fair, transparent and independent, efficient, predictable, hazard and risk-based and scientifically robust approvals system; stresses the need to align guidance documents such as those on negligible exposure with the intention and precautionary approach of the regulation as adopted by Parliament and Council;
Amendment 194 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Highlights the importance of fairly and openly assessing the benefiimpacts of active substances in supportwith a view to ensuring sustainable agriculture as well asin line with EU law, and comprehensively evaluating the risk and hazards associated with the use of products, including all adverse effects described in published, peer-reviewed scientific literature;
Amendment 199 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Calls on DG Health and Food Safety (SANTE) to establish clear criteria for defining low-risk active substances for the development and use of low-risk pesticides, whilest considering the number of existing substances that could also qualify asevolving scientific knowledge and ensuring that the objectives of health and environmental protection are met, and to ensure that safety data are present for the criteria applied for all potential low- risk substances;
Amendment 204 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Takes the view that low-risk substances should be given provisional approval for use and priority for evaluation by the rapporteur Member States and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to support implementation of IPM to help meet the aims of Directive 2009/128/EC regarding the sustainable use of pesticides, especially for product use on minor and speciality crops;
Amendment 207 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20 a (new)
Paragraph 20 a (new)
20 a. regrets that the approval process for non-chemical alternatives to plant protection products such as biological controls and nature-based solutions is the same as for conventional synthetic pesticides and biocides; notes the huge success of biological and nature-based pest controls, especially in the fruit sector; calls on the Commission therefore for the proportional easing of these restrictions on non-chemical alternatives, notwithstanding due attention to be given to avoid release of alien species;
Amendment 212 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Notes that a faster approvals process would increase the availability of low-risk pesticides on the market, stimulate industry research into the development of new low-risk substanclow risk pesticides are a last resort in IPM, and calls for stimulating research into the development of alternatives to synthetic pesticides and enableing farmers to switch more rapidly to sustainable PPPspest management;
Amendment 217 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21 a (new)
Paragraph 21 a (new)
21 a. Notes that because of unintended non-target effects of pesticides on beneficial bacteria, fungi, arthropoda, nematodes and other groups of species in agro-ecosystems, natural defence and nutrition mechanisms useful for the crop plants may be severely compromised; Notes further that this leads to limited efficacy of IPM, and also increased susceptibility to future pest attack;
Amendment 218 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21 b (new)
Paragraph 21 b (new)
21 b. Notes the reductions in efficacy of active substances due to evolution of biologically inevitable resistance linked to overuse of commonly used pesticides, including emergence of "superweeds"; Cautions therefore against prophylactic application of pesticides and advocates rather a cascade approach via IPM whereby pesticides are a last resort after physical, non-chemical and biological control methods;
Amendment 219 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21 c (new)
Paragraph 21 c (new)
21 c. Regrets the slow progress of the member states and Commission to respectively implement and evaluate implementation of IPM and directive 2009/128/EC;
Amendment 220 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21 d (new)
Paragraph 21 d (new)
21 d. Calls on EFSA to ensure stringent and independent risk assessment, in line with applicable guidance and regulations; Calls for an independent panel of scientists to review EFSA’s risk assessment of glyphosate, so as to identify the reasons behind opposite conclusions by IARC and EFSA regarding its carcinogenic properties, in order for EFSA to regain the trust of the public in its public health mission;
Amendment 221 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21 e (new)
Paragraph 21 e (new)
21 e. Questions the resource efficiency of using glyphosate as a ripening and drying agent for grain crops, due to the non target effects of this practice, in particular effects on soil microorganisms and on pest resistance;
Amendment 225 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Regrets the increasing skill shortages in many of these professions and calls on the Member States to work in partnership with industry and other relevant stakeholders in the design of their next Rural Development Programmes to identify opportunities to support skills development and knowledge transfer in these areas;
Amendment 228 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23 a (new)
Paragraph 23 a (new)
23 a. Calls for publically funded extension of farm advisory services independent of input industries, to offer advice on all options available to farmers, and to respect the principles of IPM in advising a cascade of measures that use pesticides as a last resort
Amendment 238 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25 a (new)
Paragraph 25 a (new)
25 a. Calls for the agricultural sector to diversify away from high cost solutions into low cost, effective practices to ensure sustainable solutions that are less capital intensive, more cost-effective and reach the same sustainability goals;
Amendment 243 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26 a (new)
Paragraph 26 a (new)
26 a. Notes that in the 7th Framework Programme for EU-funded research, funding available for agri-biotech based mainly upon chemical inputs is 426.7 million Euro or 67% of EU agricultural research spending, while organic farming techniques were only allotted 44.6 million Euro or 7% of EU agricultural research spending;
Amendment 247 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27
Paragraph 27
27. Considers it essential for the Commission and the Member States to develop projects which focus exclusively on the development of more resource- efficient crop varietiesnutrient exchange, especially given the increasing scarcity of water availability and certain key components of fertilisers such as phosphate; research on crop nutrition approaches should focus on e.g. closed loop nutrient cycling, and fertlility based on natural processes in a healthy living soil, instead of depending on inefficient artificial inputs, of which the majority are not absorbed by plants and are lost in soil and water;
Amendment 254 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27 a (new)
Paragraph 27 a (new)
27 a. Calls for more research into sustainable food production systems including closed loop nutrient cycling, short feed chains, pasture based grazing, low input production and increasing input independence to reduce production costs, soil science, and non-chemical and biological control options for plant protection;
Amendment 256 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28
Paragraph 28
28. Notes that throughout much of the EU, independent or publically-funded centres for education, training and innovation in agriculture have declined or do not adequately cater for transdisciplinary approaches in emerging fields such as agricultural engineering;
Amendment 262 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 29
Paragraph 29
29. Encourages the Commission and the Member States to develop Trans-European Centres for Agricultural Innovation that would deliver much needed progress towards food security and sustainability; the activities of these centres should be transparent and open to the general public as well as farmers, and should have a trans-sector approach, fostering dialogue between sectors that may be impacted differentially by innovation, e.g. mitigating confrontation between the arable crops sector and the beekeeping sector;
Amendment 270 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32
Paragraph 32
32. Notes that rural areas, and in particular agriculture, are most exposed to actual and potential climate change; recognises that agriculture must be allowed to adapt to meet changing circumstances using all available safe technological solutions;
Amendment 278 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33
Paragraph 33
Amendment 285 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33 a (new)
Paragraph 33 a (new)
33 a. Considers that in keeping with EU law and treaty obligations, it essential to protect citizens' health and the environment while considering the potential benefits of emerging technologies in a fair, open and balanced way, taking into account long term impacts and externalities, using review systems based on independent, peer- reviewed science;
Amendment 288 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 34
Paragraph 34
34. Notes in particular the high cost, long timescales and commercial uncertainty of bringing new technologies and products to market under current EU regulationsat new technologies and products that may impact on human or animal health and/or cause environmental damage should be duly assessed before being brought to market in the EU or released into the environment;
Amendment 296 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 36
Paragraph 36
36. Calls on the Commission to use its new Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) to designrefine a regulatory framework which places greater emphasis on risk-based andindependent scientific evidence when determinassessing risks ing the balance between benefits and risks in the adoptionadoption of new technologies, products and practices; Calls on the Commission to foresee post- authorisation adapted field-based monitoring for the verification of the quality of the risk assessments of new technologies, products and practices;
Amendment 301 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 37
Paragraph 37
37. Notes broad supportCalls for the adoption of the Innovation Principle, which would require EU legislative proposals to be fully assessed in terms of their impact on innovation while taking note of implied costs to society as well as potential benefits and respecting the Treaty obligation to protect the health of citizens and the environment;
Amendment 302 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 37 a (new)
Paragraph 37 a (new)
37 a. Calls for wider economic impacts to be considered when evaluating emerging agricultural technologies, including long- standing externalities such as costs of pollution especially waterborne pollution, decreased ecosystem functioning, impacts on the renewable but finite natural resources upon which agricultural productivity is based such as biodiversity and soil, and impacts on other primary sectors, notably fisheries