GENOA -- Environmentalist group Greenpeace has documentary evidence that up to 15 percent of this year's maize crop in the European Union includes genetically modified material, a spokesman said on Thursday.
Fabrizio Fabbri, Greenpeace's senior spokesman in Italy, appealed to governments to withdraw all permits for the cultivation of GM crops both experimentally and commercially because authorities could not control the impact of GM crops on the environment.
Speaking after Italy's biggest-ever anti-GM food protest in the northern city of Genoa, he declined to say what documentary evidence Greenpeace had found.
"This is a collection of in-house and outside analysis done on plants and crops," he said.
"It is completely understandable if you consider that we are finding more and more cases of genetic pollution," he added.
He said Greenpeace would provide the authorities with its evidence, but gave no details.
Three companies have received approvals for their GM maize to be grown in the EU, but several member states have imposed their own national bans.
The British government on Thursday denied it had been given any information that farmers had unwittingly planted maize seed containing GM material.
Environmentalists have voiced serious concerns over GM crops, saying no one yet knows what impact they will have on health and the environment. Life sciences companies that have developed GM technology say GM crops can boost yields, help alleviate world hunger, and raise plants' resistance to disease.
Asked to comment on the significance of Greenpeace's findings, Fabbri said, "It means that we cannot control GMOs."
He said GM material was spreading in Europe via accidental cross-pollination.
The impact would be felt most in countries that had permitted the commercial planting by farmers of approved GM maize varieties, such as Spain, Fabbri said.
"It is probably there (Spain) where the contamination is worst," he said.
The responsibility for the spread of GM maize lay firmly with the multinationals that developed the technology, he added.
Fabbri was speaking after joining a march with some 4,000 environmentalists to the site of an international biotech conference, heavily guarded by police, at Genoa's trade fair.
The march, attended by farmers, far-left and environmentalist political parties, and representatives of town councils that have banned GM foods, was the biggest anti-GM food protest in Italy so far, organizers said. Police briefly clashed with some protesters outside the complex, but calm was quickly restored.
Fabbri said countries that allowed only experimental cultivation of GM crops, such as Italy, were not immune to the spread of GM material by accidental cross-pollination.
"Countries must stop any release of GMOs into the environment either for commercial or experimental purposes," he said.
