Federal Administrative Court decides the main case in the genetic honey case

A ruling issued by the Federal Administrative Court on October 24, 2013, in the genetically modified honey case has largely gone unnoticed. In the main proceedings, lawsuits by amateur beekeepers whose honey had been contaminated by pollen from genetically modified MON 810 maize were still pending. Although the State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety had already suspended the permit, one of the plaintiffs had requested measures from the authority to protect his beekeeping products from contamination resulting from maize cultivation. In the first instance, the Administrative Court had determined that beekeeping products that demonstrably contained components of pollen from MON 810 maize were not marketable foodstuffs and therefore significantly impaired. However, it refused to issue protective measures. The plaintiff appealed against this decision. This case was then submitted to the European Court of Justice for a decision, which ruled that pollen was not a component of honey, but rather an ingredient, meaning that the approval for the corn under genetic engineering law did not extend to the pollen. Nevertheless, the appeal court dismissed the plaintiff's action on the grounds that there were no plans to replant the genetically modified corn on the experimental farm, thus depriving the plaintiff of a legal interest in legal protection. The Federal Administrative Court has now confirmed this view and dismissed the plaintiff's appeal as unfounded.

Interesting and important for practical purposes are the statements made by the Federal Administrative Court regarding the concept of "significant impairment" within the meaning of Section 36a of the Genetic Engineering Act (GenTG). It first clarified that a significant impairment relates to the labeling requirement. According to this, products must be labeled as "genetically modified" or "produced from genetically modified organisms" if the proportion of genetically modified material exceeds the threshold of 0.9% of the individual food ingredients or the food itself. The Federal Administrative Court distinguished the labeling requirement from the so-called precautionary duty (Section 1 No. 1 of the GenTG). The precautionary duty, on the other hand, which aims to prevent such impairments, is not based on the principle of zero tolerance. The precautionary principle has not been specified in the law, so the plaintiff cannot rely on it due to the lack of specific provisions. This corresponds to the case law of the administrative courts, according to which plaintiffs cannot generally rely on precautionary values, but only on limit values.

This publication can also be found on the website of the law firm Dr. Kauch .