While in disagreement on adopting policies and setting rule on the use and presence of GM seed in EU, most European countries are moving forward to adopt their own approaches to the issues.

Since early 2000 the EU Commission has unsuccessfully attempted to determinine the threshold for the 'adventitious presence' of GM seeds in batches of conventional imported seeds, including cotton, oilseed rape, corn and soybean seed. The discovery of contaminated seed, and the inability to determine acceptable levels resulted in most EU countires agreeing to an "Interim Action" which upon revision, accepts a >1% threshold (specifically 0.3% for swede rape and cotton, 0.7% for soy and 0.5% for tomato, beet, chicory, maize, and potato). The Interim Action is left to each individual country to implement.

Concern is growing that larger countries will not have the seed resources available to them, for planting non-GMO seeds, especially if they are insisting on a zero-tolerance policy. Italy, working through a zero-tolerance policy commissioned a survey, last year, which revealed seed producers were able to declare as GM-free only 14% of corn and 6% of soybean seeds sold in Italy not enough for Italian farmers' needs.

In 2001, a French food safety agency metastudy found that 7-41% of conventional lots of corn in 2001 contained GM seeds. Norberto Pogna, director of genetics at the Experimental Institute for Cereal Research in Rome stated,"Based on the French data, we can expect adventitious presence of such GM corns in many lots sowed in Italy,but if we should take literally the zero tolerance claim and the August 2000 decree, we would end up preventing the Italian food industry from using the national harvest."

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