EU ministers to debate approving GM cotton imports

BRUSSELS, May 6 (Reuters) - European Union farm ministers are likely to debate by mid-July whether to allow imports of a genetically modified strain of cotton to be used as a food ingredient and in animal feed, a document showed on Tuesday.

The cotton, known as LLCotton25 and developed by Germany's Bayer CropScience (BAYG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research), has been engineered to resist certain herbicides and would not be grown in Europe's fields.

Back in February, a panel of national EU experts failed to muster the consensus required under the EU's complex weighted voting system either to approve or reject the company's request for an import licence -- normally valid for 10 years.

So, under EU law, the European Commission has now escalated the dossier to ministers who must debate within three months whether to issue an import authorisation. If they fail to agree, then the Commission gains the right to rubberstamp an approval.

However, EU officials said country voting positions were unlikely to alter when the ministers tackled the issue. Three ministerial meetings are scheduled before the EU summer break: May 19, June 23-24 and July 15.

EU countries rarely agree on anything to do with GMOs and their discussions on authorising imports on new modified products usually descend into an ill-tempered deadlock.

At the February experts' meeting, when the bloc's member states were represented, 14 countries voted in favour of authorising, nine against, three abstained and one country was not represented: not enough to secure a majority, since weighted country voting influence varies widely.

If approved by the EU, Bayer CropScience would be allowed to import LLCotton25 seeds and derived products for use as food -- crushed into oil, for example -- as well as animal feed, like cottonseed meal and seed hulls. EU farm ministers are also due to vote before the summer on another Bayer CropScience import application, for a biotech soybean known by its codename A2704-12. Again, the product would be grown outside the EU and imported for use in food and feed.

(Reporting by Jeremy Smith; editing by Chris Johnson)