British Doctors Call for Halt to GM Crop Trials

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British Doctors Call for Halt to GM Crop Trials

The British Medical Association (BMA), which has a membership of over 120,000

and represents more than 80% of British doctors, has called for a moratorium on

GM crop trials in Scotland. Lim Li Ching reports.

 

In its submission to the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Community Care

Committee on 20 November 2002, the BMA urged that GM crop trials be stopped

immediately, as a precautionary measure to safeguard public health. It said that

" insufficient care " has been taken over public health and concerns are " serious

enough " to justify an immediate end to the trials.

 

The Health Committee, in response to a petition from the Munlochy GM Vigil, had

launched an inquiry into the health impacts of GM crops. The inquiry is

considering whether the Scottish Executive’s decision to approve the testing of

GM crops at a number of sites in Scotland will have negative consequences on

public health.

 

The BMA originally called for a moratorium on the planting of GM crops in 1999.

At that time, the doctors had already expressed deep concerns about the impact

of GM foods on long-term health and had called for a halt to any further

planting of GM crops until trials could be assessed for environmental

contamination and ecological impact. Its latest submission is made with the

benefit of more information, and notes instead that the numbers of crop trials

have increased, without the requisite thorough assessments or adequate public

consultation.

 

The BMA’s answer to the Committee’s question as to whether the Executive should

prevent GM crops trials from continuing on the grounds that it is against the

precautionary principle was a resounding " Yes " . Citing the lack of a robust and

thorough search into the potentially harmful effects of GM foods on human

health, the BMA urged that on the basis of the precautionary principle, farm

scale trials should not be allowed to continue. It stated that the concerns

doctors have about the impact GM foods may have on long-term health are serious

enough to warrant a precautionary approach.

 

It urged that GM crops be subject to rigorous and comprehensive risk assessment

prior to farm scale trials, including the consideration of longer-term

environmental and health consequences. Only once such rigorous assessment is

made should field trials be allowed. And until these risks are fully understood

and quantified by field trials, there should be a moratorium on any further

planting of GM crops on a commercial basis.

 

Currently, the BMA said that not enough is known to give an accurate risk

assessment of the health impact of GM crops on the health of local communities.

It thus called for independently funded and reviewed research in the public

domain, which considers the long term health and environmental health impacts of

GM crop planting and the consumption of GM food. Until such research is

conducted, GM crops should not be freely cultivated and extension of the current

farm-scale trials would be " ill advised " and " potentially irresponsible " .

 

According to the BMA, the most worrying issue is the potential danger posed by

GM crops in creating antibiotic resistant pathogenic organisms. ISIS has been

consistently drawing attention to this issue and to the dangers of horizontal

gene transfer. The BMA asserted that there is evidence that these genes may be

transferred to non-GM plants and that there is significant risk of antibiotic

resistance transferring " possibly into pathogenic organisms causing human

disease " .

 

Any increase in the number of resistant micro-organisms through the transfer of

marker genes from GM foods would potentially have very serious adverse effects

on human health.The BMA cited the use of antibiotic resistant markers in GM

foods as a completely unacceptable risk, however slight to human health, and

called for the use of antibiotic resistant markers in GMOs to be prohibited

immediately.

 

Another concern expressed was the potential adverse effects of allergenicity on

human health from GM products. The BMA called for further research and tests on

GM foodstuffs for allergenicity, pending which there should be an open-ended

moratorium on transgenic products, and especially on introducing nut genes and

proteins etc. into cereals.

 

The BMA warned that routine health surveillance currently in place would not

pick up adverse effects on the health of people living in the vicinity of GM

crop trial sites. It thus called on the Executive to monitor the health of

people living near the trial sites and to track any subtle changes in these

areas.

 

Dr Charles Saunders, Chair of the BMA’s Scottish Committee for Public Health

Medicine and Community Health, cautioned that the absence of monitoring meant

any potential side effects experienced by people living near GM crops trials

were not being picked up. He said, " There are certain mechanisms within the NHS

with regards to human health in relation to food that tend to pick up known

organisms and known conditions. They are quite good at picking up things that

kill people, but are relatively poor at picking up things that don’t. I would

have no confidence in their ability to pick up unusual symptoms in people living

near GM trial sites. "

 

Following the BMA’s submission, Robin Harper, Green MSP, tabled a motion in the

Scottish Parliament, calling on MSPs of all parties to demand the halting of the

trials. The Scottish National Party, the main opposition party in the

Parliament, also threw its weight behind moves to have the trials stopped,

saying there was now overwhelming evidence against them continuing.

 

However, the Scottish Executive continues to insist that there is " no evidence "

that the field trials are inherently harmful and denies that public health is

being put in danger. Ross Finnie, the Scottish Minister for Environment and

Rural Development, says that he has no plans to introduce a moratorium on GM

crops. Sources:

 

Submission of the British Medical Association to the Health and Community Care

Committee on the health impact of GM crop trials

 

‘Doctors want GM crop ban’, BBC News, 20 November 2002,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2494267.stm

‘Crop trials must stop, say doctors’, The Scotsman, 19 November 2002,

http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=1284692002

‘BMA report leads to call for halt on GM crop trials’, The Scotsman, 20

November 2002

 

 

 

This article can be found on the I-SIS website at

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BMA.php

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