Europe is united: no bioengineered food

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Europe is united: no bioengineered food

 

Elisabeth Rosenthal/IHT IHT

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

 

http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?key=GENEVA

 

GENEVA Some are smokers. Some drink too much. Some admit they love

red meat. But virtually all shoppers here at the Migros Supermarket

on the bustling Rue des Paquis are united in avoiding a risk they

regard as unacceptable: genetically modified food.

 

That is easy to do here in Switzerland, as in the rest of Europe,

where food containing such ingredients must be labeled by law. Many

large retailers, like Migros, have essentially stopped stocking the

products, regarding them as bad for public image.

 

" I try not to eat any of it and always read the boxes, " said Marco

Feline, 32, an artist in jeans, getting onto his bike (with no

helmet). " It scares me because we don't know what the long-term

effects will be - on people or the environment. "

 

The majority of corn and soy in the United States is now grown from

genetically modified seeds, altered to increase their resistance to

pests or reduce their need for water, for example. In the past

decade, Americans have happily - if unknowingly - gobbled down

hundreds of millions of servings of genetically modified foods. The

U.S. Food and Drug Administration says there have been no adverse

effects, and there is no specific labeling.

 

But in Europe - where food is high culture, if not religion -

farmers, consumers, chefs and environmental groups have joined

voices loudly and stubbornly to oppose bioengineered foods,

effectively blocking their arrival at the farms and on the tables of

the Continent. And that, in turn, has created a huge ripple effect

on trade and politics, from North America to Africa.

 

The United States, Canada and Argentina have filed a complaint that

is pending before the World Trade Organization, contending that

European laws and procedures that discriminate against genetically

modified products are irrational and unscientific, and so constitute

an unfair trade barrier.

 

U.S. companies like Monsanto, which invested heavily in the

technology, suffered huge losses when Europe balked. As part of a

public relations effort, the U.S. State Department enlisted a

Vatican academy last month as a co-sponsor of a conference in

Rome, " Feeding a Hungry World: The Moral Imperative of

Biotechnology. "

 

In response to such pressure, the European Union has relaxed legal

restrictions on genetically modified foods.

 

In May the EU approved for sale a genetically modified sweet corn,

lifting a five-year moratorium on new imports. Last month the

European Commission gave its seal of approval to 17 types of

genetically modified corn seed for farming. But no one expects a

wide-open market.

 

" We have no illusion that the market will change anytime soon, " said

Markus Payer, spokesman for Syngenta, the Swiss agribusiness company

whose BT-11 corn got the approval in May. " That will only be created

by consumer acceptance in Europe. "

 

" There is currently no inclination among European consumers to buy

these things, " Payer went on. " But the atmosphere of rejection is

not based on facts. That is a political, cultural and media-driven

decision. And so we are convinced that more and more consumers will

see the benefits. "

 

Indeed, the battle lines between countries for and against

genetically modified foods seem to be hardening. Several African

countries, following Europe's lead, have rejected donations of

genetically engineered food and seeds. In Asia, reluctance appears

to be spreading. While countries like China and India are

enthusiastically planting biotech crops like cotton, genetically

modified food crops are having trouble winning approval.

 

Africa's rejection is based partly on health and local environmental

concerns, but also on economic interests: Zambia and Mozambique have

discovered a good market in selling unmodified grain and soy to

Europe, supplanting the United States as European suppliers.

 

Mauro Albrizio, vice president of the European Environmental Bureau,

a policy group based in Brussels, said: " In the U.S., genetically

modified foods were a fait accompli; here in Europe we succeeded in

preventing that. "

 

Genetically modified foods arrived on America's dinner plates with

little fanfare in the mid-1990s as large-scale farmers in the United

States enthusiastically started planting the seeds, which increased

production and reduced the amount of pesticide required. Convinced

that bioengineered food was " at least as safe as conventional food, "

the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared that a bioengineered

lemon was the same as an ordinary lemon, and did not require special

labeling or regulation.

 

Today, nearly two-thirds of the genetically modified crops in the

world are grown in the United States, mostly corn and soybeans. " In

the U.S., a large part of the diet is actually bioengineered, " said

Lester Crawford, acting commissioner of the Food and Drug agency.

 

" The first thing other nations want to know is how many illnesses or

adverse reactions we've seen, " he added. " But we haven't actually

had any problems at all with bioengineered foods. "

 

Vast amounts of money are at stake. Believing that genetically

modified foods would quickly catch on throughout the world as they

had the United States, large biotech companies like Monsanto

invested billions of dollars.

 

Since the late 1990s the European Union has required that all food

containing more than tiny amounts of genetically modified materials

be labeled, and that all genetically modified products be submitted

for approval before sale in Europe. No products were approved during

an informal moratorium from 1998 to 2003. In the past five years,

many parts of Europe have enacted local bans on growing such foods.

 

In fact, most scientific panels have concluded that " foods derived

from the transgenic crops currently on the market are safe to eat, "

in the words of a recent report from the UN's Food and Agricultural

Organization. But the report also cautioned that crops must be

evaluated case by case.

 

And low risk is not no risk. The 87 member states of the UN-sponsored

Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety required labeling this year of all

bulk shipments of food containing genetically modified products. The

United States has not signed the pact.

 

More important, though, is that the assessment of risk depends

largely on the degree of proof that a country's consumers demand.

 

" In their personal lives people take lots of risk - they drive too

fast and bungee-jump - but for food their acceptance of risk is very

low, " said Philipp Hübner of the Basel-Stadt Canton Laboratory in

Switzerland, which tests products in that country for contamination

with genetically modified organisms. But Hübner sees his work as

detecting fraud in labeling rather than as safeguarding the public

health.

 

" For most scientists it is not so much a safety issue, but an

ethical and societal question, " he said. " This is what the public

here has chosen, like Muslims choosing not to eat pork. "

 

In a survey by the European Opinion Research Group in late 2002, 88.6

percent of Europeans listed the " quality of food products " as an

environmental issue with health implications.

 

But health fears, which can move markets, are not always consistent.

In some parts of Europe, like Bordeaux, that have declared

themselves free of genetically modified organisms, energy is

supplied by nuclear power plants.

 

To sell Sugar Pops cereal to European consumers, Kellogg's imports

unmodified corn from Argentina and spends extra money to make sure

that the entire transportation and processing chain is free of

bioengineered products, said Chris Wermann, a company spokesman. The

same cereal contains genetically modified corn in the United States.

Both varieties contain all the usual sugars, artificial colors and

flavors.

 

European advocates defend their right to be finicky. " This is not

ideology - it's a pragmatic stand because of potential risks to

health and the environment, " said Albrizio of the European

Environmental Bureau, noting that there is some evidence that

genetically modified crops may trigger more allergies.

 

In terms of agriculture, there are some very clear-cut effects, since

genetically modified seeds tend to spread in the environment once

they have been planted, making it hard to maintain crops that are

organic and free of genetic modification. Scientists call this

phenomenon " co-mixing. "

 

To environmentalists and especially to farmers, " co-mixing " it is

potentially devastating " contamination. " That is why the farmers of

Tuscany and 11 other regions of Italy have declared themselves free

of bioengineering.

 

In fact, European farmers and consumers have so far created a

firewall against genetically modified organisms, one that the

changing laws and World Trade Organization challenges may not breach

easily.

 

" In theory you could sell GMO products here, with labeling, " Hübner

said. " But I'm not aware of any products that are now being sold,

because no store wants them on their shelves. "

 

International Herald Tribune