The UN's Biotech for Food Scandal

[Guest guest]

An interesting article on biotech, Codex Alimentarius and the US role

in pushing genetic modification of foods on the rest of the world ...

 

Kind regards

Sepp

 

 

 

 

The UN's Biotech for Food Scandal

 

By Henry I. Miller

Published

09/28/2005

http://www.techcentralstation.com/0928055.html

 

 

CHIBA, Japan -- John Bolton, the blunt and controversial U.S.

ambassador to the UN, has promised " to advance American interests and

ideals at the United Nations. " During his first two months on the

job, Bolton has denounced the United Nations Development Program for

its " unacceptable " funding of Palestinian propaganda and publicly

identified " countries who are in a state of denial " about the need

for UN reform. He told a reporter that he feels " a little like Rod

Serling has suddenly appeared and we're writing episodes from 'The

Twilight Zone.' "

 

I'm having a similar experience in Japan as a member of the US

delegation to a UN task force on biotechnology-derived foods. The

group is a creature of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets

food standards on behalf of the UN's Food and Agriculture

Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO).

 

The very scope of this exercise -- which has gone on for five years

and shows no signs of abating -- makes no sense. It is concerned with

regulatory requirements only for foods made with the newest, most

precise and predictable techniques of biotechnology -- while

exempting others made with far more crude and less predictable

technologies, including irradiation mutagenesis and hybridization.

 

For example, the task force has selected as one of its new projects,

" Food Safety Assessment of Food Derived from [Gene-Spliced] Plants

Modified for Nutritional and Health Benefits. " This scope of work

completely ignores that past problems with unexpected food toxicity

in new plant varieties -- in two varieties each of squash and potato,

and one of celery -- have resulted from the imprecision of

conventional plant breeding. There is a broad scientific consensus

that the precision of gene-splicing makes the accidental introduction

of toxins or anti-nutrients into new foods far less likely. (Note

that no food modified by traditional techniques -- that is to say,

virtually the entire diet of Europeans and Americans -- could (or

should) meet the existing Codex standards for biotech foods.) It is

rather like circumscribing for extra regulation only automobiles

outfitted with disk brakes, radial tires and air bags -- and then

limiting only those to a lower speed.

 

I've participated in these kinds of negotiations and meetings for

more than a quarter-century, but never before have I had the same

feeling that the inmates were running the asylum. This Codex travesty

is rife with irony and hypocrisy.

 

First, the conference was opened by Japan's Vice-Minister for Health,

Labor and Welfare, who extolled at length the virtues of

biotechnology applied to agriculture and food production. However,

his government has approved not a single food plant, fruit or

vegetable for sale in Japan. In San Francisco, a gene-spliced,

virus-resistant Hawaiian papaya costs about $1.25 per pound. Japan

won't accept the gene-spliced variety, so they import only

conventional Hawaiian papayas (mostly from trees that have been

ravaged by the papaya ringspot virus, which diminishes their yield)

-- and the cost in Tokyo is about $15 dollars a pound! (This vignette

was less like " The Twilight Zone " and more like the British comedy,

" Yes, Minister! " )

 

Second, during the plenary the European Community's delegation

sanctimoniously lectured the other nations on how to regulate

biotechnology. Considering that biotech applied to agriculture is

virtually nonexistent in Europe thanks to ill-conceived, unscientific

over-regulation and intractable disagreements among European

countries, this is rather like the government of Columbia instructing

others on how to stop drug trafficking.

 

Third, at the same time that medical experts around the world are

fearful of a pandemic of influenza that could kill tens of millions

and disrupt the world's economy, the senior WHO representative kept

lobbying the task force to work on " ethical considerations " of

gene-spliced organisms. This bizarre concern about the " ethics " of a

sweeter melon or pest-resistant potato is rather like worrying about

flossing your teeth when you're in the path of a Category 5 hurricane.

 

Fourth, during five years of negotiations by this task force, the

participants -- including the U.S. delegation, now headed by a senior

USDA official -- have willfully ignored scientific principles and the

basic axiom that the degree of regulatory scrutiny should be

proportionate to risk. They have also disregarded the scientific

consensus that gene-splicing is an extension, or refinement, of

older, traditional techniques of genetic modification, and that it

does not warrant discriminatory, excessive regulation. They have

overlooked the fact that during almost two decades of widespread use,

the performance of gene-spliced crops has been spectacular, with

farmers enjoying increased yields, decreased costs of agricultural

chemicals, and lower occupational exposures to pesticides. The

environmental benefits likewise have been stunning, with less

chemical runoff into waterways and greater availability of no-till

farming techniques that reduce soil erosion.

 

Fifth, many who attended this meeting appear to be completely

ignorant of the appropriate context of new and conventional

biotechnology, unaware that with the exception of fish and wild game,

berries and mushrooms, virtually all of the foods in our diet are

derived from organisms that have been genetically improved in some

fashion. It is pathetic -- and a cruel misuse of resources -- to see

representatives here from countries like Sudan, Papua New Guinea,

Uganda, Lesotho, Nepal and Laos clamoring for " capacity building " to

regulate gene-splicing. Shouldn't the priorities of poor countries be

nutritional deficiencies, infectious diseases, occupational safety,

and the lack of childhood vaccines and clean water, rather than the

discriminatory, gratuitous regulation of a superior agricultural

technology that UN-based regulation already has made too expensive to

be applied widely to developing countries' crops?

 

Sixth, this project of Codex (which operates on behalf of the UN's

FAO and WHO, remember) makes a mockery of the UN's Millennium

Development Goals -- especially the first, and most ambitious: " to

eradicate extreme poverty and hunger " by 2015. That can't be

accomplished without innovative technology, and there won't be

innovative technology if it is regulated excessively and stupidly.

FAO calls on one hand for greater allocation of resources to

agriculture, and then makes those resources less cost-effective by

gratuitous over-regulation of the new biotechnology. (Another UN

initiative that has vitiated agricultural biotechnology is the

" biosafety protocol " of the UN-based Convention on Biological

Diversity, but that's another story.)

 

Other Millennium Goals inevitably will be compromised, directly or

indirectly, by this Codex project (and by the " biosafety protocol " of

the CBD). An important way, for example, to " reduce child mortality, "

the fourth goal, would be to produce childhood vaccines cheaply in

edible fruits and vegetables, but there is near-hysteria at Codex

over conjectural food-safety problems with this approach. Moreover,

when the impoverished of the world are forced to spend more than

necessary to grow or obtain food, fewer resources are available for

other public health and environmental needs. As Wellesley College

political scientist Robert Paarlberg has noted, the continued

globalization of this sort of " highly precautionary regulatory

approach " to gene-spliced crops will cause the " the biggest losers of

all [to be the] poor farmers in the developing world, " and " if this

new technology is killed in the cradle, these farmers could miss a

chance to escape the low farm productivity that is helping to keep

them in poverty. "

 

How about this for an additional Millennium Goal: Stop

genocide-by-regulation by UN bureaucrats.

 

Finally, this sort of charade is exceedingly destructive to public

sector research and development: Unscientific, overly burdensome

regulation has raised costs to levels that " exclude the public

sector, the academic community, from using their skills to improve

crops, " according to Dr. Roger Beachy, the director of the Danforth

Plant Science Center in St. Louis. In effect, Codex and other UN

regulatory initiatives have created a level playing field that is

hip-deep in muck, a disadvantage to the best, brightest and richest

in the field -- namely, American academics and companies.

 

The Codex deliberations are also disastrous politically.

Unscientific, unduly burdensome Codex standards for biotech foods

compromise hopes of World Trade Organization relief from

protectionist policies in Europe and elsewhere. Codex standards

provide cover for unfair trade practices, because with them in place,

a country that wishes to block trade in gene-spliced foods for any

reason can defend against charges of unfair trade practices simply by

remonstrating that it's deferring to Codex.

 

So why is the United States going along with this travesty? At a

meeting of our delegation, the representatives of USDA, EPA and FDA

offered the following rationales: Because virtually every other

country has in place irrational, unscientific regulation, we must,

too; and anyway, we're really addressing trade, not scientific,

issues. Most important, they said, American industry demands that we

play along.

 

It is true that U.S. industry (dozens of whose lobbyists attended the

Codex task force meeting, either as part of the U.S. delegation or as

independent NGOs) reluctantly endorses the Codex process. Paul Green,

from the Washington-based North American Grain Export Grain

Association, seemed to represent the consensus of American industry,

" We're trying to make the best of a lose-lose situation. " But

encouraging bad regulation is like eating your seed corn: a

short-term expedient, a long-term catastrophe.

 

As a scientist, policy wonk, former federal regulator and taxpayer, I

find the United States's complicity in this corrupt UN-based activity

profoundly disturbing. American officials now regularly participate

in and encourage these anti-scientific debacles, and the United

States provides 22 percent of the base budget of the UN. Moreover, at

this Codex task force meeting, U.S. officials tried (with little

success, fortunately) to cozy up to their counterparts in the

European Community delegation; on regulatory issues, that is

tantamount to the Department of Justice collaborating with the Mafia

on the implementation of the Federal Witness Protection Program.

 

John Bolton and Condi Rice take note: Thanks in large part to flawed

public policy, agbiotech already is moribund in the U.S. (and

international) public sector, little better in industry, and dead and

buried in the developing world. It's time to stop the hemorrhaging.

The United States should cut off funding and all other assistance to

foreign governments, United Nations agencies, and other international

bodies that implement, collude, or cooperate in any way with

unscientific policies. Flagrantly unscientific regulation should

become the " third rail " of American foreign policy.

 

U.S. government delegates to international bodies such as Codex, Food

and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization, United

Nations Environment Program and UNESCO should be directed to defend

rational, science-based policies, and to work to dismantle

politically motivated, unscientific restrictions.

 

Uncompromising? Aggressive? Likely to ruffle feathers? Yes -- but

justified in the face of the virtual annihilation of entire areas of

research and development, disuse of a critical technology, further

disenfranchisement of poor countries, and disruption of free trade.

 

Let's get public policy out of The Twilight Zone before it's too

late. (Cue Twilight Zone theme music.)

 

Henry I. Miller, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, was the founding

director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA, 1989-1993. He is

an advisor to the U.S. delegation to the Codex task force on biotech

foods. Barron's selected his most recent book, " The Frankenfood

Myth, " as one of the 25 Best Books of 2004.

 

--

 

 

The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition.

 

Sepp Hasslberger

 

 

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