one more on GMO...

[Guest guest]

Organics sponsored conference says 'no' to GMO

 

FoodProductionDaily.com

29/7/2003

 

A recent UK conference which questioned the future of GMO foods in the

UK has returned a resounding 90 per cent of its attendees voting against

it.

 

Chaired by political journalist Sue McGregor, the debate was sponsored

by Yeo Valley Organic and the Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative (OMSCo)

and held at the Lakewood Conference Centre, Somerset. It was attended by

around 150 local people including farmers, politicians, doctors, vets

and members of the public.

 

The argument in favour of GM food was presented by Professor Vivian

Moses, co-ordinator of a EU, GM education programme, and Tony Combes,

public affairs director of Monsanto, the world's largest producer of GM

seeds.

 

Speaking against the farming of GM crops were Peter Melchett, policy

director of The Soil Association and Nathan Argent, of Greenpeace.

 

In his presentation to try and convince the audience that the adoption

of GM technology would be beneficial, Professor Moses explained that

virtually every world safety authority has endorsed the 8 seeds approved

for use in the UK and he explained that use of GM seeds worldwide was

increasing by 10-20 per cent annually.

 

He commented: "GM is already out there. The real issue now is how do we

accommodate different systems of agriculture in the same land area?"

 

In a question and answer session, John Penrose, a local MP, who is a

keen bee keeper, asked him how it would be possible to ensure that honey

that is currently organic remains uncontaminated by pollen from

genetically modified plants, if approval is given for GM cultivation.

 

Professor Moses commented: "I think we have to acknowledge that

segregation isn't possible. There will still be a choice, it just won't

be the same as it used to be."

 

Speaking against the planting of GM seeds, Peter Melchett said:

"Genetically engineered crops represent a huge, uncontrolled experiment.

Their outcome is unpredictable. There is huge uncertainty not just in

the process, but in the impact it might have on you, your children and

the environment. It would be stupid to go ahead."

 

According to the sponsors this view was supported by many in the

audience, including GP, Dr Richard Lawson, who stated: "It took 20,000

papers to establish smoking causes lung cancer. If GM planting is

allowed and we don't get GM labelling as well, we won't know who has

eaten it and who hasn't, so we won't have a control group of people if

it transpires something does go wrong."

 

A vote by the audience, to show how many were for and how many were

against GM foods was strongly against, with more than 90 per cent of the

attendees saying they don't want to have GM food planted in Britain.

This reflects the results of a poll that has been running on the Yeo

Valley organic web site, where around 93 per cent of visitors have voted

'No'

 

Yeo Valley dairy products are all of organic origin, which follows that

many of its customers would not be likely to consume GMO food products.

 

The results of both polls and a summary of the debate are now being sent

to the UK Government in advance of its forthcoming deliberations on

whether to allow further planting of genetically modified seeds in the

UK.

 

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Naive, narrow and biased...

 

Carlo Leifert explains why he resigned from the government's GM science

review panel

 

Thursday July 24, 2003

The Guardian

 

When I joined the GM science review panel, I thought that we would be

doing a detailed risk assessment. We would work out where there might be

problems with GM, what the nature of the problems might be and what

research had to be done to prove whether or not they were significant.

 

From the very start, we should have looked at whether something could go

wrong with the technology itself. If you add an alien gene to a plant,

how do you know what side effects you will get? We know that if we add

genes to bacteria, it can change things unintentionally, and studies

show this can happen in plants as well. How good are our methods to

detect these unintentional changes?

 

But it soon became clear we wouldn't be doing a detailed risk

assessment. Part of the problem came down to how scientific results are

reported. If anyone had found that the GM process caused unwanted side

effects in plants, it probably wouldn't make it into the scientific

journals. Side effects would be viewed as negative results and

scientists tend not to publish those. They often only get mentioned in

PhD theses and reports to sponsors, because in those you have to explain

why you've taken so long to do something. I made the point that to do a

proper risk assessment, we needed to try and obtain that original data

to get an idea of how often such side effects happen. This request was

ignored. The panel felt we should focus mainly on peer-reviewed work and

that going into that much detail would take too long. I completely

disagreed with this approach.

 

It quickly became apparent that the panel wasn't balanced enough to

produce an objective report. Most of the biologists who really

understood the technical details of some of the arguments were strongly

pro-GM. I felt that there should have been more specialists on board who

weren't so indiscriminantly positive about the technology. There should

have been more of an attempt to recruit scientists with good molecular

biology knowledge and a more critical approach to the technology.

 

For me, the last straw came when someone from the biotech industry was

asked to write the chapter on food safety. It seemed incredibly naive to

me to have someone whose interest is in selling GM to do the risk

assessment chapter. They were already convinced of its safety. I tried

to resign quietly, because I was warned that it was not a good idea

criticising your peers on scientific panels. But once everyone knew I

had resigned and I was asked about my reasons, I felt that I had to

explain why. Especially because what we have now from the panel is a

report that is essentially pro-GM. It means the government decision

makers may have to react to this scientific advice by allowing imports

of GM crops and the growing of GM crops in the UK.

 

In my opinion, this report is not carefully enough researched to give

the green light to GM and doesn't identify the uncertainties well

enough.

 

The report mentions that Americans have eaten GM food for about seven

years now and they haven't suffered. But nobody has actually

investigated the effect of GM consumption on public health in the US.

The argument doesn't make sense, and to have it coming from a scientific

panel is really quite sad.

 

I don't believe the government has tried to force the science review in

any particular direction to push an agenda. My feeling is they are

concerned that GM technology could be risky to human health and the

environment. I feel that the bias came from the strong lobby of pro-GM

scientists and biotechnology representatives on the panel. They seem to

be much more prepared to take little or no evidence as meaning no

problem. I felt we should be more careful than that and say, let's get

more information and then judge it.

 

There are already signs that Europe is being more cautious about GM

technologies. The European Union is now seeking to fund research into

ways of improving our ability to check GM plants for unwanted side

effects. They have also put out a tender for testing the difficulties of

co-existence between GM crops and non-GM crops). We should wait until we

have better techniques and more information on the questions that are

still open. As soon as improved methods for safety assessments are

available we should insist they become part of the routine risk

assessments of the GM companies.

 

One of the conclusions of the report is that we have to look at GM crops

on a case-by-case basis. I wouldn't agree with that. Right now we still

have to check that there isn't some inherent problem with the

technology.

 

Professor Carlo Leifert, an expert in organic farming at the University

of Newcastle, resigned from the government's GM science panel last week.

The panel's final report was published on Monday.

 

Interview by Ian Sample.