Last Updated on 11/30/01
Email: information@biotech-info.net
Reuters
LONDON - The debate may have cooled and slipped off newspapers' front pages, but European consumers still show little appetite for genetically modified foods three years after near panic swept them off supermarket shelves.
The European Union, anxious not to cede the scientific race, has gently tried to reopen a public debate, but so far there are few signs that moves to address consumer concerns will jumpstart stalled EU approvals for GM crop growing.
Consumers still distrust authorities who claimed mad cow disease could not hurt humans -- only to have 100 people die from the human variant. They fear long-term environmental harm and are unwilling to be reassured by safety claims.
This time, they would simply rather be safe than sorry.
"If the biotech industry or governments want to recover a place for GM crops and food in Europe I'm afraid they have got to do it on the public's terms, or not at all, because they've lost its trust," said Dr Donald Bruce, director of the Church of Scotland's Society, Religion and Technology Project.(SRTP)
In the three years since the widespread rejection of GM food products, industry and governments have stepped up efforts to understand and address consumer concerns.
But they are a long way from accomplishing the job.
"The new European Commission proposals for mandatory labelling of GM foods by process of manufacture are essential if people are to have any real choice," said Bruce, whose SRTP is due to update its GM study "Engineering Genesis" next year.
"But they are rather like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted," he said.
THE CREDIBILITY GAP
Many say it will be a long hard haul. Environmental groups who are fundamentally opposed to genetic modification feel they have secured a victory but they would likely ride to battle again should the threat reappear.
"They probably feel they've secured a very definite victory in Europe and delayed it for a decade and they may well be right," said Dr Sandy Thomas, director of the British-based Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
"I think what's obvious now...whatever Europe does is going to be in isolation to the rest of the world," she said. "Whatever happens in the next 10 years -- and I suspect in Europe that will not be a lot in terms of GM technology -- much of the rest of the world will continue..."
Still, some say consumers might be persuaded of the merits of the genetically modified case were certain standards met.
But that won't be easy. Biotechnology in agriculture has not offered tangible benefits the way it has in medicine.
"Consumers in Europe made a simple risk-benefit equation," said Bruce. "They asked very reasonably 'What are the benefits and risks of GM food. The benefits are mostly for seed and biotech companies in the United States, and if there are risks, they are all ours, so why should we eat the stuff?"
REBUILDING TRUST
At the root of public concern is GMO decision-making made solely on a narrow assessment of scientific risk, said the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC), the British government's biotech advisor, in its September report.
"The public is not necessarily expressing a lack of trust in science or scientists, but simply pointing out that judgements are being made, both within and beyond the science, which demand wider public involvement," the AEBC said.
Risk is a big concern, but scientific estimates of potential risks of new human allergies or environmental change are only one part of the picture.
There are underlying notions about tampering with nature and irreversible change which have to be taken seriously, as well as the simple case of giving people a fair choice.
The following are some of the main hurdles ethicists and roundtable groups insist GMO foodstuffs must take to win over wary, battered consumers:
COSTS VERSUS BENEFITS
But the costs of some of these "musts" may well cripple the industry, handicapping its ability to come up with a next generation which is aiming at nutritional and health benefits.
"The opportunity costs of what we are seeing are simply phenomenal," said Dr Henry I Miller, a former senior official in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, now a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University.
"When you over-regulate a technology to the point that it is no longer cost-effective, it goes away," Miller said.
The AEBC report recognises that the EU approach, which regulates specifically for GMOs, suggests they are unique in their potential impact on the environment.
"From a scientific perspective, there is little reason why the full weight of regulatory oversight should fall on GM crops. Many would argue that there are potentially more environmentally damaging practices...in conventional agriculture," it said.
Gregory Conko, director of food safety policy at the U.S.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non-profit public policy organisation dedicated to free enterprise and limited government, added that we may be accepting risks and forgoing benefits with the current approach.
"A product coming on the market may have a certain risk but it may still be net beneficial to the health and environment. What we would like is a regulatory system that weighs both of these equally," Conko said.
For some scientists, who regard GMOs as a refinement of cruder, older technologies, the consumer response can be, at least in part, blamed on government officials, who according to Miller, "prefer regulation to education."
"If public officials, including regulators, had spent one percent of the time on educating the public that they've spent on implementing unnecessary regulation, the public would understand that what we have is an improvement, and that these products are more predictable, more precisely crafted and ultimately safer," Miller said.
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Last Updated on 11/30/01 Email: information@biotech-info.net |
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