Science and technology committee damns EU rules on authorisations for
genentically-modified crops as politicised and unscientific
The UK should be handed the regulatory power to green light genetically-modified crops because the EU’s GM rules are politicised and unscientific, an influential committee of MPs have said.
A new report from the committee is damning of regulatory delays
caused by the EU’s consideration of GM under a ‘precautionary principle’
which obliges caution where scientific evidence is insufficient,
inconclusive or uncertain.
“Opposition to genetically modified crops in many European countries
is based on values and politics, not science,” said Andrew Miller, the
chair of the science and technology committee. “The scientific evidence
is clear that crops developed using genetic modification pose no more
risk to humans, animals or the environment than equivalent crops
developed using more ‘conventional’ techniques.”
The report argues that the EU’s regulatory system allows countries
opposed to GM research to block growth in other countries, driving
research out of Europe and endangering the UK’s ability to be a global biotech player.
As such, “regulatory reform is no longer merely an option, it is a
necessity,” Miller said. “We must repatriate national decision making on
food and crop safety.”
GM is an indispensable tool in the fight against global hunger while using fewer resources, the report said.
Former environment minister, Owen Paterson echoed that view this week,telling a conference in South Africa that European Union and Greenpeace policies on GM “would condemn billions to hunger, poverty and under-development”.
Paul Nurse, the president of the Royal Society, welcomed the report’s opening of a discussion about GM science.
“The debate on GM is too often hampered by myths and misinformation,”
he said. “That is as true of the debate among legislators as it is of
public debate. To have a good discussion people need to be able to
assess the actual evidence, free of the ideology. The select committee
is right that it is time for that discussion to happen.”
Joe Perry, the chair of the European Food
Safety Authority (Efsa), also hailed the report as “incisive,” adding
that hold-ups in GM authorisations occurred after his group’s risk
assessments had been carried out.
“The report makes clear that the current delay in approvals to import
and cultivate GM crops within the EU is due to political disagreements,
not due to disagreements over the quality of the risk assessments, for
which there is a strong consensus amongst scientists across a range of
disciplines including genetics, toxicology and ecology,” Perry said.
But Greenpeace disputed the committee’s verdict, saying that GM
involved crude and outdated gene-splicing, which several studies had
linked to unpredictable effects. The group believes that marker assisted
selection biotechnologies could produce equally beneficial results.
“The committee fails to understand that the role of the risk
assessment process is to evaluate the problems and risks posed by GM
crops,” said Marco Contiero, Greenpeace Europe’s agriculture director.
“It is for the risk managers - EU member states and the commission - to
take into account the results of the safety testing, together with a
series of other legitimate factors related to broader socio-economic
issues, which also include the potential benefits of GM crops.”
Contiero said that correspondence between the GM unit at the
Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and EuropaBio, a
Brussels-based industry group, proved that the government had acted on
behalf of the biotech industry in recent EU negotiations.
The documents, recently released under Freedom of Information rules,
include an extensive series of emails in which the two bodies discuss
tactics for influencing the Brussels debate on GM regulation.
One EuropaBio suggestion for legislated dialogue with individual EU
states on a product-specific basis was proposed and successfully
introduced as part of an opt-out law by the UK.
Another EuropaBio suggestion taken up by Britain, proposed allowing
governments to opt out of the GM rules “with no reasons given”. Anti-GM
countries like France had wanted to be able to give their own scientific
justification, which would have implicitly challenged Efsa’s regulatory
primacy.
One email from EuropaBio said: “We would generally advise to give the
[GM] message a strong environmental (but of course also innovation and
competitiveness) spin, and ideally a focus not only on cultivation in
the EU, but also on the need to address the trade barriers.”
An unnamed Defra official replied by thanking EuropaBio for a “very
useful” missive, but noted: “We prefer the word ‘focus’ to spin.”
The official went on to express surprise that EuropaBio did not list
the development “angle” in the GM debate. “It’s worth shining a light on
this as one consequence of the EU situation beyond our borders...
particularly if we talk in terms of ‘Hunger’ as opposed to the slightly
more opaque term ‘food security’.”
To date, two GM crops have been commercially cultivated around the
world. Anti-GM groups have criticised one of these for its
pesticide-producing qualities and another for its tolerance to high
doses of a herbicide produced by the same GM company.
Responding to the committee’s report, a Defra spokeswoman said: “We
continue to push for the UK to make its own decisions on GM.”
