Government has a responsibility to ensure that food on
sale is safe and that claims can be substantiated. To do this, ministers seek
the advice of a network of advisory committees, of which the Advisory Committee
on Novel Foods and processes is one. Novel foods include all foods novel to
the UK consumer and so include GM foods, because they are novel, not just
because they are GM. The Committee is made up of experts from universities
and research institutes and, importantly, contains a consumer as a full member
and also an ethical adviser. It is chaired by a senior academic.
The regulatory bodies work in the public interest. Their decisions are made
public as is most of the information at their disposal. They have to be satisfied
that the food proposed is safe. They can ask the applicant for more information
and withhold their approval until they get it and are entirely convinced that
approval should be given. No such approval for a GM food intended for human
consumption has ever been revoked.
Comparable safety assessments have never been carried out for most of the
foods we eat. Indeed, we know that many of those are potentially dangerous.
We think we know from experience that high-cholesterol foods are harmful in
the long-term because of the damage they do - or may do - to our cardiovascular
systems. We also know that many foods cause allergic reactions in some people,
some of them serious enough to be lethal. If such foods were now about to
be offered for sale for the first time and had to pass the current regulatory
procedures for novel foods, would peanuts, eggs, milk products, wheat products,
strawberries and other fruits, as well as fish and shellfish, be permitted?
GM foods have to pass through a rigorous safety assessment by Government agencies
before they are approved.
Because safety is a negative concept (the absence of harm, damage or danger),
it can never formally be proved. But we can learn from experience that something
has indeed not been the source of harm, damage or danger and that it therefore
appears to be safe. Although tomorrow might bring something new, the more
experience we have, the more confident we can be.
Whilst it is hard to obtain precise figures, our food is probably safer than
ever before. To take one example, in the 1930s about two thousand people a
year in Britain died from drinking milk and contracting bovine tuberculosis.
Now no-one dies of this cause in Britain because of pasteurisation and tuberculin
testing of milk.
Sources:
V. Moses and M. Brannan (2001). One hundred percent safe? GM foods in
the UK. CropGen (click to download)
J. M. Bainbridge Recent developments in the regulatory system in the UK (2004).
Journal of Commercial Biotechnology, 10, 241-247.
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