London (15.2.08)
– This week, there have been reports that Europe is facing a crisis
in its meat supply. An internal EU report (2) last summer identified a major
- and predictable - downside of the present negative attitude of many politicians
towards agricultural biotechnology: a looming shortage of imported animal
feed which will inevitably severely affect the availability of European meat
and force a major contraction of livestock farming.
The reason is that, as the area sown to GM crops continues to grow and new
traits are approved in the major agricultural exporting countries (the USA,
Argentina and Brazil) the new varieties are harvested and mixed with other
types in the commodity stream. As far as the growers and traders are concerned,
one variety of soy or maize is the same as another, with its price determined
by the protein content.
Not so in the European Union, where every new genetic trait has to be individually
approved, and even a trace of a non-approved genetic event in a bulk shipment
is sufficient for it to be rejected. No matter that these new varieties have
been approved after rigorous risk assessment in the growing country, in Europe
their presence is absolutely banned. Of course, EU regulators have every right
to conduct their own risk assessment before approval. The problem is that
the system is so far behind the rest of the world that the number of unapproved
traits is building up, increasing the chances that a few grains here and there
will be detected and cause large shipments to be rejected.
The popular perception is that Europeans are more cautious and that approvals
are not being granted because there are concerns about safety. Not so. Risk
assessments - extremely rigorous risk assessments - are done for each application
by independent expert scientists on behalf of the European Food Safety Authority,
who overwhelmingly concur with the judgements of their fellow scientists in
the USA and elsewhere.
However, politicians then make the decisions, in many cases choosing to ignore
the best scientific advice on offer in order to oppose approvals. They do
so not because the majority of their populations necessarily wish them to
do so, but because green lobby groups have persuaded them that this is the
case. It's a bit like allowing court cases to be decided by phone-in votes
based on television reports rather than by a judge and jury present for the
whole trial.
Because there has to date never been a qualified majority by the Council of
Ministers to either approve or reject an application, the final decision has
been made by the Commission, which so far has always accepted the scientific
advice and approved the application. However, these applications have (since
the lifting of the effective embargo a few years ago) been for import rather
than cultivation. Following the routine indecisive vote in the Council, the
Commission now has to make the final decision on approval of two GM crops
for cultivation, and this time the Commission itself is playing politics.
Environment Commissioner Dimas has indicated that he intends to reject the
positive recommendation from EFSA, in deference to the powerful green lobby,
despite opposition from many of his colleagues, including Agriculture Commissioner
Fischer Boel. If he succeeds in blocking these applications, surely the final
nail will have been driven into the coffin of the current approval system.
Europe will have turned its back on rational scientific advice and laid course
for the unsustainable policy cul-de-sac of pretending to be "GM-free".
The reality is different. The European livestock industry simply cannot exist
in its present form without importing large quantities of vegetable protein
(3, 4) By far the largest part of this is genetically modified, but based
on genetic traits approved in the EU some time ago. Increasingly, the commodity
stream will contain traces of new varieties, as yet unapproved and hence illegal.
The EU will have to choose either to decimate its meat industry or revamp
its regulations and approvals process. If it is the former, consumers will
increasingly have to buy imported meat, which will have been fed on the very
same GM grain we are so reluctant to allow in. We can only hope that the now-obvious
contradictions and tensions are sufficient to force an overhaul of the process.
Sources:
1. Martin Livermore. Europe and GM animal feed. Scientific Alliance
Newsletter 15.2.08 (http://www.scientific-alliance.org).
This contribution has been modified slightly from the original and is
posted with the author’s permission.
2. Economic impact of unapproved GMOs on EU feed imports and livestock
product. European Commission Directorate-General for Agriculture and
Rural Development (July 2007) (http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/envir/gmo/economic_impactGMOs_en.pdf)
3. Stephen Cadogan (10.1.08). € 60 m farming bill as feed millers
can’t get maize. Irish Examiner
4. Andrew Bounds (19.2.08). Failure on GM crops could ruin livestock industry,
EU farmers warn. Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/25d78330-de92-11dc-9de3-0000779fd2ac.htm)
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