Public hostility scaring biotech companies away, warns Busquin

Date: 20/03/03

By Karen Carstens

PHILIPPE Busquin has warned that continued hostility from the EU public towards agricultural biotechnology is contributing to a sharp decrease in biotech research in Europe.

"The increasingly sceptic climate is scaring biotech companies and research centres away," the Union's research commissioner said. "If we do not reverse the trend now, we will become dependent on technology developed elsewhere in the world within the next ten years."

His comments came after a new Eurobarometer survey on biotechnology and life sciences revealed what the European Commission calls "lukewarm" support for genetically modified (GM) crops and overall opposition to GM foods. A majority oppose GM crops in six out of the 15 member states: France, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Luxembourg and Austria. Governments in the first five countries initiated the de facto EU moratorium on authorising new GM products introduced in 1999.

There is overall support for such foods in only four countries: Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Finland. Respondents did, however, generally approve of medical and industrial biotechnology applications.

Adeline Farrelly, spokeswoman for bio-industries association EuropaBio, greeted the poll's results with cautious optimism, welcoming the "great support for health care biotech" in particular. Genetic testing for inherited diseases and cloning human cells and tissues are, for example, supported in all member states. "The attitudes to biotech are back at the levels of the beginning of the 1990s," she said. "And on green (GM) biotech, the attitudes have stabilised."

The survey found that all EU countries, apart from Spain and Austria, showed moderate to large declines in support for both GM crops and food from 1996 to 1999. Thereafter support stabilises in France and Germany and increases in all the other countries, with the exception of Italy.

Farrelly said biotech firms were, however, worried about signs of dwindling European industrial interest in GM technologies.

Another Commission study released on 5 March found that the number of field trials conducted in the EU using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) had dropped by 76 since 1998. In addition, 39 of private biotech companies and public research institutes questioned said they had cancelled research projects on GMOs.

"We have been concerned about this for a very long time," Farrelly said. "And this independent study confirms what we have been saying for a very long time."

The Commission fears that if member states do not take a more positive attitude towards GM crops soon, relocation of research and commercialisation outside the EU will continue unabated. "Practically the entire European biotechnology industry is facing difficulties due to the collapse of investor confidence in knowledge-based industries," said Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen.

"Many small biotechnology enterprises, working on medical, industrial, agricultural and environmental applications, are unable to get the funding they need to turn their research findings into a commercial reality," he added. Farrelly said the EU faces increasingly stiff competition on the research front from the more biotech-friendly United States, China, India, Argentina and Canada.

"Most of the big [biotech] companies will do this research anyway, they'll just do it somewhere else," she said.

An annual report on 'science & technology indicators' released by the Commission on Tuesday (17 March) found the EU is also weak in the patenting of new biotech products. At the European Patent Office, where European firms could be expected to have a home-advantage over US firms, the latter account for a larger share of biotech patent applications (51.9) than EU firms (27.8).

• GREEN groups have threatened to pull out of talks hosted by the Commission on the 'co-existence' of genetically modified and non-GM crops. They claim the discussion, scheduled for 24 April, is "biased" towards the biotech industry.

Geert Ritsema, GMO campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe, accused the Commission of "trying to hide away from a real debate on the potential environmental and economic consequences of allowing GMOs into Europe on a large scale". Other groups backing the threatened boycott include Greenpeace, and the European Environmental Bureau.

In a letter to commissioners, they write that the round table "only deals with scientific and technical matters in an unbalanced way, since the GMO industry is well represented in the panels, whereas other concerned parties are not". This contradicts a 5 March Commission statement promising that "stakeholders will have their say", they claim.

Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin has warned that continued hostility from the EU public towards agricultural biotechnology is contributing to a sharp decrease in biotech research in Europe.