GMO firms struggle to reap benefits

Date: 25/03/1999

By Simon Coss

YOU have to admire Monsanto's tenacity.

In the week when some of the EU's largest food retailers gave a categorical thumbs down to genetically modified foods, the firm described by British Labour MEP David Bowe as a "biotech bogeyman" was adamant that there was still a serious market for its GM crops and seeds in the Union.

" We are confident there are long-term commercial opportunities for agri-food biotechnology in Europe," insisted Monsanto's Ken Baker, outlining the benefits of genetically modified organisms for farmers at last week's European Voice conference on GMOs in Brussels.

But all the speakers acknowledged that the industry faced an uphill struggle to overcome public hostility towards GM products in Europe.

The arguments on either side of the great debate can be summarised as follows. The biotechnology industry insists that the new crops offer enormous benefits to consumers and there is no evidence that they are dangerous, while environmental campaigners argue that too little is known about the long-term effects of GMOs on both human health and the environment and far more research is therefore needed before products are made available to the public.

Both sides can produce plenty of scientific evidence to support their respective hypotheses, as demonstrated by the contributions from Friends of the Earth genetic engineering expert Dan Leskien, Unilever Research's chief scientist Dr Theo Verrips and Klaus Ammann, director of the botanical gardens at the University of Bern in Switzerland, at last week's conference.

However, when it comes to the vital question of what Europeans actually think about GMOs, the environmentalists appear to be winning the argument.

This fact was highlighted by Austrian MEP Dr Marilies Flemming, who insisted that her country's government had little option but to risk the wrath of the European Commission by introducing a unilateral ban on GM-maize, in the light of public hostility to the new crop varieties.

Across the Union, consumers are making it clear that they have serious misgivings about eating produce which has been genetically modified, be it safe or not.

The Union's supermarkets have not been slow to hear that message. On the eve of last week's conference, some of Europe's largest food retailers - including the UK's Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer, Carrefour (France), Superquinn (Ireland), Delhaize (Belgium) and Esselungu (Italy) - formed a consortium which has pledged to buy shipments of GM-free ingredients for use in their 'own label' products.

Their decision is likely to have serious consequence for US soya exporters. Soya derivatives can be found in around 60-70% of processed foods. At present, most of Europe's supplies of the crop come from the other side of the Atlantic, where GM and non-GM varieties are routinely mixed together prior to shipment.

The US is currently the world's largest single producer of genetically modified crops. But if American exporters do not change their practice and set up systems for shipping gene-altered strains separately from 'natural' varieties, they risk losing some of their biggest customers to non-GM suppliers from countries such as Canada.

At last week's conference, US Deputy Secretary for Agriculture Richard Rominger repeated Washington's view that introducing such 'segregation' would put an unfair financial burden on his country's grain suppliers. He insisted the US administration was "bending over backwards" to understand Europe's situation, but said Washington was "concerned" about some of the proposals for revising the EU's procedure for approving biotechnology products.

" As traditional trade barriers begin to fall, we owe it to consumers to see that food safety does not become the next trade battleground," he warned.

But even as Rominger was speaking, the US exporters themselves were facing up to the realities of international free trade. Last weekend, grain and feed buyers at the US National Grain and Feed Association conference in San Francisco warned farmers that if they chose to grow GM crops, they ran the risk of not being able to sell their produce in Europe.

The intensity of the public backlash against GMOs has thrown the spotlight on the battle still raging between the 'big three' EU institutions - the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament - over how to update the 1990 directive (90/220) which sets out the EU-wide authorisation procedures for new GM crop strains.

Bowe, the Parliament's rapporteur on the directive, is convinced that a balance has to be struck. "Human health and the environment must come first," says the MEP. But he also stresses that the updated law should not be unfair on the biotechnology sector, insisting: "We should not be legislating the industry out of existence."

Bowe is also calling for an independent regulatory agency to be set up to handle future approvals of GMO crops. At present, all new strains have to be cleared by the Union's environment ministers who, the biotechnology industry argues, often make political rather than scientific judgements.

Monsanto and many of the Union's other 'life sciences' firms have warmly welcomed Bowe's proposals. "We need a sound, rational basis on which to make decisions," said Baker.

The Commission's views on the desirability of GM crops and seeds have been somewhat schizophrenic at the best of times. In the week when the institution was reeling, dazed and leaderless after the shock resignation of President Jacques Santer and his 19 colleagues, that confusion was more evident than ever.

The Commission does not appear to be able to make up its mind whether the biotechnology industry is an exciting new sector which will generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs and help Europe lead the world in the technology of the 21st century, or whether consumers should be protected from the as-yet-unknown long-term effects of eating plants which have been designed in laboratories.

Christina Kaul, who advises Acting Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler on biotechnology issues, tended towards the former view in her speech to the conference.

She said the industry had the potential to create around 1 million jobs in the EU, but warned that Europe was currently lagging behind the US "when it comes to the application of biotechnology in agriculture".

But Horst Reichenbach, who heads the Commission's Directorate-General for consumer policy and health protection (DGXXIV), adopted a more cautious tone.

Reichenbach used the example of driving to illustrate the fact that people were willing to take very large risks if there were obvious benefits attached to the activity involved. He pointed out that car crashes were common, but this did not deter motorists from taking advantage of the benefits cars had to offer.

But Reichenbach suggested that if the benefits of a given activity were less clear, then so was the willingness to tempt fate, and added that it was hard to argue that GM foods had a "specific and special benefit for the consumer".

Major feature on a European Voice conference on GMOs.