Experts Urge Cautious Approach to Biotechnology

By Catherine Lazaroff

WASHINGTON, DC, June 17, 1999 (ENS) - While public opinion about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the U.S. and Europe appears to differ radically, experts from both sides of the Atlantic agree that scientific advances in biotechnology are rapidly outpacing the laws meant to regulate the business. At a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, experts from the U.S. and the European Union (EU) spoke out in favor of a cautious approach to the development of new GMO products.

Biotechnological advances in agriculture are moving into the mainstream in the U.S. Genetically modified crops such as soybeans, corn and tomatoes can be easily found on American grocery shelves, though they are not always labeled as such.

In Europe however, consumers and policy makers have strongly resisted the influx of GM crops. Responding to citizen protests and media attention, several supermarket chains in Great Britain have banned all foods containing GM ingredients. Protesters have destroyed experimental GM crops throughout Europe, and even the Prince of Wales has spoken publicly against GM crops.

In May, the British Medical Association (BMA) put out a statement on the impact of genetic modification on agriculture, food safety and human health. "It is an interim statement because we believe that the advances in scientific knowledge, and the governmental responses to advances, and public responses to advances, are so rapid that it is not possible to make a definitive statement," said Sir William Asscher, chairman of the BMA’s board of science and education and director of the United Kingdom Coordinating Committee on Cancer Research.

Speaking at the news conference, Asscher said the BMA concluded, "There are too many fingers in the pie of regulating genetically modified foods in Britain. "What the BMA asked for was time to find out the effects of GMOs and time to get the regulatory system in place so as to be able to reassure on the basis of scientific knowledge and appropriate regulation rather than on prejudice and commercial pressure."

Tassos Haniotis, agriculture counselor for the European Commission, said a similar situation exists in Europe at large. "The situation in Europe is ever evolving," said Haniotis. "The Commission is caught up very often in an environment where one has a feeling that we’re always shooting at a moving target" in regard to GMOs.

Entomologist Robert Behle applies spray-dried biopesticide formulations to leaf disks in a lab at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agricultural Research Service. (Photo by Keith Weller courtesy ARS)

Haniotis sees different perceptions of acceptable risks and different regulatory frameworks as creating much of the friction between the U.S. and the European Union over GMOs. "We’re talking about the acceptable level of risk to consumers, and this is clearly set at a different level in Europe than what it is in the U.S. And this is set at a different level not overall but in food," he said.

"We don’t have a wide debate about the medical applications of biotechnology in Europe," said Haniotis. "This is because the costs and the benefits are weighed in a completely different manner than how they are weighed in agriculture."

The push in the U.S. to bring GM crops on the market may be moving too fast for either science or regulation to keep pace. Recent reports show that some GM crops thought to be harmless can damage non-target species. A modified corn crop designed to produce an insect toxin targeted at corn borers, agricultural pests, also kills harmless monarch butterflies exposed to the corn pollen.

Dr. David Andow, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, says when the developers of the corn were asked whether it would injure other members of the same insect group, lepidoptera, they argued that no threatened or endangered lepidoptera eat corn. No one stopped to think that the corn pollen, which would naturally blow beyond corn fields, would also contain the toxin, Andow notes.

The same toxin has now been added to modified trees for the forest industry, Andow says. Poplar trees carrying the Bt toxin are "fairly far along in testing," he says, and experiments have begun using pine trees.

The effect of GM crops on nontarget species is one of the largely unexplored dangers of biotechnology. Humans may also be affected by these crops. Recently, organic corn chips from the U.S. that were imported to the EU were found to contain the Bt toxin, possibly indicating transference of the toxin from nearby GM corn fields.

"We are allowing interventions into the food supply in a variety of ways, but not giving enough information to consumers to allow them to make choices," said Dr. Paul Billings, chief medical officer and deputy director of the Veterans Health Administration and a board member of the Council for Responsible Genetics.

USDA Agricultural Research Service plant pathologist Scott Abney (left) and research assistant Tom Richards check the growth of soybeans inoculated with field isolates of a plant disease. (Photo by Scott Bauer courtesy USDA)

"With genetically modified foods, exposure is involuntary," agrees Asscher. "And when you are talking about involuntary exposure to possible hazards, the safety has to be really established to far more than a voluntary exposure as in the case of a medicine."

The British Medical Association has recommended mandatory labeling of all products containing GMOs, and the prohibition of any mixing of GM and non-GM crops at farms.

All the speakers at Wednesday’s press conference urged biotechnology companies to slow their rate of creating and introducing new GMOs, and recommended that more testing be done by independent scientists, rather than industry employees.

Because science is not infallible, the speakers also recommended additional caution on the part of policy makers. "It is clear to me everywhere in the world that scientists do not make policy decisions," says Haniotis. "If we treat science as something that provides absolute truth and perfect answers, then I think we are stretching to its limits its role which is essential in the policy making process."

"Once the genie is out of the bottle, it is not possible to put it back," warned Asscher. Unlike new medicines, which can be withdrawn from the market, recovering a GMO which has been released into the environment will not be as easy, he said. "With genetic modification, it may not be possible to reverse the environmental effects."