In January 2000, the world saw the passage of an international regulation that seemed already dead in 1999: the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB) to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD, 1993). By September 2000, the protocol has been signed by 75 of the 178 contracting parties to the CBD, among them also Argentine who, as part of the Miami Group (consisting of the USA, Canada, Argentine, Chile and Urugay), had been opposing the biosafety protocol strongly.As the article of Meyer explains, the CPB regulates the transboundary movement of certain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and subjects them to the Precautionary Principle (PP) which allows action to be taken if there is suspicion of any potential environmental damage without first requiting full scientific proof.

Without being named as such, the precautionary principle seems to have entered the statue books in 1976 when the former West Germany adopted legislation stating that the government should avoid environmental damages by cautious planning. The PP was later prefigured in international law in the World Charter for Nature adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1982, and the Second Conference on the Protection of the North Sea (1987). It was not until 1992, that it received clear recognition when it was taken up by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. Subsequently it was incorporated in the CBD and later in the CPB.

The PP made its first appearance more than 150 years ago in the context of urban public health. In 1854, a cholera epidemic in a specific neighbourhoood in London lead John Snow to suspect an association between the drinking water from a public water pump and the outbreak of cholera, although at this time no causal connection could be demonstrated. Nevertheless, he was able to convince the responsible assembly that the potential cost of closing the pump by removing its handle would be much smaller than the consequences of leaving open, even if this the decision might be wrong in the end. His theory of cholera as a waterborne disease proved correct and the plague ended. It was only 30 years later, however, that the bacterium Vibrio cholerae was discovered.

The PP has been used recently in several prominent international incidents. The French banned the import of British beef in 1996 as a precautionary measure against spread of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE); the Germans banned the commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) corn by Novartis (Switzerland); and the European Union (EU), regardless of the far reaching consequences decided to prohibit the import of American and Canadian beef produced with growth-promoting hormones.

The PP is based on a willingness to take precautions in advance of formal scientific proof, to refrain from actions that might harm the health or the environment, and to shift the burden of proving the safety onto those who want to carry out the action. In this process, issues including the cost effectiveness of the planned action as well as of the non-action, the intrinsic value of biodiversity, and concerns for future generation can be taken into account. Unfortunately, there remain several difficulties associated with the practical implementation of the PP. How much evidence is needed to trigger the PP, for example, and what concerns should be considered relevant? Is “likely harm” an adequate reason for taking action or must there be the suggestion of “severe and irreversible damage”? The article of van Dommelen deals with this question more in detail.

It is clear that the PP and its application in the CPB reflects the current mood of distrust of technologies that are felt to be risky and forced on a naïve public by powerful commercial interests. There is growing evidence that consumers are increasingly concerned that commercial producers may be manipulating cost-benefit analysis of food production in their own interest, at the expense of the consumers health and of the environment.

Currently, the heavily emotive and often only scarcely substantiated slogan of “Feeding the World” has reentered the public debate GMOs. Promises of more and better food enhance the cost of non-action, in this case of slowing down the development of GM food, or of stopping its commercial introduction. Consumers in the EU, the USA or Japan, for example, are called selfish for exercising their choice to refuse GM food. The suggestion is that thereby somehow consumers and farmers in developing countries are denied food, health and hope. There is no doubt that consumers in industrialized countries absorb disproportionate amounts of the worlds food and feed production, but the real problem is the indirect denial of food security caused by a number of actions and non-actions by governments, producers and consumers, and not a simple refusal of GM soybean or corn by consumers.

The determination of developing countries to get a biosafety protocol, the demand for information and the right to be able to choose between GM, conventional and organic products shows that in the public mind GM crops are not per se associated with ‘good’ food. The call for cost-benefit analysis and risk assessments means that many countries want to decide product by product and plant by plant. It is yet to be seen whether the biosafety protocol can be turned into equally strong national regulations, but surely a debate of all stakeholders is neccesary.