| Keywords: | Europe, Genetic Engineering, Public acceptance |
| Correct citation: | Schenkelaars, P. (2001), "Uncertainty and reluctance: Europe and GM food." Biotechnology and Development Monitor, No. 47, p. 16-19. |
It was not until autumn 1996, when European environmental activists tried to block the first imports of genetically modified (GM) soya, that the USA and European media started getting serious about biotechnology. This article examines how regulatory structures to deal with GM crops have evolved within the European Union (EU) in recent years and describes how public uncertainties about foods containing GM products continue to shape legislation.
The controversial approval of GM maize by the European Commission (EC) in 1997 fuelled the emerging public controversy over GM foods, heightening the interest of all stakeholders involved in the food production chain. Many Europeans suddenly became aware that soya and maize derivatives were widely used in the production of everyday foods. Public interest groups expressed concerns about the environmental and food safety assessments of these novel varieties and the increasing global control of food production by a limited number of biotechnology and food processing companies. The biotechnology industry, governments and scientific organisations countered these concerns by emphasising the environmental and agronomic benefits of novel crops. As a result there was a real public relations (PR) battle by all stakeholders for the hearts of the public. In the ensuing debate scientific knowledge and empirical evidence on the risks and benefits of GM crops, if it existed, often played a marginal role.
The advent of recombinant DNA techniques aroused considerable interest in industrialized countries. It seemed to have economic potential and was described as a key technology of the 21st century. The EC, national governments, industry and science expected benefits to accrue in areas such as healthcare, industrial chemicals, food and feeds, agriculture and environmental clean-up services. It was anticipated that innovation and growth stimulated by the application of biotechnology would mean increased investments in supplies, services and hardware, that would ultimately have a positive effect on employment.
As a result the EC and national governments started to create an attractive investment climate for the biotechnology industry in order to remain economically competitive with North America and Asia. European and national knowledge infrastructures were built by providing financial incentives for biotechnology research programmes at universities and public research institutes, for small start-up biotech companies and for innovation and technology transfer by industry. In addition, the EC and national governments also began implementing regulatory frameworks to address aspects like patenting rights on biotechnological inventions and the safe use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Since the mid 1980s groups critical of specific aspects of biotechnology have emerged in EU countries. Much of their criticism has been directed towards the political, socio-economic, ecological and ethical issues associated with the application of genetic engineering. Whilst perceptions and arguments were influenced by national, political and cultural factors, these groups generally regarded biotechnology as an ill-conceived attempt to repair the damage to human health and the environment caused by the chemical technologies employed in industry, agriculture and food production. Since these technologies had been developed by the same companies that were now using genetic engineering, expectations about its benefits and risks held by industry, science, national governments and the EC were greeted with suspicion. Biotechnology was viewed as a technological fix that would only perpetuate existing industrial, agricultural and food production practices.
From such perspectives, public interest groups started to inform consumer, environmental, animal welfare, small farmers', women's, trade union, Developing countries and church organizations on the developments taking place in biotechnology and, in doing so, started to establish national networks. These networks immediately began interacting with each other at the European level - regularly facilitated by the environmental parties in the European Parliament - to counteract the lobbying pressure being exerted on the EC by the biotechnology industry.
At first, major consumer and environmental organisations had little interest in campaigning about biotechnology. But this changed when in 1988 four USA companies applied for a European license to market a genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (BGH, also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin, rBST) as a veterinary drug to increase milk production in dairy cows. This triggered the first campaigns by coalitions of different types of public interest groups. Whereas the producers of BGH argued that its use to enhance milk yield was simply another 'management tool', those who opposed its introduction were very critical of this 'instrumental' approach to animals. They also questioned the safety of BGH and its effects on animal health and welfare and were concerned that the introduction of BGH would drive many small dairy farmers, who were already struggling with the heavily subsidized milk surplus in Europe, out of business. It was argued that if BGH were to be approved, milk from cows treated with BGH should be kept apart and labelled so consumers could choose which type of milk they wanted.
This wave of protest created a serious dilemma for the EC. If BGH was granted a product license in the USA, failure to license it in Europe could provoke the USA to evoke trade sanctions. Nevertheless, in 1989 the EC decided to adopt a 15-month moratorium on the commercial use of BGH. In 2001, eight years later, the EC has still not given its consent and the controversy about safety, socio-economic impacts, consumer choice and ethics has now extended to include GM food.
Another controversial issue was the proposal by the EC in 1988 to allow intellectual property rights (IPRs) on biotechnological inventions. The EU aim was to work towards harmonizing national patent laws. While the European Patent Office (EPO) had already begun issuing the first European patents on GM plants and GM animals, public interest groups and the Greens in the European Parliament declared it was unacceptable to allow 'patents on life'. Besides moral concerns, there were also more specific criticism that patents would prevent plant breeders exchanging breeding material, farmers from saving seed from one harvest to the next and scientists from exchanging information. Public interest groups brought several cases against patents granted on GM plants and animals to the Court of Appeal of the EPO.
In May 1998, after more than ten years of discussion, the European Parliament approved the European Patent Directive (EPD). But the controversy continues with the Netherlands, Italy and Norway challenging the directive before the EU Court of Justice. Other countries such as Belgium, France, Germany and Denmark have made it clear to the EC that they have difficulties implementing the directive into their national patent legislation.
The development of recombinant DNA techniques in the 1970s lead to immediate discussions among scientists and government policy makers as to whether the use of genetic engineering involved unique hazards and whether the application of these techniques should be regulated. In 1983, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) started working out general safety guidelines for the use of GMOs in industry, agriculture and the environment. These were published in 1987 and although they were not binding, they have had considerable influence on the implementation of national safety regulations in most industrialized countries.
The way these guidelines have been implemented has varied from country to country. Countries such as Germany, for example, decided to adopt completely new legislation to specifically regulate research and use of GMOs whereas others, including the Netherlands, preferred to adapt existing legislation.
The EC subsequently tried to harmonize the national safety regulations of member states. On 23 April 1990, it adopted two directives: Directive 90/219 on the contained use of GM micro-organisms and Directive 90/220 on the deliberate release of GMOs into the environment. In its communication, the EC pointed out that appropriate legislation was seen as an important part of developing an atmosphere of acceptance and public confidence. Public consultation in decision-making on the use of GMOs was viewed as a key element in creating such an atmosphere.
In 1993 the biotechnology industry concluded that in contrast to that of the USA, the European approach to regulations seemed to imply that genetic engineering was a potentially hazardous technique. The EC responded by issuing proposals for simplifying both directives, which in turn led to criticism from various public interest groups. These groups saw this simplification as deregulation, initiated to decrease the impact of central recommendations on how to proceed with risk assessments of GMOs. However, neither the methodologies nor the data for a reliable prognosis on their long-term ecological effects were available.
Directive 90/220 in particular caused serious disputes between the EC and national authorities during the approval procedures for the commercial cultivation of the first GM crops such as insect resistant Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) maize and herbicide tolerant oilseed rape in 1996 and 1997. There were, for example, disputes over the burden and type of scientific evidence relevant for the predictability of effects, over the role of new scientific knowledge in decreasing or increasing uncertainty about potential effects, and over the types of 'adverse effects', which should be evaluated and prevented. The definition of 'adverse effects' appeared to be particularly problematic from a regulatory policy point of view, as this involves a normative (and non-scientific) judgement about the acceptability of potential effects. Some member states like the Netherlands, France and the UK took existing agricultural practices as a normative baseline and the impact of a GM crop was judged against the impact of a conventional crop. Other countries including Austria and Sweden adopted a more stringent baseline that a GM crop should cause relatively less harm than a conventional crop and should not jeopardize any crop protection methods that contribute to sustainable agriculture.
These regulatory disputes led to a cumbersome review of Directive 90/220 by the EC, national regulatory authorities and the European Parliament. In June 1998, the European Council of Environment Ministers agreed to a proposal for a revision of the directive from the EC. An important difference was that approvals for commercial use of GMOs would only be granted for a limited period of time, i.e. ten years. Furthermore, post-marketing monitoring would be required and bags of GM seed would have to be labelled. In addition, threshold values for 'adventitious' contamination with GM material and requirements for traceability of GMOs would be established.
Despite the Ministerial agreement, France, Greece, Denmark, Italy and Luxemburg declared that as long as there were no concrete regulations for labelling and traceability, they would not give any further consent for the marketing of GM crops. Blocking by these five EU states resulted in a de facto moratorium, which was explicitly contested by countries such as Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Subsequently, to conform with EU law, the proposal revising the directive had then to be adopted by the European Parliament. Since public concerns about GM foods were mounting all over Europe, a lengthy procedure had to be followed to reconcile differences in views between the EC and the major political factions in the European Parliament.
The reconciliation procedure took more than 18 months and resulted in the publication of Directive 2001/18 in February 2001 to be implemented into national legislation before October 2002 as an amendment to Directive 90/220. Passed on 25 July 2001, the EC regulation on the traceability and labelling of food and feed products produced from GMOs, amended the new Directive 2001/18. It now allows the 'adventitious' presence of unauthorised GMOs in conventional foodstuffs up to a threshold of one per cent without labelling.
Public interest groups claim that freedom of consumer choice can only be exercised if GMO foods are labelled and GMO-free foods remain available. In several European countries, public interest groups started issuing 'green' lists of GMO-free food and 'red' lists of GM foods. As a result, food manufacturers and retailers in Europe started seriously reconsidering their position on the use of GM soya and GM maize and set about investigating options that would make it possible to exclude ingredients from GM crops from their (brand) products. This was, however, far from easy, as the USA, which had already approved many GM crop varieties, did not consider it desirable to segregate GM soya and GM maize from conventional varieties because it would seriously disrupt existing global trading practices in bulk commodities and limit their exports.
The first imports of GM soya into Europe had also attracted the attention of the health food and organic food industries where soya products play an important role. Against this background of anxiety on consumer markets, associations for organic produce began marketing their produce as free of genetic manipulation, and organic farmers' organisations explicitly rejected the use of GMOs. However, bringing this into practice and keeping organic products GMO free has proved to be a complicated business. For example, in the case of some crops such as maize, there was the risk that outcrossing from GM maize could contaminate the organic crop. From 1998, several grain handlers, food companies, retailers, member states and the organic sector started to develop systems of documentary and technical control to monitor the supply lines of (identity preserved) non-GM raw materials.
Meanwhile pressure was being exerted on the EC and national governments by the food industry and retail, consumer and environmental organisations to issue regulations on the labelling of GM foods. The first European regulations formed in 1997 provided that GM food or ingredients derived from them should be labelled if traces of DNA resulting from genetic engineering were detectable in the final consumer product. This meant that a consumer product containing oil refined from GM soya was not required to carry a GM label.
However, this labelling scheme did not meet the degree of freedom of consumer choice that consumer and environmental organisations appeared to require. In EC labelling proposals adopted in July 2001 all foods produced from GMOs, irrespective of whether DNA or protein of GM origin is detectable in the final product, must be labelled. Such labelling also requires that GM food can be traced to their origin 'from farm to fork'. However the proposals allow for the presence of unauthorized GMOs up to a level of one per cent without labelling. This one per cent clause has been criticized by the opposition to GMOs as creating "a license to pollute".
Since the mid 1990s, Europe has had to deal with several food scares. The way these have been managed by European and national officials has led to a serious decrease in the public's confidence in regulatory authorities. GM crops subsequently became the focus of more general concerns about intensive agriculture. This led to greater scrutiny of production methods throughout the food chain, a process that has been fostered by many globally operating food processing and retail firms in an effort to restore consumer trust in food quality.
Many European farmers and their organizations still have ambiguous feelings about biotechnology and view developments in this area from the perspective of an industry that is well aware that today's food markets are driven by consumer demand.
Since June 1998, a series of applications to introduce GM crops on the European market have been blocked by a de facto moratorium by five EU member states. Although the EC has now proposed new regulations, these still have to be implemented in national legislation. From a procedural point of view, this could easily take more than two years. As a result, compared to other parts of the world, there is little demand in Europe for GM food crops. At the same time, the EC proposals have further upset the USA and other major grain exporters at the forefront of the commercialization of GM food crops and trade conflicts have been threatened.
Against this background, the biotechnology industry, government and science, have all increased their efforts to inform the general public about the GM issue using a variety of means including media campaigns, citizens juries and broad public debates and have become increasingly aware of the strategic importance of engaging public interest groups in 'stakeholder dialogues'. However, many public interest groups have greeted these efforts at communication with a mixture of suspicion and scepticism and have intensified their campaigning activities. Radical groups in countries such as France, the UK, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have sabotaged many GM field trials in the last two years and as a result, the controversy over GM foods is again high on the agenda of EU member states.
At the moment, Europe has limited experience with the cultivation of GM crops. Sound scientific investigation into the potential benefits and risks of growing GM crops compared to conventional and organic products may, therefore, provide the empirical evidence lacking in the current debate. Scientific investigations should seek to engage all stakeholder parties in the research design and evaluation of findings. But given the plurality of values across European countries and among stakeholders, science alone will not be able to advance the debate. Extended communication processes of knowledge sharing, deliberation, justification and negotiation between all stakeholders need to be developed urgently to ensure informed discussion on whether GM crops can lead to more sustainable agriculture in Europe, and if so, under what conditions.
Schenkelaars Biotechnology Consultancy, Niels Bohrweg 11-13, 2333 CA Leiden, the Netherlands.
Phone (+31) 71 523 5089; Fax (+31) 71 523 5090; E-mail pschenkelaars.sbcbiotech@planet.nl
URL: http://www.sbcbiotech.nl
Sources
Schenkelaars, P. (1996), "Outlooks on Public Information and Participation in the Context of the European Biotechnology Directives 90/219/EEC and 90/220/EEC". In: Van Dommelen, A. (ed.), Coping with Deliberate Release: The Limits of Risk Assessment.. Tilburg, The Netherlands: International Centre for Human and Public Affairs.
Durant, J., Bauer, M.W., and Gaskell, G. (eds.), Biotechnology in the Public Sphere: A European Sourcebook.. Michigan, USA: Michigan State University Press.
Tokar, B. (ed.) (2001), Redesigning Life: The worldwide challenge to genetic engineering.. London, UK: Zed Books.
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