GM Foods are a scary topic for consumers and politicians alike, but at least the global players in biotechnology had now accepted people have not yet been convinced of their merits, according to EU Commissioner Mr David Byrne.
The European Commission, for its part, was beginning to grapple with the complex issues that arose from biotechnology, Mr Byrne said yesterday following publication in Dublin of a book on global food security by the noted Indian theologian Josanthony Joseph. It was commissioned by the development agency Trocaire and issued to commemorate International Human Rights Day.
As Commissioner for Consumer and Public Health, he said he would not be adopting the fundamentalist position that could be found at the extremes on either side of the debate.
"But because biotechnology, in terms of genetic engineering, is such a new area, I believe we must also be prudent and, in the case of scientific uncertainty, adopt a precautionary approach."
With the large biotech corporations accepting the reluctance of consumers and participating in debate with them and policy-makers, there was a chance to take some of the emotion out of the debate and introduce more reason.
Biotechnology as it applied to medicine was considered beneficial, though not without risk. But when one moved into the much newer territory of GM foods, particularly their environmental effects, more searching questions arose in Europe, despite the US growing vast quantities of GM maize and soya.
"Will people start to avoid cotton clothing as a result of GM cotton seeds? Should cows be injected with hormones, such as BST, to facilitate higher milk yields?"
One could equally ask what contribution GM rice could make to the fight against child blindness in so many developing countries. Mr Byrne said the questions raised complex ethical, moral, economic and social issues. He paid tribute to the author for raising the food debate above a mere "vested interest" level.
The author noted that just three crops - wheat, rice and maize - supplied more than half the world's food. These staples were genetically engineered and patented by "transnational companies that have gained a stranglehold over food supply, while the livelihoods of 1.4 billion farmers in the developing world are under threat". What was most unacceptable, Josanthony Joseph said, was the growing concentration of control of the world's food supply in fewer and fewer corporate hands.
Food is the fourth book in Trocaire's Christian Perspectives on Development series and is published by Veritas/CAFOD.
