GM food accord hard to swallow at Japan summit
Date: 20-Jul-00
Country: JAPAN
Author: Stuart Grudgings
A year later, they still need all the help they can get.
A rising tide of public anxiety over the health and environmental risks of GM products coupled with high-profile mishaps have ensured the issue is more divisive than ever.
As a result, diplomats say any progress at this weekend's summit in southern Japan will likely be restricted to coordinating further research on GM safety.
Even this may be controversial if it is seen by the United States, the world's biggest GM producer and home to a $4 billion a year GM food industry, as another way of delaying acceptance of the technology.
U.S. bio-tech firms are already smarting from the adoption this year of the Biosafety Protocol, the first agreement regulating GM trade, which allows countries to block GM imports whose safety they doubt under the "precautionary principle".
Yet some experts say the United States may have to soften its stance and submit to European and Japanese demands for more stringent checks as there is a growing acceptance that public concern is the biggest single barrier to GM trade.
"One of the big issues is public concern...there's a growing recognition of the need to engage a broader range of stakeholders," Peter Kearns, the principle administrator for biotechnology at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), told Reuters.
OECD HANDS IN HOMEWORK
A set of OECD reports drawn up at the request of last year's G8 summit aims to set out the state of debate on GM organisms, which contain a gene from a different organism to give plants resistance to herbicides or disease.
The G8 is set to agree on a framework to coordinate research and study based on the OECD's findings, but critics say these raise as many questions as answers.
The OECD's assertion that governments are confident in the safety of GM products they have already approved has stirred up controversy.
Activists say the OECD has excluded anti-GM opinion from the process while favouring the biotech industry and scientists keen to promote GM research.
Nor does the report provide definitive answers on some of the murkier scientific and ethical problems posed by GM food.
On "substantial equivalence" - which refers to when GM food is similar enough to its natural counterpart to be seen as safe - the report noted concern over the adequacy of testing.
Some believe the jury is still out on other health and environment worries, prompting consumer groups to call on the G8 earlier this week to impose a moratorium on GM food development.
PR DISASTER
Although evidence so far suggests GM food is safe, recent events have been a public relations disaster for the industry, especially in Europe, where scares are reported almost daily.
The credibility of government GM programmes was shaken this year after hundreds of farmers in Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Sweden unwittingly sowed natural oil seed rape that had been contaminated by GM material in Canada.
The case sparked a public outcry and highlighted environmentalists' concerns about the long-term impact of GM crops on the ecosystem - something they say may be impossible to measure for generations and too late to reverse when it appears.
A move last week by the European Union toward ending its 21-month-old moratorium on licensing GM organisms was enough to spark an outraged response from consumer and environmental groups.
"I believe the writing is on the wall (for GM foods)," said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, a U.S. consumer group. "It doesn't matter what governments say, stores are increasingly refusing to stock GM food in response to people's concerns."
TOO MANY COOKS?
One proposal likely to be aired at the summit is a British-backed idea to set up an international panel to include GM supporters and critics. But some argue it would simply muddy the waters further.
"It could definitely confuse things by picking up on issues o