Genetically Modified Food

The Liberal Democrat party’s DEFRA spokesperson has waded into the debate on GM food policy in the UK by commenting on a ministerial statement by the UK Government.

The statement, from Phil Woolas, the minister for the environment, referred to a recent consultation on the coexistence of GM and non-GM crops. The statement simply announced that the government wanted to wait until all the evidence is in before formulating a policy on growing GM crops near conventional crops. The government wants the policy so that the public can be sure that conventional crops are not contaminated by their GM neighbours.

The Liberal democrat spokesman, Chris Huhne , said
“People want to be safe and not sorry on GM foods, as the overwhelming bulk of responses to the Government’s consultation show. Ministers should not give any go-ahead for commercial planting until they can state confidently that GM varieties would not contaminate non-GM foods and that they are safe.”

Why is it important that GM crops not contaminate their non-GM counterparts, for example by cross-pollination? The answer appears to be that the British public thinks GM crops are probably dangerous, or at least have not been conclusively shown to be safe.

Is there any evidence that GM foods can cause harm to human beings? It appears not. An independent review of over 600 scientific papers in 2003 concluded that

“To date world-wide there have been no verifiable untoward toxic or nutritionally deleterious effects resulting from the cultivation and consumption of products from GM crops. However, absence of readily observable adverse effects does not mean that these can be completely ruled out and there has been no epidemiological monitoring of those consuming GM food.”

Consumers in the United States have been eating GM food for more than ten years, and GM foods have been introduced in Canada, India and Australia. Presumably, we can look to these countries for some epidemiological monitoring.

The scientific evidence also seems to show that the negative impact on human health of various manipulations of plant DNA is low. This is unlikely to persuade a British public still aching from the scars of the BSE crisis of nearly twenty years ago, which is the most likely reason for public antipathy towards statements made by governments and scientists about food safety.

Campaigners in this country have exploited the fear that the BSE scare engendered in the public mind to mobilise public opinion to levels unheard of in the rest of the world. Couple this with images of “Frankenstein foods” evoked in the British media and it is no surprise to find that the result has been to hold back British progress in a very promising field of scientific research; to force scientists working in these areas to consider leaving the country to further their careers elsewhere; and to produce nothing of discernable benefit to the British consumer.

Of course,one can’t blame politicians for wanting to react appropriately to the public mood, but would it be too much to ask that they introduce statements like Chris Huhne’s with a caveat such as “There’s no evidence that GM foods are harmful to humans”?