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Friday, July 23, 1999
Minneapolis Star Tribune (Unites States)Frankenfoods
- Doubts over biotech deserve respect
In pledging enhanced scrutiny of genetically engineered foods, Agriculture
Secretary Dan Glickman has paid appropriate if belated attention to safety
concerns held by many consumers -- doubts that may well be dispersed by
scientific study, but in the meantime deserve respect.
Yes, there is indeed considerable scientific consensus -- as the makers
and regulators of these new products are fond of asserting -- that
gene-spliced foods pose no hazard to humans. But it is unsupported by
specific long-term study and is based chiefly on the inference that since
the new foods aren't very different from the old ones, there is little to
worry about.
Many reasonable people find this kind of consensus unpersuasive, and no
wonder. The doubters may not have science on their side but they do have
history, in the long list of substances -- from radium to DDT to
thalidomide -- that were once thought benign but turned out otherwise.
And they have the alarming example of one biotech company, seeking better
animal feeds, that inadvertently transferred allergens from a nut to a
soybean.
Just now the doubts are running particularly deep in Europe, where fear of
"Frankenfoods" has moved protesters to destroy test plantings and
governments to erect import bans. Glickman attributes this to Europeans'
lack of strong, U.S.-style regulatory programs in which to place their
confidence.
In fact, some serious gaps in the U.S. system have been spotlighted by
biotech issues -- especially those arising from potatoes and other crops
engineered to produce an organic insect toxin known as Bt. The Food and
Drug Administration, which normally certifies the safety of foods and food
additives, has no authority over pesticides and therefore refers matters
concerning Bt to the Environmental Protection Agency. For its part, the
EPA assumes that since both Bt and potatoes are harmless to humans, the
combination must also be safe.
Glickman's department, which has the conflicting tasks of promoting new
biotech products while ensuring that they pose no harm to other plants or
animals, is aware of concerns that the new crops could create strains of
Bt-resistant pests, but so far it has relied on voluntary efforts to
prevent that result. Similarly, the FDA relies on safety assurances from
food companies.
One needn't be a food purist or a paranoid to wish these regulatory
agencies would adopt a more assertive stance toward those they oversee.
Or to welcome Glickman's pledge to step up monitoring of the new products
for problems, while ordering an independent scientific assessment of the
process by which his agency has already reviewed and approved 50 new
biotech products. If only the FDA would adopt similar initiatives.
It was disappointing, too, to hear Glickman take a wishy-washy position on
the question of labeling genetically modified foods as such -- a step
demanded by some consumer groups and emphatically resisted by industry.
The secretary acknowledges that labeling appears inevitable, but it would
be far better to see him leading the charge. It will be years before
science answers all the fears over biotech food; in the meantime,
consumers ought to be able to choose whether to eat the stuff. |