France and Germany’s decision to ban the planting of genetically modified corn is politics unsupported by science, says a French scientist who studied the evidence.
Many prominent European scientists have publicly protested.
“The French and German bans are politically motivated,” Agnes Ricroch of AgroParisTech and Université d’Orsay told a Sept. 23 conference organized by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC).
“It is a victory of the precautionary principle.”
She said France, the first European Union country to ban planting herbicide-tolerant corn in defiance of EU decisions, invoked a special safeguard rule citing “new evidence” about the dangers of GM corn.
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However, scientists at the Université de Paris studied the “new evidence” and found it either old or flawed.
Ricroch said 40 French scientists protested the ban last year, and the European Food Safety Authority said the safeguard measure invoked by France and later Germany was unjustified by scientific evidence.
However, the politics of GM food in France are volatile. In March, a display table that the association of scientists who questioned the ban set up at an agricultural fair was vandalized.
“When scientists’ opinions diverge with their own, anti-GMO opponents tend to use verbal and sometimes physical attacks,” Ricroch said.
As Canadian exporters of GM food have complained for years, evidence presented at the conference by French scientists illustrated a highly politicized system for approving GM varieties.
Expert advisory panel
The Commission du Génie Génétique, the body that makes recommendations to the French government on the acceptability of new proposed varieties, includes 11 scientists whose expertise range from agronomy and toxicology to ecology and medicine.
It also includes a consumer representative, an environmentalist, a farmer representative, two labour representatives, a lawyer and a member of Parliament.
The commission, with committees on the science of the application and the ecological and sociological implications of the proposed new variety, then makes a recommendation to the French agriculture minister, who conducts public consultations and seeks environment ministry views before making a decision.
It is a varietal approval system in contrast to the arms-length process in Canada, in which the Canadian Food Inspection Agency restricts itself to scientific criteria, including agronomic traits, before making a decision.
Socio-economic impacts are not part of the process.
That became part of the discussion at the Royal Society conference as critics of the Canadian system complained that citizens and society are excluded from the decision-making process about new varieties.
“There is a distinct lack of democracy and transparency in relation to this technology,” said Lucy Sharratt, co-ordinator for the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network in Ottawa.
Canadian members on the RSC speakers’ panel agreed that Canada’s system of GM variety approval should be more transparent, although there was no clear definition of how that could happen and whether the system could be politicized as it is in France.
Brian Ellis of the University of British Columbia, co-chair of the 2001 Royal Society report that criticized GMO regulation and assessment, told the conference that those who insist variety registration should be strictly science-based should acknowledge that scientists do not have all the answers.
“We have to acknowledge openly the limitations of our knowledge,” he said. “We hide behind our expertise. We should acknowledge our gaps.”
