Although attention in the EU is on the appointment of the new president of the Commission, there are still other things going on. After years of deliberation, it looks like the Council is finally poised to allow individual Member States the choice of whether or not their farmers should be allowed to grow GM crops (EU member states back compromise to allow GM crops: diplomats). Not that it’s quite a done deal yet: it has to be formally approved by ministers and finally be voted on by the new parliament later this year.
This uneasy compromise has the benefit from the point of view of pro-GM states such as the UK that the logjam may finally be broken and their farmers allowed to plant any variety which has had a positive safety assessment from EFSA. Equally, those countries which are opposed, like Germany and Greece, have the right to ban them with no regard for the scientific evidence. Only by allowing this has it been possible to reconcile the entrenched opposition in some parts of the bloc with the more open-minded approach elsewhere.
Not that this pleases everyone, of course. The system will work by allowing countries which are opposed to growing GM crops to request the Commission to ask companies to exclude them from approval applications they make to EFSA. In the view of some activist groups, this leaves too much power in the hands of biotech companies. Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth is quoted as saying "Governments must be able to ban unwanted and risky GM crops without needing the permission of the companies who profit from them." This seems a somewhat unnecessary criticism, as applicants are hardly likely to waste time in applications for territories where there is no chance of success.
At the same time, this move creates some unwelcome precedents. It is remarkable in many ways that it goes against the move towards a single European market, one of the prime objectives of the Union and one on which many governments (though by no means all) are very keen. It also, of course, allows objective scientific advice to be ignored when bans are enacted. This already happens in practice when Member States automatically vote against new approvals, but the formalisation of this sends a dangerous message about how politics can be allowed to trump science.
Unfortunately, this is not the first example of this trend. Arguably, the adoption of the precautionary principle started the ball rolling, but this simply encapsulated an increasing emphasis on avoiding risk without balancing it against benefits. The possibility of hindering the applications of technology because of hypothetical concerns about the environment – concerns which might or might not turn out to have any real basis, but are virtually impossible to resolve to everyone’s satisfaction – fostered an anti-science attitude and increased the influence of the environmentalist lobby.
In 2009, things went a step further, with the passing of the new Pesticides Regulation. For the first time, rather than relying on the proven approach of risk assessment and management, the approval of new active ingredients (and the re-approval of existing ones) became based on an assessment of hazard alone. While this is a distinction which would be unclear to most members of the public, the change is actually highly significant and goes further in the precautionary direction.
In the conventional (pre-2009) approach, actual risks of exposure were assessed and advice given on the basis of whether these were both acceptable and manageable. For example, there might be a health risk through excessive exposure to spray, but this might be easily avoided by using simple protective clothing. The new approach, however, assesses hazard – the possibility of harm if no precautions are taken to manage the risk – and rejects compounds that breach certain targets.
The intention is to remove the more hazardous materials from use. However, by making it more difficult and expensive for manufacturers to gain approval for their products, there is likely to be a sustained loss of pesticides over the years, in particular making specialist crops more difficult to grow successfully, increasing the reliance on a small number of active ingredients and the real prospect of yield erosion. The end result could be an increase in food imports from countries which may be far less careful in their use of pesticides.
And the pressure on pesticides continues. For years, campaigners argued that the widely-used neonicotinoids harmed bees. After some quite serious declines in bee populations in some countries in recent years, the EU last year put a temporary ban on this class of compounds. Now we see reported that Widespread impacts of neonicotinoids ‘impossible to deny’, based on a study timed to put pressure on for an extension of the ban.
The literature review (due to be released shortly, was commissioned by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a campaigning group, despite its official-sounding name. The spokesperson for the team conducting the review is Prof Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex, who points in particular to the use of neonicotinoids as seed coatings. In his words: "It is a bit like taking antibiotics to avoid getting ill. The more they are used, the stronger the selective pressure you place on pest insects to become resistant to them. Using them as prophylactics is absolute madness in that sense." No matter than this is an inaccurate analogy; it makes for good headlines.
According to the European Crop Protection Association, the researchers have been selective with their evidence: "We respect the scientists who have produced this research, but it appears that they are part of a movement that brings together some academics and NGOs whose only objective is to restrict or ban the use of neonicotinoid technology regardless of what the evidence may show."
However things may pan out, the European agricultural sector finds itself on the back foot when it comes to the use of the latest technology. There may have been a partial victory for supporters of crop biotechnology, but that has unfortunately been at a cost; the official sanctioning of politics over science. In the meantime, the green lobby continues to put the pressure on.
Martin Livermore
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
__________________________________________________