The long drawn-out saga of the EU’s relationship to genetically modified crops rumbles on.This week we read, for example, EU one step closer to law on national GMO crop bans. Individual crops are recommended for approval by independent scientists on behalf of the European Food Safety Authority, and will continue to be approved across the bloc by a vote of Member States in the Council. In practice, this means there is never a qualified majority for approval or rejection, and the Commission then normally makes a formal decision based on the EFSA recommendation (although even this was a step too far for the outgoing Commission when the request was for approval of cultivation rather than import).
A number of Member States – including Italy, Greece and France – routinely vote against approvals, ignoring the scientific evidence. If asked, they will often cite vague environmental concerns, but the truth is that these are political positions reflecting the position of the environmental movement as well as, it must be said, public opinion in some countries.
The proposal just voted on by the Parliament environment committee differs to some extent from the one originally proposed in 2010, whose purpose was to make approval more likely if Member States saw they were able to maintain national bans legally. However, it is still a double-edged sword, albeit one weighted in favour of those opposed to GM crop cultivation. Countries will have a statutory right to ban cultivation of approved crops for a range of reasons, which may be flimsy in the extreme. But, on the other hand, it would still allow more open-minded governments, including the UK, to permit farmers the choice to plant approved crops. Anti-GM activists still see this as a Trojan horse designed to erode the current position.
Ironically, this vote comes in the same week that sees Jean-Claude Juncker’s incoming Commission deciding neither to extend the term of the current chief scientific adviser (the well-respected Prof Anne Glover) nor to appoint a successor. The report in the Times highlights the background: Chief scientist is forced out after green campaign.
Her position on GM crops (on which topic, as a professor of molecular and cell biology, she may be considered an expert) had angered activists from the beginning, and Greenpeace and eight other campaigning groups wrote to the new Commission President in the summer complaining of her “one-sided, partial opinions” on GM crops, and in the words of the Times report, “wrongly claiming that there was scientific consensus about their safety”. As an aside, this is a nice illustration of policy-based evidence making from the green lobby, which is only too happy to slap down the slightest criticism of climate change policy by referring to the ‘scientific consensus’ on that topic.
The Greenpeace letter was followed by one from a number of learned bodies, including the Royal Society, in which they said “Lobbyists who seek to remove scientists because they don’t like their findings or advice do so at the peril of their citizens.” Unfortunately, they were ignored. The Royal Society president, Sir Paul Nurse, is quoted as saying “This appears to be a very backward step by the new commission, having only made the enlightened decision to raise the profile of scientific advice three years ago.”
The reaction of most scientists is covered further in a BBC report of this story: Researchers ‘appalled’ as EU chief scientist role is axed. Sir Paul is quoted further in this: "Scientific advice must be central to EU policy making, otherwise you run the risk of having important decisions being unduly influenced by those with mixed motives."
It’s certainly hard to see anything positive about this development. The CSA, despite Greenpeace’s argument, has not been the sole arbiter of opinion. In the case of GMOs and other food issues, it is EFSA which provides the primary considered opinions. Activists seemed to think, however, that Anne Glover’s influence was too strong in controversial areas such as endocrine disruption. With the EU seemingly set on an ever more precautionary approach to safety and already having taken the retrograde step of basing pesticide approvals on hazard rather than risk, the CSA provided an unwelcome breath of rationality.
But there may be further developments. To quote from the BBC: “It remains unclear as to what President Juncker will now do, though there are rumours he may appoint advisors across five key areas of policy. This might lead, according to Prof Alberto Alemanno, from HEC Paris, to a broader definition of what science means. ‘We only had the chief scientist represent the hard sciences, but not the social sciences,’ he said. ‘If we are going to have five policy areas perhaps we will adopt a broader perspective towards the sciences, it is also possible to interpret the Juncker decision in a more positive way.’" If social sciences are to be given parity with physical sciences, we truly are on a slippery slope.
How ironic then, also to read this week that German study finds GM crops good for farmers and the environment. This refers to a meta-analysis of all relevant past studies (A meta-analysis of the impacts of genetically modified crops), in this case funded jointly by the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and the EU FP7 programme. Unfortunately, whatever the evidence, the EU seems set to strengthen and institutionalise the high barriers to innovation built at the behest of the green lobby.
Martin Livermore
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
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