Roundup: Like It or Not, GM Food Safety Sets to Become Big Topic

It does look like a real chaos when hundreds of participants from 58 countries and regions around the world tried to build a consensus despite their polarized views on the Genetic Modified (GM) food and dozens of anti-GM food activists dumped imported GM fruits into garbage boxes during their protest outside the meeting venue.

Local news papers were also filled up with front-page articles which contradicted to each other on the pros and cons of developing GM food.

But out of all the mess, one thing is clear: whether you like it or not, the GM food issue is getting more and more attention because it is or it will be so important to everyone's life.

At the closing session of the three-day international conference on new biotechnology and food safety, Lord Selborne, the chairperson admitted here Thursday that the fruits yielded from the three days' discussions were merely more than an extensive dialogue among policy makers, scientists, representatives from consumer and environmental groups and entrepreneurs on the issue of GM food Safety.

"To be specific, of course we reached some positive conclusions," said the British aristocrat who has long been active in the world's environmental and bio-technological talks.

One of the agreed points on the summary paper of the meeting is all the participants believed that the GM food issue deserves more attention because it is directly related to food safety and human health as well as the environmental balance, and to make risk assessment of these stuff is necessary before people opts to accept it or not.

A recent consultation between the Food and Agriculture (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that "the consultation was satisfied with the approach used to assess the safety of the GM food that have been approved for commercial use."

Food authorities in the United States, Canada and Belgium have drawn similar conclusion that they have seen no evidence that the bio-engineered foods now in the market pose any human health concerns.

However, researchers argued at the Bangkok meeting that the above statements did not necessarily mean that risks would not exist as new foods are developed with novel traits.

So, they proposed that the GM food should be assessed on case by case basis, using advanced scientific methods, to ensure that the foods brought to market are safe for human consumption.

Consumer groups said their key concern is being able to identify GM food products with labels attached to demonstrate that they may contain allergens or other harmful substances, so people who have allergic or food intolerant reactions to particular things can avoid them.

Policy makers noted that given increasing global concerns about food safety, all countries will need to have in place safety regulations and human and institutional capacity to set and apply food safety standard.

In the regard of the impact on environmental safety, environmental activists pointed out that the plantation of GM crops may risk to bring gene transfer, weediness, trait effects, genetic variability and other things which could damage the natural ecosystem.

However, up to now, the plantation of GM crops are limited largely in the developed world, including the U.S. having the biggest portion, and less than a dozen of American and European countries.

An important factor for pushing forward the global research and dialogue on the safety of the GM food is the endeavor of a number of international organizations.

The meeting is largely an initiative of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which widened the participation source of global debate on the issue by organizing the first international GM Food Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland last February.

At the beginning of 2000, FAO founded the Panel of Eminent Experts on Ethics in Food and Agriculture to raise public awareness of ethical considerations related to GM food safety. The WHO established the concept of "substantial equivalence" as the fundamental approach for the safety assessment of GM crops.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) included the GM safety issue into its global trade talks while the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) is providing technical and budget support for 18 developing countries to build their national bio-safety frameworks.

And for the second time, the Bangkok GM food meeting's results will be presented at the upcoming annual G8 Summit for discussion.

National governments around the world also began to respond positively to the issue. 134 countries agreed at the U.N. Bio-safety meeting in Canada last year to sign the so-called Cartagena Protocol on Bio-safety. Over one hundred nations has signed it so far.

Although the GM food talks are mainly restricted among developed countries, now things seem to change when representatives from developing world stood up to speak out their ideas on the issue at the Bangkok conference.

However, due to the differences of values and conditions among various countries and interest groups, as the organizers of the meeting admitted, the global consensus-building efforts on the issue of GM food safety will have long run to reach its final goal.

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