Spilling the Genes provides
consumers with a background to genetically engineered foods. Many such foods,
like soybeans, maize, oilseed rape, have new agronomic characteristics which
reflect the priorities of growers and food processors rather than consumers.
Herbicide-resistant crops are, for example, the most prominent development,
mainly to common herbicides such as glyphosate and glufosinate. There is also
increasing interest in commercial crops genetically altered to produce the toxin
derived from the naturally occurring Bacillus thuringiensis.
With any new process there will be uncertainties about
long-term safety. BSE has demonstrated how a small change in food production,
feeding animal protein to cows, can have potentially adverse effects which can
take many years to show up.
There is no international scientific agreement on what safety
tests to apply to genetically engineered crops and no adequate legal controls
over how their products are sold. There will be some improvement with the EC
Novel Foods Regulation, but it will not require member states to do long-term
monitoring.
Spilling the Genes, Genetics Forum, 5-11
Worship Street, London EC2A 2BH, 1996, £6.95 (individuals), £11.95 (organisations),
20pp.
[This
article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 34,
December 1996, page 10]