By Richard Lawley
Recent years have seen a boom in testing for GMOs in food, especially here in Europe. This has been largely driven by legislation, specifically EC Regulation 1829/2003 governing the authorisation and labelling of GM crops, food and feed. A plethora of newly developed test kits for GMOs are now available and most commercial analytical laboratories offer a GMO testing service to their clients. From the point of view of the diagnostics sector and the testing laboratories, GM regulation in the EU has helped them to create a welcome new market – one that is likely to keep on growing rapidly according to a new report from the UK.
The report covers follow-up tasks undertaken by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Food Standards Agency in response to a major UK Government report called Food Matters: Towards a Strategy for the 21st Century published in 2008. This examined a broad range of food policy issues, highlighting some areas where more information was needed. One of those was the effect of the EU regulatory system for GMOs on food production, especially in the livestock sector. DEFRA and the FSA published their findings in August in a report that makes worrying reading for meat producers. The main concern raised in the report is so called ‘asynchronous approval’, where producer countries might authorise and grow new GM crop varieties before they can make their way through the lengthy EU approval process.
This is seen by some industry sources as almost inevitable in countries like Brazil and Argentina, both of which already cultivate GM soya varieties on a vast scale. Since Brazil and Argentina produce most of the soya imported into the EU for animal feed, the potential problem for Europe’s livestock farmers is clear. If producer countries start to grow new varieties not authorised for import into the EU, it could become very difficult to source sufficient soya from authorised and non-GM crop varieties to sustain current levels of livestock production. In fact, the report identifies a worst-case scenario for the UK in which feed costs rise by 300%, production of pork and poultry falls significantly and meat prices rise by 20% or more.
Even if such a catastrophic feed supply problem does not happen, unauthorised GM contamination incidents in imported food and feed crops are likely to increase markedly as long as the EU ‘zero tolerance’ approach to unauthorised GM contamination continues to apply. The European Commission has begun an independent evaluation of the legislative framework for GM and has also funded research on the implications of asynchronous approvals on EU feed imports. But that study will not be complete until the second half of 2010. By then, new soya varieties developed in the USA may already be being grown in South America, whether or not they are approved by the EU. While some experts believe that Brazil and Argentina will not willingly exclude their produce from the EU market, the dramatic expansion of new markets for animal feed, notably in China, may be a powerful influence on South American agriculture.
Though potentially serious, this issue is merely part of a much broader concern for Europeans. EU policy on GM crops, food and feed is simply out of step with much of the rest of the world. While we continue to assert that there is no market for GM in Europe, other countries are embracing the technology with enthusiasm and without concern. Already, unwitting consumers in the EU are eating unlabelled meat from animals raised using feed containing GM material – only organic meat may not legally be produced with GM feed. Eventually, Europe will be faced with a choice. Either we stick with current policy and accept the potentially massive price increases and reduced production that could result, or we abandon our ultra-cautious approach to GMOs and fall into step with the rest of the world. We may not like it, but there is little we can do to hold back the tide of progress indefinitely.
