According to this article a food industry conference on the global acceptance and sustainability of GM food, yesterday heard an interesting American perspective of EU regulations governing GM food from "a US scientist".
The "US scientist" is identified as "Francis Smith from the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington DC". Presumably, that should be "Frances Smith" - the wife of Fred Smith, the founder of the CEI. Frances Smith is a board member and an Adjunct Fellow at CEI.
Smith is not a scientist. According to her CEI profile, though, she was the founding editor of the Journal of Retail Banking!
http://www.cei.org/dyn/view_Expert.cfm?Expert=96
The CEI says its mission is about, "Advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government." However, according to PR Watch, in reality CEI is "a well-funded front for corporations" which uses its multi-million dollar budget to attack environmental, health and safety regulations. Among CEI's long list of known sponsors are Philip Morris, Pfizer, Dow Chemicals, Monsanto and Exxon.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=30
CEI's aggressive campaign of Exxon-supported climate change scepticism is certainly worth bearing in mind when reading Smith's insistence that policy needs to be based on "scientific evidence". And it's a shame that the journalist who wrote this piece didn't recognise that his readers might find CEI's politics and corporate funding background relevant to the question of in what sense Smith provides, "A US perspective on EU GM regulations."
Certainly, when Smith tells her audience that, "In comparison to Europeans, US consumers tended to express less fear and less distrust [of GM]", it's worth bearing in mind that with no labelling in the US and America's corporate media giving the issue little airing, few US comsumers know anything at all about the issue and would probably be equally unhappy if they did!
That's not just our view but that of the US sociologist Thomas Hoban who helped produce a number of the most quoted US consumer surveys on GM. He says, "Polls still show the vast majority of American consumers do not understand that they already have been eating genetically engineered foods. When they find out, they resent the fact that no one told them scientists were changing their food."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4387
Those poll findings are unsurprisingly absent from this review of consumer surveys by "a US scientist".
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IFT: A US perspective on EU GM regulations
By Anthony Fletcher in Orlando http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/ng.asp?n=68688-ift-gm-eu
27/06/2006 - The EU's approach to GM food regulation has little theoretical basis, and panders to the fears and prejudices of its citizens, according to a US scientist.
IFT conference on global acceptance and sustainability of genetically modified food yesterday, Francis Smith from the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington DC gave an interesting American perspective of EU regulations governing GM food.
"It is clear that consumers in the EU are concerned a lot about food, especially over topics that attract a lot of media coverage," she said.
"The percentage of people who claimed to be 'worried' is between 53 to 63 per cent. GM comes in at about the middle, around 58 per cent."
Breaking these recent Eurobarometer figures down by country, Smith found that Austrians are the biggest worriers. About seven out of ten claim to be 'worried' about GM products.
And a quarter of all EU consumers claim to be 'very worried'.
"When this data was analysed further, we also found that gender was a factor. Four out of ten European women said that they were 'very worried' about food, compared to 29 per cent of men.
"Considering that women make most of the household purchasing decisions, this is a very important group."
Fundamentally, Smith said that these figures showed there was an underlying fear of new technology, largely absent in the US . Americans, she said, tended to look at the benefits. In comparison to Europeans, US consumers tended to express less fear and less distrust.
The EU is therefore different. Its precautionary principle, which rules that regulators should err on the side of caution, assumes that a prevention strategy is always appropriate.
A recent European Commission (EC) communique reads: 'decision-makers have to take into account fears generated by these perceptions and put in place preventative measures'.
"There is little theoretical basis for this approach," argued Smith. "We're talking about regulations addressing perceptions and fears. Also, this is an approach that can never be satisfied - there'll always be someone who can think of yet one more theoretical risk."
Smith also said that there have been some alarming developments within the EU, taking decision makers further into the realms of the hypothetical. "This all increases the perceptions of risk when there is little basis for this, and could lead to mass hysteria. Fears are common, and can be dangerous."
Of course, there are reasons why the EU has more stringent regulations than the US. The outbreak of mad cow disease triggered Europe-wide concern about the safety of the food supply chain in the 1990s, and Europe is by nature a more regulated environment than the States.
But Smith's point is that overly stringent regulations, based on public perceptions of danger rather than scientific evidence, could result in the unnecessary rejection of significant new products. She argues that the EU is pandering to unsubstantiated fears.
"With the global population doubling in the next couple of decades, we need biotechnology," she said. "We need to make strong consumer value arguments, about the fact that GM technology can lead to reduced allergen food. People just don't know about the vast improvements that have been made."
Convincing both consumers and food makers operating in Europe that GM technology is both completely safe and profitable is likely to continue to prove tricky, however. Later this week, FoodNavigator will report on recent global regulatory initiatives to harmonise GM regulations.