Biotech Food Tears Rifts in Europe 7/3/2006 12:38:31 PM
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People do not want it…yet we as a nation and as a world are being forced to accept it.
ATHENS — In this famously fractious country, there is one thing on which almost all Greeks agree: They do not want genetically modified crops grown, sold or eaten here. "All political parties are opposed," said Theodore Koliopanos, a legislator and former deputy environment minister, "which is odd because we disagree on everything else." "The environment minister who gives in and allows G.M.O.'s into this country will never be minister again," said Nikos Lappas, head of Greece's largest farmers' union. "For farmers, forcing G.M.O.'s would be economic suicide, since our market doesn't want them."
Greece and a few other countries in the European Union that have banned genetically modified organisms are on the front lines of a war over the future of modified food in Europe, the only large swath of the world that does not already grow or buy the crops. Facing international pressure and a lawsuit brought by the United States, Canada and Argentina at the World Trade Organization, the union said this year that all member states MUST open their doors to genetically engineered crops and prepare practical and legal regulations to ensure safety for health and the environment.
But five countries have imposed eight different types of bans. Many others use their votes in Europe's Council of Ministers to block the crops from entering. European consumers and farmers generally do not want them, leaving the European Union to try to steer a Solomonic course between conflicting interests. The basic problem is that Europeans, whose food culture has developed over centuries, balk at putting biotech crops in their fields or their mouths.
Critics say that countries should be permitted to decide if they will accept a risk, however small, noting, for example, that unpasteurized milk is legal in France but not in Britain. But while there is little, if any, scientific evidence that genetically modified foods are harmful, in much of Europe they are so unpopular that mainstream supermarket giants like Migros will not stock them. In surveys, consumers say they are unconvinced that genetically modified crops are safe, particularly for the environment.
But producers of genetically modified products (and the countries they represent) are aggressively pursuing their case at the W.T.O. and with individual governments, spurred by an untapped European market and could care less if anyone want GMF. GMF will be shoved forcefully down their throats as in America, which has been forcefed GMF for a decade, without ANY input. Allergies and asthma attacks are rampant in the population.
Biotech companies like Monsanto and Syngenta insist that the crops should be immediately admitted to Europe, because genetically engineered foods have been consumed in much of the world for a decade without obvious ill effects. Their safety, said Christopher Horner, a Monsanto spokesman, has been "ratified by numerous credible regulatory and scientific authorities."
The United States grows 220 million acres of genetically modified crops — by far the world's leader — and almost none of it is sold to the European Union. They do not want the crap.
Genetically engineered seeds and plants contain genes that were inserted in a laboratory that give them special advantages, like resisting common pests. But pollen from those crops can spread in the air from field to field, intermixing with pollen from conventional crops. Once genetically modified crops enter a country's food production, it can be difficult and costly to keep the food chain free of them because there is mixing of plants from farms in milling and in production. GMF corrupt the entire food chain of countries.
Greece and other European Union members say such issues make any cultivation of biotech plants impossible because they would quickly infiltrate both agriculture and the food supply. In much of Europe, where small farms are the norm, it is hard to create "buffer zones" between fields on adjacent farms. Europe's agricultural insurers will not cover farmers for liability should their genetically modified crops contaminate adjacent fields.
"I started with an open mind on this but now I think the answers are clear," said Mr. Lappas, of the Greek farmers' union. "If our market doesn't buy it, and insurers won't insure us, how can we grow it?" Indeed, in many areas that have blocked genetically engineered crops, small farmers survive by producing niche food, like unique, high-quality vegetables and grain; there is a premium for food that is not genetically modified. In Poland, 1.5 million farms are still mostly farmed without pesticides, giving that nation the opportunity to become an important producer of natural foods, according to the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside, which has lobbied for a national ban.
"The E.U. policy of just pushing forward with the technology is utter blindness," said Helen Holder, a spokeswoman for Friends of the Earth in Europe. "Genetic contamination is unavoidable and irreversible and will only increase over time."
