May 2000 / Nature Biotechnology / Volume 18 Number 5 pp 484 - 485 / Asako Saegusa
Asako Saegusa is a freelance science writer working in Tokyo.
Japan, the country that is, according to this story, about to introduce the strictest regulations in the world concerning safety of GM foods, has been chosen to chair a working group that will draft the guiding principles on risk analysis and risk assessment of foods derived from biotechnology.
However, the resulting guidelines are unlikely to be as draconian as might be expected because two key concepts of the risk assessment process up for discussion, "traceability" and "familiarity," have many countries perplexed -- most notably Japan, whose officials seem reluctant to use the terms in the context of food-safety regulation.
The GM food-safety working group is, the story says, part of the ad hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on Foods Derived from Biotechnology, which was established by the global food standards body, the Codex Alimentarius Commission. The task force is charged with developing "standards, guidelines and principles on foods derived from biotechnology or traits introduced into foods by biological methods" by 2003, and it was at its first meeting in the middle of March in Chiba, Japan, that France proposed "traceability" and "familiarity" be included in the task force agenda.
Itaru Nishimoto, director-general of Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare's environmental health bureau, which will take a leading role in the working group, was cited as saying that applying the terms to GM foods is a daunting task, adding, "It is unclear at the moment what the implications of the two concepts are, as they have not previously been used by Codex, and are new to most of us."
The concept of "familiarity" in environmental risk assessment has already been defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as the understanding of characteristics of an organism and its introduced trait, the environment into which the organism is introduced, and the interactions between them. Although Nishimoto accepts and understands "familiarity" as a form of environmental risk management, "its application [to food safety] in relation to a precautionary approach would have to be considered carefully," he says.
"Traceability" -- mechanisms by which particular substances can be followed from source to final product through record tracking of trade routes and labeling -- is seen as "ambiguous" when applied to biotechnology-derived foods.
The story goes on to cite Henry Miller, a former US FDA official and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA), as saying the Codex task force meeting carried an unusually strong anti-biotech tone, pointing to the conspicuous lack of lobbying from the US delegation, which included FDA officials. According to Miller, the FDA plans to announce a new requirement that all foods containing GMOs must undergo premarket evaluation at the agency, adding, "Knowing that their own policy will soon contravene the scientific consensus about biotech regulation constrains FDA officials from pushing the scientific line. As a result, the Codex task force is en route to describing and codifying various procedures and requirements more appropriate to potentially dangerous drugs and pesticides than to gene-spliced tomatoes, potatoes, and strawberries."
(posted without permission)
