Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Further Policy Directions
Genetically modified organisms are not a single, homogeneous technology.
Each application brings different potential benefits and risks for different
stakeholders. Regulators, therefore, face special challenges in the face of
rapidly developing technical applications. In the European Union, releases
of genetically modified organisms were regulated under Directive 90/220
for a decade. Following protracted negotiations, this has now been revised,
harmonized and tightened, and signed into effect in early 2001. The new
directive sets out provisions for the scientific assessment of the risks of
experimental and commercial releases of genetically modified organisms
into the environment, and establishes protocols for post-release monitoring.
To date, the general approach to risk assessment in agriculture, as a
whole, has been to establish rigorous procedures prior to release, and then
to assume that farmers engage in 'good agricultural practice'. The novel
nature of emerging policies centres on a fundamental shift in risk
assessment to a need to understand the effects of technologies in the field
and on the farm. Much of the harm to the environment arises when
technologies, whether pesticides, fertilizers or machinery, are not used in
accordance with regulators' criteria. The assessment of genetically modified
organisms will, however, now contain new requirements to assess the effects
of diverse farm practices on the genetically modified organisms themselves,
and to determine how this interaction will affect desirable environmental
outcomes, such as the integrity of local biodiversity. Such new risk
assessments could have a positive side effect by increasing our under-
standing of agricultural-environment interactions in agricultural systems
at large.
However, these standards for regulation are not yet widespread. The
challenge that developing countries face is to find ways of increasing
regulatory and scientific capacity in order to assess the effects of modern
agricultural technology on their environments. The Convention on
Biological Diversity establishes a broad framework for assessing effects.
Efforts are underway to see the January 2000 agreement on adopting the
precautionary principle as the basis for an international biosafety protocol,
and ratified by 130 countries, signed and put into practice. 38 The centre
piece could be an 'advance informed agreement' procedure to be followed
before transboundary transfer of genetically modified organisms, although
a bloc of agricultural exporting nations still argue that agricultural
commodities should be excluded from this procedure. Whether such
international agreements can be signed or not, there is still a high priority
on findings ways to help build domestic scientific and legal expertise
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