Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Coexistence andTraceability of
GMOs in the Agro-Food Sector
KlausMenrad, Tobias Hirzinger,
andDaniela Reitmeier
1. Introduction andRegulatoryFramework
The worldwide acreage of genetically modified (GM) plants is growing
year by year and amounted to more than 114 million hectares in 2007
(ISAAA, 2008; James, 2005, 2006). In contrast to the globally growing
use of GM plants in agriculture, the acceptance of GM food is still low in
the European Union (EU) (Gaskell et al., 2006) as well as in Germany
(Frank, 2004). In the opinion of most EU consumers there is nothing
to gain by applying GMO ingredients but serious disadvantages may
occur. Some of the often-mentioned concerns of EU consumers are neg-
ative long-term health and/or environmental impacts, the extreme diffi-
culties of reversing GMO technology as soon as it becomes widespread,
and a rising monopolization of huge seed and food processing compa-
nies resulting in a larger dependency of farmers as well as ethical con-
cerns. Furthermore, the share of people thinking that it is useful to apply
biotechnology to food production decreased in the recent years (Gaskell
et al., 2006). It is interesting that there are significantly more consumers
concerned about GM food than about medical applications of biotech-
nology (Frank, 2004; European Commission, 2002; Gaskell et al., 2006).
In the case of GM food the high opposition of European consumers “is
accompanied by perceptions of relatively high risk” (Gaskell et al., 2006)
which is unacceptable for many EU consumers.
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