Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
or food component with regard to phenotypic and agronomic character-
istics and chemical composition, it can be treated in the same manner
with respect to safety” (see Chapter 3).
Earlier in the history of GMOs, molecular biology was the core, and
almost the unique science that was able to evaluate and authorize exper-
iments throughout Europe (for example) in the late 1980s and early
1990s. At the time, it was argued that the safety of GM products was
essentially determined by the quality of the molecular design. The better
and duly described by biotech firms seeking approval for tests, the safer
the design would be, according to biologists. Moreover, the conviction
that the design had to be as simple and elegant as possible to be deemed
safe contributed heavily to producing a type of safety assessment, based
on the intrinsic qualities of the new plant itself (Roy, 2001). At this point,
safety was only considered from the angle of molecular biology. There
was no attempt to broaden the context of safety issues, and include mat-
ters such as dissemination or commingling errors at storage sites.
The second term of reference is then a “natural” product that does
not need to be assessed because it has already been cultivated for
decades (or centuries) with no history of toxicity. For many experts, a
GMO is after all just another plant. For most of them at the time, a
GMO was structurally safer because complete design traceability could
be detailed and provided. Explicitly the dominant philosophy was that
GMOs were much more under control than existing plants (which have
centuries of enhancement with less rigorous techniques), hence, they
were deemed much safer (Kahn, 1998).
One of the implications of such a narrow vision of safety is that it
focuses mainly on the plants' characteristics, and neglects the interaction
of such plants with existing ecosystems. Also it fails to address compa-
nies' responsibilities for growing them, or the type of organization of
work needed to manage safely such crops.
This early choice had to be reevaluated when growing concerns
emerged among experts who put this new technology's weak point on the
table: namely, the integration of such seeds, when sown on large fields,
