Research on GM food in China will not stop: scholar

Research on GM food in China will not stop: scholar

Jiang Gaoming, a researcher at the Institute of Botany of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, said research on genetically modified (GM) food in China will continue no matter what problems arise.

In 2004, the Chinese government listed the cultivation of GM crops as a major scientific development for the country, and it allocated a total budget of more than 20 billion Chinese yuan (US$3.28 billion). Since then, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have become a very popular area for research, Jiang stated.

The 49-year-old Jiang is a noted anti-GMO scholar in China. He has released several theses questioning the engineering techniques used in the production of GMOs.

He pointed out that an online survey projects that over 90% of Chinese nationals consider GM food unsafe and opposed the commercial production of GM crops in China.

More than 10 years ago, research into GMOs was a niche field of research until a book triggered a discussion on the genetic engineering techniques amongst the Chinese people.

Genetic Engineering-Dream or Nightmare?: The Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business, a book that opposed genetic engineering, raised the first public debate on GMOs among the Chinese people in 2001.

The book, first published in 1998 and translated and published in Chinese in 2001, noted that GM food could potentially endanger the health of humans and animals. More importantly, the book informed the Chinese people of the debate on GM crops raging in Western society.

Following the public reaction to the book, Greenpeace, a non-governmental environmental organization headquartered in Amsterdam, announced in 2002 that GMOs had been found in food products in Hong Kong.

Zhang Jing, a Greenpeace official, stated that the organization had been following the development of GM crops in China since 2002.

So far, Greenpeace has released 23 reports on GMOs in China.

In 2005, the organization announced that it had found GM crops being grown illegally in Wuhan and Jingzhou during four separate investigations in Hubei. In the latest incident to attract the public spotlight, genetically modified rice was being tested on children in Hengyang in 2012, in what subsequently became known as the "golden rice incident."

Zhang claimed the government's research and development agencies should focus on the potential harm of GMOs to humans rather than simply advertising the advantages of GM food.

An immunology professor at Peking University, Wang Yuedan, said he supported techniques to grow GM food, but he was opposed to GM food being widely promoted without allowing public debate to decide whether it was safe for consumption.

In China, the commercial production of GM crops needs approval. It was said that the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) planned to grant a security certificate for GM rice, but this did not happen due to the intense debate among the public.

Since 2006, the MOA has issued security certificates for GM papaya and insect-resistant rice, but only GM cotton and papaya are allowed to be produced commercially.

A food law issued in 2012 mandated that GM techniques cannot be adopted as the main food source in the country without prior approval. Wantchinatimes