No consensus over GMO foods safety – expert

Anti GMO-protesters stage a rally dressed as 'GM-Zombies' 

Russian ecologists demand a complete moratorium on genetically modified products in the country. Members of the National Association for Genetic Safety fear that the decree allowing production of GMO food in Russia might come into effect on 1 June 2014. Earlier a group of Russian lawmakers also called for toughening requirements for GMO foods in the country. Voice of Russia's Jay Johnson has talked to Louise Payton, policy officer at the London Soil Association, who spoke of the absence of a general consensus on GMO safety and the advent of safer technologies.

Do you share Russian ecologists’ concerns about GMO crops?

Yes, we certainly do.

In this connection, do you think Russia and other countries need a GMO-crops moratorium as soon as possible?

Yes, what we are seeing is this concern is spreading across the world. For example, in China there are reports that there are bans of GMO staple crops such as rice, and in India, the state of Kerala has banned GMO crops from planting, and in Europe, where there are very strong regulations on GMOs, in practice there are only tiny amounts of GMOs growing in Spain, and that is it. So, at the moment GMO-planting bans are quite common.

While the safety of GMO foods for humans and animals is yet to be proven, some experiments suggest that they may, after all, be dangerous to human health. What are thoughts on this?

It is often said that there is a consensus over the safety of GMO foods. In fact, scientists have recently signed a letter saying that there is no consensus over the safety of GMO foods. So, in other words we just don’t know about whether or not GMO foods are safe.

Isn’t it true that there are large multinational companies such as Monsanto that actively pursue scientists that do wish to go against the general consensus and wish to study and see what the effects of these GMO foods are?

Yes, there are concerns. One of those scientists, he published studies which find that there are grounds for concern and was harassed as a result. It’s unclear whether that is the case. But certainly there is a lack of long-time feeding studies, so when the crops are fed to animals in the lab over their lifetime to see what effect is there, these studies are actually finding that there are causes for concern and the reasons why we should be worried, whereas the majority of studies that are taken by the corporations are in fact very short-term and don’t find effect.

Well, I was led to believe that the scientists that did not toe the multinationals’ lines were eventually driven out of the industry. Their project-funding dried up and basically they became non-existent inside of the industry. But let me put that aside for a minute. In your opinion, do you feel that GMO products should be totally banned?

At the moment there is not a single GMO plant, which is actually allowed for planting in commercial level in the EU, but what is actually interesting is that in practice this results in a very small amount of GMOs planted in the EU. So, essentially what we are seeing is a very-very strong regulation against GMO planting. It is unlikely that this is going to get any more prevalence.

What is your forecast on the situation surrounding GMOs? Will we see more GMO foods foray into the market in the near future?

We actually remain quite optimistic. Concerns over GMOs are not going away, and we are seeing a lot of progress and other, safer forms of technology. And that certainly needs more focus, these are actually being delivered already. So, for example marker-assisted selection is a form of biotechnology, which doesn’t actually shift the genes using genetic manipulation. Instead it uses a knowledge of plant and animal genomes to identify individuals with desirable genetic traits and crossbreed them, so essentially speeding up the process of breeding, which is something that GM has long promised and never really delivered upon. And we are already seeing things like draught-resistant plants .voiceofrussia