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ARE genetically modified foods safe to eat? A grand forum of internationally
renowned scientists and other experts might soon be helping the world decide.
The forum would regularly provide governments with an independent,
state-of-the-art consensus on what the latest science tells us, helping to
resolve international divisions on GM food safety.

The forum is the brainchild of John Krebs, the British scientist who chaired
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s recent summit
conference in Edinburgh on the safety of GM foods. Krebs, who also chairs the
British government’s new Food Standards Agency, says that the GM foods forum
could resemble the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC is a
global coalition of scientists that meets regularly to review the scientific
consensus on global warming.

Consumer groups are sceptical, however. Sue Mayer of the pressure group
GeneWatch UK doubts that a committee of “grandees” would work in an area where
most pressure has come from grassroots consumer campaigns. “It will be too
distant from ordinary people, and could even make matters worse,” she says.

Krebs included the proposal in his final report from the Edinburgh
conference, published last week and sent to governments of the world’s eight
most powerful nations. Ministers from these G8 countries will discuss this and
Krebs’s other proposals in July when they next meet, in Okinawa, Japan.

Krebs says his proposed forum would not just include scientists but,
crucially, other “stakeholders” whose views on the politics, economics, ethics
and morals of biotechnology would feed into reports by the forum. He also
believes that developing countries should be widely represented on the panel,
given the enthusiasm for GM foods they expressed in Edinburgh. “The real push
for GM is taking place in developing countries, particularly China, South
America and Africa,” he says. “It shouldn’t be limited to a group of wealthy
countries,” agrees a spokesperson from the Panos Institute, a London-based think
tank on Third World issues.

Krebs’s report also addresses some consumer issues, including a call for
reassessment of “substantial equivalence”, whereby regulators assume GM plants
to be identical with their natural counterparts, apart from an inserted trait
such as resistance to weedkillers or viruses. “We’ve been critical of
[substantial equivalence] for some time,” says Mayer. “We don’t feel the system
is set up to identify unexpected changes in food.” Additionally, Krebs’s report
reflects unanimous feeling from Edinburgh that consumers must be told on labels
when a product is genetically engineered, even if it is identical to a rival
product manufactured without GM technology.

Mona Patel of Britain’s Consumers’ Association wonders how Krebs’s forum will
interact with other international food groups. For example, the UN’s Codex
Alimentarius Commission, which sets international food standards, is already
looking into such issues as labelling and substantial equivalence.

Meanwhile, a report published last week by the US National Research Council
calls for a tightening up of US regulations on GM plants and improvements in the
methods by which their toxicity and allergenicity is tested. But it cautiously
pronounces GM foods safe, given the lack of adverse data so far.