If you have a moment then spare a thought for the beleaguered food industry. Together with agriculture, the food industry experiences many of the same environmental pressures affecting the waste management industry but is, in addition increasingly finding itself at the sharp end of serious public concern about new environmental and health issues. The new science of genetic engineering has added to this pressure. While there are potential economic and environmental benefits to be obtained from genetically modified crops there remain, as yet, unquantified and unknown potential disbenefits together with both real and perceived human fears associated with this new science. Much as the agro-food industry would wish it otherwise, public and consumer scepticism is not always attributable to scientific ignorance.

Monsanto has tried to inform public opinion by embarking on a large scale advertising campaign about the potential environmental benefits which might be obtained through the widespread use of genetically modified crops incorporating a gene for resistance to glyphosate herbicide (trade name - Roundup). This, Monsanto argue, would enable farmers to control the growth of weed species with much reduced applications of other herbicides. Others remain concerned that this also risks the eradication of other forms of wildlife, by reducing the variety of plant species and thus food supplies and habitats, within cultivated fields by the higher degree of monoculture thus obtained. There is the additional longer term risk of the transfer of the modified gene into other plant species which would then necessitate the use of additional herbicides on newly resistant weed species. If this happened the environmental losses would almost certainly outweigh the short term benefits obtained as other species would probably have been eradicated in the interim. The end result, in such a scenario, might not actually be very different to experience gained with other pesticides and with antibiotics - thusjust as there is a need for the continual development of new pesticides/antibiotics to counter emerging resistant forms of the pest/bacteria these are designed to kill, there would also come a time when the need to develop new genetically modified crops would emerge as reservoirs of resistance to the effects of a particular gene built up in the wider environment. The IlK’s National Institute of Agricultural Botany stated in 1994 that’ the deployment of more than one herbicide tolerance in sugar beet varieties could result in related weeds and volunteers (remainder crop) developing tolerance to combinations of herbicides. Cross or multiple tolerance to other herbicides might result from this herbicide tolerance, so that a far greater spectrum of resistance/tolerance could occur in related weed species than originally envisaged.’

Such was the type of concern which recently influenced a UK farmer to bring a case against the Ministry of Agriculture, for permitting trials of genetically modified crops close to his own crops. He, being an organic farmer, was fearful that pollen from these crops might contaminate his maize. The Court of Appeal agreed with the farmer and ruled that the Ministry of Agriculture had acted unlawfully in permitting the trial without first considering data from previous preparatory trials. In fact, in the UK, no requests for the release of genetically modified organisms for trial purposes have yet been rejected.

Concerns over genetically modified crops and foodstuffs are, however, now beginning to multiply in Europe. The European Commission’s scientific advisers have for the first time recommended that a genetically modified plant should be withheld from the market because they cannot guarantee its safety. Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, is also now considering imposing a three-year moratorium on transgenic crops grown for commercial use. France has withdrawn a consent granted to Novartis for genetically modified maize, pending a review of the risks of antibiotic resistance.

Attitudes to the potential use of genetically modified organisms within the agro-food industry vary. Besides Monsanto and its glyphosate resistant gene, other manufacturers, including Uniliver, operating further along the human food chain, are actively in favour of introducing genetically modified soya, mostly produced in the United States, into a wide range of food products. Consumer concerns are beginning, however, to influence some supermarket chains and Iceland, for example, is to ensure that none of its own label products contain genetically modified foodstuffs.

Political representatives may have to examine the status of the World Trade Organisation if consumer concerns about genetically modified foodstuffs are to be translated into legislation. Through the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the WTO is responsible for setting and harmonising world food standards. While in theory consumer protection comes within its remit, 100 out of the Ill observers are sponsored by the agri-food industry. The ability of the WTO to give recognition to consumer concerns is marred by its failure, for example, to control the import of improperly caught tuna and shrimp into the USA or to harmonise animal welfare standards.

Monsanto has sought to sell the benefits to be had from genetically modified crops in terms of both increased food production and reduced herbicide use on a worldwide scale. Professor David Ingram, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, summing up a conference on the Implications of Plant Science, sponsored by the Gatsby Foundation and the Biotechnology and Biological Research Council in 1995, however, referring specifically to the Third World countries, said that ‘we now know that much work remains to be done on the ecological consequences of the transfer of alien genes to wild species, especially genes such as those for herbicide resistance.’ He also said that we need to know much more about the transfer of antibiotic resistant genes in the gut and to soil bacteria as well and that we were ‘woefully ignorant ofthe consequences of such transfer’. Even less is known about virus ecology were we to consider the transfer of viral genes.

Reducing the impact our weekly supermarket shopping has on the contents of our household waste should surely require less aspirin than the headache resulting from having to deal with the much bigger environmental issues raised by genetic engineering. If you think about it for long enough you will realise that the issues are much more closely related than you might at first have thought. Then, perhaps you didn’t.

Peter Doyle