Enjeux - GMOs, a stormy debate Enjeux - GMOs, a stormy debate

OUTLOOK AND SOLUTIONS

Research falling behind?

Seed researchers and professionals deplore the fact that France has arrived at this deadlock because they see it as a threat to the future of French research and expertise in plant biotechnology. Researchers have also been shocked to see their trials destroyed by anti-GM groups. They consider it indispensable to maintain GMO experiments to keep France from falling behind laboratories and companies in other countries, especially the USA. From their point of view, preventing European breeders from using these technologies could result in variety innovation and selection being concentrated in the hands of a highly limited number of private firms or multinational capital.

Competitive distortion

For their part, pro-GM farmers in France see themselves as victims of competitive distortion compared with farmers in countries authorising GMO cultivation. Reducing the number of crop protection products and obtaining more productive varieties, those for example that use available water or fertilisers better, cut production costs. French producers are afraid that they will become far less competitive than their counterparts in other countries. 

A clear framework for GMO cultivation?

European and French authorities have for some time been discussing an acceptable threshold of GMOs in non-GMO seeds and non-GMO crops. But a conclusion has yet to be reached. A limit of 0.9% has been suggested (the proportion adopted for foodstuff labelling) but is contested by anti-OGM movements. And despite numerous studies, neither has a decision been taken on rules for producing GM and non-GM varieties (for example, the distance between fields) and avoiding the risk of cross-pollination.

Setting such a threshold and establishing precise rules on the “co-existence” of GM and non-GM crops would be seen as a great step forward by the farming world, enabling them to produce GMOs trouble-free. Anti-GM groups are holding their positions, however, and think that cultivating GM varieties is quite simply too risky for the time being.

To calm things down and clarify the situation, the French government set up a High Council of Biotechnology in April 2009. One of the Council's first asks will be to rule on the definition of what is and what isn't a GMO.
  
Meanwhile, researchers and breeders are coming up with new ideas that could be used in regulation. For example, scientists suggest that companies be required to systematically provide a for-and-against analysis report for each case. They also propose that toxicology tests be strengthened when approval requests are submitted, for example by extending them to at least two species, by making tests longer than 90 days, and by factoring in the sex of the individual, along with other aspects that for the moment do not figure in inspections.

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A CASE-BY-CASE APPROACH

Recent debates between pro- and anti-GM parties have highlighted the necessity in the future to not approach GMO authorisation as a generality but to study each approval request case by case.