Barcelona, Spain
July 24, 2008
Source:
SciDev.Net
Jia Hepeng
European nations should take a
more positive attitude towards genetically modified (GM) food
because their negative stance is seriously affecting developing
world policies regarding commercialisation of GM crops to feed
hungry people, says a leading Chinese scientist.
"The attitudes of Chinese policymakers are deeply influenced by
your views and I appeal to you to reconsider your stance so that
modern agricultural technologies can benefit more people in
China and other developing countries," said Yang Huanming,
director of the
Beijing Genomics Institute and China's leading researcher of
human genomics and rice genomics projects.
Yang's remark was made on 18 July at a session organised by
European Action on Global Life Sciences (EAGLES) during the
Euroscience Open Forum.
It came days after the Chinese government approved a gigantic
seeding research project that focuses on using a GM approach to
improve plants' nutrition, yield, and tolerance to drought and
floods.
Details of the research project were not revealed, but the China
Daily newspaper reported that the funding for the long-term
research programme (2006–2020) could be up to 20 billion Chinese
yuan (US$2.92 billion), around 20 per cent of which would be
used for biosafety inspection of new species and infrastructure
construction.
Yang believes that this project will make the approval of GM
crops easier, especially GM rice of which several varieties are
under pre-commercialisation trials in China.
But environmental organisations, like Greenpeace, say that GM
food poses a danger. They say there is risk of 'gene pollution'
— where the inserted gene of GM plants affects non-target plants
of similar kinds via pollination. Earlier this year, Chinese
scientists developed a strategy that could potentially minimise
this (see
New method
'prevents spread of GM plants').
Yang told SciDev.Net that claims made by environmental
organisations have posed a major barrier to commercialisation.
"[Environmental groups] say the majority of Chinese agricultural
products will be polluted by the modified genes, seriously
influencing Chinese exports to Europe [as the continent will ban
Chinese exports due to the risk of gene pollution]," Yang says.
"This claim is threatening enough to some policymakers although
there is no scientific evidence of 'gene pollution'."
David McConnell, a professor of biotechnology at Trinity
College, Dublin and co-vice chairman of EAGLES, welcomes Yang's
appeals. "These voices from the developing world help European
scientists to deliver more correct sounds, such as scientific
basis of GM foods, to European public," he told SciDev.Net.
"The GM-free organic farming in Europe [cherished by
environmental groups] relies on huge government and financial
support and cannot be realised among small farmers in the
developing countries with urgent need for modern agricultural
biotechnologies to improve their productivity." |
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