As a marketing gimmick, the company that sells Mr. Men socks in Europe is currently packaging its product inside a matching coffee mug. The package bears a warning label, "Remove socks before use." It isn't clear whether the company fears that you'll put coffee in the mug without removing the socks, or try on the socks without taking them out of the mug. Either way, the label seems pretty dumb. But at least it's unlikely that it was mandated by any government.
Unfortunately, the European Union wants certain food products to carry labels that make almost as little sense as the one on Mr. Men socks. In the past two years, the EU has caved into demands from anti-technology advocates by approving two directives that will require warning labels on foods derived from new biotechnology techniques.
The scientific consensus is that the risks associated with new biotechnology products are fundamentally the same as for other products. Dozens of new plant varieties modified with traditional genetic engineering techniques enter the marketplace each year without special labeling or premarket review. Many products on the market are "wide crosses," plants derived by moving genes from one species to another to create a variety of plant that does not exist in nature. While this may sound dramatic, the results are as mundane as a tomato that is more resistant to disease or that has a thicker skin that won't be damaged during mechanical picking. Plants that have undergone these slight but important alterations have been an integral part of European and American diets for decades.
Scientists around the world also agree that new "gene-splicing" technology lowers even further the already minimal risk associated with introducing new plant varieties into the food supply. Thanks to this technology, it is now possible to introduce pieces of DNA that contain only one or a few well-characterized genes, while older genetic techniques transferred a variable number of genes haphazardly. The result is a final product that is even safer for the consumer.
Strangely, the EU's new regulations apply only to foods made with the newest biotechnology. The first directive, announced in 1997, applies when any of four conditions occurs: when there is no "substantial equivalence" between the new food and an older counterpart; when materials are present in the new food that may affect the health of certain groups of people; when the new food contains material that may present "ethical problems"; or when living genetically altered organisms are present in the new food.
The EU's terminology, such as "substantial equivalence" and "ethical problems," is so vague as to guarantee confusion among food producers and regulators alike. The imprecision of the bureaucrats' wording will ensure endless squabbling and litigation over individual cases.
Furthermore, only the second condition is related to actual health risk. All foods already are required by pre-existing regulations to carry labels when they pose a significant health risk. Given biotechnology's pedigree, it makes no sense to force only genetically modified food to carry a label just because it might pose a health risk to "certain groups of people." Bags of healthy, genetically engineered peanuts will have to carry the warning, "genetically engineered," while the medically and scientifically sound label (for all peanuts) would read, "should not be eaten by anyone allergic to peanuts."
The labels mandated by the EU will also add significantly to the costs of processed foods made from fresh fruits and vegetables. For example, a canned foods company that sometimes uses a gene-spliced, less-watery tomato (which is more favorable for processing) would have to determine whether modified tomatoes or non-modified tomatoes are present in its final product. This requires monitoring at each level of production -- planting, harvesting, shipping, processing and distribution. Detailed labels would then have to appear on all manner of products. A can of minestrone soup, for example, would have to announce the presence of any amount of gene-spliced tomato, potato or other natural ingredient. The added production costs are a particular disadvantage to products in the competitive, low profit-margin processed foods market.
The latest EU directive, issued last May, is focused on soya and maize and establishes new and even stricter criteria for labeling. It would require labels on any food or food ingredients that are made either wholly or partly from seeds derived from gene-spliced soya or maize. A warning would be mandated if DNA or protein derived from introduced genetic material is detectable in the food.
Again, this makes no scientific sense. A genetic cross between a plum and an apricot, or wheat and a grass (or two varieties of maize), always contains DNA, protein and other constituents from both "parents." That is what imparts novel, desirable characteristics. Moreover, even if such a condition made sense, it leaves uncertain what is meant by "detectable." Different techniques vary by a factor of millions in their ability to detect DNA and proteins.
The EU's directives illustrate the hazards of crafting public policy that forsakes scientific advice and does nothing to protect the public's health. Like the warning on the socks, the EU -mandated food labels will provide no genuinely useful information about the product. They will only require that the labels note that the products modified with the newest methods are made with "biotechnology" or from "genetically manipulated organisms." Those terms have little meaning in view of the fact that most fruits, vegetables, meat and poultry in America and Europe have long been genetically improved using less precise, traditional techniques. As often happens with political decisions on issues with a scientific component, the citizenry is compromised by an outcome that makes neither scientific nor economic sense.
The European Commission's own biotechnology advisory group has said that information provided to consumers must be "useful" and that labeling is appropriate only "when modern biotechnology causes a substantial change in composition, nutritional value or the use for which the food is intended." Clearly, the EU's latest directives do not follow those guidelines. Instead, unnecessary, arbitrary and conflicting food labeling requirements constitute, in effect, a tax on regulated products and activities, creating a potent disincentive to product development and use. Consumers, whose prices will be raised and choices diminished by this regulatory tax, would be better served by industry spending its resources on research and development to create safer, more innovative products. The EU's directives on labeling deserve a label of their own: unscientific, misleading and silly.
Dr. Miller is a senior research fellow at Stanford University's
Hoover
Institution and the author of "Policy Controversy in Biotechnology:
An
Insider's View" (R.G. Landes Co., 1997).
