U.S. Official Cites Challenge of Biosafety Conference

By Jim Fuller
Washington File Science Writer

Washington -- A U.S. official says representatives from countries around the world will gather in Montreal at the end of January for "very challenging" talks on a Biosafety Protocol to reduce potential risks resulting from the transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms.

David Sandalow, newly-confirmed assistant secretary of state for oceans, environment and science, told a small group of reporters December 6 that the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity should focus on environmental issues. Sandalow said that a core objective of the U.S. delegation at the talks will be to ensure that the proposed Biosafety Protocol is an environment agreement and not a trade agreement.

"These negotiations are arising under the auspices of the Biodiversity Convention," he said, "and they ought to appropriately focus on the environmental challenges associated with biotechnology. They should not become centrally a negotiation about rules for trade. To the extent that it moves toward complex rules that would interfere with world food trade, the United States will not be able to support it."

The upcoming round of talks follows a session of the conference of parties held last February in Cartagena, Colombia, where officials were unable to finalize the draft text of the Biosafety Protocol. The main areas of contention centered on trade issues, treatment of commodities and domestic versus international regulatory regimes.

The talks focused on the treatment of commodities containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that can resist disease or produce higher yields. For example, genes from a common microbe found in the soil, known as Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), can be inserted into the DNA of corn and other plants to make them noxious to specific insect pests. The full possibilities of biotechnology are only now emerging as research continues.

"I believe we need to proceed with precaution in addressing biotechnology, but we need to proceed," Sandalow said. "Modern biotechnology offers tremendous benefits for all of mankind."

He said scientists doing research in agricultural productivity in the developing world report that biotechnology provides opportunities for helping to improve nutrition for poor children by enhancing crops with Vitamin A and micronutrients.

Researchers at the Rockefeller Foundation's International Rice Biotechnology Program hope to increase rice production in Asia 20 percent by 2005, while minimizing environmental degradation.

"The technology is already helping to reduce pesticide usage in some areas, and by enhancing agricultural productivity in the developing world we can help to reduce deforestation," Sandalow said. "So all of these are important benefits of modern biotechnology. We need to protect them."

Sandalow said that, in the view of many scientists, the public fury in Europe over biotech foods "threatens to leave thousands, if not millions, of children behind in the developing world as scientists and funding institutions become concerned about applying these tools of modern biotechnology, and unwilling to do so as a result of the public fury."

U.S. regulators have determined that foods developed by modern biotechnology do not differ in safety or quality in any uniform way from foods developed by other methods of plant breeding. At the same time, U.S. farmers have increased the planting of soybeans and other genetically modified -- or GM -- crops, which have been altered to resist insect pests or certain types of herbicide. But consumer groups in Europe and other major U.S. markets overseas have resisted the move towards GM foods, calling for further testing or labeling of foods that may contain GM material.

According to some experts, many Europeans remain skittish over food and crop modifications after a series of food crises in recent years. Among those was the discovery of the so-called "Mad Cow" disease in British beef herds.

"I will be spending a lot of time focusing on biotechnology," Sandalow said. "It's an issue that has been at the top of the public agenda in Europe now for some time, and I think is only recently getting much attention in the United States. But it's getting a lot more attention in the U.S."

Sandalow said the State Department's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs will also be focusing on climate change and the loss of biodiversity. He said that while global climate change is currently getting most of the attention, according to some scientists the loss of biodiversity "is every bit as serious and maybe even more serious."

"Scientists will tell you that we're changing the climate at a rate unknown for a couple of hundred thousand years, but they'll also tell you that we're losing species at a rate unknown in about 65 million years -- since the dinosaurs went extinct," he said. "It's quite dramatic. And much of the work of this bureau relates to protecting biodiversity."

Sandalow said the bureau is doing a lot of work with regard to protecting fisheries, which are important to the U.S. economy. The bureau is also very involved in work to protect whales.

Sandalow said another issue that demands priority attention is the problem of invasive species, which refers to species from one continent that are transferred to another continent, often doing tremendous damage in a new environment where they have no natural enemies to control populations.

"In this country, for example, the zebra mussel in the Great Lakes region has done incredible economic damage, and we need to find ways to address problems like that in the year ahead," he said.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State)

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