Waiting for climate change


These are hard times for European companies planning to develop genetically modified crops and vegetables. The number of new GM-plant projects across Europe has dramatically decreased in the last five years, according to a recent report.

BioMedNet, News, 19. Juni 2003


BMN190603 - Since June 1999, when a de facto moratorium was initiated by the European Union (EU) Council of Environment Ministers, the commercialization of new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the EU has practically ground to a halt. Subsequent approval of new GMOs has been suspended pending the implementation of a new directive, designed to provide a stricter legal framework covering not only safety, but also labeling and traceability of GMOs.

A report issued earlier this year by the European Commission Joint Research Center (JRC), the German Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI), and the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, Germany, examines the state of Europe's GM-plant research throughout this period. A total of 165 companies and research institutions responded to questionnaires issued by the report authors.

The findings reveal that since 1998 the annual number of field trial notifications being registered in the EU has dropped by 76% (and may reach 87% when 2002 data are incorporated). From 1991 onwards, registrations had increased annually. Field trials are a prerequisite step when applying for market approval and constitute a core part of the information submitted to the regulators for the safety assesment.

Almost 40% of companies and research institutes have cancelled at least one project, according to the report. Reasons for cancellation included the unclear legal situation in the EU, low consumer acceptance of GM products, and an uncertain future market. Despite the pessimistic mood of researchers, private companies are awaiting the future with many ideas and projects. "The pipelines with GMO-Projects are full," said Klaus Menrad from the German ISI, one of the report's authors.

The report's main aim was to assess what companies and institutions might request for commercialisation in the next decade, awaiting an end of the moratorium in the near future. "Most current review studies on GMOs focus on the technological developments outside Europe, thus there was a need for a study looking inside," said Menrad.

The authors surveyed ongoing R&D projects, which were categorized according to how close to commercialization these were: within five years, between five to ten years, beyond ten years. For the shortest period, researchers expect applications, such as herbicide tolerance and some forms of pest resistance, that are already known and that serve the farming and food processing industries rather than consumers. In the mid-term, researchers anticipate the development of fungi resistance and virus resistance in some crops, and modified starch, fatty acid, or protein content. Only in the next decade do Menrad and his colleagues expect plants with health-related traits such as nutrient-enriched vegetables or rice or hypoallergenic crops.

They also predict what a prolonged slowdown of the research and development phases might mean for agricultural GMOs in the EU. One disadvantage is that novel GMOs and applications are delayed in the pipeline lists. "But this wouldneþt be so grave," says Menrad, "because in the next five years there will be only little innovative applications." More problematic could be that smaller private companies (less than 500 employees) that have scaled down their R&D projects will stay in stand-by mode. They might not engage in new innovative plant biotechnology research, warn Menrad and colleagues: "There is a limit in the capacity of 'recovery' of research activities after a prolonged slow down."

Bert Uijtewaal of Bayer Cropscience predicts that smaller companies will suffer most: "Iteþs just because they have a smaller financial buffer," he said. But bigger international companies will also have problems: "It is to be expected that food or seed will travel around the world," he said. "One has to foresee a registration in all major countries in which the product can be expected to pop-up. This mean that if registration in the EU is blocked, it makes it difficult to bring a product somewhere else on the market, knowing that this can cause serious problems in the EU later on."

Uijtewaal thinks the speed of acceptance and market development depends on the product a company offers. "It depends on flexibility and the research focus of the companies whether they can make the right restart or not", he said. The problem will be, in contrast to US companies, whether the EU boards of companies can agree on another ten years R&D without income in the mean time. "The major advantage for US companies is that for them it is easier to survive this period because of the income they have based on the existing products," he said. Nevertheless Uijtewaal thinks that EU institutions will have a chance to compete with US companies, but only in new products. "The head-start that the US companies have in other parts of the world will be quite difficult to overcome."

The consumer is the other big problem, the report notes. For example, the Dutch seed and crop company Nunhems had to stop developing GM vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers or salad. "The end consumers are very frightened, this makes the threshold too high," said Orlando de Ponti, director of research at Nunhems. This, together with the high number of tests needed before vegetables are approved, curtailed development. "It's not profitable," said de Ponti.

Uijtewaal says consumers are not so negative as thought. "The major concern is that they do not like to be forced to do something but want to make decisions by themselves," he said. That means labelling and offering the consumers the right information to make their choice. Others are more cautious. "We know that the consumer's attitude will not change over night," said Simone Neddermann, press assistant of the German medium-sized crop business KWS. If product safety is proved, this will make an impact, KWS hope.

And something else might change the consumer's mind, suggests Uijtewaal. "It has not been discussed before, but I think we learned we also made some mistakes ourselves," he said. "We developed products with no clear consumer benefits. It was too easy for opponents to bring the doubts in the peoples minds, including politicians."

But as the report predicts, end consumers and politicians might have to wait more then ten years before EU companies can offer products with clear consumer benefits. Whether this will lead to the hoped-for climate change in Europe remains in question.

BioMedNet, News, 19. Juni 2003

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