Don’t Go Easy On The EC

Avatar for Matt Hopkins By Scott C. Lucas|22 April 2008

In an earlier article, BASF stated that it has not ruled out the possibility of taking legal action against the European Commission (EC) if a decision could not be made on a variety of biotech potato that for nine months has been suspended in the regulatory process without receiving approval. BASF contends that the EC is not following its own regulatory processes, and that the potato was supported by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which held that the potato does not pose danger to humans or animals.

Yet, opponents to the crop – and general opponents to biotechnology – have created enough of a concern that the EC appears now to be ignoring its own approval process, and simultaneously undermining its own credibility.

Several nations did attempt to block the approval of BASF’s Amflora potato, as well as two biotech corn products that are also left hanging in the system. These are the practices that brought the EU under the scrutiny of the WTO for using an unfair trade system.

So what is the EC to do, faced on the one hand with alienating or enraging the very large portion of the European population which holds anti-biotech sentiments – and on the other with violating its own rules and again running afoul of the WTO?

Easy. Approve the crop, if it has satisfied the requirements of the approval process; do not approve it if it hasn’t.

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There is severe danger in taking any other action. And it goes farther than the European “brain drain” – the fact that researchers are going elsewhere because of the EU’s anti-science policies. It is in the creation of a government body that fails to adhere to its own rules and procedures. It’s as if the Magna Carta were erased from Europe’s history, and the king is again above the law rather than subject to it.

Europe’s regulatory scheme is perhaps the most trying. The products that meet its demands need to be permitted to market, lest no advancements can be made. Or worse – companies like BASF simply stop trying.