New genetically modified foods - perhaps as many as several hundred - are about to enter the marketplace but gaps in scientific knowledge of their potential effects must be filled first, a Dublin conference was told yesterday. To ensure such foods match their purpose, a co-ordinated system of thorough monitoring of such products and their derivatives, through a single European register and database, is also paramount, according to an an Austrian scientist, Dr Alexander Haslberger.
Genes and traits can now be exchanged between organisms which are not related at all, such as between micro-organisms and higher plants. Typical products now available were herbicide-resistant plants but more sophisticated foods with modified nutritional properties, including "drought tolerance", were likely to be available.
Knowledge of gene behaviour in a new genetic/ecological environment "is still very limited", he said at the EU conference on regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) hosted by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Dr Haslberger is a member of the Austrian GMO regulatory authority.
Austria was not saying new genetically modified foods are harmful, but that such potential effects warrant definitive examination.
Five GMO products allowed in the EU were recently prohibited in Norway, said Ms Guri Tveito, biotechnology adviser to its environment ministry. This was mainly due to insufficient data.
The public concern about GMOs, concentrated on the safety of genetically modified foods, "has no foundation", according to Prof David McConnell of Trinity College department of genetics.
Genetics, including GMO use, was essentially "a green science" with an unblemished record of safety. Smoking, he said, was the biggest single cause of global death. "How I wish there were regulations to control it, similar to the level of regulation of biotechnology in Europe."
