The Use of GM Crops in Developing Countries
The precautionary approach
4.35 Most people agree that an assessment of the environmental safety of GM crops should focus primarily on the severity of the consequences of gene flow. However, some also take the view that GM crops should not be developed at all because there may be a very low probability that some unpredictable and serious adverse consequences may ensue. This case is frequently argued in terms of the so called precautionary approach (see Box 4.1). The argument is that, irrespective of possible benefits, a new technology should never be introduced unless there is a guarantee that no risk will arise.
4.36 An alternative interpretation of the approach with regard to the use of GM crops is that it enjoins us to ‘proceed with care’, when we have no well-grounded reason to think that a hazard will arise and when there is a valuable goal to be achieved. By this interpretation, each new release of a GM crop into the environment needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Each application would require an iterative approach, beginning with the contained use of GM crops, followed by several smaller field trials, and then possibly by larger trials and a provisional and time limited commercial release.
4.37 How might we decide between alternative interpretations of the precautionary approach? We offer the following observations. First, an excessively conservative interpretation, demanding evidence of the absence of all risk before allowing the pursuit of a new technology is fundamentally at odds with any practical strategy of investigating new technologies. Pursued to its logical outcome, a conservative interpretation would require a delay (i.e. a moratorium) in the use of a new technology until a complete assurance of absence of risk is available. However, no one can ever guarantee an absolute absence of risk arising from the use of any new technology. In our view, such an approach would lead to an inappropriate embargo on the introduction of all new technology. There are countless recent cases which indicate that it would make impossible technologies which are now accepted by most people in developed countries, such as the wide deployment of vaccination programmes or the use of mobile phones or aeroplanes. We have come firmly to the view that the only sensible interpretation of the precautionary approach is comparative, i.e. to select the course of action (or of inaction) with least overall risk.
4.38 Secondly, it is easier to forgo possible benefits in the light of assumed hazards, if the existing status quo is already largely satisfactory. Thus, for developed countries, the benefits offered by GM crops may, so far, be relatively modest. However, in developing countries the degree of poverty and the often unsatisfactory state of health and agricultural sustainability is the baseline and the feasibility of alternative ways to improve their situation must be the comparator.