Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are no riskier than their conventionally farmed equivalents, the European Commission’s Chief Scientific Advisor Anne Glover has told EurActiv in an exclusive interview, calling for countries impeding GMO use to be put to proof.
 
The endorsement of GMO safety will rattle member states where bans are in place, and represents the CSA’s highest-profile policy intervention since Glover became Commission President José Manuel Barroso’s scientific advisor last December.
 
“There is no substantiated case of any adverse impact on human health, animal health or environmental health, so that’s pretty robust evidence, and I would be confident in saying that there is no more risk in eating GMO food than eating conventionally farmed food,” Glover told EurActiv, saying the precautionary principle no longer applies as a result.
 
Glover said that scientific evidence needed to play a stronger role in policymaking, firing a warning shot at countries that have banned GMOs. “I think we could really get somewhere in Europe if when evidence is used partially, there were an obligation on people to say why they have rejected evidence,” she said.
 
GMOs and other scientific advances must be explored in order to head off the increasing scarcity of energy and other resources and competition for land use, Glover suggested.
 
“If we are using land to produce biofuels, we are not producing food, and that that means we have to intensify food production,” she said.
 
Glover’s role is to bolster scientific evidence by saying things that politicians and officials are sometimes uncomfortable with, she said, adding: “The evidence with which I work is independent, the evidence with which I work does not change according to political philosophy. And that should give people a lot of confidence.”
 
Glover said that discomfort around the subject of GM crops in the 1980s and 1990s was “a generation ago, we’ve moved on and the challenges are completely different”.





back to overview