Food poisoning is a very real risk, albeit one which is generally well managed. We live with these risks on a daily basis. Why do we tolerate these but not GM crops?
Food, risk and zero tolerance
How pure do we want our food to be? And how natural? These are questions which go to the heart of our concept of ‘good’ food, whether we eat to live or live to eat. Food is a necessity for life but also a source of great enjoyment. As long as our basic requirements for energy are fulfilled without too much struggle, we can afford to choose the food we prefer to eat. In the developed world, the variety of food available has increased enormously over just a couple of generations and pretty much anyone can afford to have a varied diet with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.
An abundance of food is just one aspect of a great improvement in many aspects of life in recent decades. We live longer, have better healthcare and have greater freedom to enjoy our lives how and where we will. But as life (generally) gets better and safer, remaining risks take on a much greater significance. In the case of food, risks of all sorts are compounded with cultural and personal preferences to produce an at times irrational list of things which people consider to be good or bad to eat. Chicken feet are waste in the West, a delicacy in China; Dutch children learn to enjoy nieuwe haring (raw fermented herring) which other nationalities find disgusting.
But these preferences go further and take us into the realm of risk. Soft cheese made from unpasteurised milk may be one person’s idea of real, high quality food, but for others it is an invitation to live dangerously. Live oysters present a similar dichotomy. The risks are real, albeit quite low, and the consequences may be acutely unpleasant but are short-lived. Many people are happy to take the risk.
‘Use by’ and ‘best before’ dates were introduced to ensure people were eating safe food in good condition although ‘best befores’ tend to take away the element of commonsense. At one time, looking and smelling was usually sufficient to judge how edible something was, but now it’s certain that a large amount of perfectly edible food goes to waste because the nominal date has been passed. In a similarly precautionary fashion, our fridges are now full of jars of jam, pickles and so on which we used to be happy to keep in the cupboard and occasionally throw away if mould started to grow.
These real but generally manageable microbiological risks are part of our everyday lives. Cooking chicken thoroughly to avoid the risk of campylobacter poisoning, or eggs to kill salmonella are part of a sensible approach to safety. Occasionally, something more serious happens, and the most serious incidents in recent years have been caused by specific strains of Escherichia Coli (E coli). E coli is a type of bacterium commonly found in the animal gut (including that of human animals) and most strains are not harmful to the host. Neither are they generally a serious food poisoning problem, but E coli is used as a useful marker organism for faecal contamination.
Bacteria, however, are very adaptable and new strains emerge frequently, depending on the selection pressure. It is this rapid evolution which has led to the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, for example: bombard them with antibiotics, particularly when people don’t complete the full course, and the more resistant individuals survive and prosper. For whatever reason, the deadly E coli 0157strain evolved and caused a number of deaths when people ate contaminated meat. More recently, it was a particularly virulent strain of E coli which caused 29 deaths in Germany. In this case, the contamination was of bean sprouts, but the source of the outbreak was initially believed to be imported cucumbers, leading to enormous losses for growers of a range of salad vegetables.
Microbial contamination is a real problem and one which cannot be 100% overcome. There is always a potential risk in eating raw vegetables, and an unfortunate incident like this every so often just serves to remind us of the fact. But, in the same way that people once again ate soft-boiled eggs after the alarm about Salmonella contamination, and consumption of British beef rose again following the CJD scare, most people will quite quickly forget and raw bean sprouts will once again be seen as a healthy, nutritious food rather than a potential poison.
Wide-scale avoidance of a particular food, followed by a cautious rebuilding of previous eating patterns, is a common reaction to serious food poisoning incidents. Some people may overreact initially, but over time commonsense reigns and consumers are able to choose to eat it or not, based on clear advice from food safety authorities.
But there is one issue where the response is different, namely genetic modification. Despite over 15 years’ experience of GM soy and maize being in the international commodity supply chain, with not a single credible incidence of harm having been reported, there is still intense opposition to their use from environmental activists. This will not be lessened by the recent approval by the EU of a 0.1% tolerance level for so-called ‘unapproved events’ in animal feed.
Because of the sclerotic approvals system in the EU, many new GM events are approved and in use in seeds planted by farmers and other countries well before a decision has been made in Brussels. The result has been a difficult time for European livestock farmers, who rely heavily on imports of soy to feed their animals at a reasonable cost. Any detectable transgenic DNA from a variety not yet approved by the European authorities would cause complete shipments to be rejected. The new regulation will allow tiny traces of events approved elsewhere (and which EFSA considers to be safe) to be detected in accepted loads.
The new ruling is therefore a pragmatic recognition that 100% ‘purity’ is impossible to guarantee, but it will offend the organic and environmentalist lobby, for whom this represents the thin end of a very unwelcome wedge. Today, animal feed, perhaps tomorrow human food (and many member states are reported to be in favour of this).
There is still a degree of concern about GM foods amongst many consumers, which is hardly surprising given the scare stories which have been started by the greens over the years. In fact, surveys show that this is pretty much a non-issue for most people. They are, rightly, far more concerned about food poisoning (they also continue to believe, unfortunately, that the tiny residues of synthetic pesticides on fruit and vegetables are far more harmful than the much larger quantities of plant-derived chemicals in the daily diet).
It is difficult to believe that, if the EU member states would only accept the advice of EFSA and approve more GM crops for cultivation as well as consumption, the majority of the public would not begin to accept that food is food and that, if it is fresh and tasty there is no reason to avoid it. If there is sound scientific advice that something is safe, there is no reason to protect the public from it.
Copyright Cambridge Network 2011.
