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Judging gene foodsAn impartial panel could quell health and environmental fears ARE genetically modified foods safe to eat? A grand forum of internationally renowned scientists and other experts might soon be helping the world decide. The forum would regularly provide governments with an independent, state-of-the-art consensus on what the latest science tells us, helping to resolve international divisions on GM food safety. The forum is the brainchild of John Krebs, the British scientist who chaired the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's recent summit conference in Edinburgh on the safety of GM foods. Krebs, who also chairs the British government's new Food Standards Agency, says that the GM foods forum could resemble the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC is a global coalition of scientists that meets regularly to review the scientific consensus on global warming. Consumer groups are sceptical, however. Sue Mayer of the pressure group GeneWatch UK doubts that a committee of grandees would work in an area where most pressure has come from grassroots consumer campaigns. It will be too distant from ordinary people, and could even make matters worse, she says. Krebs included the proposal in his final reportfrom the Edinburgh conference, published last weekand sent to governments of the world's eight most powerful nations. Ministers from these G8 countries will discuss this and Krebs's other proposals in July when they next meet, in Okinawa, Japan. Krebs says his proposed forum would not just include scientists but, crucially, other stakeholders whose views on the politics, economics, ethics and morals of biotechnology would feed into reports by the forum. He also believes that developing countries should be widely represented on the panel, given the enthusiasm for GM foods they expressed in Edinburgh. The real push for GM is taking place in developing countries, particularly China, South America and Africa, he says. It shouldn't be limited to a group of wealthy countries, agrees a spokesperson from the Panos Institute, a London-based think tank on Third World issues. Krebs's report also addresses some consumer issues, including a call for reassessment of substantial equivalence, whereby regulators assume GM plants to be identical with their natural counterparts, apart from an inserted trait such as resistance to weedkillers or viruses. We've been critical of [substantial equivalence] for some time, says Mayer. We don't feel the system is set up to identify unexpected s in food. Additionally, Krebs's report reflects unanimous feeling from Edinburgh that consumers must be told on labels when a product is genetically engineered, even if it is identical to a rival product manufactured without GM technology. Mona Patel of Britain's Consumers' Association wonders how Krebs's forum will interact with other international food groups. For example, the UN's Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets international food standards, is already looking into such issues as labelling and substantial equivalence. Meanwhile, a report published last week by the US National Research Council calls for a tightening up of US regulations on GM plants and improvements in the methods by which their toxicity and allergenicity is tested. But it cautiously pronounces GM foods safe, given the lack of adverse data so far. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news_223429.html (New Scientist magazine, 15 April 2000)