Inside D.C.

Biotech and European self loathing

I’m fascinated and more than a bit befuddled, how Europe after evolving through the Dark Ages, blossoming during the Renaissance to become the world’s cradle of the arts, science and technology, expanding the borders of the known world, and responsible for peacefully creating the largest and most economically powerful coalition of democratic nations in recorded history can be at best naïve and at worst, stupid about biotechnology.

Europe’s social and political attitude toward biotech is the political equivalent of raging against the light, and is not only economically masochistic, it directly impacts not only the Europe’s qualify of life, but the ability of a large chunk of the developing world to become food self-sufficient.

Recent silliness to come out of the European Union (EU) was the March, 2015, “reform” of its biotech plant approval policy, saying on one hand it was streamlining the genetically modified (GM) seed/crop approval process – a major complaint of both European and global biotech companies – while at the same time granting the 28 EU member nations an “opt out” option.  This means the EU writ large might approve the safety of a new GM crop clearing it for planting, but each member nation can choose to ignore the approval and ban the cultivation of any GM crop within its borders.  To date, 19 out of 28 EU member nations have requested opt-outs for all or part of their country when it comes to planting a recently approved Monsanto corn variety.

As the rest of the planet slowly moves to embrace biotechnology providing weed, insect, disease, saline or drought resistant crop varieties – the ultimate goal being food self-sufficiency – the EU intentionally condemns itself to either import expensive feed and food grains to meet its needs – the global sources for which are dwindling – or increases food costs to its consumers by cultivating more labor-intensive and expensive conventional crop varieties.

As a side note, when it comes to feeding its livestock, the GM ban does not extend to livestock and poultry feed in the same way it applies to breakfast cereals.  Because consuming a GM corn or soybean variety doesn’t change the DNA of the animal consuming that feed, it’s OK to feed GM feed grains.  The fact the EU is seriously feed grain deficient may have something to do with that process.

Stranger still is the European Parliament’s action last month on livestock cloning.  Claiming concerns for animal health and ubiquitous “consumer concerns,” Parliament announced a September 8 recommendation to ban cloning of all farm animals, including cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and horses.  However, given the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has affirmed cloning is a reproductive technology that doesn’t affect food safety or quality, politicians rationalize the move saying consumers worry about the welfare of surrogate mothers and their cloned offspring.  Effectively, Parliament banned the use of a proven and safe technology, denied efficiency to its farmers, and turned a blind eye to improving the health and welfare of its animal herds and flocks by banning the sale of cloned animals and their offspring.

The U.S. declared cloning safe in the first-ever food safety risk assessment of clones and their offspring published by FDA in January, 2008.  That exhaustive risk assessment was followed by similar independent declarations of safety from Canada, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and EFSA.  China used to proudly say it would build its beef herd off cloned champions.  The practice has quietly found lots of customers, and cloned animals – the genetic “rock stars of the barnyard” – stand on farms across the U.S., Latin America and Asia, and literally millions of calves have been born from these animals.  That number rises exponentially when global sales of semen from cloned animals are calculated, and trust me, those cloned animals and their offspring are grazing happily across Europe, breeding succeeding generations quite efficiently.

The true silliness of the Parliament’s action is that it is 100% unenforceable, meaning it’s a 100% political gambit, a play for the hearts and minds of technology ignorant and/or fearful European consumers.  Because cloning does not add, subtract or alter the genetic makeup of an animal as in genetic plant modification, what you get with cloning is simply a genetic twin. There’s no take-home DNA quick test for clones or their offspring or their offspring’s offspring.  Unless the company which created the clone provides the testing protocol – and that ain’t going to happen – there’s no practical way to test or prove an animal is a clone or isn’t.  The same goes for their offspring.

At the same time, the nations which embrace cloning as just another reproductive technology are the same nations supplying most of the EU’s meat. Will the Parliament’s declaration be imposed on imports?  If that’s the way it goes, beef and pork on European menus will be available only to the top 1% of European earners.

However, if these technology missteps only caused economic pain and suffering to EU residents, the damage at least would be contained.  However, because the EU has a history of imposing its social mismanagement on other nations with which it does business, those populations will suffer right along with the Europeans.

The best example of this is the prevailing political attitude of most African nations. Due to economic and political pressures out of Europe several African governments won’t allow GM production within their borders.  This means sub-Saharan nations can’t use saline and drought-tolerant crop varieties to overcome food deficits.  Comes the day, disease resistant animals which can thrive in tropical climes won’t be contributing a whit to African hunger battles and food self-sufficiency.  This is what a European politician would call an ”unintended consequence” of its policy.