Discussion of Czech scientists

The involvement of Czech scientists in the agricultural biotechnology and its regulation has long tradition. In 1989 after the democracy in Czechoslovak Republic was resumed a voluntary group of scientists from Czech Academy of Sciences was formed with the aim to consult and harmonise all experiments involving recombinant DNA techniques. This group cooperated later with the Ministry of Environment and after the GMO law came in power (2001) it was transformed in the Czech Committee for the Use of Genetically Modified Organisms and Products.

The Institute of Biotechnology of the Charles University cooperated with NY University organising in November 1993 a conference "Biotechnology and Business" in Prague. Members of the Institute participated since January 1994 as observers in the OECD Working Party on Biotechnology, director of the Institute was a member of the OECD group on Regulatory Oversight and also of the Czech delegation at the 6th Meeting of Ad hoc Open-ended Working Group on Biosafety in Cartagena (February 14-22 1999). The Scientific Secretary of the Institute spent from March to June 1995 three month visit at the OECD Environment Directorate, Health Environment and Safety Division. (Czech Republic was the member of OECD since 1995). Czech delegation also participated in European Commission's public consultation on "Life Sciences and Biotechnology - A strategic vision" 27-28 September 2001 and cooperated with the Ministry of Environment in organisation of a UNEP Conference in Prague.

Czech scientists developed the genetically modified potato with increased metabolism of reducing sugars in tubers, transgenic flax and participated in many field trials of GM crops. In three years' field research they evaluated the ecology impact of Bt maize and the level of micotoxines in regions under pest infestation. Czech farmers quickly introduced the only transgenic crop approved in EU - Bt maize. In last year 171 farmers were grown it on 8300 ha.

The Czech academic community is therefore very concerned about clear political acts - like the ban of Bt maize in France - presented as "scientific" measures and in general about the pressure to replace science by ideology in the EU approach to agricultural biotechnology as demonstrated by the potato Amflora case.

This is why the invitation to the discussion about the assessment of GMO impact on the environment that was issued by the Council Conclusions on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) at the 2912th Environmnt Council meeting (Brussels, 4 December 2008) was welcomed. The Biology centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences addressed the academic community to prepare a position concerning this issue. The starting points for the discussion were suggested as follows:

1) Any agriculture represents an invasion into ecology.
2) Any new crop and new variety has impact on the community of organisms.
3) New variety should provide at least one new stable and reproducible trait, i.e. new gene(s) comparing with existing varieties.
4) All new genes can be transferred to sexually compatible plants including original and "conventional" crops.
5) Farmers will always prefer the most effective a commercially successful varieties with no regard how they were developed.
6) There is no scientific reason why transgenic varieties should have specific position in above points.
7) The assessment of the impact of new agriculture should be based on the assessment of existing technique and evaluation of changes the new technique might bring.
8) The effect of crop variety should be distinguished from the effect of agriculture technique.
9) The impact of new technology and/or new varieties on ecology and organisms community may be either positive or negative; the term "risk" implies automatically only negative impact. Such à priori prepossession has no scientific background.
10) Without the assessment of benefits and risks at the same scientific level the acceptable risk cannot be defined.
11) Due to the prevention of negative impacts the risk should be in certain cases preferentially assessed; risk is given by the probability of damage what means that the probability term already includes the incompleteness of available information. Therefore the so called precautionary principle is superfluous.
12) There is no zero risk; only relative risk can be determined; in agriculture this means to compare the benefit/risk ratio for existing agriculture and compare it with benefit/risk of the agriculture using GM crops.
13) The socio-economic issues are political factors depending on prices of outputs and inputs of agriculture, state of manpower and on political provisions like taxes, subsidies, etc.; all these are very volatile issues and are completely out off the sphere of science.
14) The involvement of public in biotechnology regulation issue must respect the level of information public may employ.
15) The European regulation of GMO that is on the level of toxic chemicals, explosive and narcotics represents a message to the public that GMOs bring about the same level of danger.
16) If political measures in the field of biotechnology have to be taken they should be clearly declared as political and must not be covered by "scientific" rhetoric.

Author: Jarolav Drobník