SymBioSE´97: General problems with novel food regulations
Results of the workshop
General problems with novel food regulations
Introduction
At the beginning of this year the European Community (EC)
passed a law which set up a lot of regulations on novel food.
This workshop tried to work on different aspects of this theme.
Topics discussed
This workshop had big problems with providing informations to
the participants. Most infos were in german language (because
of lag and non existance (??))
Participants
We started with a short introduction of ourselves. Questions:
interest in workshop, expirience on molecular biology.
Laws in Europe
We worked out, that there were laws in Austria, Netherlands,
Germany; in Portugal and Great Britain we weren´t quite sure.
Austria is setting up a referendum for not patenting life, no
field studies with modified organisms and not allowing to sell
an import these products. Furthermore a labeling of these
products.
Analysing discussions
In this part, we started to collect different arguments used in
discussions about genmodified novel food. We agreed that in
these discussions is no possibility to find a compromise - just
a exchange of arguments. Each point was discussed and wighted
(no protocoled).
For: · Reduction of herbizides · nachwachsende Rohstoffe: new products out of plants · optimizing of nutirens · increasing of quality · adaption of plant to new areas · solution of the world-food-problem (discussed controversly) · economic and ecologic production of traditional products
Against: · results in monocultures (?) · loss of biodiversity · gentransfer to wildforms · moral and ethics · many unused possibility in the classical methods · unknown risks · economic and social system not accepted · alternative farming against industrialized farming · alergenic potential of transgenic products · considering personal to community wealth
European Community
In this part we wanted to work out, which institutions are
there in the EC, how they are set up and which role they play
in passing a law. The European Parliament (EP) is comparable to
the one found in each country. The E. Commission can be
compared to a governement (but is not seleced by parliament but
by the governements of the EC-countries) - its main functions
is the suggestion of laws. The third important gremium is the
assembly of the ministries which is a collection of the
ministries of a certain topic. Passing a law is a difficult
act, in which all three institutions are involved.
Role of Knowledge
We discussed the influence of access and presentations of
informations on the public point of view. Research data are
often not surprising for people in research but may threaten
people outside. We agreed that spreading manipulated
informations is as bad as spreading no informations.
Author & Project
| Stefan Herms | Fachschaft Biologie / Uni
Kaiserslautern
|
Berliner Straße 20
67659 Kaiserslautern
| Erwin - Schrödinger - Straße
67663 Kaiserslautern
|
| Tel: 0631 - 95263 (FAX: 78122)
| 0631 - 205 - 2403 (FAX: 2998)
|
herms@student.uni-kl.de
www.student.uni-kl.de/~herms/ | fsbio@rhrk.uni-kl.de
www.uni-kl.de/FB-Biologie/FS/
|
Stefan Herms
22.08.97