Living modified organisms, at your nearest store.

• Author: Tamale, Erie

Over the last two decades, there has been rapid advancement in the development and application modern biotechnology--a technology that involves taking genetic material from one organism and inserting it into another to give it a desired characteristic. This new technology is complex and arouses much debate.

On the one hand, modern biotechnology promises to contribute to sustainable development and generate benefits to humankind, such as producing drought-tolerant crops that could result in increased agricultural productivity in regions suffering from harsh weather conditions. The technology also promises to produce high-yielding or disease-resistant varieties of crops, which can help increase the production levels of food supplies.

On the other hand, products resulting from biotechnology may have adverse effects on biological diversity and human health, or have negative socio-economic impacts. For instance, concerns have been raised over the possibility of the How of genes from genetically modified plants to their wild relatives, such as through cross-pollination, leading to undesirable consequences. It is also feared that certain genetically modified plants which contain, for example, insect resistant traits, could harm not only the targeted insect pests but also other non-targeted species.

In 1992, delegates at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) acknowledged that, while modern biotechnology might have great potential to make a significant contribution to improve human well-being and sustainable development, it must be developed and used with adequate safety measures. This resulted in the adoption in January 2000 of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, as a supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity, to ensure the safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms (LMOS) resulting from modern biotechnology.

The Protocol promotes the precautionary approach, which reaffirms Principle 15 of the UN Rio Declaration, stating that, "where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation." The concept of such a precautionary approach has also been applied in other international agreements and, in the case of the Protocol, it means that Governments may decide, on the basis of precaution, not to permit a particular LMO to be imported across...