Ontology engineering

commentaryGoing to ridiculous lengths—Europeancoexistence regulations for GM cropsKoreen Ramessar, Teresa Capell, Richard M Twyman & Paul ChristouEven if a GM crop can surmount Europe’s excessive product registration process, any farmer hoping to plant it mustthen navigate tortuous, arbitrary and scientifically unjustifiable coexistence regulations.© 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.Genetically modified (GM) crops nowcover over 100 million hectares of arableland in >20 countries, and this trend towardincreased uptake and deployment is growingat a steady rate 1 . Inevitably, GM and non-GMcrops of the same species will be grown neareach other, a concept defined by the term‘coexistence’ 2 . There has been an extraordinaryand sustained campaign mainly inthe European Union (EU; Brussels) thathas united certain stakeholders, includingorganic producers, certification bodies andenvironmental groups, against GM/non-GMcoexistence. The escalating battle has drawnin producers, retailers, governments, regulatorybodies, scientists and, of course, thegeneral public. The outcome in the EU is amess: a haphazard and inconsistent set ofrules that has no rational scientific underpinning,which obstructs GM producers,misleads the public and adds unnecessarylayers of complexity to international trade.GM/non-GM coexistence is now a loadedterm, used by opponents as a de facto criticismof GM agriculture and a self-fulfillingreason to impose restrictions. Is there anyway to encourage a rational approach to thecoexistence debate?Koreen Ramessar and Teresa Capell are at theDepartament de Producció Vegetal I CiènciaForestal, University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain;Richard M. Twyman is at the Department ofBiological Sciences, University of Warwick,Coventry, UK; and Paul Christou is at theDepartament de Producció Vegetal I CiènciaForestal, University of Lleida and the InstitucióCatalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, PasseigLluís Companys, Barcelona, Spain.e-mail: christou@pvcf.udl.esSpecial treatment required? Keeping GMcorn pollen grains (like this one pictured ata magnification of 795×) segregated fromconventional corn is one of the purposes ofEurope’s coexistence regulations.Adventitious presenceThe basis of the campaign against GM/non-GM coexistence is “adventitious presence,”which is defined (in the context of GMagriculture) as the presence of unwantedGM material in non-GM commodities. Theadventitious presence of GM material canoccur in many ways (Fig. 1), but most oftenthrough outcrossing, the growth of volunteerplants from stray seeds and admixtureafter harvest 3 . The adventitious presence ofGM material in non-GM commodities isoften presented as disastrous by opponentsof GM technology and described usingterms such as ‘contamination’ and ‘adulteration’.However, it is important to recognizethat the reasons it is thus regardedANDREW SYRED/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYdiffer according to different stakeholders.Environmental pressure groups are keen topromote uncertainties about the impact ofGM crops on human health and the environmentand oppose coexistence on thebasis that the adventitious presence of GMmaterial is a safety issue, even though thesafety of GM crops must be demonstratedto regulators before licensing for commercialproduction. Organic producers, on theother hand, oppose coexistence becausethey fear their organic status and associatedorganic price premium may dependon the absence of GM material, promptinglegal challenges and lobbying againstGM agriculture both within the EU andelsewhere 2,4 . The European Commission(EC; Brussels) has confirmed that coexistenceis purely an economic issue by definingit as “…issues relating to the economicconsequences of adventitious presence ofmaterial from one crop in another and theprinciple that farmers should be able tocultivate freely the agricultural crops theychoose, be it GM crops, conventional ororganic crops...” 5 .Intimately intertwined with the politicalcoexistence debate is the European public’santipathy to GM products and preferencefor non-GM products. Public uncertaintyabout the safety of GM products is exaggeratedby environmental pressure groupsand some parts of the media, thus helpingto create the preference. Many suppliers andretailers, responding to consumer pressure,have therefore imposed restrictions on theuse of GM material and its presence in foodproducts, encouraging producers to segregateGM and non-GM crops. A viciouscircle has been created.nature biotechnology volume 28 number 2 february 2010 133