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SCIENTISTS are ready to unleash plants and animals that have had their
genetic structure tinkered with. This is bound to set instinctual alarm
bells ringing. Is it right to fiddle with nature in this way? And if we
must, then can we not confine this work to the laboratory, where the risk
of a species with altered genes mingling with its more natural counterparts
is minimal? But biotechnology needs field trials to take it forward. Those
releases allowed in Britain to date have had no known adverse environmental
effect, but the risks are real. Genetically engineered organisms could alter
the balance of ecological systems. The new organisms could turn on useful
insects, or compete for nourishment with established crop plants. As the
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution warned earlier this year, ‘at
the most extreme, new organisms could conceivably affect major environmental
processes such as weather patterns and the nitrogen cycle’.

But, with sensible caution, biotechnology need not bear out the nightmare
predictions of its opponents. It could work for good: in creating new medicines,
simple tests for viruses and enzymes for industry and accelerating the production
of food.

What is needed is rational control. Over the next few weeks the Department
of the Environment (DoE) will sift through the responses of industry, academia
and the environment lobby to the Green Paper it published in June. This
laid down the government’s plans for monitoring and policing the release
of genetically manipulated organisms. Most of its respondents are vehemently
opposed to the government’s suggestion that a new body, within the DoE,
should act as watchdog. The Health and Safety Executive already has respected
expertise in assessing the safety of releases and controlling them. Such
experience in the DoE is limited. It would only waste time if releasers
had to satisfy two bodies before going ahead with an experiment. The consensus
is that responsibility for controlling releases should stay with the HSE,
with a nod to the DoE’s role in safeguarding the environment by allowing
it onto an extended version of the HSE’s release committee.

An embellished committee would do well to heed the mood of the larger
companies involved in biotechnology. They are hardly up in arms about the
hoops they have to jump through before they are allowed to release a new
product. Richard Mahoney, chairman and chief executive of Monsanto, the
chemicals company, was in London this week. He is not perturbed by the intricacies
of the regulatory process in the US which ensures that altered organisms
are safe enough to be released. Companies like his are used to negotiating
tough controls on new pesticides and drugs.

Ecologists should be allowed in on the process of checking the safety
of proposed releases. So far, they have been kept out. The authorisation
process should be slowed down; industry can stand it. ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵs themselves
have nothing to hide and are calling on the government to allow public access
to information about their experiments. Yet the DoE is prevaricating on
the extent of such access – we must protect commercial confidences, it warns.

The industry cannot afford a veil of secrecy. It should look instead
to fixing the shortcomings in the patenting process for novel organisms
which pose a far greater threat to commercial interests. Genetic engineering
must have a chance to prove itself; but with real controls, policed by a
body with a more convincing record than that of the DoE in protecting the
environment. This is the only way to persuade the public to look to the
benefits, not the risks, of biotechnology.