According to the EU Directive 90/220, genetically modified plants must undergo a risk assessment before they are to be released. The criteria only take account of direct effects of the plant and its new properties.
To make a broader based assessment, experience with conventionally bred plants using the OECD "concept of familiarity" must be included. To investigate the degree to which the EU catalogue of criteria allowed prediction of the possible ecological impact of the release of genetically modified plants, information on the observed ecological effects of the cultivation of conventionally bred plant species (corn, wheat, potatoes, rape, sunflowers, topinambour, apples, carrots, cock's-foot, black locust, spruce) was obtained through interviews with experts and literature searches.
In a second phase an attempt was made to find a link between the observed effects and the plant properties. These relationships could, however, only be established to a limited extent, and only if the time period and area under consideration were limited. The primary effects through plant properties and secondary effects through farming practices appeared to be largely interdependent. The effects of gene transfer and naturalisation, a main focus when assessing the risk of genetically modified plants, appeared, however, to be important more in theoretical than in practical terms. Three examples were selected and assessed using the EU Directive criteria. Recommendations concerning (pending) modifications to the EU criteria included the addition of a question on possible farming practice.
The project, commissioned by the Federal Environment Agency and executed in collaboration with the Seibersdorf Research Centre and the Austrian Ecology Institute, began in November 1994. The final report was published as a Federal Environment Agency monograph.
Austria has interpreted the precautionary principle and Directive 90/220 in a more stringent way than other EU member states. It continues to ban the import of Bt maize despite the Commission’s recurrent warnings. The Austrian standard of GMO risk assessment emphasizes a broad definition of adverse effects beyond a purely technical account of risk, including effects of agricultural practices. Boundaries between plant, seed, food, and feed assessments tend to blur. It asks implicitly for the demonstration of safety and uses organic farming as a normative reference point. The understanding of precaution goes beyond the Danish approach in extensively interpreting the scope of Directive 90/220. This policy originated from the Environment Agency (UBA) and developed out of the division of labour among government agencies. It is in line with the inherent paternalism of Austrian governance as well as with Austrian public sensitivities concerning organic agriculture and food. When public opinion turned hostile to agricultural biotechnology, the Austrian standard got entrenched and led to Austria’s initially peculiar stance among EU member states.
The risk assessment of genetically-modified plants pursuant to Annex II B of EU Direc-tive 94/15/EC assumes that it is possible to infer the environmental impacts of a crop plant from its characteristics, so most of Annex II should also be applicable to conventional plants. To test this, we surveyed reports on the ecological impacts of the cultivation of non-transgenic crop plants with novel or improved traits and, in three cases, investigated whether Annex II B would have been adequate to indicate the effects. Such an assessment appears feasible only if the time frame on which ist is based is short, so that long-term effects cannot be assessed. Secondly, the plant must be genetically homogenous which is not always granted, e.g. trees in forest. Thirdly, the cultivation area must be defined. Differences in the behaviour of foreign plants between their original and cultivation habitats may be ecologically relevant and should be assessed. In the (few) cases where direct inference of the observed effects was possible from inherent traits, these effects often correlated with poor adaptation to local environmental conditions. The ecological impacts of traits that had been introduced in order to overcome poor adaptation may differ widely according to the way in which the traits are exploited. In practice, the effects of agricultural measures are more important than the effects of gene transfer and invasiveness, although the latter currently play a major role in risk assessment. In the light of these deliberations, a modification of Annex II B of EU Directive 94/15/EC is suggested.
12/1993 - 12/1996