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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (20563)	8/3/2001 7:53:14 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

. If I remember correctly the point was that no meeting was held with non government employees If that were the case, there would be no reason for GAO to look into it. The reason for the inquiry was that there were supposed to be industry people there. Interesting. Thanks for looking for me. Yes, I agree that it's a political error both because of the comparison with Hillary's task force and because the Administration is making a point about how above board they are. Thanks for the Kyoto link. I didn't read the whole thing yet. Too late in the day for something that heavy. Karen

To: TimF who wrote (20563)	8/5/2001 12:06:50 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

Here's another editorial on excessive regulation from those demolibs at the Post. Biotech Panderers Sunday, August 5, 2001; Page B06 THE WORLD'S population will grow by at least 2 billion over the next two decades, requiring a big increase in farm output. But each year around 1 percent of the world's irrigated farm land is rendered infertile by build-ups of salt, making the task of keeping up with population growth all the more daunting. So scientists are working on crops that can withstand salt, and a team has recently come up with a tolerant tomato. If this and similar breakthroughs can be commercialized, large swaths of irrigated land in dry areas of India, Pakistan, China and the western United States may become newly productive. This is the promise of biotechnology. There are also risks, and these have been recently illustrated by the StarLink story. StarLink is a brand of genetically modified corn; it is approved only for animal feed, but last year it turned up in human food in small quantities. Some 300 corn products were recalled from stores, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were brought in to test 17 consumers who had reported allergic reactions. But even in this case of regulatory failure, the consequences do not appear to have been harmful. The centers found no evidence of allergic responses, though (as another panel recently pointed out) it could not rule them out completely either. Given the promise of biotechnology, you might think that the world would accept the manageable risks associated with it. So far, after all, not a single genetically modified product has been shown to harm human health; on the other hand, the more abundant and cheaper food that biotechnology promises could make a huge difference to consumers, especially in poor nations with extensive malnourishment. Yet consumer groups are up in arms against so-called Frankenfoods. And the European Union recently proposed rules on food labeling that would greatly discourage the advance of science in this area. Some types of food labeling are defensible. There is a case for providing consumers with information that they want, even though the U.S. government has fairly resisted lending its name to labels that have no known health merit. But the European proposal goes beyond what can be called reasonable. Rather than requiring labels on genetically modified foods that can be identified as such by diagnostic tests, the Europeans demand labels on everything with biotech ingredients. For example, oil made from genetically modified soybeans would have to be labeled, even though there is no way of telling this oil from the ordinary variety. To enforce this labeling rule, producer countries would have to set up systems to trace grain from farm to processing center to store. But grain is a commodity product that gets marketed in bulk. Creating a tracing system will be hugely expensive. If implemented, Europe's proposed labeling regime will be the most burdensome in the world. It will restrict European consumers' access to cheap food. It will stretch Europe's obligations to free-trade rules at a time when the continent is calling for new global trade talks. It will penalize producer countries like the United States that have embraced biotechnology, and may induce waverers like Brazil to shy away indefinitely. And it will decrease the incentives for biotech research around the world. If the technology posed unmanageable risks, this might be excusable. But Europe's policymakers are responding to irrational consumer fears. Rather than educate their voters, the continent's leaders have chosen to pander to them. © 2001 The Washington Post Company