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FSA 'intrinsically-biassed-toward-GM-food'

 

The resignation of Prof Brian Wynne last week from the Food Standards Authority due to concerns about the proposed 'dialogue' with the public and other stakeholders is highly-concerning.

 

In his letter of resignation from the Dialogue Steering Committee,  Professor Brian Wynne reaches the conclusion that the FSA 'is intrinsically pro-GM'  He is also critical of the dismissal of the public as 'anti-science'  when the issues around GM are much wider.

 

'.... even if wider positions are heard, if no one challenges the institutional dogma which afflicts FSA and it seems other government bodies, that the issues are scientific and the only perspective which can be properly used to assess these is  (so-called) 'sound science', then these wider frameworks will be doomed to dismissal before they have even been properly heard, since some of them at least are saying that a (so-called) 'sound science'  perspective cannot possibly accommodate, understand and assess some of the key issues over global food and its food-chains (including GM), and their resilience, sustainability and justice.'

 

'What is at issue, indeed what I have been forced to conclude is compromised, is the integrity of the very policy process in which we as the dialogue steering group had become a key component.  I am not prepared by default to aid and abet this kind of systematic failure of institutional integrity in what is a crucial public arena, involving deep questions of science and public good.'

 

http://www.genewatch.org/uploads/f03c6d66a9b354535738483c1c3d49e4/Resignationletter31May10.doc

 

Comments

Joe Otten said…
What that criticism suggests to me is that the problem is that the government has offloaded to an agency value judgements ("justice") rather than just a role in evidence, which should indeed be entirely sound science.

So what is needed is for these implicit value judgements to be uncovered and debated in a democratic forum. And let the FSA get on with the science.
12 June 2010 at 11:34
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