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[SANET-MG] precautionary principle
ISIS Press Release 09/01/06
Lectures in The Philippines
By Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Peter Saunders in universities and open
forums in Luzon and Mindanao 11-16 December 2005
The Precautionary Principle
Prof. Peter Saunders
Institute of Science in Society and King’s College London
Abstract
The precautionary principle is really just a statement that we shouldn’t
introduce a new technology or continue with an old one unless we’re
convinced it’s safe both for us and for the environment. If we’re not
sure, we wait until we are. We don’t just charge ahead and hope for the
best.
This is obvious common sense, but many powerful people oppose it, often
because they or their friends want to make money out of products that
appear likely to be - or even are known to be - hazardous. I list and
refute the arguments most often used against the precautionary
principle. I describe one example - asbestos - where failure to apply
the principle resulted in a massive cost in lives and money,
and show how the principle could and should be applied in the cases of
Bovine Somatotropin (currently before the WTO) and GMOs.
When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the
environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause
and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In
this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public,
should bear the burden of proof.
The Wingspread Declaration [1]
The Precautionary Principle applies “where preliminary objective
scientific evaluation indicates that there are reasonable grounds for
concern …”
The European Commission [2]
It’s just common sense
The precautionary principle is really just a statement that we shouldn’t
introduce a new technology or continue with an old one unless we’re
convinced it’s safe both for us and for the environment. If we’re not
sure, we wait until we are. We don’t just charge ahead and hope for the
best.
Now you might think that this was such an obviously sensible idea that
no one could possibly disagree. Unfortunately, there are many who do.
That’s usually because they or the people who support them want to make
profits out of things that might be very dangerous: for instance,
asbestos, tobacco and GMOs.
They insist on what we might call the anti-precautionary principle: what
they are producing must be permitted unless and until it can be proven
to be dangerous. What is more, they set a very high standard of proof:
the tobacco companies are still advertising and selling cigarettes
despite the overwhelming evidence that smoking, even passive smoking,
contributes to many serious diseases, not only lung cancer, and
significantly shortens life expectancy.
Because these people represent big corporations, well-financed think
tanks, and university departments, they have a lot of influence. So we
can’t assume that just because the precautionary principle is common
sense our governments are going to adopt it. We’re going to have to
convince them, and to do that we have to be clear in our own minds about
what it is and how it works.
The burden of proof
The precautionary principle is like the legal principle of the burden of
proof. In a criminal court, the two sides are not on equal terms. The
defendant doesn’t have to prove he is innocent. He doesn’t have to prove
anything. The prosecution must prove he is guilty “beyond reasonable
doubt.” If they cannot, he goes free.
The reason for this deliberate bias is that while we hope that our
courts will convict the guilty and acquit the innocent, they won’t
always get it right, and we have to think about what will happen then.
Most people would agree that while it is bad that a crime should go
unpunished, it is much worse that an innocent person should be
convicted. So just thinking that someone is probably guilty isn’t good
enough. The jury may only convict if they are really convinced he is,
beyond reasonable doubt.
In exactly the same way, the precautionary principle says that if we
have good scientific grounds for being concerned that something presents
a serious danger to health or the environment, then we do not have to
prove that it is dangerous before we can justify banning it. It is the
people who want to use and profit from the technology that have to prove
it is safe. Of course they don’t have to provide absolute proof – there
are no absolutes in science any more than in the courtroom – but they
have to demonstrate safety beyond reasonable doubt. And we bias the
decision in that direction because the damage that can be done if a
technology turns out to be unsafe can be so much greater than what we
stand to lose by waiting until we are sure it is safe, or can be made so.
Common criticisms refuted
Opponents of the precautionary principle have a number of standard
objections that they generally raise when attacking it. They are all
easily refuted, and I’m not even sure if the people that put them
forward really believe them, but it’s as well to go through the ones
that are most often used.
1. “The precautionary principle is useless because it does not lead to
decisions.” The principle is not a formula for making decisions.
Decisions are made by people exercising their judgement, and the
precautionary principle is just one of the things they should take into
account. A judge will explain the concept of the burden of proof to the
jury, but they still have to decide whether the defendant is guilty
beyond reasonable doubt, and even what level of doubt they are prepared
to accept as reasonable. In the same way, even if we accept the
precautionary principle, we must still weigh up the evidence as best we
can and decide for ourselves.
2. “The precautionary principle does nothing that is not already covered
by risk assessment.” Risk assessment involves multiplying the
probability that something happens by the cost if it does. The
precautionary principle comes into play when we are not able to estimate
one or both of these factors at all, or with any degree of accuracy.
3. “The precautionary principle is too weak. It would make no difference
at all to policy.” I shall show later how using the precautionary
principle would have made a major difference to policy on asbestos (as
it would have on many other issues) and would make a difference now if
applied to BST and GMOs.
4. “The precautionary principle is too strong. It would stop all
progress”. In practice, the Precautionary Principle would not affect
most innovations at all. In most other cases, it would mean only a short
delay while the technology was properly tested. (Even with the burden of
proof on the prosecution, many people do get convicted!)
5. “The precautionary principle is anti-scientific.” Nothing could be
further from the truth. The precautionary principle applies only when
there are good scientific grounds for concern. It then requires that
more good science be done to address those concerns. What is
anti-scientific is to assure the public that something is safe when you
have no evidence to back up your claim.
6. “The precautionary principle is merely a cover for protectionism.”
Anything that involves regulation can be used to block imports. Here,
however, the innovator has the opportunity to have the ban lifted by
providing convincing scientific evidence that what he wants to export is
safe.
7. “These issues should be decided in the courts.” The precautionary
principle is not an alternative to the courts; like the burden of proof
it is a principle that the courts can and should use.
Examples
I’ll now discuss three examples. The first illustrates clearly what can
happen when the precautionary principle is not used; the other two are
current issues where using the principle would make a real difference.
Asbestos
Everyone knows that asbestos is very dangerous and that it is still
being removed from buildings some of which are no more than 30 years
old. Most people probably believe that the danger was only recently
discovered and that action was taken as soon as it was. Actually it
wasn’t quite like that [3].
Asbestos was first mined in Canada in 1879. It was soon noticed that
people who worked with asbestos tended to suffer from respiratory
diseases, and in 1898 an English factory inspector, Lucy Deane, observed
that these were more serious than what she saw in other workers who
worked in dusty conditions. She was also able to discover why: asbestos
fibres are sharp and so likely to damage the lungs.
Nothing was done about her report, and even in 1917, when more evidence
had accumulated, the UK Factory Department decided that there was no
need to take any action. In the very next year, however, insurance
companies in the USA and Canada started to refuse cover to asbestos
workers, “due to the assumed injurious conditions in the industry”.
Note the parallel with GMOs today. We are being assured by the biotech
industry and by our governments that GMOs are safe, yet at the same time
the industry is refusing to accept any liability if they are not, and
insurance companies are refusing to provide cover. A clear example of
what happens when, as the Americans say, you ask someone to put his
money where his mouth is.
For most of the rest of the twentieth century, the evidence against
asbestos steadily built up. It became clear that not only people who
worked with asbestos but also their families and others who came in
contact with it were at risk. Yet far too little was done, and then only
in the factories. It wasn’t until 1982 that the British government
started to restrict the use of asbestos and look for alternatives, and
only in 1998, the one hundredth anniversary of Lucy Deane’s report, was
asbestos banned altogether in the UK and France.
Even then, the Canadian government went to the World Trade Organisation
to have the ban declared an artificial restraint of free trade. The WTO
rejected the appeal – it is hard to see how even the WTO could have done
anything else in view of the overwhelming evidence – but this is a very
clear example of how an industry can put profit ahead of safety and how
a government can support it.
Throughout the whole of the twentieth century, governments consistently
took an anti-precautionary approach to asbestos. They waited for
undeniable evidence of harm before taking any action, which meant they
always acted far too late.
What would have happened if they had applied the precautionary
principle? We don’t know, because we can’t say when they would have
banned asbestos or at least regulated its production and use. That would
have been a matter of judgement at the time.
We also do not have anything like full records of the number of deaths
due to asbestos or the cost of removing it from places where it was
used. Some partial data are, however, available and they give us an
indication of the scale of the problem. For example, it has been
estimated that between 1979 and 2001, over 200,000 people died in the
USA from diseases caused by asbestos. It has also been estimated that
there are about 250,000 mesothelioma deaths still to come in the EU even
though asbestos is no longer used; this is because the disease takes so
long to develop. The long time lag between first exposure and the actual
onset of the illness is yet another argument in favour of a
precautionary approach.
As for the financial loss, the Dutch have estimated that if they had
banned asbestos in 1965, when the mesothelioma evidence had been widely
accepted, instead of in 1993, they would have saved about $20 billion in
construction and compensation costs. That’s for one small country and
assuming action was taken considerably later than a precautionary
approach would have implied, so you can imagine what the total must be.
BST
Bovine somatotropin, commonly known as BST, is a growth hormone
frequently given to cattle in the USA. The European Union prohibits the
import of products from these cattle on health and safety grounds. In
1996, the United States appealed to the World Trade Organisation,
claiming that the EU’s ban was an unfair restraint of trade.
Let’s see how the precautionary principle operates. Are there good
scientific grounds for concern? There certainly appear to be, because we
always have to be cautious where hormones are involved. They are signal
substances, telling the body to do something rather than doing it
themselves, and that means they can have major effects even at very low
dosages. And while BST normally acts in cattle, hormones are not
necessarily species specific, which means BST might act in humans as well.
When we look into the situation more closely, however, things look a bit
better, at least initially. Most of the BST in milk is destroyed by
pasteurisation. What’s more, any that survives can’t function as a
growth hormone in humans because the molecule is the wrong shape and
doesn’t bind to the appropriate receptors.
On the other hand, BST stimulates the production of ‘insulin-like growth
factors’ in cattle, and these are not destroyed by pasteurisation. In
humans, high levels of IGF-1 are associated with a greater risk of
cancer [4]. At present, we don’t know whether it increases the risk or
whether it is merely a marker for cancer risk – i.e. we don’t know if it
is cause or effect – but it’s clearly something to be concerned about.
There is also the problem that hormones often play more than one role.
Even if we know their chief function we may have no idea what else they
do. So the fact that BST can’t act as a growth hormone in humans doesn’t
mean that it doesn’t act in humans at all.
As in conventional risk assessment, we have to look at the other side as
well. How great a risk we are willing to take naturally depends on the
cost of not taking it. There is no shortage of milk in the EU; on the
contrary, the EU has had to impose quotas to reduce milk production by
its own farmers.
Is BST a hazard to human health? We don’t know. We don’t even know how
likely that is. But that’s precisely the point. If we were sure it was
dangerous, there’d be no argument. It’s when we aren’t sure that the
precautionary principle comes into play.
Here it surely leads us to conclude that on the basis of the evidence
currently available, the EU is justified in not permitting the import of
milk from BST treated cattle.
The WTO, however, generally applies the anti-precautionary principle. It
therefore ruled that it was up to the EU to prove that BST is hazardous
to human health and gave the EU a year to do this. Not surprisingly, the
EU was not able to comply, largely because whatever harmful effects
there are probably can’t be seen in such a short time, even if we knew
exactly what we were looking for, which of course we don’t. After all,
both asbestos and smoking can take 20 years or more to act, and here one
of the chief concerns is the possible effect of ingesting small
quantities of IGF-1 over a long period of time. In the end, the ban was
allowed to stand, but only for the time being; the US is still trying to
get it removed.
I was recently arguing with a leading British opponent of the
precautionary principle. I asked him several times, in different ways,
if he thought the WTO was right to insist that the EU drop its ban on
BST. He steadfastly refused to give me an answer, which I’m sure was
because he agreed the WTO was wrong but didn’t want to admit that the
precautionary principle can really work.
Finally, he said that it didn’t matter whether we accepted the
precautionary principle or not because the Americans had told him that
whatever the WTO decided, they’d force BST products into the EU one way
or another. That tells you where the opponents of the precautionary
principle really stand. They’re not interested in the logic of the case.
They just want to foist their products on us by whatever means they can.
That is exactly what they are doing with GM crops.
GMOs
I’m not going to say much about GMOs because Mae Wan Ho will be dealing
with them in some detail. As she’ll explain, there are many good reasons
for being concerned about GMOs: it is an inherently hazardous
technology, the risks of horizontal gene transmission, allergic effects,
and so on [5].
I’d like to comment on one further issue however, diversity. Here in the
Philippines there are thousands of varieties of rice. If you were to
switch to GM rice, there would be at most a handful. The biotech
companies aren’t going to genetically modify large numbers of varieties,
and there wouldn’t be time for local types to evolve, even if farmers
were allowed to keep their seeds – which of course they are not.
This could leave the Philippines highly vulnerable to any new pest or
disease that might appear. Remember, GM crops have been engineered to be
resistant to one particular challenge: a particular pest or a particular
disease. They are at least as vulnerable to other pests and diseases as
conventional crops, which makes relying on a single variety a very risky
strategy.
It’s worth bearing in mind that one of the reasons the famine in Ireland
in the 19th century was so devastating was that the country was very
heavily dependent on the potato, which is not indigenous to Ireland. It
had been brought to Europe comparatively recently from Peru. With little
or no diversity when the blight arrived, almost the entire crop was
destroyed.
The precautionary principle does not lead to the conclusion that we
should stop all research into GMOs. If we think that genetic engineering
has the potential to improve crops, and it may well have, then there’s
no reason not to carry out research, providing we do it in enclosed
laboratories and greenhouses. The objection is to releasing GMOs into
the environment when there are so many unanswered questions concerning
their safety and their effect on the environment in general and other
crops in particular. We ought to be doing more research into
understanding what happens in genetic engineering and finding better and
safer ways of doing it, and of course devoting far more of our time,
effort and resources to discovering how we can improve our farms and our
crops without using GMOs (many examples in successive issues of Science
in Society, especially #17, 23 and 28) [6-14].
Conclusion
In short, there’s nothing difficult about the precautionary principle.
It’s just common sense. The only problem is getting our governments to
accept that, and to act on it.
A fully referenced version of this paper is posted on ISIS members’
website. Details here
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Making the World Sustainable & GM-Free
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 0XR, UK
www.i-sis.org.uk
Lecture tour in the Philippines 6-19 December 2005
Abstract
Decades of an “environmental bubble economy” built on the
over-exploitation of natural resources has accelerated global warming,
environmental degradation, depletion of water and oil, and falling crop
yields, precipitating a crisis in world food security with no prospects
for improvement under the business as usual scenario.
Genetically modified crops promoted to “feed the world” have the worst
features of industrial monocultures and are proving inherently hazardous
to health. They are a dangerous diversion from the urgent task of
getting our food system sustainable in order to really feed the world.
Expanding the cultivation of GM crops across the world is a recipe for
global biodevastation, massive crop failures and global famine.
There is a wealth of knowledge for making our food system sustainable
that not only can provide food security and health for all, but can also
effectively mitigate global warming by preventing greenhouse gas
emissions and creating new carbon stocks and sinks.
One of the greatest obstacles to implementing the knowledge is the
dominant economic model of unrestrained, unbalanced growth that has
precipitated the present crisis. I describe a highly productive
integrated farming system based on maximising internal input to
illustrate a theory of sustainable organic growth as alternative to the
dominant model.
The complete paper with references posted on ISIS members’ website.
Details here
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