ABSTRACT
The international debate on agricultural biotechnology continues, but the terms are progressively shifting as evidence on adoption increasingly becomes available. This shift is evident, for example, in recent summary reports by the International Council for Science (2003), the Nuffield (UK) Council on Bioethics (2003) and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nation’s State of Food and Agriculture report (2004) on agricultural biotechnology. All these reports find no verifiable evidence of toxic, health-related or nutritionally harmful effects resulting from consumers’ use of genetically modified foods over the past decade or more. The shift is increasingly from ‘whether’ or ‘if’ genetically modified crop varieties should be approved for use by farmers in many countries to how best to assure broad-based adoption, equitable sharing by farmers in the social benefits accruing from technology adoption (given the associated market and price effects), and maximising the likelihood that these benefits are pro-poor.
