"GMO" maize and public health. A little case of Schumpeterian policy in the EU
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EU lawmakers have been successfully struggling for a quarter of a century to refuse the cultivation of “Genetically Modified Organisms” on the Old Continent. A clear example is given by the revision of the accepted level of contaminants in maize: rather than admitting that Bt maize is safer
than “non-GMO” varieties, and therefore European farmers should be allowed not only to import it, but also to produce it, politicians have raised the threshold of the poisonous fumonisins that may be legally
present in food and feed.
This decision is an example of a “Schumpeterian” approach to policy, where public choices are not inspired by a science-based mind-set, but are substantially dictated by a calculus of consent: most probably, EU politicians reckoned that an adjustment of the legal level of food poison would have cost them less than the possible outrage deriving from encouraging “GMO” cultivation.