Third, at the same time that medical experts around the world are fearful of a pandemic of influenza that could kill tens of millions and disrupt the world's economy, the senior WHO representative kept lobbying the task force to work on "ethical considerations" of gene-spliced organisms. This bizarre concern about the "ethics" of a sweeter melon or pest-resistant potato is rather like worrying about flossing your teeth when you're in the path of a Category 5 hurricane.

Fourth, during five years of negotiations by this task force, the participants -- including the U.S. delegation, now headed by a senior USDA official -- have willfully ignored scientific principles and the basic axiom that the degree of regulatory scrutiny should be proportionate to risk. They have also disregarded the scientific consensus that gene-splicing is an extension, or refinement, of older, traditional techniques of genetic modification, and that it does not warrant discriminatory, excessive regulation. They have overlooked the fact that during almost two decades of widespread use, the performance of gene-spliced crops has been spectacular, with farmers enjoying increased yields, decreased costs of agricultural chemicals, and lower occupational exposures to pesticides. The environmental benefits likewise have been stunning, with less chemical runoff into waterways and greater availability of no-till farming techniques that reduce soil erosion. Fifth, many who attended this meeting appear to be completely ignorant of the appropriate context of new and conventional biotechnology, unaware that with the exception of fish and wild game, berries and mushrooms, virtually all of the foods in our diet are derived from organisms that have been genetically improved in some fashion. It is pathetic -- and a cruel misuse of resources -- to see representatives here from countries like Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Lesotho, Nepal and Laos clamoring for "capacity building" to regulate gene-splicing. Shouldn't the priorities of poor countries be nutritional deficiencies, infectious diseases, occupational safety, and the lack of childhood vaccines and clean water, rather than the discriminatory, gratuitous regulation of a superior agricultural technology that UN-based regulation already has made too expensive to be applied widely to developing countries' crops?

Sixth, this project of Codex (which operates on behalf of the UN's FAO and WHO, remember) makes a mockery of the UN's Millennium Development Goals -- especially the first, and most ambitious: "to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger" by 2015. That can't be accomplished without innovative technology, and there won't be innovative technology if it is regulated excessively and stupidly. FAO calls on one hand for greater allocation of resources to agriculture, and then makes those resources less cost-effective by gratuitous over-regulation of the new biotechnology. (Another UN initiative that has vitiated agricultural biotechnology is the "biosafety protocol" of the UN-based Convention on Biological Diversity, but that's another story.)

Other Millennium Goals inevitably will be compromised, directly or indirectly, by this Codex project (and by the "biosafety protocol" of the CBD). An important way, for example, to "reduce child mortality," the fourth goal, would be to produce childhood vaccines cheaply in edible fruits and vegetables, but there is near-hysteria at Codex over conjectural food-safety problems with this approach. Moreover, when the impoverished of the world are forced to spend more than necessary to grow or obtain food, fewer resources are available for other public health and environmental needs. As Wellesley College political scientist Robert Paarlberg has noted, the continued globalization of this sort of "highly precautionary regulatory approach" to gene-spliced crops will cause the "the biggest losers of all [to be the] poor farmers in the developing world," and "if this new technology is killed in the cradle, these farmers could miss a chance to escape the low farm productivity that is helping to keep them in poverty."