Delegates to the UN-sponsored Convention on Biological Diversity negotiated a “biosafety protocol” for the regulation of international trade in recombinant DNA-engineered plants, animals, and micro-organisms for almost seven years. Before the latest meeting in Montreal last January, it appeared that many delegates would settle for any agreement, no matter how unscientific or wrong-headed, that would finally end the negotiations. And settle they did.

Instead of establishing a set of scientifically defensible, risk-based rules to govern the trans-boundary movement of what the agreement inexplicably calls “Living Modified Organisms” (a gratuitous euphemism for Genetically Manipulated Organisms, or GMOs), the parties agreed on a scheme for regulation that violates a cardinal principal of regulation—namely, that the degree of scrutiny should be commensurate with risk. Numerous international scientific organizations and policy groups have examined the known risks of biotechnology, and a widespread scientific consensus has evolved that the risk of rDNA-engineered organisms is primarily a function of the biological characteristics of individual products, not of the methods used to develop them. But biotechnology's ideological opponents have ignored these facts in crafting an agreement that singles out rDNA-engineered products solely because they have been developed with relatively new processes. The trigger for the UN's regulatory regime is merely the fact of manipulation with rDNA techniques, independent of risk. The protocol is certain to slow the pace of technological progress. It will hobble the work of academic researchers and small, innovative companies, ultimately delaying or denying the benefits of the “gene revolution” to much of the world.

The goal of the UN's biosafety protocol is ostensibly to ensure that the development, handling, transport, and field testing and use of rDNA-engineered organisms into the environment are “undertaken in a manner that prevents or reduces the risks to biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health.” It was also hoped that a multilateral agreement would promote uniformity and regulatory predictability, so that the global development of beneficial rDNA-engineered organisms would continue apace. But even a cursory examination of the protocol shows that the agreement has less to do with legitimate concerns about public health or the environment, and more to do with trade protectionism and pandering to anti-technology views.

Following the consensus reached in Montreal, the final protocol will enter into force once it is ratified by 50 member nations, which is likely to occur by the end of the summer. The question for policymakers will then become one of implementation. The agreement requires participating nations to construct regulatory systems that promote the goals of the protocol, but it leaves them much discretion in how to do so. That discretion gives government officials political cover to erect questionable barriers against rDNA-engineered organisms, but the concerted influence of the scientific community and those committed to free trade may encourage them to establish a risk-based regulatory scheme that is focused on legitimate risks.