Gérard Pascal

The Speaker

Gérard Pascal, Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite, and a member of the Academy of Agriculture of France and of the Academy of Technologies, is honorary Director of Research at the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA). A biochemical engineer at the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) in Lyon, he began his career at CEA-Saclay. Gérard Pascal was later recruited to work for INRA.  He has led a number of teams researching nutrition, and founded the Nutrition, Diet and Food Security department (NASA) and the Centers for Research on Human Nutrition (CRNH).  He represents the INRA in other scientific and research organizations.
When Gérard Pascal becomes director of the National Study Center for Nutritional Recommendations at the CNRS, his job will be to work with other European scientific organizations in an effort to cooperate with France in the area of diet and nutrition.
In addition to his research, Gérard Pascal has leant his expertise to various other issues, including most recently the mad cow disease crisis. He was a member of the multidisciplinary scientific committee on mad cow disease from 1996 to 1997 before being named president of the European Economic Community’s Scientific Committee on Human Diet.  In 2003, he continued his pursuit of expertise in the field in founding the European Authority of Food Safety. In this role, he was much involved in the evaluation of risks associated with BSE (“mad cow” disease) and the creation of guide lines for evaluating GMOs.
Gérard Pascal is also a Food Safety expert with the World Health Organization.
He was named a member of the Commission of Biomolecular Engineering where he is responsible for nearly all of the files on the evaluation of sanitary safety of genetically modified plants.

Lectures

Genetically Modified Organisms and Health: Fact and Fiction

This presentation will be limited to genetically modified plants whose products are for human or animal consumption.
A description of methods for obtaining genetically altered plants, the vegetal species involved and the global importance of their cultivation will provide background information and identify the potential health problems posed by genetically modified plants. These include the risks related to newly produced proteins existing in small quantities in the plant, the risks associated with allergies of these proteins and risks of unintentional and unforeseeable effects of the genetic transformation.
The first type of risk can be evaluated through classical toxicology methods. As with any other food protein, the allergy risk for humans cannot be evaluated with absolute safety, for lack of a method totally adapted to this task. The unintentional effects are evaluated by starting with a comparison of the genetically altered plant with the parent plant, which is not thought to contain toxic elements and is not believed to be dangerous to people’s health.  This is the substance equivalence concept.
There is no known risk at present attributed to the genetically modified plants currently on the market or for ones being considered for admission to the market, despite claims from some  which are not based on scientifically proven facts, even though they are widely reported  in the media.

The Specter of “Mad Cow” Disease

This disease has become the prime example of a full-blown food crisis, for which scientific and political management is a very delicate matter. This case study during the escalation of the mad cow disease (BSE) crisis underscores the salient features of the analytic approaches to understanding the risks of BSE in the United Kingdom, France, and in the European Union from 1989 to 1996. At the level of the European Union, the evaluation of risk management was deeply interwoven within the General Directorship of Agriculture within the European Commission, in a process conducted by a majority of nationals from the United Kingdom, who had special interests to defend. There was no consultation of the parties involved, and minority opinions were silenced.

Fortunately, in March 1996, just after the United Kingdom’s minister of health announced a possible transmission of BSE to humans, the ongoing crisis within the European Commission led to the formation of a multidisciplinary scientific committee on BSE, and then, in autumn 1997, to the appointment of a scientific committee specifically assigned to questions related to BSE.  Over the course of two terms from 1997 to 2003, the scientific guiding committee furnished the bulk of useful advice used by the risk managers, even if certain member states and third-party countries protested. However, events often proved the committee right, especially concerning the evaluations of the geographical risks of BSE. Other opinions provided by the scientific committee differed from those given by other national committees. This is not surprising.  In situations where there are scientific uncertainties, not only the facts must be taken into consideration but also the plausibility of the hypothesis, which is likely to be interpreted in different ways.

Method of Food Risk Evaluation

This presentation will be dedicated primarily to chemical risk, but microbiologic risk can also be taken up during the discussion, if the audience so chooses. The discussion describes the internationally accepted general methods of risk analysis. While the first administrative and regulatory measures (prevention, control, and suppression) of food supply risk management date back to the early twentieth century in France and the United States, the real birth of an evaluation methodology was the result of work done by the World Health Organization in the late 1950s, under the impetus of French toxicologist René Truhaut.
Originally designed to evaluate the health risks of food additives, this methodology was gradually extended to contaminants and pesticide waste. This change will be described giving particular emphasis to the tremendous progress made in biology.
Some new approaches have recently been proposed for responding to questions raised by genotoxic carcinogens and by exposure to very small doses (in the case of packaging materials, the odors of certain contaminants and waste).
Lastly, in order to better respond  to consumers’ expectations of food sanitation safety procedures, researchers are working on validating new methods born of post-genomic progress (regulation of gene expression by food components: metabolomic and methods for analytic imprints).

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