BIOTECH IN
TROUBLE
The agricultural biotechnology
industry's situation is desperate and
deteriorating. To be sure, genetically
engineered (GE) food is still selling
briskly on grocery shelves in the US, but
probably only because GE products are not
labelled, so consumers have no idea what
they're buying.
to label or not to label
At present, an estimated two-thirds of all
products for sale in US grocery stores
contain genetically engineered crops, and
none of them are labelled as such. However,
polls show that US consumers overwhelmingly
want GE foods labelled. A TIME magazine
poll in January 1999 showed that 81 percent
of respondents thought GE foods should be
labelled. A month earlier, a poll of US
consumers by the Swiss drug firm Novartis
had found that more than 90 percent of the
public wants labelling.
For five years, the GE food industry has
been saying that biotech foods can't be
labelled because it would require
segregating GE from non-GE crops -- a
practical impossibility, they claimed.
However, in December 1999, Monsanto
announced that it had developed a new
strain of rapeseed (a crop used to make
canola cooking oil) that might raise the
levels of vitamin A in humans. How could
consumers identify (and pay a premium price
for) such a product if it weren't labelled?
Obviously labelling will become possible --
indeed, essential -- when it serves the
interests of biotech corporations.
Many food suppliers seem to have figured
out for themselves how to segregate GE from
non-GE crops. According to the New York
Times, Kellogg's, Kraft Foods, McDonald's,
Nestle USA, and Quaker Oats all sell
gene-altered foods in the US but not
overseas. Gerber and HJ Heinz announced
some time ago that they have managed to
exclude genetically modified crops from
their baby foods.
For its part, the US government has
steadfastly maintained that the labelling
of GE foods is not necessary -- and might
even be misleading -- because traditional
crops and GE crops are "substantially
equivalent." For example, the government
has maintained that Monsanto's New Leaf
potato -- which has been genetically
engineered to incorporate a pesticide into
every cell in order to kill potato beetles
-- is substantially equivalent to normal
potatoes, even though the New Leaf potato
is, itself, required to be registered as a
pesticide with the US Environmental
Protection Agency.
Now the government's position has become
untenable. In February this year, the
government agreed to the international
Biosafety Protocol, a treaty with 130 other
nations, in which all signatories agree
that genetically modified crops are
significantly different from traditional
crops. Thus the US government has now
formally acknowledged that GE crops are not
"substantially equivalent" to traditional
crops.
trouble brewing
Meanwhile, a groundswell of consumer
protest reached a crescendo last year in
England and the rest of Europe, then spread
to Japan and the US where it has severely
eroded investor confidence in the industry.
Major US firms that had invested heavily in
the technology are now being forced to pull
back. Monsanto, Novartis and AstraZeneca
all announced in early January that they
are turning away from -- or abandoning
entirely -- the concept of "life sciences",
a business model that combines
pharmaceuticals and agricultural products.
The New York Times reported in January that
Monsanto will eventually shed its entire
agricultural operation. In late February,
DuPont announced that it was returning to
its traditional industrial chemical
business to generate profits.
Investors are not the only ones turning
away from GE foods. The Wall Street Journal
announced in late April that fast-food
chains such as McDonald's Corp. are quietly
telling their french-fry suppliers to stop
using Monsanto's pesticidal New Leaf
potato. "Virtually all the [fast food]
chains have told us they prefer to take
non-genetically modified potatoes," said a
spokesperson for the J.M. Simplot Company
of Boise, Idaho, a major potato supplier.
Earlier this year, Frito Lay also told its
corn farmers to abandon GM varieties of
corn for use in the company's various snack
foods.
According to the New York Times, US
farmers have sustained a serious financial
blow because they adopted genetically
engineered crops so rapidly. In 1996, the
US sold $3 billion worth of corn and
soybeans to Europe. Last year, those
exports had shrunk to $1 billion -- a $2
billion loss. The seed sellers like
Monsanto and DuPont got their money from
the farmers, so it is the farmers who have
taken the hit, and not the biotech firms.
The Wall Street Journal reported on 28
April that "American farmers, worried by
the controversy, are retreating from the
genetically modified seed they raced to
embrace in the 1990s ... Government and
industry surveys show that US farmers plan
to grow millions fewer acres of genetically
modified corn, soybeans and cotton than
they did last year."
The biotech firms dispute this
assessment. They say demand for GM crops
has never been better. Less than a year ago
Robert Shapiro, the Chief Executive Officer
of Monsanto, said bravely, "This is the
single most successful introduction of
technology in the history of agriculture,
including the plow." This year a
spokesperson for Monsanto said, "We're
seeing a very stable market. There's no
major step backward; it's now a matter of
how much we'll grow." But Gary Goldberg,
president of the American Corn Growers
Association, told the New York Times
recently that he believes that GM corn
plantings will be down about 16 percent
this year, compared to last. He indicated
that biotech firms are resorting to
deception to maintain sales: "The
[agricultural biotech] companies are
deceiving farmers into thinking their
neighbours are planting GM," he told the
New York Times.
new developments
In coming days, GE food is likely to
receive more attention from the public.
Last month, the National Academy of
Sciences issued a report confirming what
critics have been saying about GE crops:
they have the potential to produce
unexpected allergens and toxicants in food,
and the potential to create far-reaching
environmental effects (see article this
issue). The Academy said there was no firm
evidence that GE foods on the market now
have harmful effects on humans or the
environment, but at the same time indicated
that testing procedures to date have been
woefully deficient. Indeed, the present
regulatory system is voluntary, not
mandatory, so it is possible that the
government may not even know about all of
the GE foods being sold in the US
today.
The Academy pointed out that roughly 40
GE food products have so far been approved
for sale in the US, but approvals have also
been given for an additional 6,700 field
trials of GM plants. And a 3 May New York
Times story about super-fast-growing GE
salmon noted that "a menagerie of other
genetically modified animals is in the
works.... Borrowing genes from various
creatures and implanting them in others,
scientists are creating fast-growing trout
and catfish, oysters that can withstand
viruses, and an 'enviropig', whose feces
are less harmful to the environment because
they contain less phosphorus."
The Clinton/Gore administration
announced recently that it will
"strengthen" the regulatory system for GE
foods, but said the new regulations will
definitely not require genetically
engineered products to carry a label. Thus
the government's latest regulatory
initiative makes one thing crystal clear:
what the Clinton/Gore administration and
the biotech companies fear most is an
informed public.
It will take years before anyone knows
what these new regulations entail, or how
effective they will prove to be. By that
time, there may have been hundreds of GM
plants and animals introduced into the
environment with little or no regulatory
oversight. The public is legitimately
concerned about this. In response to these
concerns, biotech corporations have begun
to spend tens of millions of dollars on a
public relations campaign because "the
public has the right to know more about the
benefits of biotechnology."
Excerpted from Rachel’s Environment and
Health Weekly, #695, 4 May 2000.
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