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The Debate about GM Foods
By Karlyn Eckman (reprinted from the Feb/March 2000 newsletter)Editor's Note: This article is the second in a series about genetically modified (GM) foods. You can read part one here...
Worldwide, a fierce debate is occurring among consumers, technologists, corporations, and governments about the safety and sustainability of GM foods. Those who support GM foods explain that GM plants can reduce the need for pesticides, thereby reducing air and water contamination. Proponents state that GM foods can reduce disease in human and livestock populations. Pharmaceutical companies and farmers are experimenting with methods to manufacture commercial drugs in milk from genetically engineered cows. Some scientists see GM foods as a cheap and convenient means of delivering vaccines and medicines to large populations. Advocates claim that high-yielding GM crops will play a major role in feeding the world in the 21st century, given their higher productivity. However, opponents of GM foods contend that there are legal, public health, environmental, economic, and policy reasons for regulating and even banning GM organisms.
Patent and Legal Issues
Many of the international seed companies (such as Zeneca, Novartis, and Ciba Geigy) have patented their own terminator seed varieties to protect their investments in research and development and to ensure future profits. However, opponents claim that farmers will be harmed by being forced to accept GM seed. It is also feared that farmers in developing countries will be unable to protect their traditional, staple varieties from cross-pollination with GM seed. In addition, many traditional varieties (such as Basmati rice) have recently been patented by multinational corporations. Basmati rice farmers in India will no longer be able to use their own Basmati rice seed, or market their harvest as Basmati rice.Public Health Concerns
GM opponents argue that consumption of GM foods may have unintended consequences and result in future public health problems. For example, scientists have found changes in the guts of rats fed GM potatoes and stunting in the growth of test animals. A Pioneer-brand GM soybean with a spliced Brazil nut gene can cause Brazil nut allergies in consumers who have never before experienced the allergy. The use of GM plants containing viral or bacterial microbes (such as Bacillus thurengensis or Bt) may lead to the evolution of new microbes that are resistant to antibiotics and may escape from human control. Other GM plants are immune to pesticides, so that only the GM plant will survive spraying, leaving little else alive in the farm field. Elevated levels of pesticides in the food chain are a potential outcome. Monsanto has developed an injectable growth hormone that increases milk production in cows. However, the hormone can cross the digestive tract from milk to the bloodstream of consumers, who may be at increased risk for breast and prostate cancer.Environmental Concerns
GM food appears to have impacts on food chains and across species. GM corn has been found to be capable of killing monarch butterflies. Research in England found that the life-span of ladybugs was halved when they fed upon aphids that had consumed GM potato plants. Honeybees do not discriminate between GM and non-GM plants when foraging for pollen and nectar, and the honey they produce is contaminated with GM pollen. Consumer advocates fear that it is no longer possible to obtain organic honey.Scientists have found that some crops are cross-pollinating with wild relatives or other plants (called "genetic drift"), creating hardy weeds that can survive herbicidal sprays. GM seeds can also cross-pollinate with organic crops in adjoining fields, and organic crops grown in fields formerly used for GM crops may also be contaminated. Indian scientist Vandana Shiva contends that such genetic pollution could decimate staple varieties that farmers rely upon to carry them through drought years and could lead to social disintegration in India and other developing nations.
Economic Aspects
American farmers have planted millions of acres in GM crops this year, and the acreage has increased exponentially every year. However, both foreign and domestic consumers are rejecting American GM crops. Japan's two largest breweries and a major Mexican corn tortilla maker said they would no longer import U.S. gene-altered corn for their products. The Iams company no longer accepts GM corn for use in its pet foods. The trend to reject GM crops within the food industry may reduce the farmgate prices that American farmers are paid in the future for crops grown with the costly high-yielding seed technologies.Apart from concerns with profitability, questions remain about the sustainability of GM foods in the global food chain. For thousands of years, farmers in India, Ethiopia, and other developing countries have traditionally saved their seeds. They are the primary breeders of seed, selecting on the basis of reliability during drought and heat, and other characteristics important to subsistence farmers. But high-tech seed technologies may disproportionately benefit richer farmers over poorer farmers. Shiva notes that in 1998 thousands of Indian farmers committed suicide due to indebtedness linked to terminator seeds and other poorly performing new hybrid seeds.
Solving hunger is not simply a matter of developing new technologies. Researchers agree that the world already produces enough food to provide everyone with a nutritious and adequate diet. But hunger is never a simple matter of the quantity of food produced. How that food is distributed among rich and poor households and the ability of poorer people and the landless to pay for food determine who goes hungry.
Policy Aspects
Consumer and farmer organizations are concerned that too much of the world's seed business is becoming rapidly concentrated in fewer large companies such as Monsanto and Novartis. Some policy makers feel that such multinational corporations are achieving near-monopoly status, and have control of the seeds that are essential to the world's food supply.Until now, the US has assumed that GM-derived foods are fundamentally the same as conventional food for policy purposes. In terms of public policy, GM foods are treated the same as conventional crops. All 44 GM crops that have gained FDA approval have avoided scientific and public scrutiny. The lack of studies to date on the human health impacts of GM food gives policy makers little information upon which to make informed decisions.
However, in Europe (and especially England), food policies are far more stringent. GM foods are not permitted within the European Economic Community. Free trade pressures (led by the U.S. government) may eventually force European governments to import GM foods from the international market. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is now hearing a case put forward by the U.S. government on behalf of Monsanto to force the European Union to start importing American hormone-treated beef and milk.
At the international level, 125 nations negotiated a global treaty called the Biosafety Protocol to regulate the international trade in genetically altered foods. The treaty failed to achieve legally binding status after the United States and five other big agricultural export nations rejected it in February 1999. The U.S. still has not ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity reached at the Earth Summit in 1992, because some senators fear that U.S. agribusiness interests would be jeopardized.
Recent Developments
Strong rejection of GM foods by consumers has forced agricultural corporations to backpedal on the new technologies. In October, Monsanto decided to drop the "terminator" seed technology after a 35% drop in the value of Monsanto stock and consumer concerns about the safety of terminator seeds. Monsanto will no longer invest in research and development of terminator seed stock and will not patent the varieties it has already developed. Other seed companies will be pressured to follow Monsanto's lead.In Europe, the European Union has determined that tougher controls on GM organisms are needed. Tougher risk assessment, more comprehensive labeling, monitoring of products after they come on the market, a mandatory re-approval each decade, and other controls have been established. The EU still has to work out ways to determine legal liability if problems with GM foods eventually emerge. This summer, British protesters destroyed dozens of GM trial plots to prevent pollen from reaching other farmers' fields.
In the U.S., Archer Daniels-Midland has asked farmers to segregate GM grains from non-modified grains so that it can continue to sell soy and other grains in Europe, which has outlawed GM foods. Gerber has publicly pledged that its products will not contain GM foods.
Consumers worldwide are demanding that products be labeled so that GM ingredients are identifiable. This is not so easy, as GM grains are often mixed with non-GM shipments in grain elevators, bins, and tanks. The U.S. imports a considerable amount of GM food, including soya from Brazil, which produces 25% of world soya. Currently, these imports are not identified as to GM content. However, in Europe such identification is now required. In England, consumers are insisting that restaurants inform their consumers if they use GM ingredients in their menus.
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In addition, Consumers Union has called for universal labeling of products containing GM foods. However, biotech and agricultural corporations have decided to mount a huge lobbying and advertising campaign to counter anti-GM consumer groups. Monsanto, DuPont, Novartis and other companies have formed alliances and have committed millions of dollars for public relations and advertising to promote genetically engineered products.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit has been filed against the EPA in U.S. District Court by Greenpeace International, the Center for Food Safety and the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements for the EPA's approval of GM crops using Bt gene technology. Consumers can send comments to the following address (be sure to include the docket number):
U.S. District Court for D.C. Docket No. 99-CV-389 (LFO) Carol M. Browner, Administrator Environmental Protection Agency 401 M. Street SW, Room W1200 Washington, D.C. 20460Author's note: This article was compiled from approximately 50 sources. Due to space limitations, the references are not reproduced here. Readers who would like a copy can contact the author through Hampden Park Foods.