The
GM Debate
'Is
it okay to change what is a tree, what is a salmon, what is food?'
by Marianne Arbogast
As
I was opening a new jar of apricot preserves the other morning, I noticed a
flag on the label that reads: "NOW GMO FREE." The small print assures me that
"every ingredient in this jar is certified to be free of genetically modified
organisms." The issues surrounding genetically engineered (GE) foods have only
recently begun to penetrate my awareness, and I hadn't bought the product for
that reason. But clearly, the company considers it a selling point.
Labeling, in fact, is one of the battlefields where the controversy over GE foods is being fought out. Groups like the Safe Foods Campaign -- which is calling for a moratorium on genetically engineered foods -- are demanding mandatory labeling of all foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients. "The rapid advance of this technology has been accompanied by almost no federal safety testing or regulation," a Safe Foods Campaign flyer reads. "A January 1999 Time magazine poll found that 81 percent of U.S. consumers believe GE foods should be labeled, yet the FDA's most recent changes in its GE policy still do not require labeling or comprehensive pre-market health and environmental testing."
The speed of the GE foods revolution -- fueled by corporations that, while they claim to want to feed the world, might reasonably be suspected of wanting to feed their profit margins -- should concern everyone, writes Jean English, editor of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener, published by the Maine Organic Farmer and Gardener Association (MOFGA). "When MOFGA proposed its first labeling legislation in 1993, not a single GE product was on our supermarket shelves," she writes. "Now, an estimated 60 percent of our processed foods contain GE ingredients, either corn or soy derivatives. Advocates of GE technology often argue that hundreds of thousands of Americans are consuming GE food every day, with no ill effects, so why worry?"
Here's why, she explains. First, if there were ill effects, either short- or long-term, how could we know their source, if GE foods are neither tested nor labeled? And second, the quantities we consume are destined to sharply rise. "The products now on the market are only the tip of the iceberg, or more accurately, perhaps, a molecule of the iceberg, of the brave new world of GE products that scientists in the laboratory are developing," English writes. "Each new product presents new and unique, and largely untested, issues of environmental impact, nutrition and food safety."
The FDA -- and the food industry -- counter that foods containing GE ingredients do not differ in any substantial way from those without them. Moreover, industry spokespersons say, labeling would cause consumers unnecessary alarm and impose significant burdens on producers -- an argument that seems difficult to defend, since many manufacturers who export their products do manage to comply with more stringent European labeling rules.
Those who demand labeling do believe that GE foods are substantially, and dangerously, different -- in the risks they pose to human health and the health of ecosystems, in the economic and social impact they will have on people in developing countries, and in the fundamental questions they raise about the integrity of creation. As Seattle activist Craig Winters, quoted in Science & Spirit magazine, explains, "If genetically engineered foods were labeled, consumers would pay more attention and start asking important questions: What are our values? Is it okay to change what is a tree, what is a salmon, what is food?"
Human
health risks
The first reason it may not be okay to make such changes has to do with risks to human health. Here, much of the concern is that we simply don't know whether GE foods are safe or not, or how genetic engineering might change the nutritional composition of foods; and the minimal testing that has been done on GE products has often been sponsored by the very corporations with an economic interest in promoting them.
The Safe Foods Campaign cites studies that have linked consumption of GE foods by rats to organ and immune system damage and stomach lesions. MOFGA's Jean English writes of Arpad Pusztai, a researcher for an institute in Scotland that had received money from Monsanto, who lost his job after going public with results of a study that documented malformed kidneys, spleen and brain tissue, as well as weakened immune systems and thickened stomach linings, in rats fed GE potatoes. Although his research techniques were criticized by the institute, they were exonerated by an outside panel of scientists who said his conclusions were justified and recommended a moratorium on the sale of GE foods in Great Britain.
Another health concern has to do with the use of genes for antibiotic resistance in the genetic engineering process. These are not "target genes" for desired traits but "marker genes," which make it easy to test whether the desired gene has been successfully transferred. Critics claim that this could lead to increased antibiotic resistance in disease-causing bacteria -- already a health concern of significant proportions.
GE foods also have the potential to trigger new food allergies. An oft-cited case is the insertion of a Brazil nut gene into soy by Pioneer Seed Company. Although initial animal testing seemed to indicate that the product was safe, further research concluded that the modified soy might trigger serious reactions in humans allergic to nuts. Moreover, when foods are modified to include genes from species not normally included in the human diet, unpredictable allergic reactions could occur.
Finally, critics of genetic engineering fear that it could change the nutritional composition of foods in unpredictable and potentially negative ways.
Supporters of genetic engineering view these risks as minimal, claiming that genetic engineering is more likely to increase nutritional value. And allergy sufferers might benefit if scientists are able to disable the genes that produce allergens.
Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest -- a consumer watchdog group that has spoken out against everything from french fries to sulfites -- wrote a recent column in The Wall Street Journal defending GE foods. "While biotechnology is not a panacea for every nutritional and agricultural problem, it is a powerful tool to increase food production, protect the environment, improve the healthfulness of foods and produce valuable pharmaceuticals. It should not be rejected cavalierly." While Jacobson is in favor of expanding safety testing and regulation, he is optimistic about the technology's potential. And his position illustrates one of the most confusing aspects of the controversy -- namely, that GE advocates and adversaries often base their arguments on the same set of values.
Risks to ecosystems
This is particularly true in the assessment of the potential impact of GE crops on ecosystems. Advocates say biotechnology will lead to decreased use of pesticides, while opponents say it is likely to increase pesticide use. Advocates say it will allow the use of fewer toxic herbicides; opponents argue the reverse.
"Ecology is very complicated, and it's difficult to predict ecological outcomes," says Allison Snow, a biologist at Ohio State University who is studying the problem of gene flow from GE crops to related wild plants. "It's hard to say right now that there's any benefit at all [to GE crops] or a huge risk at all. Ecologists are probably a little more cautious, obviously, than people who are promoting the technology. Probably most ecologists who have thought about this and studied it would say, yes, there are some benefits, but there are some pretty serious risks that we need to watch out for."
Snow names three. One is the rapid evolution of pesticide resistance in insects that feed on crops engineered to contain a pesticide such as Bt -- the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium. Organic gardeners -- who dust Bt onto crops as a primary pest control tool -- are particularly alarmed that its widespread engineering into crops will produce strains of Bt-resistant insects -- thus rendering Bt ineffective in any form.
A second risk is the possible effect of such crops on "non-target" insects. The monarch butterfly became a symbol of this danger after Cornell University researchers reported that pollen from Bt corn -- engineered to produce its own pesticide -- was toxic to that species. Other studies have reported that it can have toxic effects on ladybugs and lacewings, insects that benefit farmers by eating aphids.
A third risk is gene flow from GE crops to non-GE crops or to the crops' wild relatives. Not only would this make the presence of GE ingredients in foods impossible to prevent or control, it might also create "superweeds" from the crossing of herbicide-resistant GE crops with weedy relatives, increasing the need for chemical herbicides and threatening biodiversity. While gene flow from transgenic crops to weeds has not yet been documented, Snow says that it is happening.
"I would not say it's very common right now, mainly because corn and soybean and potatoes [the main GE crops in the U.S.] don't have wild relatives," she says. "It's only other crops like rice and squash and canola where this is starting to happen. I was just talking with someone who said that Tasmania wanted to be GM-free, but they had some field trials with canola that was genetically modified, and now it's all along the roadside and there's just no way they can get rid of it."
The possibility of stress-tolerant crops, which would need less water or fewer nutrients, opens up another area of debate. On the plus side would be less need for irrigation and fertilizers. On the downside would be the possibility of further agricultural sprawl into areas where farming had not previously been possible -- desirable, perhaps, in very poor areas of the world, but ultimately damaging in others, leading to further loss of biodiversity. And, as with herbicide- and insect-resistant crops, gene flow could be a problem. No one wants stress-resistant weeds.
It's too early to assess which of the potential risks or benefits are occurring, Snow believes, though she agrees that the technology has moved ahead too fast.
"I think things should proceed a little more slowly, and government regulations need to be examined and re-examined all the time to make sure that they're keeping pace with what the industry is trying to sell."
Economic and social concerns
A colorful brochure titled "Global Harvest: Biotechnology & Imported Food" pictures lush green and golden fields, and women in developing world marketplaces brimming with grain and produce. The credit on the back names the source and their slogan: "Monsanto -- Food, Health, Hope." Inside, the corporation recites statistics on growing population, life expectancy and global demand for meat, along with decreasing land availability and food resources. But Monsanto has the solution: Bioengineered crops will "enable farmers to produce more food at lower cost in sustainable ways and provide consumers with a more abundant, higher quality food supply."
Skeptics abound. For many, Monsanto's name is linked not with "food, health and hope" but with the infamous "terminator technology" which produces sterile seeds, forcing farmers to purchase new seed from the company year after year. Although, after massive public protest, Monsanto promised in 1999 not to commercialize these "gene protection systems," research and patent application has continued on such technology by other global corporations.
Ironically, "terminator technology" might offer an ecological advantage, in preventing gene flow to wild relatives or non-GE crops. But it illustrates a fundamental problem with the use of genetic engineering in the developing world -- the issue of control. Who will benefit if people in developing nations become dependent on global corporations for their food supply?
The patenting of genetic engineering processes and their products by multinational companies is an area of concern both for those who warn of the dangers of biotechnology for developing countries, and those who are optimistic about its potential.
"Patents and intellectual property rights are supposed to be granted for novel inventions," Indian doctor Vandana Shiva said in a recent lecture. "But patents are being claimed for rice varieties such as the basmati for which my valley -- where I was born -- is famous, or pesticides derived from the Neem which our mothers and grandmothers have been using. The knowledge of the poor is being converted into the property of global corporations, creating a situation where the poor will have to pay for the seeds and medicines they have evolved and have used to meet their own needs for nutrition and health care."
Shiva regards biotechnology as another stage in the process of the globalization of food, which -- in the name of increased production -- is destroying the biodiversity essential to the health of the earth and of the poor, who rely on a wide array of native plants to meet nutritional needs. In an article titled "A Blind Approach to Blindness Prevention," she challenges the apparent benefits of "golden rice," bioengineered with genes from daffodils to create a yellow rice high in beta-carotene, used by the body to produce Vitamin A. Although widely hailed as a "miracle cure" for blindness caused by lack of Vitamin A in the diet of children in poor countries, its production is part of a process that has destroyed traditional, natural sources of the vitamin, Shiva writes. "Sources of Vitamin A in the form of green leafy vegetables are being destroyed by the Green Revolution and genetic engineering which promote the use of herbicides in agriculture."
Moreover, rice production is water-intensive, unlike the production of native greens and fruits which produce Vitamin A. And excessive Vitamin A can be harmful. Since those who suffer from Vitamin A deficiency suffer from general malnutrition, the best approach would be to increase the food security of the poor, Shiva says.
Others, such as Peter Matlon of the U.N. Development Program [see interview, p. 11], also critique the patent system, yet believe that biotechnological innovations -- liberated from the grip of global economic interests -- can increase poor farmers' food security.
A December 2000 report of the E.U.- U.S. Biotechnology Consultative Forum stressed the need to look at the impact of biotechnology within the context of globalization.
"There is one global economic space, but there is no mechanism to ensure global equity," the report states. "Inequalities of capacity -- lack of trained scientists, for example, or lawyers familiar with the intricacies of the international intellectual property system -- perpetuate inequalities of societal wealth and well-being."
Though "we should not burden biotechnology with the full weight of these broader problems," the report argues, "we should not make decisions about biotechnology out of context. How biotechnology helps or harms the world, contributes to equity or reduces it, should be part of decision-making."
'The Great Yellow Hype'
Biotech corporations themselves appear to have heard this message, and are capitalizing on it with ad campaigns focused on the needs of the developing world.
In an article titled "The Great Yellow Hype," New York Times writer Michael Pollan suggests that the "unspoken challenge" in ads extolling the benefits of golden rice "is that if we don't get over our queasiness about eating genetically modified food, kids in the third world will go blind" (NYT, 3/4/01). Yet, he writes, "it remains to be seen whether golden rice will ever offer as much to malnourished children as it does to beleaguered biotech companies. Its real achievement may be to win an argument rather than solve a public-health problem." Even the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, which financed the initial research on golden rice, has said that "the public-relations uses of golden rice have gone too far," Pollan reports.
Still, others cite the potential medical uses of genetic engineering as an area of tremendous promise. Scientists have already developed potatoes and tomatoes that contain a vaccine against hepatitis B, and are working on inserting an anti-diarrhea gene into bananas, according to a story in Science & Spirit magazine (1-2/01). Such vaccines would be significantly less expensive and easier to store and distribute, advocates say. They would eliminate the risk of disease transmission through contaminated needles, and would offer a medical advantage by promoting the formation of antibodies in the intestinal tract.
Other ethical issues
Genetic engineering of food raises a host of other ethical issues. Animal welfare advocates point to ailments developed by animals who were bred with genes from other species (not to mention the huge numbers of animals subjected to biotechnological experimental research), and vegetarians do not want flounder genes in their tomatoes.
There are many, like Craig Winters, who question whether biotechnology represents an irreverent and ignorant tinkering with the sacred and complex processes of life. Many others object to the power of profit-driven corporations to make decisions that could have major, unforeseen impacts on the health of the earth and its people. And many are intuitively repelled by the idea of anyone holding patents on forms of life.
"This technology's not going to go away," Allison Snow says. "You can't un-invent all these things that people have discovered about genetic engineering. So the question is how fast should it proceed and how should it be used wisely for the public good?"
While others would debate whether it should proceed at all, and argue that "wise use" of biotechnology is a contradiction in terms, it is undeniable that the challenges posed by genetic engineering are here to stay.
Detroiter Marianne Arbogast is associate editor of The Witness.