Conscious Choice: Frankenfoods, Part Two: Europe Gets Wise

September 1999

Frankenfoods, Part Two: Europe Gets Wise

by Liane Casten

Just as the carousel turns, so turns the ever-unfolding story of genetically-engineered (GE) foods. This high drama is taking place across the globe, and with the exception of a few national U.S. magazines and newspapers, precious little of this drama is occupying the minds or concerns of consumers in the U.S. This despite the fact 60 to 70 percent of foods on our grocery shelves contain unlabeled GE components. While American citizens are blissfully going about the business of buying all this engineered food, experiencing whatever physical reactions they may be experiencing, the United Kingdom (U.K.) the rest of Europe, Asia, and South America are filling the media with a barrage of rage — and some pretty serious responses to this new form of "agriculture." In fact, at this point, it’s safe to say these various countries are way ahead of us when it comes to dealing with a technology that critics claim is insufficiently tested and possibly harmful to the environment and to humans.

A GE Primer

You may be aware that many GE crops contain substances that never have been part of the human food supply. The fundamental genetic makeup of GE "foods" has been modified in the laboratory by introducing genes from viruses, bacteria, animals, or fish. The genes include the gene controlling a specific trait, like herbicide tolerance, along with, say, another gene that may deal with antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The mix also includes a virus gene called a promoter, which is needed as a switch to turn the gene on; an enhancer gene, needed for the gene to be expressed; and a termination gene, which provides punctuation in the genetic code. A cassette of genes are required to insure that a trait such as herbicide tolerance is expressed. These genes, which are foreign to the plant’s basic natural structure, are inserted in the hopes of achieving certain predictable and desired results.

Government regulators and the multinationals promoting these products have taken the position that GE crops are safe; the presumption is that GE crops are basically equivalent to crops that have not been modified. Notwithstanding these claims — made mainly by GE giant, Monsanto — a growing body of science has uncovered serious differences and problems. Thanks to a much more aggressive international media, the following information, summarized by Canadian Professor Joe Cummins has been making headlines in Canada and across the ocean:

1. GM [genetically modified] crops will injure people or animals. The kinds of injury include damage to the immune system, allergy, or autoimmune disease. A study from York University in England showed that allergy to soy increased greatly after GM soy was introduced. But the study pointed out that the failure to label GM food made it difficult to relate allergy to GM food.

2. Virus components of GM crops will recombine invading virus to make virus strains that are more hazardous than either original virus. Such recombinant viruses have been observed in laboratory experiments.

3. Crops with genes for pest control will destroy helpful or bystander insects. Recent experiments showed that GM corn may threaten the Monarch Butterfly. Earlier beneficial insects including lacewing and ladybug were shown to be injured by GM crops.

4. Human and animal bystanders will be injured by breathing pollen from GM crops. Such pollen is known to cause allergy and the impact of GM gene products and dna on the airway has escaped regulatory oversight. Crops grown with medical products such as interferon or monoclonal antibodies may have a powerful impact on the human airway.

5. Antibiotic resistance genes may be transferred to pathogenic bacteria in the guts of animals. Such transfers have been observed in a European laboratory.

6. Genes from GM crops may be spread to neighboring crops or to wild species in pollen. Spread of genes has been observed and creation of herbicide tolerant "super weeds" has been predicted.

7. Terminator technology developed by the United States Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pineland Company (to allow seed producers to produce seeds that produce crops that have seeds that are sterile) are achieved using terribly dangerous viruses that should not be released to the environment.

Cummins concludes, "The dangers of GM crops offset the benefits of their use. GM foods should be labeled in the market to allow detection of ill effects from eating them."

Once Burned

U.K. consumers, already burned by the lethal effects of Mad Cow Disease, are especially leery of food that is being shoved down their throats by multinational corporations all with the P.R. mantra, "in the interest of solving world hunger." Critics challenge that assumption with good reason: starving people simply cannot afford the technology.

The backlash in the U.K. is growing incrementally. Leaders and public figures like Prince Charles — calling for a ban on GE crops until safety issues are settled — and former Beatle Paul McCartney publicly denounced GE foods. They have come up against a carefully orchestrated effort on behalf of Tony Blair — ever the friend of Bill Clinton — to force these foods on to the tables of a public growing downright hostile to the idea of being forced to eat what they do not choose. While Tony Blair’s Chief Scientific Advisor publicly stated that ministers should not allow GE crops to be released on to the market before 2003 at the earliest, Blair and other cabinet ministers have repeatedly refused demands for a four-year ban from English Nature and other environmental groups.

Secret Files Revealed

In a stunning exposé, (April 1999) the Financial Times newspaper revealed that Environment minister Michael Meacher said public confidence had been shaken by revelations that some members of an advisory committee on GE foods had received funding from companies producing GE foods. The newspaper said Meacher planned to replace some of the food scientists with experts in wildlife, plant life, and farming methods, to assess the possible longer-term impact of GE crops this June.

To his great astonishment, Meacher has discovered recently that the CIA has a file on him — apparently detailing Meacher’s reservations about GE foods. Charles Secrett, Director of Friends of the Earth responded to the news by commenting, "The immediate fear is that the CIA is working hand in glove with Monsanto to do anything they can to force this technology down our throats...."

In May 1999 the British Medical Association, with 119,000 members representing more than 80 percent of Britain’s doctors, called for an open-ended ban on the introduction of GE crops and foods. The chair of BMA’s Board of Science and Education said more research into the health and environmental impacts of these foods was needed. The Association called for strict regulation and assessment of crop trials and other tests, adding that the use of "antibiotic resistant genes in GE foods was a completely unacceptable risk."

The Public Debate

Public debates, now dotting the landscape in the U.K., are charged events, where farmers who consent to GE trials find themselves at loggerheads with those who call for the crops’ destruction.

"GE foods are unpredictable, unnecessary and unwanted," the opponents say. "Consumers and big food companies do not want them. The trials are putting other farmers’ livelihoods at risk. This trial is at our doorstep, but nobody asked [us] before it started."

Proponents of GE crops argue back that research involving GE crops was being conducted as long ago as the early 1980s, and that no evident threats to public health have emerged.

The obvious rebuttals are: "If these experiments did take place, where are the results? What publications contain the evidence of these successful experiments? Are these early experiments dealing with gene alterations that are artificially grafted onto plants or just experiments aiming at making plants look or taste better?"

In truth, how old is this GE science? The purpose of altering crops has radically changed in the past five years, creating new, unknown risks which are just recently being discovered.

GE Crops Yield Disappointment, Suspicion

In December 1998, the U.K.’s Farmer’s Weekly revealed that the latest crop trial from the U.K.’s National Institute of Agricultural Botany showed the yields from GE winter oilseed rape and sugar beets were between 7 percent and 8 percent less than high-yielding conventional varieties when the crops were managed using conventional weed control techniques. Conventional varieties "significantly outperformed" the GE varieties. (Ditto in the U.S., especially with Roundup Ready treated crops. And worse, RR-treated plants are now more tolerant, requiring more Roundup,)

By June, the government’s official policy on GE foods was left in disarray when research found that GE crops could pollute other plants. Commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food, the report concluded it was impossible to guarantee that foods now sold as GE free could remain completely uncontaminated. "Bees and wind can carry pollen several miles, while seeds from modified oilseed rape could be accidentally dispersed during harvesting or transferred from machinery to non-GE fields."

The report presents the U.K. government with devastating implications: GE agriculture and organic food and farming cannot co-exist; a choice will have to be made between them. Research by Friends of the Earth found that more than ninety of the U.K.’s 1,000 organic farms are within a six-mile radius of the GE test sites set up by the government. Tony Blair and his ministers are being accused of operating on a "pollute now, pay later" policy. It becomes a nightmare for those food producers who are desperately trying to sell "GE-free" foods.

The anger is spilling into citizen action. Boycotts are being called for those shops that won’t guarantee their products to be GE free. The public is told to avoid imported foods from the U.S. and Canada — and this includes U.S. products such as fruit, vegetables, ice cream, milk, milk powder, butter, soy sauce, chocolate, popcorn, chewing gum, health foods, cotton, and denim clothing. Britain’s top chefs have come out against GE foods. Britain’s biggest farmer, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, has decided not to take part in proposed new field trials of GE crops. Nestle U.K. and Unilever U.K. both have announced they will no longer use GE ingredients.

U.K. Businesses Get the Picture

In March, the leading British retailer, Marks & Spencer, said it would also stop selling GE foods because of customer concerns. By June, restaurants and fast food outlets in the U.K. had been ordered to tell consumers if their meals contain GE products. If staff cannot tell diners whether their food contains GE ingredients when asked, they will face fines of up to 5,000 pounds ($8,000). Major frozen food specialists, Iceland Plc, announced that company was going to be the first major retailer to go GE free — causing a big sales boost and new customers. Add Tesco Plc, Britain’s biggest supermarket chain, which is committed to removing GE ingredients from food products whenever possible and tightening up on labeling. All these debates and events are on the front pages of British newspapers nearly every day.

As the World Turns

The UK is not the only scene where the Genetic-Engineering drama is playing out. Turn the globe just a bit and we can find some kind of furor surrounding GE foods nearly everywhere but in the U.S.

In mid-June, 1999, the E.U. environment ministers delayed approval of new GE crops until 2002, when a new law on licensing products will be in place. This decision came after a number of countries called for tighter safeguards on GE foods.

In Brazil, Monsanto was poised to take the first steps in planting Roundup Ready soybeans, aiming at composing half of Brazil’s soybean crop. But Brazil’s Greenpeace organization is prepared to hold the soybeans hostage to Brazil’s complicated court system. And Brazil’s major soybean producing state, Rio Grande do Sul, is threatening to destroy GE soybeans grown on a test plot by the local unit of Monsanto. The state’s Agriculture Secretary claims Monsanto is breaking a new state law by failing to provide an environmental risk analysis for the test plot. The same minister has declared the state a GE free zone, while eighteen other Brazilian states called on their federal government to halt commercial releases of GE crops.

In India, with thousands of small farmers barely subsisting, the backlash is dramatic. Three hundred-and-fifty farmers hanged themselves or drank the poisons that they claim had failed to save their crops, bringing the number to more than 500 farmers from the Warangal area who have killed themselves in the past eighteen months. The debate here may center on neo-colonialism — and questions regarding who owns and controls the technology and the food supply. Whoever controls the country’s food security controls that country, and perception is Monsanto is working to do this. Farmers have already burned down five of Monsanto’s GE cotton trial sites.

In France, the Farm Ministry has expressed his concern about "serious issues" relating to food safety, food security, and the use of science in agriculture. French retailers say they have led the way in the drive among European supermarkets to root out GE foods from among their own brand-name products.

In Canada, milk containing bovine growth hormones has been banned.

In Spain, Pryca, the country’s largest supermarket chain, announced it was phasing out the use of GE ingredients in its own brand food products sold in its fifty-eight stores. This includes foodstuffs like canola oil, corn, potatoes, squash, and tomatoes. All this is done in response to "public fears." The area devoted to organic food production in Spain has multiplied sixty times since 1991, with production for export growing. A leading Spanish farmer group of 200,000 is demanding a moratorium on using GE organisms in planting until scientists have completed investigations into possible health risks.

In Malaysia, soybean is the only GE food allowed. "Malaysia is not a favorite dumping ground for exporters," said the Deputy Health Minister.

Burger King’s franchisees in Portugal have banned GE ingredients at fast food outlets because the company was concerned over possible health risks.

In Russia, imports of GE foods will be allowed in only if they pass a series of Russian safety tests.

Headaches for Glickman

Can we say all this is creating a massive headache for Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman? Yup. This summer, U.S. farmers are finding that grain exports — and grain prices — are falling. Food giants A.E. Staley Mf., Co. and Archer Daniels Midland Company, sensing the market potential, have rejected GE corn and other products but say that GE free products will come at a premium.

In May 1998, a coalition of American public interest groups, scientists, and religious leaders filed a landmark lawsuit against the FDA to obtain mandatory safety testing and labeling of all GE foods. They accuse the FDA policy of being scientifically unsound and morally irresponsible.

The International Center for Technology Assessment, as part of its ongoing lawsuit, found that even the FDA’s own scientists had serious differences over the FDA 1992 policy of "no-labeling" and "no safety-testing." Internal documents at FDA show officials repeatedly cautioned that foods produced through this technology entail different risks than do their conventional counterparts. This input was consistently disregarded by the bureaucrats who crafted the agency’s current policy — a clear violation of the U.S. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in allowing GE foods to be marketed without testing. The court will decide by the end of 1999 whether GE foods have to undergo an environmental impact statement and whether FDA is required by law to mandate pre-market testing and labeling.

Bedfellows

To make matters ever muddier, Dr. Michael A. Friedman this July left his post as Deputy Commissioner of the FDA to head clinical research at Monsanto’s G.D. Searle & Co. unit. He will be responsible for directing and implementing clinical research strategy at the company. Former U.S. Trade Ambassador Mickey Kantor has joined Monsanto’s Board of Directors. Michael Taylor, prominent Washington, D.C. attorney first representing Monsanto, became associate FDA commissioner for policy. He now directs Monsanto’s corporate strategy in D.C. And the far-right Competitive Enterprise Institute is now hired to defend GE products.

In the meantime over 500,000 U.S. citizens have signed a petition urging Congress to require labels on GE foods. The petition was delivered in June to House Minority Whip David Boniors (D-MI) by leaders of the Iowa-based Natural Law Party.

Congressional trade advocates are growing increasingly irritated with Europe’s resistance to agricultural biotechnology. They know that the market risks are two-fold: agricultural trade may grind to a halt — and U.S. consumers might get wind of their role as guinea pigs.

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