A new book by Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey, Against the Grain, makes it clear that genetic engineering is revolutionising US agriculture almost overnight.
In 1997, 15% of the US soybean crop was grown from genetically engineered seed. By next year, if Monsanto Corporation's timetable unfolds on schedule, 100% of the US soybean crop will be genetically engineered. The same revolution is occurring, at the same pace, in cotton. Corn, potatoes, tomatoes and other food crops are lagging slightly but, compared to traditional rates of change in farming, are being deployed at blinding speed.
Traditionally the movement of genes has been possible only between closely related species. Now, however, genetic engineering allows scientists to remove genes from a trout or a mosquito and implant them in a tomato, for better or for worse.
Three US federal agencies regulate genetically engineered crops and foods — the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agencies have set policies that:
- no public records need be kept of which farms are using genetically engineered seeds;
- companies that buy from farmers and sell to food manufacturers and grocery chains do not need to keep genetically engineered crops separate from traditional crops, so purchasers have no way to avoid purchasing genetically engineered foods;
- no-one needs to label any crops or food products with information about their genetically engineered origins, so consumers have no way to exercise informed choice. In the US, every food carries a label listing its important ingredients, with the remarkable exception of genetically engineered foods.
These policies have two main effects: (1) they have kept the public in the dark about the rapid spread of genetically engineered foods, and (2) they will prevent epidemiologists from being able to trace health effects, should any appear, because no-one will know who has been exposed to novel gene products and who has not.
Today Pillsbury food products are made from genetically engineered crops. Other genetically engineered foods include Crisco, Kraft salad dressings, Nestle's chocolate, Green Giant harvest burgers, Parkay margarine, Isomil and ProSobee infant formulas and Wesson vegetable oils. Fritos, Doritos, Tostitos and Ruffles chips — and chips sold by McDonald's — are genetically engineered.
By next year 100% of the US soybean crop will be genetically engineered. Eighty per cent of all the vegetable oils in US foods are derived from soybeans, so most foods that contain vegetable oils will contain genetically engineered components by next year or the year after.
Never before has such a rapid and large-scale revolution occurred in a nation's food supply. And not just the US is targeted. The genetic engineering companies (all of which used to be chemical companies) — Dow, DuPont, Novartis and, preeminently, Monsanto — are aggressively promoting their genetically engineered seeds in Europe, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, India, China and elsewhere.
Pushing pesticides
Monsanto — the clear leader in genetically engineered crops — argues that genetic engineering is necessary if the world's food supply is to keep up with human population growth. Without genetic engineering, billions will starve, Monsanto says.
However, if genetically engineered crops were aimed at feeding the hungry, then Monsanto and the others would be developing seeds with certain predictable characteristics: they would be able to grow on substandard or marginal soils; plants would produce more high-quality protein, with increased per-hectare yield, without increasing the need for expensive machinery, chemicals, fertilisers or water; they would aim to favour small farms over larger farms; the seeds would be cheap and freely available; and they would be for crops that feed people, not meat animals.
None of the genetically engineered crops now available or in development has any of these characteristics. Quite the opposite. The new genetically engineered seeds require high-quality soils, enormous investment in machinery and increased use of chemicals. There is evidence that their per-hectare yields are about 10% lower than traditional varieties (at least in the case of soybeans), and they produce crops largely intended as feed for meat animals, not to provide protein for people.
Fully two-thirds of the genetically engineered crops now available or in development are designed specifically to increase the sale of pesticides produced by the companies that are selling the genetically engineered seeds. For example, Monsanto is selling a line of "Roundup Ready" products that has been genetically engineered to withstand heavy doses of Monsanto's all-time top money-making herbicide, Roundup (glyphosate).
A Roundup Ready crop of soybeans can withstand a torrent of Roundup that kills any weeds competing with the crop. The farmer gains a $50 per hectare cost saving, but the ecosystem receives much more Roundup than formerly. To make Roundup Ready technology legal, EPA had to triple the allowable residues of Roundup that can remain on the crop.
Monsanto's patent on Roundup runs out in the year 2000, but any farmer who adopts Roundup Ready seeds must agree to buy only Monsanto's brand of Roundup herbicide. Thus Monsanto's patent monopoly on Roundup is extended into the foreseeable future. This should not be confused with feeding the world's hungry.
Monsanto's other major line of genetically engineered crops contains the gene from a natural pesticide called Bt. Bt is a soil organism that kills many kinds of caterpillars that eat the leaves of crops. It is the pesticide of choice in low-chemical-use farming, IPM (integrated pest management) and organic farming. Farmers who try to minimise use of synthetic chemical pesticides rely on an occasional dusting with Bt to prevent a crop from being overrun.
Monsanto has taken the Bt gene and engineered it into cotton, corn and potatoes. Every cell of every plant contains the Bt gene and thus produces the Bt toxin. It is like dusting the crop heavily with Bt day after day after day.
Monoculture and monopoly
The result is entirely predictable, and not in dispute. When insect pests eat any part of these crops, the only insects that will survive are those that (a) are resistant to the Bt toxin, or (b) change their diet, thus disrupting the local ecosystem and perhaps harming a neighbouring farmer's crops.
According to Dow scientists who are marketing their own line of Bt-containing crops, within 10 years Bt will have lost its usefulness because so many insects will have developed resistance to its toxin. Thus Monsanto and Dow are profiting bountifully in the short term, while destroying the usefulness of the one natural pesticide that undergirds IPM and organic farming.
Ultimately, for sustainability and long-term maximum yield, agricultural ecosystems must become diversified once again. Monoculture cropping — growing hectare upon hectare of the same crop — is the antithesis of sustainability because monocultures are fragile and unstable. Monocultures can be sustained only by intensive, expensive inputs of water, energy, chemicals and machinery.
The genetic engineering revolution is dragging US agriculture down the old path toward vast monocultures, which favour the huge farm over the small family operation. It is precisely the wrong direction.
When 100% of the soybeans in the US are grown from Roundup Ready seed, then 100% of US soybean farmers will be dependent upon a single supplier for all their seed and the chemicals needed to allow those seeds to thrive. Monsanto will have achieved a monopoly on a fundamental food crop.
It is clear that Monsanto's goal is a similar monopoly on every major food crop here and abroad. If something doesn't change soon, a small number of "life science" corporations (as they like to call themselves) will have a monopoly on the seed needed to raise all of the world's major food crops. Then the hungry, like the well fed, will have to pay the corporate owners of this new technology for permission to eat.
(Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey, Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1998.)
[From Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly. Like 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, Rachel's is a non-profit publication which distributes information without charge on the internet and depends on the generosity of readers to survive. If you are able to help keep this valuable resource in existence, send your contribution to Environmental Research Foundation, PO Box 5036, Annapolis, Maryland 21403-7036, USA. In the United States, donations to ERF are tax deductible.]