By Peter Montague
The New York Times in October ran "Playing God in the Garden" by Michael Pollan. It explains why many people in the US are already eating genetically engineered foods like corn and potatoes without knowing it, and why there is a lot more genetically engineered food in our future whether we like it or not. It's the story of a powerful corporation on a dangerous mission and a huge government too feeble to intercede. The Times story makes these points:
Genetically engineered food crops have been on the market in the US for four years now. Some brands of corn, potatoes and soybeans are now genetically engineered.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — does not require genetically engineered food crops to be labelled as such, so no-one can know whether the food they are eating is genetically engineered. The Times story focuses on Monsanto's New Leaf Superior potato, a thin-skinned white spud found fresh in the supermarket.
Monsanto's New Leaf Superior potato is, itself, legally registered as a pesticide with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because it has been genetically engineered to poison any Colorado potato beetle that might eat even a tiny portion of it.
Every cell of Monsanto's New Leaf Superior contains a gene snipped from a bacterium called Bacillus thuriengensis, or Bt for short, which produces a protein that is highly toxic to Colorado potato beetles. The Bt gene is present in every cell of a Monsanto New Leaf Superior, which is why the potato itself is registered as a pesticide.
The US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has responsibility for licensing new pesticides. As a test, EPA fed pure Bt to mice without harming them. Because mice are not visibly harmed by eating pure Bt, potatoes containing Bt genes must be safe for humans, EPA reasoned.
The Times reported, "Some geneticists believe this reasoning is flawed" because inserting foreign genes into plants may cause subtle changes that are difficult to recognise. Only time will tell.
The label on a bag of Monsanto's pesticidal potatoes in the supermarket lists all of the nutrients and micronutrients in the potato, but fails to mention that the potatoes have been genetically engineered or that they are legally a pesticide. Food labelling is ordinarily the responsibility of FDA.
An FDA official told the New York Times that FDA does not regulate Monsanto's potato because FDA does not have the authority to regulate pesticides. That is EPA's job.
EPA-approved pesticides normally carry an EPA-approved warning label. For example, a bottle of Bt bears a label that warns people to avoid inhaling Bt and to avoid getting Bt in an open wound.
However, in the case of Monsanto's pesticidal potato, EPA says FDA has responsibility for requiring a label because the potato is a food. However, FDA told the Times that it requires genetically engineered foods to be labelled only if they contain allergens or have been "materially changed", and FDA has determined that Monsanto did not "materially change" the New Leaf potato by turning it into a pesticide. Therefore no FDA label is required.
Furthermore, the law that empowers the FDA forbids FDA to include any information about pesticides on food labels. Pesticide labels are EPA's responsibility, says FDA, and we come full circle.
Some genetically engineered food crops are not registered as pesticides, and FDA does have the authority to regulate those. However, according to the Times, FDA maintains a list of foods that need no regulation because they are "generally recognized as safe" (or "GRAS").
Since 1992 FDA has allowed companies like Monsanto to decide for themselves whether their new genetically engineered foods should be added to the GRAS list and thus escape regulation. In other words, FDA regulation of genetically engineered foods is voluntary, not mandatory.
A Monsanto official told the New York Times that the corporation should not have to take responsibility for the safety of its food products. "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food", said Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. "Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job."
Encouraging resistance
Monsanto's New Leaf Superior potatoes will have major effects on agriculture.
Organic farmers apply powdered Bt sparingly to their crops from time to time, a natural pesticide of last resort. In this powdered form, Bt is neither present in high concentrations nor for very long because it degrades in sunlight. Therefore, insects have not developed resistance to Bt.
But now that Bt is continuously present in whole fields of Monsanto potatoes, the insects in those fields will be continuously exposed. Therefore it is only a matter of time before they develop resistance.
Not every potato beetle will be killed by eating Monsanto's pesticidal potatoes. A few hardy beetles will survive. When those few resistant beetles mate with other resistant beetles, a new variety of potato beetle will spring into being, and it will thrive by eating Monsanto's potatoes.
At that point, Bt will have lost its effectiveness. Then Monsanto will start marketing some new "silver bullet" to control the Colorado potato beetle. But what will the nation's organic farmers do? For private gain, Monsanto will have destroyed a public good — the natural pesticidal properties of Bt.
Monsanto scientists acknowledged to the Times that the Bt-containing potato will create Bt-resistant potato beetles. They know exactly what they are trying to do. They are hoping to make a mint selling Bt-laced potatoes and, in the process, depriving their competitors (organic farmers) of an essential, time-honoured tool. The strategy is brilliant, and utterly ruthless.
For decades, Monsanto and other agrochemical companies have relentlessly promoted farming systems aimed at making farmers dependent on synthetic chemicals. In the US, the use of chemical pesticides grew 33-fold from 1945, peaking at 498 million kilograms (about two kilograms per year for each man, woman and child) in 1995.
Dependence
Now, with growing numbers of pesticide-resistant insects, and consumers better informed about the dangers of pesticide residues on food, Monsanto is planning to shift US farmers from the pesticide treadmill to a biotech treadmill.
For thousands of years, farmers have saved a portion of this year's crop to provide seeds for next year's. Monsanto intends to end that age-old practice by requiring farmers to come back to it each year to purchase new seeds.
Potatoes are not grown from seeds — they are grown by planting "eyes" of other potatoes. Before you buy a bag of Monsanto's pesticidal potatoes, you must sign a contract promising that you will not retain any of your potatoes toward next year's crop. This will force you to purchase more potatoes from Monsanto next year.
To tighten the noose on farmers, Monsanto has a new technology in the pipeline, called "the Terminator." Terminator technology was developed with public funds by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a seed company that Monsanto is in the process of buying. The Terminator is a group of genes that can be spliced into any crop plant, sterilising all of the plant's seeds.
Once Terminator technology has been widely adopted, control of seed production will move from the farmer's field to corporate headquarters, and farmers will become wholly dependent upon corporations for seeds. As the Times summarised it, "The Terminator will allow companies like Monsanto to privatize one of the last great commons in nature — the genetics of the crop plants that civilization has developed over the past 10,000 years."
The Times says that, to create its New Leaf Superior pesticidal potatoes, Monsanto has had to introduce the Bt gene into thousands of potatoes to get it right, because often the introduced gene ends up in an unexpected place in the potato's DNA, creating a plant that doesn't have the right pesticidal properties, or one that is an outright freak.
"There's still a lot we don't understand about gene expression", says David Stark, co-director of Naturemark, Monsanto's potato subsidiary, in a monumental understatement.
[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.]