Food

An artical written for a class, but humph!

Letting GM crops out of the bag
425 plots of genetically modified (GM) crops were secretly planted in France over 4 years reported the Journal du imanche last week. It's been revealed that during 1999, 123 plots of corn, 78 plots of rape seed oil and 135 plots of beets had been planted without informing the communities or villages involved. The sense of betrayal is reminiscent of the fiasco involving the use of HIV+ blood reserves during the 80's. In that case AIDS loomed large, and now 'Frankenstein' foods show the French government again failing to safeguard public interests.

The French scandal has come to light during a time of mounting public protest in the U.K. and U.S. over GM crops. Companies such as Monsanto have resorted to field testing in India to avoid crop destruction by Greenpeace. In France the security of test sites came into focus weeks earlier when activists led by Jose Bove, a farmer who champions traditional farming methods, destroyed a plot of genetically modified oil seedrape in the Ariege region, in southern France.

The GM debate raises a strong fear of meddling with the genetic composition perfected by Nature though millions of years of evolution. For many it's not just a threat to Nature, but how we view ourselves in Nature's scheme. A spokesman for Greenpeace said "But with the technology's intrusion into plant and animal breeding, a less publicized parallel discussion has erupted on questions which go far beyond public health, environmental protection and the safety of GE foods. It is a debate that deals with the very concept of creation itself and our relationship with it."

While it's still too early for concrete scientific evidence that GM foods threaten public health, there has been scares which have raised the public's concern. One of them was the improvement of soybeans by transferring a gene from Brazilian nuts which also transferred the nut allergy. While this was caught before the product went to market, there are many who fear that the accumulative effect of eating GM foods is not being tested enough.

GM protesters are concerned that GM crops will lead to the creation of Superweeds. With GM crops resistant to pesticides and herbicides, the farmers will be able to dump the chemicals on their fields without harming the crops. This will select for pests which are resistance to herbicides and pesticide.

Genetic pollution is also likely to happen thought the interbreeding between GM crops and their natural relatives. In America at least 3 of the 24 known extinction of species listed under the Endangered Species Act were wholly or partially caused by hybridization between closely related exotic and native species. There are many who fear that the genetic degradation of Nature will only be increased by GM crops.

For the past twenty years scientist have been focusing on crops such as soybean, yellow maize, cotton, oilseed rape and tobacco. But now a U.S. firm, AF Protein, has recently created a GM fish which could cut the cost of raising salmon and trout by half. AF Protein projects that the GM fish will be on the market within the year. They counter GM health concerns by insuring that the fish will be sterile. However as Andrew Kimbrell, from the Washington-based Center For Food Safety, says "It is not possible to ensure 100 percent of the fish are sterile." He told BBC Radio: "Once you have an organism out there, you can't recall it. It reproduces, it disseminates, it mutates. We have low probability, admittedly, but very high consequences if a few of those fish do escape and they do mate with native wild populations, no one, nothing, can stop that genetic pollution from destroying that species."

The publicity campaigns of GM companies have promised that the new technology will help less developed countries. However many believe the modifications used in GM crops are not directed to world hunger, but rather the opposite. Monsanto, one of the largest seed producers, was developing 'terminator technology', a technique for genetically altering food plants so that they produce sterile seeds. Hartwig de Haen, an Assistant Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization, said "The use of such seeds prevents farmers from following the old practice of re-using their own seeds, and it has the risk that farmers who are not fully informed about the infertility of those seeds, and yet use them again (the following year), might suffer complete failure of their crop." The public outcry to this technology was so strong that last October Monsanto decided against continuing such research.

The question of where the public should turn for their safeguards in this new technological world is a difficult one. In a globlised millennium one country's problems do not stay within national boundaries. In the case of Europe, the European Parliament seems ineffective. This is illustrated by the fact that they delayed a bill two weeks ago which would have held the makers of GM crops responsible for any resulting damage to the environment or the public's health. However, the European Parliament passed a bill setting up a public registry which will list all genetically modified food with more than 1% of GM products listing where the food has been made and by whom.

It is perhaps ironic that in our times of capitalistic monopolies, consumers are turning the tables and asserting their right to choice. However with the increasing labeling of GM foods consumers are able to influence government and companies' polices with their currency. What remains to be seen is how much of an effect the public will have over environment polices, and whether it will stifle the GM market.

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