Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (34 page)

This story begins soon after the peak of the mad cow disease epidemic in Great Britain, a crisis that resulted not only in the downfall of the British beef industry but also in the loss of public confidence in scientists and government (see concluding chapter). In this context, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, a long-time researcher at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, applied for and won a competitive contract to see how rats might react to consuming transgenic potatoes containing lectins. Dr. Pusztai isolated genes for lectins from snowdrop plants and transferred them into potatoes. For comparison, he physically inserted purified lectins into other potatoes. He fed the transgenic potatoes to one group of rats and the lectin-added conventional potatoes to another group. All of the rats reacted badly to lectins, but the ones fed the transgenic potatoes fared worse.
⁴²
On August 10, 1998, Dr. Pusztai—bravely or foolishly, depending on one’s point of view—appeared on television to announce that the rats fed transgenic potatoes showed signs of growth retardation and some immune system dysfunctions. He said: “If you gave me the choice now, I wouldn’t eat it,” and it would be “very, very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs.”
⁴³

Dr. Pusztai based these comments on studies not yet published or subjected to peer review. Industry officials charged that because of his remarks, “the whole of the biotechnology industry had gone up in smoke,” and they would now be faced with consumer opposition that would take years to undo.
⁴⁴
The head of the Rowett Institute defended the work at first, but quickly changed his mind. After reviewing the data and judging it flawed, he sealed Dr. Pusztai’s laboratories, forced him to retire, barred him from speaking to the press, and ordered a formal audit of his data—actions that received front-page press attention and did nothing to calm public alarm about food biotechnology in Great Britain or Europe.

As might be expected from a review of provisional results, the audit committee decided that the data did not support Dr. Pusztai’s conclusions. Dr. Pusztai again reviewed his own data and said that they did. Furthermore, he conducted his own peer review; he sent copies of his research reports and the television transcript to scientists who requested these documents, and asked
them
to evaluate the materials. In February
1999, more than 20 scientists from at least 13 countries called a press conference to announce that the findings were just as Dr. Pusztai had claimed.
⁴⁵
Public calls for a moratorium on food biotechnology research followed immediately. Most scientists (other than the 20 supporters) strongly doubted that genetically modified lectins could have harmed the rats, although they thought the potatoes might have been induced to express higher levels of
other
toxic substances. When the British government rejected demands for a moratorium, critics charged that government officials were “in the pocket of the biotech industry” and had offered huge sums to biotechnology companies to induce them to work in Britain. They also noted that Monsanto had bought off the Rowett Institute in advance with a
£
140,000 grant.
⁴⁶

In May, the British Royal Society weighed in with an anonymous review that judged Dr. Pusztai’s studies flawed and inconclusive. Dr. Pusztai called this clandestine peer review “deprecable because many influential committees are redolent with advisors linked to biotechnology companies.”
⁴⁷
The
Lancet
, a leading medical journal, agreed, calling the Royal Society’s review “a gesture of breathtaking impertinence.”
⁴³
The Prince of Wales expressed sympathy for Dr. Pusztai’s plight. Industry commentators, however, said Dr. Pusztai was “largely responsible for the British public’s mistrust of genetically modified food” as well as for subsequent governmental actions to regulate, label, or ban genetically modified foods.
⁴⁸

In October 1999, in an act that itself generated a huge outcry, the
Lancet
published Dr. Pusztai’s data as a short research letter. The journal fueled the controversy by including another report in the same issue suggesting that snowdrop lectins interact with human white blood cells in some peculiar way that demands further investigation. An editorial in the same issue, however, stated that such experiments were incomplete, insignificant, inadequately controlled, and uninterpretable.
⁴⁹
Justifying the journal’s decision to publish evidently flawed research, the
Lancet
’s editor chided critics for their “failure to understand the new, and apparently unwelcome, dialogue of accountability that needs to be forged between scientists and the public.” He quite sensibly pointed out, “Risks are not simply questions of abstract probabilities or theoretical reassurances. What matters is what people believe about these risks and why they hold those beliefs. [The] data are preliminary and non-generalisable, but at least they are now out in the open for debate.”
⁵⁰

By one report, a member of the Royal Society with ties to biotechnology companies accused the editor of acting immorally by publishing
research known to be “untrue” and implied that doing so would “have implications for his personal position.” With or without such threats, the editor’s argument did not convince scientists skeptical of the quality of the research, and they heavily criticized the journal for publishing it.
⁵¹
Whatever the scientific merits of Dr. Pusztai’s work, his treatment reinforced public suspicions that no group with a vested interest in food biotechnology would act in the public interest. If a problem with transgenic foods did emerge, the government and much of the scientific establishment would support the industry above all other considerations.

We now turn to the most widely publicized—and most fiercely debated—example of unintended consequences—the effects of
Bt
crops on
friendly
insects, in this case, monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants that grow throughout fields of corn. Of course the
Bt
toxin kills monarch larvae that hatch from the eggs; the toxin is
supposed
to kill insect larvae. When Cornell University investigators dusted laboratory milkweed leaves with pollen from
Bt
corn, the results were only to be expected: the test larvae grew more slowly and died more quickly than those fed leaves dusted with pollen from conventional corn or with no pollen at all.
⁵²
This research note, taking up less than a page in a scientific journal (albeit the prestigious
Nature
), elicited an immediate response: “Will the conjectured absence of butterflies flapping their wings on Iowa farms provoke political firestorms among Washington policymakers?” Indeed, yes. Farmers did not want to be termed “butterfly-killers,” and neither did Congress. Legislators proposed an appropriation of $200,000 to study the effect of transgenic foods on monarch butterflies and also introduced legislation to require labeling.
⁵³
Monarch butterflies became the symbol of antibiotechnology protests, as illustrated in
figure 18
.

From the industry standpoint, killing butterflies and other friendly insects is normal collateral damage, no worse than the effects of conventional pesticides. Using this argument to deflect appeals for preservation of an already endangered species, however, would be unlikely to succeed. Thus, the industry employed different strategies. The first was to discredit the science by pointing out, correctly, that one small laboratory study should not be taken too seriously until it is confirmed. Second, the industry funded new studies, reportedly at $100,000 each, to repeat the work in field trials. Third, it organized a scientific symposium to publicize the results of those trials.
⁵⁴
The industry-funded studies produced the expected conclusion: transgenic crops pose no risk to monarch butterflies. This outcome was so certain that the industry sponsors distributed a news release
prior
to the conference: “Scientific symposium to show no harm to monarch butterfly.”
⁵⁵
The conference itself, however, proved rather contentious. Some participants complained about manipulation by the industry: “It was dirty pool and the fox was guarding the chicken coop. . . . It was not conclusive.”
⁵⁶
Independent scientists were appalled by the industry’s heavy-handed control of a meeting at which researchers—many with only preliminary results to report—were supposed to be presenting and discussing them in a careful and deliberate manner.

FIGURE 18
. The FDA’s Washington, DC, hearings on genetically modified foods in November 1999, drew demonstrators dressed as monarch butterflies. This photograph appeared in the
New York Times Magazine
, December 12, 1999. (© 1999 AP/Wide World Photos by J. Scott Applewhite. Reprinted with permission.)

Further studies attempted to resolve the issue. One reported that pollen from
Bt
corn did not harm black swallowtail butterflies. The authors concluded, “at least some potential nontarget effects of the use of transgenic plants may be manageable,” but “the plain fact of the matter is that growing food has nontarget effects. . . . Our challenge is to minimize them.”
⁵⁷
Another found just the opposite, but came to the same conclusion:
Bt
pollen on milkweeds in corn fields caused “significant mortality” of monarch butterfly larvae: “This is telling us that with naturally deposited pollen there’s a good probability you’ll get some mortality.”
⁵⁸

Although it might seem self-evident that
Bt
pollen kills “nontarget” insects as well as those it is intended to control, the industry and its federal regulators have taken heroic—and expensive—steps to prove the trivial nature of such collateral damage. In December 1999, the EPA “called in” (translation: asked for) comments from researchers on the toxicity of
Bt
corn pollen. In February 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) held a conference to respond to that call-in and to set research priorities for determining the safety of
Bt
pollen for monarch butterflies. Its own in-house researchers spent two years investigating this question (conclusion: “negligible” risk).
⁵⁹
In September 2000, the EPA issued a preliminary report concluding that the butterfly population was not at risk from
Bt
pollen. In the meantime, agricultural biotechnology companies had pooled resources in partnership with those agencies to fund extensive field trials. The results of these trials appeared as a collection of six papers in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
in September 2001. The final paper concluded, “The impact of
Bt
corn pollen from current commercial hybrids on monarch butterfly populations is negligible.” Its lead author said, “I don’t think there’s a need to consider monarchs at risk due to this technology.” The
New York Times
headline repeated the conclusion: “Reports say threat to monarch butterflies is ‘negligible.’”
⁶⁰

My reading of this extraordinary scientific effort to prove the obvious comes to a slightly different interpretation: negligible under some circumstances, but not others. The papers provide substantial evidence that certain types of
Bt
corn produce more lethal pollen than others. They find that monarch butterflies are more likely to survive in fields planted with lower amounts of genetically modified corn, treated with lower levels of insecticides, and weeded less vigorously (unweeded fields contain more milkweed plants). The butterflies survive better when they are not near the center of the fields where pollen counts are higher, and when rain washes the pollen off the milkweed plants.

Such results may be debatable, but no such debate took place—for reasons of politics. The papers were to appear just at the time the EPA was about to decide whether to renew the licenses (registrations) for planting
Bt
corn and cotton. The EPA asked the journal to release the papers on the Internet prior to publication so the agency would appear
to have considered the results in coming to the decision—one it had already made.
⁶⁰
In announcing the decision, the EPA said: “Adhering to a process that emphasized up-to-date scientific data and methodologies, numerous opportunities for public involvement, and balanced decision-making, EPA maintained a transparent review process to ensure that the decision was based on sound science.”
⁶¹
Critics did not find the process so transparent, not only because they had no chance to review the studies beforehand, but also because some of the data had been classified as “confidential business information” in an unusual concession to the industry. When the EPA did make the confidential information available, it required readers to agree not to copy or discuss it. In this instance, as in so many others, science alone cannot settle social questions of transparency or trust.