Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (41 page)

Enforcement
. The aggressive tactics used by biotechnology companies to protect their patent rights cannot help but elicit distrust. To pick just one example: Monsanto added a $5 technology fee to each bag of Roundup
Ready soybeans when the seeds became available in 1996. The company required farmers to pledge never to harvest the seeds, and to permit its agents to inspect the fields for three years. It used crop consultants and independent investigators as informants, and pursued more than 200 “plant piracy” cases in the courts. A spokeswoman explained, “Monsanto has invested a lot of money . . . and we will protect that investment.”
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Injustice
. Questions of justice cause distrust of genetically engineered foods because of court decisions that consistently favor the patent rights of food biotechnology companies. Biotechnology patents rank second only to software patents in generating lawsuits. In a case considered critical to the continued economic viability of the industry, an Iowa seed company challenged patent protection as monopolistic and contrary to Congressional intent. The company, Farm Advantage, purchased 600 bags of Pioneer Hi-Bred corn seed from a third company for about $54,000 and resold the seeds to customers. In 1999, Pioneer Hi-Bred sued Farm Advantage for violating its exclusive patent rights. The Farm Advantage attorney asked the court to dismiss the case. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Pioneer, a decision seen as a victory for companies holding patents on transgenic processes.
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A spokeswoman for Monsanto explained that the court “clearly wanted to protect the rights of investors.”
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Biopiracy
. This is the pejorative term applied to the private appropriation of public biological resources, particularly the patenting of indigenous plants for corporate profit at the expense of poor farmers in developing countries.
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For example, a Texas company obtained a patent for several lines of basmati rice, a staple grain consumed in India for millennia and an important source of income for that country. India requested a reexamination of the patent. Although protests eventually induced the Patent Office to refuse most of the company’s claims, the initial approval lent credence to the idea that U.S. companies were stealing native plants from developing countries. When Monsanto’s patents on transgenic soybeans raised similar alarms in China, the company said farmers in that country could use the technology without restriction. But why, ask critics, “should someone be entitled to transfer a resource from the public domain to the private domain?”
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Patenting is unquestionably political; its ostensible purpose is to promote useful inventions that benefit society. If so, according to one academic expert,

It is reasonable to question the extent to which plant and animal patents are likely to benefit society as a whole, particularly in an era when the Western patent system is being imposed internationally against the wishes of numerous countries. . . . If, on the other hand, the protection of the natural rights of inventors is the primary justification for patents, then it is perfectly reasonable to question the extent of those rights. In particular, it makes sense to consider what belongs in the genetic commons as discoveries and the natural heritage of humankind rather than industrial or government property.
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Animal Rights
. The patenting of animals generates distrust for reasons of religion, ethics, and animal rights. Various organizations—animal-rights groups and others—believe that the genetic engineering of farm animals adversely affects family farmers, is cruel to animals, endangers living species, or is flatly unethical. Perhaps in response to such concerns, the Patent Office stopped issuing patents for transgenic animals in 1988. In 1993, it resumed processing of the 180 animal patent applications that had accumulated during the moratorium, but fewer companies were attempting to patent farm animals by that time, largely because persistent technical problems and costs had encouraged them to shift to more profitable areas of research. Lobbyists against animal patents such as Jeremy Rifkin, a leading critic of biotechnology, continue to object to Patent Office policies for reasons of philosophy and economic inequity: “We believe the gene pool should be maintained as an open commons, and should not be the private preserve of multinational companies. . . . This is the Government giving its imprimatur to the idea that there is no difference between a living thing and any inert object. . . . It’s the final assault on the sacred meaning of life and life process.”
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Mr. Rifkin helped organize a coalition of church groups representing 80 religious faiths and denominations to oppose patenting on the grounds that animals are creations of God, not of humans. Others also find the idea of patenting animals repugnant on moral, ethical, and religious grounds.
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“Terminator” Technology
. No patent issue elicits greater distrust of the food biotechnology industry—and of its government regulators—than patent protection through “terminator” technology. As yet another irony of the politics of food biotechnology, the terminator was the work of a USDA
government
scientist who recognized that the insertion of certain genes and antibiotic-resistance marker sequences into plants could stop them from reproducing. When treated with a suitable antibiotic, these genes lead to the production of a protein that prevents seed germination.
This trick prevents plants from cross-pollinating bioengineered traits into weeds (a good thing). However, it also acts as a “technology protector system,” meaning that farmers cannot collect seeds and grow them. Instead, they must buy seeds protected by a biotechnology company’s patents, and must do so every year. Before the USDA researcher had even developed the technology, he won a patent for it in collaboration with a seed company, Delta and Pine Land.

When Monsanto attempted to buy Delta and Pine Land, it appeared as if the true purpose of terminator technology was to protect private property and make farmers even more dependent on seeds and chemicals controlled by corporations. Critics feared that use of this technology would devastate farmers in poor countries who typically save their seeds from one year to the next. On this basis, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research recommended in 1998 that its 16 member institutes ban research on terminator genes. The following year, U.S. rural development groups, alarmed about the possible effects of the technology on global food security and biodiversity, organized their constituents to demand that USDA cease sponsorship of terminator research.
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This research evoked vivid images—and street theater—of corporate science conducted for profit rather than for the good of society (see
figure 26
).

The already high profile of critics of this research rose even higher in June 1999 when the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Gordon Conway, challenged Monsanto to stop work on terminator genes. In his view, this work was so controversial that it placed the entire food biotechnology enterprise at risk—including its potential to feed the developing world. The use of this research, he said, “particularly by the poor and excluded, is being threatened by the mounting controversies in Europe and to some extent in the United States. There is a real danger that the research may be set back, particularly if field trials are banned. . . . The agricultural seed industry must disavow the use of terminator technology to produce seed sterility.”
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Mr. Conway also suggested that Monsanto invest more in research to solve food problems in developing countries, and voluntarily label its products. In response, Monsanto officials issued a “terse statement” terming their conversations with Mr. Conway “frank and productive. We will continue to reach out to people like Prof. Conway to discuss the challenges and opportunities of biotechnology applications in agriculture.”
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Nevertheless, his remarks hit home. In October 1999, Monsanto announced that the company would “make no effort to market” terminator seeds (even though the possibility of doing so was still years away), thereby averting “a public relations disaster in an industry already under attack on other, more serious fronts.”
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Earlier that year, a Monsanto spokesman said that “seed sterility has become a surrogate for the entire debate on biotech. . . . We are recognizing now though that there is something psychologically offensive about sterile seed in every culture.”
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Other motives, however, may have influenced Monsanto’s retreat on this issue. The Justice Department’s antitrust division had delayed Monsanto’s purchase of Delta and Pine Land. When Monsanto merged with Pharmacia and Upjohn late in 1999, it withdrew the purchase offer (lawsuits ensued). The USDA, citing the many beneficial applications of the ability to turn genes on and off, continues to conduct terminator research, leaving plenty of room for ongoing distrust—and outrage—about how government and industry plan to use this technology.
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FIGURE 26
. This flyer advertises a play produced by the San Francisco Mime Troupe in summer 2000: “In her laboratory, Dr. Synthia Allright-Bloom is hard at work on a bio-genetic engineering discovery that could feed the world.” The Mime Troupe presents free plays in public parks.

A third major issue of distrust arises from the inadvertent transfer of transgenic pollen to organically grown or native plant species. The high level of public concern about this issue is revealed by the political battle that took place over the USDA’s proposed rules for certifying foods as “organic.” Scientists and the food biotechnology industry are also concerned about pollen spread, but for a different reason—its political and economic consequences. Such consequences are best illustrated by the discovery of transgenes in native varieties (“landraces”) of maize growing in Mexico, and the ensuing uproar over publication of this finding.

Organic Foods
. Because practices related to organic farming were inconsistent, organic farmers attempted to set up a voluntary certification program but could not reach consensus on how to do that. They asked Congress to establish mandatory rules for designating food as organic, and legislators did so in 1990 when they passed the Organic Food Production Act and established a National Organic Standards Board to advise the USDA about implementation. The board, realizing that Congress had passed the legislation before bioengineered foods were on the market, recommended “as a policy matter” that genetically modified foods be excluded from those considered organically grown.
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In proposing standards, the USDA was especially sensitive to objections that
organic
implied criticism of other agricultural methods. In what appeared to be a compromise forced by mainstream agricultural producers,
the agency asked for public comment on whether
organic
could be applied to foods that had been genetically modified, irradiated, or fertilized with reprocessed sewage (“sludge”). Buried in a 120-page and especially impenetrable
Federal Register
notice were a few short paragraphs unlikely to shed light on the department’s position on these issues. For example:

We do not consider non-synthetic substances that have been treated with a synthetic substance, but which have not been chemically altered by a manufacturing process, to be synthetic under the definition given in the Act. . . . We have included toxins derived from genetically engineered bacteria on the proposed National List primarily so that we can receive comment on the proper classification of these substances and on whether they should be allowed, prohibited, or approved on a case-by-case basis.

Translation: the USDA considers genetic engineering and irradiation to be processes that do not alter the fundamental nature of food and, therefore, proposes to include transgenic foods on the Federal List of foods certified as organically grown.

When the USDA invited comments on this idea, the agency got them. By February 1998, just two months after publication of the notice, 4,000 people had filed comments, many of them along the lines of “USDA should not permit corporate agribusiness lobbyists and bureaucrats in Washington to force-feed the rules to organic farmers and their customers.” In response to the deluge, the USDA postponed the comment deadline and scheduled public hearings. By March, an extraordinary grassroots campaign based on the Internet, notices on milk cartons, and other low-cost efforts had elicited 15,000 comments, nearly all of them negative. I can attest to the breadth and persistence of this effort; for weeks, I received daily electronic mail instructions about how to file comments on this issue. By the deadline, the USDA organic standards docket contained an astonishing 275,603 letters, with genetic engineering eliciting the most criticism.
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Eventually, the USDA responded to public demand and dropped the controversial proposals; it would not permit genetically modified, irradiated, sewage-fertilized foods, or animals fed antibiotics to be labeled as organic. The organic foods industry and its constituents hailed the decision as a decisive victory: “Organic food stores are no longer just little co-ops with tofu and bean sprouts. . . . They alerted their customers, and the customers rejected the proposed rules.”
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Biotechnology industry representatives criticized the decision as “political, not based on any realistic assessment of risks, benefits, or science,” and USDA officials reassured
them that the organic standards did not “reflect a judgment about the safety or utility of biotechnology. . . . USDA has not drawn official conclusions about biotechnology labeling for conventional agriculture products. In general, USDA is doing a great deal to promote biotechnology as a key part of mainstream US agriculture efforts.”