Bioengineered food: coming to a table near you

Social justice news
July 2001

Bioengineered food: coming to a table near you
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Bioengineered food: coming to a table near you
Round-up Ready or not, genetically modified food may only be as far away as your next dinner party. While Europe and Japan strive to keep so-called GM food out of their national pantries, so quickly are genetically altered crops proliferating across farm fields in the United States, many Americans may already have dined on bioengineered cuisine. The advent of GM crops represents an enormous transformation of the U.S. agriculture and food production systems, a transformation that critics charge is occurring with little public commentary, even awareness.

More than 100 million acres of the world's most fertile farmland were planted with genetically modified crops last year, about 25 times as much as just four years earlier. U.S. farmers used genetically modified seed to plant 82.3 million acres this spring, 18 percent more than last year, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey. Wind-blown pollen, commingled seeds, and black-market plantings have further extended these products of biotechnology into the global food supply.

Some critics even suggest that this "unintended" transformation of American and global agriculture may be exactly what high-tech producers of GM seeds hoped for to short circuit the global debate on the safety or desirability of gene-altered food. Most of the biotech fields are soybeans and corn planted in North and South America, the biggest food exporters. But biotech crops are being shipped or experimented with in many other countries, including China, India, Australia, and South Africa.

GM food skeptics say that tampering with nature could inadvertently alter species, harm wildlife and give rise to new problems, like herbicide-resistant "superweeds." They also worry about the long-term health consequences of eating foods that are armed with insecticides and foreign genes.

While U.S. farmers who grow 68 percent of the U.S. soy beans and 26 percent of the U.S. corn crop have determined to use genetically modified seeds, other farmers complain that because of natural cross fertilization as pollen from genetically altered crops drifts across their fields, they have little choice but to accept the dawn of genetically modified farming. Organic growers are especially concerned that GM strains will "contaminate" their crops or lead to mutations of normal crop pests that will make them impervious to previously effective methods of eradication.

"[GM crops] just seem to be turning up everywhere," says Robert Gronski, senior policy analyst for the National Catholic Rural Life Committee. Gronski says that a lot of the agricultural policy activists and farmers he's spoken with have become suspicious because of the level of GM proliferation they're seeing, wondering how seed producing companies could not have foreseen how such basic agricultural processes such as pollen drift would effect non-GM crops. "They're saying, 'No way is this an accident.' "

"On the other hand," says Gronski, "a lot of farmers like Roundup Ready and Bt seeds because they're helping them reduce costs." Monsanto's Round-up Ready seeds have been genetically modified to be tolerant of its "Roundup" weed killer. Bt crops have been bioengineered to contain a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that codes for a protein that is toxic to certain insects.

Brian Hurley, a Monsanto spokesperson, denies that pollen drift is a serious problem or a cause of "contamination" of non-GM crop fields. "Pollen poses a reality that farmers have confronted for centuries," he says. "Farmers are well equipped to deal with it. It's absolutely manageable, alongside all the other factors in a biological environment."

Hurley denies the rapid spread of GM seeds and genetic material across U.S. farmlands is the result of secret plan among GM seed producers to push their technology as a fait accompli on farmers and ultimately U.S. and global consumers. He argues that far from "spreading unintendedly," GM farming is growing simply because so many U.S. farmers are opting to use GM seeds. "This is clearly an intentional decision taken by farmers. Biotechnology has a lot to offer most farmers." The rapid adoption of GM crops is "good for farmers and good for biotechnology," says Hurley.

But is it good for consumers? Who benefits, who gains, and who gains what are just a few of the questions about GM agriculture raised by recent observations by Pope John Paul II, according to NCRLC's Gronski. "Everyone has the right to live off the fruits of the earth," writes John Paul II in an address celebrating the Jubilee of the Agricultural World in November 2000. "This is a principle to be remembered in agricultural production itself, whenever there is a question of its advance through the application of biotechnologies, which cannot be evaluated solely on the basis of immediate economic interests. They must be submitted beforehand to rigorous scientific and ethical examination, to prevent them from becoming disastrous for human health and the future of the earth."

In Gronski's analysis, while acknowledging that bioengineered agriculture offers many promises, the pope argues that it presents many perils as well and cautions against a rapid adoption of such technology particularly when it can concentrate too much power over the world's food production into a few corporate hands. For his part, Gronski wonders how the U.S. public feels about taking part in perhaps the world's largest experiment, testing the long-term safety and economy of GM food production.—Kevin Clarke

For more information:
Address during the Jubilee of the Agricultural World: November 11, 2000
The National Catholic Rural Life Conference
Monsanto Corporation
Genetically engineered crops for pest management—from the USDA
Corn has been contaminated with a potentially harmful protein
"Care for the earth is a local call"—from U.S. Catholic

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