Frankenfood for Dinner? Health Is Probably the Least of Your Concerns.

The air was warm and stagnant. Flies bounced lazily off the windowpanes. Attorneys wiped sweat from their brow. Canada farmer Percy Schmeizer stood nervously as the judge entered the courtroom and prepared to deliver the verdict.

Okay, that’s not what actually happened. I wasn’t there. That’s just how I imagine it. In 2004 the Supreme Court of Canada passed judgment in the famous case of Percy Schmeizer vs Monsanto. No doubt it all went down boringly in air-conditioned comfort, but there ought to have been a little drama. For on that day the justices ruled in a 5-4 split decision to uphold a biotech corporation’s patented control of a living thing.

It wasn’t inevitable. In the early days of biotech, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that the legal and regulatory bodies of the United States and Canada would accept patents of genes. But they did. The argument was that engineered genes were a kind of intellectual property like books, music, and pharmaceuticals. Biotech was a promising field and companies like Monsanto needed patent protection to justify investing significant amounts of money in research and development. If any of the decision makers felt uncomfortable about extending intellectual property rights to DNA, to the code of life itself, they must have decided the benefits outweighed the risks.

Decades later the debate is still raging. In North America, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are now as common as canned goods. There’s a good chance you’ve eaten something today that came from a genetically modified plant. Although anti-GMO activists in Europe have succeeded in convincing governments to ban many GM crops outright, here in North America they haven’t even managed to make much progress towards labeling.

Opposition to the biotech giants usually begins with a visceral objection to direct tampering with the stuff of life, especially when the tampering extends to a mixing of genes belonging not merely to different species or families, but to different kingdoms. A bacterial gene, for example, has been inserted into Monsanto’s patented 810 maize, causing the modified plant to produce a pesticide within it’s own cells. Opponents call this Frankenfood. To a lot of people it just doesn’t feel right.

But the argument from repugnance tends to be the weakest. Genetic engineering might result in the creation of harmful organisms, but not necessarily. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) it’s not possible to make general statements about the safety of all GM foods. As with the powerful knowledge of the inner workings of the atom, the good and the evil lies in the application. Are you making PET scanners or atomic bombs?  Some genetic modifications could have harmful effects on human health and others won’t. The challenge becomes one of honest and adequate testing of each new GMO.

Simple toxins aren’t the only concern. The WHO has identified three more big ones:

1. Allerginicity. GMOs have the potential to provoke serious allergic reactions. GMOs that are going to market are supposed to be properly tested for this.

2. Gene Transfer. A weird, almost sci-fi scenario: It is possible, although unlikely, that genes from GMOs consumed by humans might be transferred to cells in the body or to bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract. For this reason the WHO has recommended that genes with antibiotic resistant properties not be used in GMOs. It is, however, a rare occurrence.

3. Outcrossing. A worrying problem for ecologists and environmentalists. Genes from genetically engineered plants have the potential to move to conventional plants and even wild plants with unknown results. It’s a public health issue as well, since genes from GMOs approved only for use on livestock have mysteriously found their way into food for human consumption. This is the classic Jurassic Park, you-can’t-keep-the-genie-in-the-bottle argument, and it has serious weight.

I would add a fourth reason to explore labeling and bans on GMOs: what I’m going to call “irresponsible use.”

My perspective is very much that of a consumer. I’m not a biotech expert; I’m a person who wants to learn more about where the food I eat comes from. And I’ve noticed in the course of my research that many of these genetically modified crops have been created not for the benefit of poor third-world farmers or even first-world consumers, but for the benefit of biotech companies and agribusinesspeople.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

Take Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” GM corn, for example. This corn has been engineered with a bacterial gene that makes it resistant to Monsanto’s proprietary Roundup herbicide. The benefit is that farmer’s can now dump more herbicide on their fields without killing the crop. For the agribusinessman that makes industrial farming a little bit easier and operational yields potentially higher. For Monsanto it means they sell lots of GM seeds (which produce plants with sterile seeds are licensed for one year, so farmers have to buy them every year.) Also, of course, it means that they sell more herbicide. This kind of biotech is a bonanza for agribusinessmen and shareholders.

But what does the consumer get out of this, other than crops that have been doused with extra helpings of chemicals? Monsanto would like you to believe that higher yields mean lower prices to the consumer. The economics, however, are complex. Maybe in a perfectly competitive environment you’d get lower prices, but the biotech-agricultural industry is very far from perfectly competitive. Monsanto has huge market share and few, if any, real rivals. On the farmers’ side of things there’s a Byzantine system of government subsidies and strangled distribution that pretty much ensures the proceeds of these higher yields are going to everyone but you. And there’s no earthly reason why you, as a consumer/voter, should support the use of a potentially harmful and environmentally destructive new technology merely for someone else’s private gain, especially when alternatives exist.

There are signs that biotech companies are becoming aware of this challenge and adapting their strategies accordingly. Speaking at the International Wheat Quality conference recently, Meinolf Lindhauer of Germany’s Max Rubner Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food suggested that winning acceptance of genetically modified wheat may require GMOs that provide a direct benefit to the public  (for example, a gluten-free GM wheat for people with celiac disease).

“If the consumer perceives that the benefit is just for the producer or worse still, just for some big company that’s making a profit out of it, why would they want to adopt it?” said Lindauer.

Irresponsible use might also encompass attempts to apply the magic bullet of genetic engineering to developing-world agriculture. Recently in India thousands of farmers committed suicide after going into debt to buy expensive GM seeds. The crops from such seeds are infertile, so when the crops failed, the farmers were left with no income and an inescapable debt. Prince Charles made headlines in 2008 by referring to ‘the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming…from the failure of many GM crop varieties’. According to the National Crime Records Bureau of India, 16,625 farmers killed themselves in 2007 alone. There were 182,936 farmer suicides in India between 1997 and 2007.

Observers have reason to be skeptical when they hear that Monsanto is involved in a new project to develop drought-resistant GM wheat for African farmers. Sounds like a good thing. Could be. It’s funded by the Gates Foundation and the Buffet Foundation. I felt a little less warm and fuzzy about that when I learned that the Gates Foundation’s project leader, Rob Horsch, is a former VP of Monsanto. But still, cronyism aside, you can hope that these new seeds, which are to be sold to farmers “royalty free” are more about helping people than opening new markets. Certainly, the skeptics have lots of well-documented material to work with.

Percy Schmeiser

The more you dig, the more it seems that the economics of GMOs are as worrisome as the GMOs themselves. Price trends, in particular, are not encouraging, especially for farmers in developing countries. According to the Center for Food Safety, “GM seeds cost from two to over four times as much as conventional, non-GM seeds, and the price disparity is increasing. From 80% to over 90% of the soybean, corn and cotton seeds planted in the U.S. are GM varieties. Thanks to GM trait fee increases, average U.S. seed prices for these crops have risen by over 50% in just the past two to three years.”

If you’re a large biotech, advancing capital-intensive, patented crops which can’t reproduce makes great business sense. The question is, will simpler, better, more natural solutions get left behind in the scramble for dollars?

In his long expensive legal battle with Monsanto, perhaps Percy Schmeiser was never on the right side of the letter of the law, but just maybe, as four Supreme Court judges evidently agreed, he was on the right side of what the law should be. The analogy between genes and forms of intellectual property like books and pharmaceuticals isn’t a very good one.

Consumers are right to be skeptical of the claims of biotech companies. At the same time, there are some casual critics of genetic engineering who need to tread carefully in order to avoid stumbling onto the wrong side of science in a creationists-vs-evolutionists style of debate. After reading as much as I possibly could on the subject in a few weeks’ time, I find I don’t fear the technology, but I do question the uses to which it will be put and the motives of those who are promoting it. How has my attitude changed? Well, I feel more relaxed about where things are at right now. Yes, we’re seeing more and more genetically engineered crops in North America, but the food movement is strong and growing stronger all the time. If you’re generally opposed to GMOs, something tells me you have reason to be optimistic about the direction the wind is blowing.