March 14, 2000
New Genes and Seeds: Protesters in Europe Grow More Passionate
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Issue in
Depth: Genetic Modification Debate
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By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
THE HAGUE -- At the big
conference on genetically modified food
here in January, the discussion
among 300 participants in the hall
was serious science -- intelligent,
earnest and a bit dull.
Outside, things were livelier. Two
protesters dressed as headless
chickens strutted. A gorilla wailed
over his pox-speckled bananas, and a
mutant apple in a radiation suit
passed out leaflets. The demonstrators played a tape of bubbling cauldrons
and vile belches, and the perfect fillip was the stench that hung in
the air -- which was not even their
idea, just dumb luck that a sewer
crew was working nearby.
Naturally, the television cameras
lingered on the protesters, who numbered fewer than 20.
In Europe, the debate over genetically modified food is as much about
passion as it is about science. British
newspapers routinely call ingredients from genetically altered plants
"Frankenfood," and pollsters say
just 1 percent of Britons think that
genetically modifying plants has any
value at all. Environmental advocates in Europe have destroyed
fields of test plants.
By contrast, in the United States
such ingredients are in nearly two-thirds of the products on supermarket
shelves, and few Americans
seem to have noticed. For Europeans, "It's not at the level of a
rational discussion any more," said
François Perroud, a spokesman for
Nestlé, the world's biggest food company, which is based in
Switzerland.
Nestlé has stopped buying any grain
from genetically altered seed for its
European operations.
"It's become a battle of doctrines,
of religious beliefs, of inanities," Mr.
Perroud said. "But unfortunately
more and more retailers have
jumped on the bandwagon and banished these products from their
shelves."
Legally, the European Union requires labels on any food with 1 percent
or more of genetically modified
ingredients. Planting, importing or
selling genetically altered seeds or
foods has virtually stopped, because
farmers will not plant the seeds, consumers will not buy the foods, and
stores decline to stock them.
Regulators have not approved any
new seed strains for nearly two
years.
Total American corn and soybean
exports slipped briefly, but American farmers are undeterred. Early
indications this year from seed companies are that they are not
significantly cutting back, because big food
processors have agreed to buy modified grains and keep them separate
from traditional ones.
The focus of the fury is a technology that borrows a genetic code from
plants or animals and transfers it to
a plant. Modified seeds, for instance,
can produce their own pesticide and
reduce the amount used in the fields.
The seeds are now used throughout
North and South America, China and
Australia.
Opponents concede that no one has
ever been harmed by genetically
modified food. But there are questions about environmental threats.
Will genes from herbicide-resistant
corn get into weeds, creating "superweeds"? Will benign insects like
Monarch butterflies be killed by pollen drifting from bug-killing corn?
Many Europeans fear the food itself, and some supermarket chains
will not sell it. Those who object to
the science argue that more research is needed on long-term safety.
Many factors are at work -- a
mysterious science that occurs at the
submicroscopic level, jingoism about
food, scare campaigns by environmentalists, arrogant American responses and
one bit of bad timing, the
fact that freighters loaded with the
1996 American soybean crop sailed
just as British mad cow disease, totally unrelated to genetically modified
food, was terrifying Europe.
There is also an anti-American element. Demonstrators' signs often
portray America and its agrochemical companies as one and the same.
But Guy le Fur, an expert on biotech
food at the Confederation Paysanne,
a radical farmers' organization that
has destroyed silos full of modified
grain, drew a distinction.
He noted that there were European giants in gene-technology, too,
although most of their work is in
pharmaceuticals. "I don't see it as a
national issue," Mr. le Fur said. "It
is colonization by three or four companies who want total control of what
goes onto the plates of people across
the planet and who want to make a
lot of money."
Pierre Lellouche, a Gaullist member of the French Parliament committee
on environmental safety, said
there was deep mistrust specifically
of American assurances that the
food was safe. "The general sense
here is that Americans eat garbage
food, that they're fat and they don't
know how to eat properly," he said.
American endorsements, Mr. Lellouche added, were "like the British
beef thing -- the British government
is still screaming that their beef is
perfect."
Whether or not European fears
will spread to America is unclear.
Biotech seed accounts for 36 percent
of American corn, 55 percent of its
soybeans and 43 percent of its cotton.
Some Americans wonder how dozens
of supermarket items like infant formula, cola and muffin mix could
contain biotech products without
their knowing it.
American seed producers like
Monsanto and DuPont's Pioneer Hi-Bred International are under pressure not
just by environmental activists but by food makers like H. J.
Heinz, Gerber and Frito-Lay who
have stopped using biotech ingredients and by corn farmers who
switched to the seeds and then saw
consumer fears shake European
markets.
The trade group that represents
big food makers, the Grocery Manufacturers of America, says it believes
that much of the concern is
overblown. "It's barely a blip on the
radar screen," a spokesman, Brian
Sansoni, said. "It's just not an issue
that's front and center with the
American people."
The protests in Europe also stem
from lingering cultural differences
in the ways Americans and Europeans look at food. Since World War
II, despite raised eyebrows from the
academic elite, Europeans have eagerly lapped up most American culture,
from blue jeans and computers
to movies and music.
But, though the older generation
remembers the chewing gum handed
out by American G.I.'s, other American culinary innovations like frosted
cereals and marshmallows meet
with less enthusiasm.
"Every traveler knows the strawberries and asparagus in America
look beautiful but have no flavor,"
said Marc van Montagu, a professor
of genetic science at the University
of Ghent in Belgium. "They're bred
for shelf life."
Last year, the European Union
bought just $1 million worth of American corn, down dramatically from
$305 million in 1996.
Europe buys 25 percent of the
American soybean crop, worth $2.6
billion in good years. Purchases
dropped, to $1 billion last year, according the United States Agriculture
Department. That decrease
largely reflects price cutting by exporters in Brazil and Argentina, the
American Soybean Association said.
Now their prices are rising.
The anti-biotech movement affected soybeans less, because most imported
beans are used to make animal feed and cooking oil. Under European law,
food for animals is not
labeled, and processed oil contains
no DNA, meaning that it does not
have to be labeled, either.
The European Union is debating
making those laws stricter.
While Europeans fear the "G.M."
label, scientists like Chris Somerville, a Stanford University plant
biologist, say that genetic technology is
"hundreds of times more predictable
than traditional means" like cross-breeding plants or mutating seeds
with radiation or heat. The fear of
creating unpredictable monsters is
"largely unfounded," Mr. Somerville
added.
Among American shoppers, surveys show that they have confidence
in the Food and Drug Administration
and the Agriculture Department. Europeans, on the other hand, having
faced mad-cow disease and scandals
over dioxin and sewage sludge in
animal feed, have no such confidence
in their regulators.
Also, in a debate over gene-splicing in the United States in the
mid-80's, a decade before the seeds were
widely planted. Jeremy Rifkin, an
anti-biotech campaigner, raised the
alarm. But it blew over like the population scare of the 70's.
Through a chance meeting in
Washington in 1986, Mr. Rifkin made
a convert of Benedikt Haerlin, then
an official of the Green Party in
Germany and now head of a campaign by Greenpeace to stop bioengineered food.
Nearly a decade later, just as mad-cow disease struck, the first
American crop with some herbicide-resistant soybeans was on the ocean.
Advocates still talk about the 1996 crop as
if it was the Normandy invasion.
"Now we had concrete targets," a
spokesman for Greenpeace, Mika
Railo, said. "We had to hit the ground
running."
British newspapers leaped into the
fray, and soon British companies
were asking American exporters for
unmodified grain. Big shippers initially refused.
Worse, some Americans were insulting. Bill Wadsworth, the technical
manager for Iceland, a British
frozen-food and supermarket chain
that is leading the fight against biotech food there, attended a meeting
in 1997 of the American Soybean
Association and American farmers.
"I told them our customers wanted choice, and if they would supply us
with one bucket, just one bucket of
non-G.M. beans, then we'd make
some product without,"' he said.
In his presence, Mr. Wadsworth
said, an association speaker referred
to him as "a backward European"
and assured the farmers that "European objections are irrelevant."
"That's when I organized a separate chain of supply from Brazil,"
Mr. Wadsworth recounted.
Europeans often see the United
States government, aggressively
free trade and keen on technology, as
a co-conspirator. Last July, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said
the administration would use all legal remedies to compel Europe to
accept American soybeans and corn,
even if that meant punitive tariffs. In
the same speech, he conceded for the
first time that the administration
wanted long-term studies of the
food's safety. He has since modified
that tone considerably.
American resistance to labeling,
though, rankles some Europeans,
who say it looks suspicious.
In January in Montreal, 130 countries hammered out the first
international treaty on the issue by agreeing
that shipments of modified grain be
labeled. Under the treaty, which 50
nations have yet to ratify, countries
can prohibit imports of a crop
deemed a threat to its environment.
The treaty does not deal with labeling consumer packages.
European governments and scientists worry about another form of
backlash. Genetic science is becoming a huge industry. If Europe earns
a reputation for Luddite reactions to
new fields, they fear, it will continue
to lose its best scientists and thousands of jobs to the United States.
"People say we're playing God,"
said Daniel Vasella, president of Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical and
biotech giant that owns Gerber. "But
that's what they said about Icarus
and flying or Prometheus and fire or
Galileo. You put the old order to rest,
and you're told you've questioned the
rule of God and you will now be
punished like the fall of the Tower of
Babel."
Mr. Haerlin of the Greenpeace
campaign made a strongly worded
speech at conference here. To an
audience of scientists, he said that
many scientists were liars and that
"smarter science and smarter scientists" were needed to improve organic
farming.
He was criticized by an African
official of the United Nations Food
and Agricultural Organization, who
said, "Organic farming is practiced
by 800 million poor people in the
world because they can't afford pesticides and fertilizers -- and it's not
working."
In remarks to reporters afterward, Mr. Haerlin dismissed the importance
of saving African or Asian
lives at the risk of spreading a new
science that he considered untested.
The Greenpeace position, he said,
was that research could continue as
long as no seeds or animals were
ever released.
Not all Europeans agree. Swiss
voters, for example, have twice rejected by large margins referendums that
would have banned all
genetic research or put a 10-year
moratorium on field trials or sales.
