A Matter of Taste

By John Feffer, The American Prospect. Posted April 29, 2003.

At the Sunday market at the Place de la Bastille in Paris, the produce proudly announces its origins. There are bananas from Martinique, olives from Spain, artichokes from Brittany and broccoli from St. Malo, the place names written just above the prices. Signs tell which family dairies the cheeses come from and whether the lamb grazed on salty coastal grasses. The provenance of the wine on display is even more precisely noted. The open-air markets in France are a good place to understand terroir, the French belief that local conditions such as soil and weather produce distinctive tastes.

The markets are also a good place to understand why the French -- and most other Europeans -- are so up in arms over genetically modified (GM) crops. In Europe, people want to know how their food was raised and made. For quality control, they generally trust farmers over biotechnicians. In 1998, responding to consumer demands, the European Union (EU) blocked the commercial introduction of new GM products and required the labeling of all foods containing -- by design or by accident -- 1 percent or more of GM ingredients. The EU is now considering legislation that would lift the ban but lower the threshold at which labels are required. The EU also wants the food industry to establish a precise paper trail for all GM ingredients. This "traceability" would lead investigators back to the culprit should some unfortunate Swede inexplicably keel over after eating chow mein stir-fried in GM canola oil.

In the United States, open air markets are comparatively rare, and most Americans have no idea where their food comes from. An orange from Florida, an orange from Brazil -- what's the difference? Most Americans, too, have obliviously ingested several years' worth of genetically altered soy beans, canola oil and corn. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers a tomato that's genetically modified for longer shelf life to be essentially the same product as an ordinary tomato -- novel enough to be patented, as Michael Pollan points out in his best-selling book, "The Botany of Desire," "yet not so novel as to warrant a label telling us what it is we're eating."

For a European who appreciates the entire process by which food is grown, the FDA focus on end products is just another example of the irrevocable vulgarity of the United States -- Alice Waters and other terroir-influenced American chefs notwithstanding. For their part, two successive U.S. administrations have argued that European fear of genetically modified organisms (GMO) is the result of emotionalism and unsound science. The Americans insist that biotechnology will end world hunger, decrease the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizer, and even solve critical medical problems.

The latest round of this sparring match has coincided with a ratcheting up of tensions between the New World and "old Europe" over war in Iraq, which has added animus to the Bush administration's previous impatience. It now seems more likely than ever that the administration will act on its threat to haul the European Union before the World Trade Organization (WTO). The administration claims that EU policies on transgenic food and feed are largely a cover for plain old protectionism and have already lost U.S. companies an estimated $300 million.

But money isn't all that's at issue. This is a clash of civilizations, of terroir versus McWorld, of Old World cautiousness versus New World impetuousness -- and on the GMO front, at least, there is little hope of real compromise.

Genetic Revolution

In five short years, from 1996 to 2001, genetically modified crops moved from scientific experiment to mainstream product. Worldwide, the farmland devoted to such crops increased 30-fold. By 2001, nearly 50 percent of all soybeans grown, including 75 percent of U.S. soybeans, were genetically modified. The spread of GM crops and the resulting contamination of conventional crops have been so significant that the U.S. seed industry -- the world's largest -- can no longer guarantee that its seeds for ordinary soybeans, corn or canola are entirely GM-free.

Genetic engineering has become the centerpiece of U.S. governmental and corporate strategies for maintaining a lead in agriculture and for addressing food deficits in the developing world. Scientists expect greater yields from GM crops and, when they insert pest-resistant genes into common crops, dramatic reductions in the amount of pesticides used in commercial farming. GM animal feeds could provide an alternative for farmers in Europe and elsewhere looking for a cheap, high-protein substitute for the bone meal feed that is the probable cause of "mad cow disease." Meanwhile, a second generation of crops is being heralded for its medical virtues. Genetic engineering has reduced the level of mycotoxins in corn, with the potential to lower the risk of certain cancers. "Golden rice" promises to reduce vitamin A deficiency throughout the developing world.

The U.S. government insists that genetic engineering is safe, and indeed GM foods have not yet been implicated in any major health or environmental problems. Most foods pose some risk, points out Gregory Jaffe, the director for the Project on Biotechnology at the Center for Science in the Public Interest: "If you did a risk assessment for a peanut today, it would not necessarily be approved." With this general proviso, his influential organization has accepted GMO. "In general," Jaffe says, "we have looked at the food safety of the current biotech crops and the evidence from independent scientists, and we are comfortable in telling our 800,000 subscribers that these products are safe to eat."

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