GM Food for Thought

Unless you've gone exclusively organic, the odds are you've eaten potatoes that are registered pesticides. Monsanto's New Leaf Superior potato is engineered to produce the insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Bt kills the Colorado potato beetle but it is also in every one of the New Leaf Superior's cells. Thus, it is legally registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a pesticide, not a food...and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cannot regulate the New Leaf Superior potato because the FDA does not have the authority to regulate pesticides.

This would be an interesting and important issue even if it began and ended with the New Leaf Superior but the concerns swirling around genetically modified (GM) food run far deeper than a baked bug killer. Among the countless GM projects in use or in development, we have trees engineered never to flower, potatoes mixed with jellyfish genes that glow in the dark when they need watering, and so-called "edible vaccines."

Is any of this safe? Is it even understood?

Corporate proponents and their flacks would like us to believe so, and they often go to great lengths to discredit critics. For example, the most recent GM defense paints agro-giants as saviors: altruistic entities trying to feed the world. As part of his bullying effort to force GM food on the EU, George W. Bush declared, "European governments should join, not hinder, the great cause of ending hunger in Africa."

But hunger isn't a result of insufficient resources...it's more about the inequitable distribution of abundant resources. In a recent study of food production and hunger, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization concluded, "Globally, there is enough land, soil and water, and enough potential for future growth in yields, to make the necessary production feasible."

Hunger is a political problem that GM food will not and cannot solve. Roughly 150 million acres of farmland around the world are planted with GM crops; primarily soybeans, corn, cotton and canola. These four big moneymakers do little if anything to nourish hungry people in developing countries.

"The field is dominated by five very large multinational corporations," says Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation. "For these corporations, there is no profit to investing in expensive research on new products that can only be purchased by subsistence African farmers with little money. So quite logically, these companies are not focused on improving the basic crops of the developing world such as millet, sorghum, cowpeas, yams or cassava."

What these companies are focused on is ignoring public sentiment and rigorous science. Early in 2001, the Royal Society of Canada -- the nation's foremost scientific body -- said there was insufficient research into the potential allergic effects and toxicity of genetically engineered foods. GM foods could cause "serious risks to human health," the society said. "Genetic engineering of food has far outrun the science that must be its first governing discipline," adds Ralph Nader. "Many unknowns attend the insertion of genes across species, from ecological risks to food allergies. These unknowns beg for investigation."

Long-term (and unbiased) research is needed to make anything approaching an accurate assessment. While such investigation does not appear forthcoming at this juncture, there is enough already known about GM food to put its safety in doubt:

• Scientists have discovered that the aforementioned Bt may produce allergies in people. A July 1999 study of Ohio crop pickers and handlers shows that Bt "can provoke immunological changes indicative of a developing allergy. With long-term exposure, affected individuals may develop asthma or other serious allergic reactions."
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