----- forwarded message -----
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 23:17:16 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Welcome to tomorrow - if your body can't adjust to the new ways, you
shall die and your progeny will die also if they can't adjust.
It's known as the survival of the fitest - or the most adapable.
- is
========================
------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 19:35:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: As Biotech Crops Multiply, Consumers Get ittle
Choice
The New York Times
June 10, 2001
By DAVID BARBOZA
CHICAGO, June 9 � Despite persistent concerns about genetically
modified crops, they are spreading so rapidly that it has become
almost impossible for consumers to avoid them, agriculture
experts say.
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. Wind-blown pollen,
commingled seeds and black-market plantings have further extended
these products of biotechnology into the far corners of the
global food supply � perhaps irreversibly, according to food
experts.
"The genie is already out of the bottle," said Neil E. Harl, a
professor of agriculture and economics at Iowa State University,
speaking of genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.'s. "If the
policy tomorrow was that we were going to eradicate G.M.O.'s,
this would be a very long process. It would take years if not
decades to do that."
Most of the biotech fields are soybeans and corn planted in
North
and South America, the biggest food exporters. But biotech crops
� genetically altered to do things like release their own
insecticide or withstand the spraying of weed-killing chemicals �
are being shipped or experimented with in many other countries,
including China, India, Australia and South Africa.
They are even turning up where people least expect them: in
countries where they are banned but a black market has developed;
in food supplies where they are forbidden or shunned, like
organic products; even in fields that farmers believe are
completely free of genetically modified crops.
The rapid adoption and proliferation means that even as
scientists
and others debate the safety of altering foods' genetic codes to
produce cheaper and bigger supplies, a large share of the world's
population has little or no choice but to consume genetically
modified crops.
One indication came last year when Starlink, a variety of
genetically modified corn not approved for human consumption,
accidentally entered the global food supply, leading to extensive
food recalls in the United States and Japan over fears it could
cause allergic reactions.
Starlink has not been shown to be harmful; indeed, there is
little
evidence that biotech foods are dangerous to humans. But the
episode showed that seeds planted on less than 1 percent of
America's corn acreage could easily spread from farm to farm,
contaminate the nation's grain handling system and seep into
global food supplies.
Seed companies, farmers, processors and food makers have spent
more than $1 billion in the last six months trying to eradicate
Starlink. But most experts agree that will take years.
In the meantime, experts say the spread of biotech crops creates
an entirely new set of trade, regulatory and legal problems:
� Large countries with policies limiting the use of genetically
modified crops may soon have to change course, because they will
not be able to get enough nonbiotech crops to meet their import
needs.
� Regulators are under pressure to develop new standards to
determine what is and is not genetically modified � a situation
complicated, as the Starlink episode demonstrated, by the
commingling and cross- pollination of different crops.
� Big food and agriculture companies are facing legal and public
relations challenges, because some farmers and consumers believe
their products have been contaminated.
Gene-altered crops are already ubiquitous in the United States,
where the Food and Drug Administration has deemed them "entirely
safe." But Europe and parts of Asia remain wary of the crops, and
there have been moves in those regions to halt or slow their
import.
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. And the critics suspect that the
industry has intentionally flooded the world market with
genetically altered seeds to pre-emptively settle the question of
whether or not to adopt biotechnology
Opponents expected Starlink to be a turning point in the fight
against genetically altered crops. But while the episode helped
stall the advance of genetically modified wheat, potatoes and
sugar, it seems to have served as proof, over all, of biotech's
inexorable spread. Most food makers in the United States continue
to use biotech crops, insisting they are safe and far too
pervasive to avoid; meanwhile, relatively few American consumers
seem to care.
Perhaps more important, the bulk of American grain sold for
domestic and international use goes into animal feed, and thus
far few farmers or big companies have opposed feeding biotech
grain to livestock.
Indeed, biotech industry officials believe the game is nearly
won.
The United States, Brazil and Argentina account for about 90
percent of the world's corn and soybean exports. Bulk shipments
from the United States and Argentina are predominantly biotech.
And Brazil is widely believed to have a black market in biotech
soybeans.
If Brazil legalizes biotech production, Europe and Asia � the
world's two biggest purchasers of soy � would have almost nowhere
to turn for adequate supplies of nonbiotech soybeans.
Environmentalists in Brazil have protested biotechnology, and
though the government there is split, industry officials in the
United States say that Brazil is leaning toward allowing the use
of genetically modified seeds.
"We are very hopeful that last domino will fall," said Bob
Callanan, a spokesman for the American Soybean Association, a
trade group that supports the use of gene-altered crops. "That's
why the environmentalists are putting up a stink down there in
Brazil. They know if that goes, it's all gone."
That would be a huge victory for biotechnology companies.
Monsanto, Aventis, Syngenta and others have spent billions of
dollars to create the crops, and some independent groups,
including the United Nations, promote them as one answer to world
health and hunger problems.
Andrew Cash, an analyst who follows the biotechnology industry
at
UBS Warburg, says that Europe already has little choice but to
accept the crops, largely because Monsanto's Roundup Ready
Soybeans, the primary biotech variety, are so widespread.
"Europe is learning its first lesson in the `beggars can't be
choosers' world of agricultural reality � it's G.M.O. beans or no
beans," Mr. Cash wrote last January.
Food companies are already having a hard time obtaining
nongenetically modified crops. Grain handlers like Archer Daniels
Midland and Cargill are charging extra to segregate and test
crops to certify that they are nonbiotech.
And that is becoming harder to do. Some agriculture experts say
that cross-pollination of biotech corn and seed corn, as well as
poor and imperfect grain-handling practices, have thoroughly
scrambled crops in a global food chain that for decades shipped
bulk supplies of largely undifferentiated products.
Food makers around the world are finding traces of gene-altered
crops in foods that were not supposed to be made with them;
Midwestern farmers are complaining that wind is blowing pollen
from gene-altered crops into neighboring fields planted with
conventional corn.
Even organic crops labeled "G.M. Free" are testing positive for
genetic modification. Organic growers are now considering a
class-action lawsuit against the biotech industry that would seek
damages for the contamination.
"We have found traces in corn that has been grown organically
for
10 to 15 years," said Arran Stephens, president of Nature's Path
Foods, an organic producer of breads and cereals based in Delta,
British Columbia. "There's no wall high enough to keep that stuff
contained."
Some critics of biotechnology see a sinister plot at work, with
the industry ignoring the implications of widespread pollen flow
and perhaps even encouraging a black market in biotech crops.
"They're hoping there's enough contamination so that it's a fait
accompli," said Jeremy Rifkin, a longtime critic of
biotechnology.
"But the liability will kill them," he said. "We're going to see
lawsuits across the Farm Belt as conventional farmers and organic
farmers find their product is contaminated."
The world's biggest biotech seed companies acknowledge that some
pollen may go astray. And they acknowledge that they cannot
guarantee that even the conventional seed they sell is 100
percent free of genetic modification.
Agriculture, they say, is prone to mishaps.
"By and large,
where there are crops grown, and where G.M. materials are
approved, the issue is with us," said Dean Oestreich, a vice
president at Pioneer Hi-Bred, the world's largest seed company.
"Our basic seed stocks are pure. But there's always adventitious
presence, which means small amounts of unintentional presence
through pollen flow and physical mixing."
Because of all this commingling, the companies are calling on
regulators in many countries to relax tolerance standards for
crops, to avoid trade, labeling and legal problems.
Zero tolerance, said Jeanne Romero-Severson, a professor of
agriculture at Purdue University, is simply not realistic.
"If your standard is 100 percent pure," she said, "you better
stop
eating right now."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/10/business/10GENE.html?ex=9932265
86&ei=1&en=660749d27dcaeb0a
------- End of forwarded message -------
Irene Stuber ................. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Women of Achievement and Herstory archives www.undelete.org
"It's not ever acceptable to be violent toward women and children (or
men) or to
traffic women for sexual exploitation or slave labor - not ever, under
anyone's cultural history or scheme."
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