Controlling flourishing business of world's food

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): "This is not right and we won't do it," said Malcolm Walker, head of Britain's 770-store Iceland food chain. "There is no practical reason why we should be genetically modifying anything. Genetics is incredibly inexact. We are playing with fire."

Last week, Walker announced that he will not use genetically modified plants and bacteria in any of the 400-odd own-brand foods that Iceland sells in its stores. But he is the first sizable player to risk open resistance to the juggernaut that is sweeping through the world's food business, and it is very late in the day.

People have tried in the past to corner the global market in single commodities like silver, but the idea that anybody would seek to control the whole business of growing the world's food was unthinkable even a few years ago. Now six giant chemical companies are trying to do exactly that -- and that is why we will all be soon eating genetically modified food (without even the option of refusing it, if their tactics work).

Like most plans for world conquest, this one began as a smaller ambition: the giant chemical company Monsanto's desire to maintain the market dominance of its profitable glyphosate-based weedkiller 'Roundup' after the patent runs out in the year 2000. The solution was radical: develop genetically modified crops that are not harmed by large doses of glyphosate-based herbicide.

Monsanto's first mutated crop was soya beans. Spraying these genetically altered beans with heavy doses of Roundup raises yields by seven percent, because the weeds all die while the soya flourishes.

Great -- but it wouldn't help Monsanto much if farmers growing the mutant 'Roundup Ready' beans can buy the rival (and presumably cheaper) glyphosate herbicides that will appear on the market in 2000. However, they won't have a choice: to buy the mutant seeds, they must sign a contract promising to use only Roundup herbicide.

Once Monsanto opened the way, the other big agro-chemical conglomerates, Novartis, AgroEvo, Dupont, Zeneca and Dow, piled in with their own genetically engineered products. Last year more than 30 million acres were planted with mutated soya, corn, cotton, and rapeseed, up from 10 million acres in 1996 and three million in 1995. The area will double again this year, and genetically modified versions of practically every other major crop are on the way.

This is the fastest economic revolution on record: agriculture accounts for 65 percent of the global economy, and the six agrochemical giants are creating an almost unassailable position for themselves. "Their combined power to dominate world markets is awesome," said a United Nations economist. "The train has already left the station. It is practically unstoppable now."

So what? Creating herbicide-resistant crops truly does boost yields, and there is not yet any proof that turning genetically modified plants loose in the environment poses grave dangers to human beings. Gene-swapping between genetically modified plants and wild ones might produce herbicide-resistant weeds, or mutations in food crops that produce toxic effects and allergies in human consumers, but there is no evidence for it.

However, it will be very hard to identify and prove any ill effects once we are all eating the stuff -- and almost impossible to reverse any changes. The real crime is that we are getting no time to investigate these risks properly, and no way of opting out.

Jeff Rooker, Britain's Agriculture Minister, says bluntly that if the new Labor government had been elected a year earlier it would have demanded the segregation of genetically mutated crops: "I for one will not be prepared to give robust answers about it all being safe for ever more." But the whole world is being rushed into accepting these mutant crops by a battery of marketing tactics and legal moves designed to negate any possibility of saying no.

The first and still the most effective tactic of the big agribusiness combines is their blank refusal to segregate natural crops from genetically modified ones. Marketing the two kinds separately is obviously possible, but since a huge majority of consumers have reservations about eating genetically altered foods,it's best to leave them no choice in the matter.

Some European countries are now moving towards compulsory labeling of genetically modified foods, so the companies are in a rush to ensure that almost everything on the supermarket shelves contains mutated material: that way, there will be little effective choice. Soya, used in 60 percent of processed foods, is the key to this tactic, which is why the marketers have been so determined to mix the modified and natural strains together.

Then there's the legal campaign to make everybody accept these foods. This began with a well-funded lobbying effort that resulted in surreal 'food disparagement' laws being passed in 14 American states. U.S. talk-show host Oprah Winfrey recently ran afoul of these 'veggie libel' laws for 'libeling' hamburgers, but they are really meant to stifle criticism of genetically modified crops.

Even more ambitious is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's proposed new 'national standard' for organic farming, which blatantly serves the interests of the biotech/agribusiness complex.(By an amazing coincidence, these same firms also make very large political donations -- and President Clinton even singled Monsanto out for praise by name in his last 'State of the Nation' speech).

The new standard will permit food that has been genetically manipulated, irradiated, treated with additives, and/or raised on sewage sludge to be labeled 'organic'. And the producers of real organic food (whose market is growing by 20-30 percent a year as consumer anxieties rise) will even be banned from using a different word to replace the devalued 'organic' if it suggests that their produce is superior to the bio-engineered stuff.

This will be a solely American standard, of course -- but U.S. manufacturers will certainly then complain that other countries are erecting unfair trade barriers by refusing to recognize their stuff as 'organic food'. Washington will lodge a complaint with the World Trade Organization, which will refer it to Codex Alimentarus, a global food standards body packed with corporate scientists.

Codex Alimentarus will report that it sees no difference between American 'organic' produce and the real thing, and the World Trade Organization will threaten trade sanctions against countries that insist on maintaining the higher standard. This is exactly the strategy by which European consumers have already been forced to accept American beef and milk that was produced with injectable growth hormones, and it will probably work for mutated foods too.

The ironic thing is that Monsanto is run not by short-sighted bottom-liners but by eco-visionaries like chief executive officer Bob Shapiro, a Harvard-educated liberal who is close to President Clinton. They talk about 'ecological sustainability', and they think they are launching another Green Revolution.

Their intentions are not bad, nor maybe even their genetically engineered solutions. The danger lies in the monstrous, jackbooted arrogance with which they seek to suppress all other options.