Will Agbiotech's Genetic Contamination Conquer the World?

As Biotech Crops Multiply, Consumers Get Little Choice
By DAVID BARBOZA
The New York Times
June 10, 2001

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."