Uncle Sam's Other War: Biotech vs. the European Union

Uncle Sam's Other War: Biotech vs. the European Union
Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, AlterNet
March 6, 2003

The U.S. government is not very happy with the European Union these
days. Washington is calling Europe's stand "inmoral", but Europe refuses
to budge.

No, it's not the Iraq war. The issue is genetically modified (GM) foods.

Since 1998 the European Union has required the labelling of all GM
foods. This has amounted to a de facto moratorium on U.S. imports of GM
foods because Uncle Sam stubbornly refuses to label them. Small wonder,
since consumer polls on both sides of the Atlantic show that most
shoppers want GM foods labeled, precisely so they can avoid them.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick, recently called the
European position on GM foods "Luddite" and "immoral". David Byrne, the
European Union's health and consumer protection commissioner, called
Zoellnick's remarks "unhelpful", "unfair" and "wrong".

The U.S. agricultural biotech industry is deadset against labelling.
"labelling is a sham," said Mary Kay Thatcher, lobbyist for the American
Farm Bureau. "It would be so expensive, it would shut down our exports."

Labelling "implies that there is something wrong with genetically
modified good," said Elsa Murano, the U.S. Agriculture Department's
undersecretary for food safety. "It would be another kind of trade
barrier."

Years of struggle

Europe's opposition to eating GM foods did not just happen overnight.
Rather, it was the product of years of activism and agitation on the
part of activists from all walks of life.

Thoughout the 1990's, citizens all over Europe took matters in their own
hands, "weeding" or "decontaminating" experimental GM plots with garden
tools. Many of these civil disobedience acts were done in broad
daylight, in front of reporters and flabbergasted policemen. They did
not fit the profile of the lone nut or the crazed leftist. They were
teachers, artists, farmers, carpenters, middle class housewives. Then
came the "crop squats": groups "weeded" GM crops and occupied the plots
for days and even weeks, turning them into demonstration organic farms
and makeshift community centers.

These Gandhi-like revolutionary actions were remarkably similar to those
carried out by the European peace movement in the 1980's against the
deployment of American MX missiles. One can say that whereas nuclear
weapons were a symbol of state power in the cold war, biotech is a
symbol of corporate power in the post-cold war.

Activism worked. People made a difference. Europe today has no Yankee MX
missiles or Yankee GM "frankenfoods". Now "Old Europe" has a de facto
moratorium on GM foods, and it won't budge. Uncle Sam is furious.

WTO? Be my guest!

Washington has repeatedly threatened to bring a case against the
European Union to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Unfriendly to
social, environmental and public health considerations, the WTO has a
dispute resolution mechanism whose workings have been repeatedly
denounced by civil society groups as untransparent and undemocratic.

When a member country brings a case against another for erecting an
"unfair trade barrier" in the WTO, the accused country is guilty until
proven innocent. The accused country has to prove its innocence, the
accuser has to prove nothing. The cases are heard behind closed doors by
panels of unelected trade bureaucrats.

But not to worry, the European Union will win its case if it can prove
that its rejection of GM foods is based on "sound science". "Whatever
that means," the Europeans sigh sardonically. In the late 1990's, "sound
science" meant that Europe had to import American beef tainted with
growth hormones, even though its scientific authorities had determined
that such hormones were an unacceptable health risk. The WTO had simply
declared that the European ban on hormone-tainted beef was an
unjustified trade barrier. So much for "sound science".

GM foes in Europe and all over the world breathed a collective sigh of
relief last month when the U.S. laid down its challenge. As reported in
the Organic Consumers Association web site, Washington decided not to
take the matter to the WTO. However, few observers on either side of the
issue believe the U.S. has really called it quits.

Could this be a quid pro quo? In hopes of winning Europe over to Bush's
war on Iraq, perhaps? The U.S. government flatly denies this.

Is the U.S. hoping things will cool off and resistance to GM will
soften? That would be a gross miscalculation. The European Parliament
shows no intention of loosening GM food labelling requirements. Worse
yet, last month British Minister of State for the Environment Michael
Meacher came out against genetically engineered foods and crops, calling
them unnecessary and dangerous.

"The real problem is whether ten, 20, 30 years down the track serious
and worrying things happen that none of us ever predicted," he said to
the Ecologist. "It's these sorts of totally unpredicted problems that
make me very, very cautious."

These declarations are pretty bad news for American biotech interests,
since England has historically been the European government most
supportive of the U.S. position on GM foods.

Not exactly a booming market

The outlook for biotech foods doesn't look much better in the rest of
the world. As reported in the February 2003 issue of Biodemocracy News:

.. India has just refused part of a $100 million shipment of GM-tainted
soy and corn from the U.S.A

.. On January 18 Brazil impounded a shipment of American GM corn,
demanding that it be returned or incinerated.

.. In the Phillipines, protesters uprooted GM crops and turned to the
streets after the government caved in to the U.S. pressure to accept
these biotech products.

.. Shipments of American GM crops were greeted with protests in several
Australian cities.

Opposition is building up in the U.S. too. As of 2002, 44 American
municipalities had passed resolutions calling either for the labelling
of GM foods of against the planting of such crops, including Denver,
Boston, San Francisco and Austin. 33 of these municipalities are in
Vermont, a state small in size and population but large in democratic
tradition. And on Monday March 3, 36 more Vermont towns voted against
genetic engineering in their town meetings.

One blunder after the other

The biotech industry has been stumbling from one embarassing fiasco to
another. It had assured that containment of GM organisms and products
would not be a problem. But in 2000, traces of Starlink, a GM corn
deemed unfit for human consumption by the FDA, appeared in hundreds of
U.S. supermarket products. Millers and processors ended up spending one
billion dollars in a three month period trying to get rid of it. And yet
it keeps showing up in the darndest of places. Japan recently turned
back a shipment of American corn after it tested positive for Starlink.

Then came the Prodigene Affair, dubbed the "Three Mile Island" of
biotech by The Nation. Last November the FDA impounded 500,000 bushels
of soy that were contaminated with biopharmaceutical GM corn engineered
to secrete pharmaceutical drugs.

Biopharmaceuticals, or "pharmacrops," are the biotech industry's latest
bet. The idea of genetically engineering corn, soy or rice plants to
turn them into biofactories of chemicals or pharmaceuticals, ranging
from industrial enzymes to contraceptives and abortion-inducing
morning-after drugs might seem like a great idea to industry executives.

But the Starlink and Prodigene affairs are friendly warnings of what
might happen if these pharmacrops are not contained and properly
segregated from the food supply. Even the Grocery Manufacturers
Association and the National Food Processors Association have expressed
concern about this.

But the biotech genie dies hard. Is the industry giving up on it? Not
even close. Stay tuned.

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero is a Puerto Rican journalist. He is a research
associate at the Institute for Social Ecology, and a Fellow at the
Society of Environmental Journalists and at the Environmental Leadership
Program.