Seattle Weekly

Published March 15 - 21, 2001

Frankenbeans

BY GEOV PARRISH

March 20, at Benaroya Hall, Starbucks' annual meeting will feature a new protest twist: the Frankenbean.

A group called the Organic Consumers Association is joining with other Starbucks critics to mount protests Tuesday in front of Starbucks outlets in over 100 U.S. cities. The group wants Starbucks to stop using genetically modified ingredients in the baked goods and dairy products it sells and to agree not to sell genetically modified coffee.

Starbucks has become the latest consumer target in a food movement that is rocking Europe and most of the rest of the world, but which is only slowly gathering steam in the United States--where the problem is biggest. With the eager complicity of giant food producers and federal regulators, genetically modified ingredients are now part of an estimated two-thirds of all foods in the U.S. While the battle in other countries is to keep such foods off the shelf, here it's to keep them from monopolizing the food supply.

"European governments are being far more rational and sensible than we are," says Phil Bereano, a professor of technology and public policy at the University of Washington. "They are insisting on prior testing, and they are insisting on labeling."

Here, by contrast, a steady revolving door links giants like Monsanto with government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration; for example, Bush's new secretary of agriculture, Ann Veneman, formerly worked in the genetically engineered food industry.

"The U.S. position is dictated on business emotionalism, not on a scientific basis and no funding is going into investigating risk," says Bereano. In other words, we're all guinea pigs.

Food safety advocates hope protests like the one at Starbucks will raise awareness of the dangers of genetically modified food and start consumers demanding that food producers serve "real" food. Let's hope consumer revulsion will eventually force labeling and choice in the U.S.--just as it is doing in Europe. The reason is fairly simple: I don't wanna put that shit in my body. Do you?