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By David Barboza
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
-
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 GM 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."
New
York Times June
10, 2001
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