Frankenfoods: Beginning or End of the Biotech Century?

Frankenfoods: Beginning or End of the Biotech Century?

Despite repeated claims by the agbiotech industry that they are conquering the world, the global controversy over genetically engineered (GE) foods and crops continues. Are consumers about to roll over and accept drug and chemical companies controlling our food choices? Are the world's two billion farmers and rural villagers willing to become mere "bioserfs" in the employ of Monsanto and the Gene Giants? Or are we about to head in the opposite direction, away from industrial agriculture and genetic engineering, toward a future of organic farming, holistic health, and sustainable development? A review of a number of important developments on the consumer, science, and regulatory fronts indicate that agricultural biotechnology, far from being triumphant, is in deep trouble.

Reading the mainstream press, it's hard to find anything critical of genetic engineering. The public interest think tank, Food First, released a report April 29 demonstrating that 13 of the US's major newspapers and magazines "have all but shut out criticism of genetically modified (GM) food and crops from their opinion pages."

http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/usnewsbias043002.cfm

In January the biotech industry boasted that global acreage of GE crops had increased 18% in 2001 over the previous year. In BioDemocracy News #38

http://www.organicconsumers.org/newsletter/biod38.cfm

we argued that this supposed "increase" in global Frankencrops is misleading, since it is based upon multi-billion dollar US government subsidies and below market cost dumping of Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybean seeds in Argentina. In March, the US Department of Agriculture predicted that the US's GE crops in 2002 would increase to include 74 of all soybeans, 32% of corn, and 71% of cotton. In addition, 15% of US dairy cows are being injected with Monsanto's controversial recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), while two-thirds of the Canadian and US canola crop is GE.

In early May, CEO Hendrick Verfaillie told Monsanto stockholders that the company could increase revenues by up to a billion dollars next year due to anticipated victories on the global regulatory front including: approval of their Bt cotton for cultivation in India; an "expected" approval for planting Roundup Ready soybeans by a Brazilian appeals court; approval in the US for a rootworm resistant corn and new GE cotton seed; and a loosening of EU import restrictions, where a de facto moratorium on new GE crops has been in place for four years.

(St. Louis Post-Dispatch 5/3/02)

Yet despite Monsanto's rosy predictions, a March 28 Greenpeace report, "Risky Prospects" points out that the agbiotech industry is in the doldrums.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/GreenPeace032802.cfm

Despite projections made five years ago by Monsanto and the White House that most countries would soon adopt biotech farming, basically only four countries are currently cultivating gene-altered crops (US, Canada, and Argentina, with 96% of total acreage; and China with 3%).

In addition, only two crops, soybeans and corn, account for a full 82% of all global acreage, while two others, cotton and canola, account for 17%. In the year 2000, the seeds of one company, Monsanto, made up 91% of all GE crops, while, for all practical purposes only two other Gene Giants have products on the market, Syngenta (formerly called Novartis/AstraZeneca) and Aventis (now owned by Bayer).

While total sales of agbiotech seeds and rBGH will amount to less than $5 billion this year, global organic food sales will be five times greater or $ 25 billion. While only four countries are growing GE crops on any scale, farmers in 130 nations are now producing and exporting

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