Andrew Christie

In 2001, the biotech industry formed the Council for Biotechnology Information to conduct a three-year, $50 million public relations campaign touting genetically modified organisms (GMOs aka Frankenfood) as new, improved, safe, environmentally friendly miracle foods and biotechnology companies as saviors of a hungry world.

It was a false promise. According to the World Health Organization, "Hunger is a question of maldistribution and inequality--not a lack of food." The world's total food production, if distributed equally, would allot every person on earth 4.3 pounds of food per day. Monsanto, Syngenta, and DuPont have pitched their patented, genetically engineered crops as needing only a few applications of a single herbicide or insecticide, such as Monsanto's Roundup. Instead, pesticide use on GMOs is increasing as inevitable tolerance builds up, and yields of some crops are lower than their non-engineered counterparts.

USDA soil scientist Robert Kremer headed a four-year study that has found repeated application of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide to its GMO soybeans produced massive fungus infestations in the soil. "Microbes in the soil are in a natural balance with each other," Kremer told the Los Angeles Times, "and if we keep putting the same chemicals in year after year, that could lead to a shift in the soil ecosystem, which could lead to problems down the road in terms of the soil's ability to nurture plant life."

Just lie back and relax.

Though there are no studies or data on potential long-term health or environmental effects, 100 million acres of genetically engineered food crops are planted each year in the United States home to three-fourths of the world's total (which may be explained by the near-universal hostility that has met GMOs in the rest of the world). But almost none, as yet, are in California, the nation's largest agricultural producer. On March 29, Ventria Biosciences of Sacramento aimed to change that when it received approval from the California Rice Commission to plant California's first pharmaceutical food crop: rice with synthetic human genes spliced in. The genetically modified organisms will produce human enzymes for use in drugs.

The commission's vote - 6 to 5 - reflected the controversial nature of the proposal. In both potential environmental and health impacts, biotech food remains blissfully untested and unregulated. Consumers Union told the California state Senate Office of Research in 2002, "Since the FDA does not require human safety testing, just voluntary safety consultations, we feel California should have more rigorous standards. Just as Cal EPA's pesticide law is more stringent than the federal law, we feel California should require appropriate testing of GMOs."

Perhaps the greatest concern generated by genetically modified organisms is contamination of the gene pool of food crops. Biodiversity and food security are at risk from this documented phenomenon. Botanist Jack Harlan has noted that genetic diversity is what "stands between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine." (Read the UK government study documenting GMOs' impact on biodiversity at www.defra.gov.uk/environment/gm/fse.)

Ventria and the California Rice Commission promised that pollen would not drift far enough on the wind to contaminate non-GMO or organically grown rice, and that safeguards would prevent contamination in transport, storage, or spills (and that everything would go exactly as planned).

"Two known examples are aprotinin, which shortens the life of honeybees, and avidin, which kills or impairs numerous species of insects. 'Leakage' from biopharm roots may also impact microorganisms in the soil and water, affecting the entire food chain."

There is another reason to be skeptical of promises of strict safeguards by the biotech industry as it takes aim at California's global breadbasket: Genetically engineered crops are supposed to pollute other crops. As California rice grower Bryce Lundberg puts it, biotech crops "are not intended to stay where they're planted, and not expected to stay where they're planted."

"The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded that there's nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender," said food industry consultant Don Westfall in 2001. (Westfall is vice president of Promar International, a supporter of genetically modified foods.)

The ultimate rationale behind the industry's mass-contamination strategy is to be found nestled in the trade rules of the World Trade Organization. Therein, the agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) extends patents and trademarks to genes, cells, seeds, plants, and animals. "TRIPs gives the patent holder a monopolistic right to prevent others from making, using, or selling seeds," writes Vandana Shiva, founder of the Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology. "Seed saving by farmers has now been redefined from a sacred duty to a criminal offence of stealing 'property.'"

Resistance is Fertile

Ventria's request for an "emergency" permit - circumventing pesky requirements for public comment - was ultimately denied by California Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura who noted the lack of an actual emergency. Ventria can reapply next year or as its CEO has said it may do, look for "other locations outside of California which have a more streamlined approach to regulatory issues.''

Yes and no. Since 2000, 70 Vermont townships have passed resolutions against genetically engineered foods - all demanding labeling and most seeking legislation for a moratorium on planting GMO crops. California got even less hospitable to Frankenfoods on March 2, when Mendocino became the first county in America to ban bioengineered crops outright. Since Mendocino had no such crops (and though the biotech industry spent $700,000 on the effort to defeat the measure), the ban was considered largely symbolic...for about a month. Then the Ventria proposal made the threat immediate and biotech activists in eight California counties moved quickly to draft ordinances to keep out GMOs. Signature gathering is now underway for anti-GMO November ballot measures in Central and Northern California including Humboldt, Sonoma, Butte, and San Luis Obispo counties.

The Sierra Club endorses a moratorium on the planting of all genetically engineered crops and the release of GMOs into the environment, including those now approved. Releases should be delayed until extensive, rigorous research is done that determines the long-term environmental and health impacts of each GMO and there is public debate to ascertain the need for the use of each GMO intended for release into the environment.

For more information and resources, see the Genetic Engineering Action Network (www.truefoodnow.org) and Californians for GE Free Agriculture (www.calgefree.org).