Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

"Miami is a banana republic"
The stench of rotten fruit lingers heavily over City Hall.
By Daryl Lindsey
[05/05/00]

Geezer hoops
NBA basketball is suddenly an old, cold victim of its own marketing strategy. Plus: What was baseball's Elián protest really about?
By Allen Barra
[05/05/00]

"I don't think we need a big show"
The Senate GOP's No. 2 backs away from prickly hearings on Janet Reno.
By Daryl Lindsey
[05/04/00]

The last supper
Recounting the negotiators' shocking final hours before the Elián González raid.
By Myra MacPherson
[05/04/00]

Bidding for the boat
EBay has a mess on its hands after a rogue auctioneer tries to sell Elián's "genuine" raft.
By Daryl Lindsey
[05/03/00]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

How political is the coalition? Consider that two of the group's three Democratic governors are from states housing the headquarters of biotech gorillas Monsanto and DuPont.

The Clinton administration's rules themselves may be designed to ease consumer worries rather than protect their health. They establish standards for labeling foods biotech-free, require that companies like A/F Protein provide the Food and Drug Administration with their research data on new biotech products and give the FDA some testing rights. But this is far short of what environmentalists and consumer advocates have been demanding, namely, clear labeling of any products containing genetically modified ingredients.

Indeed, so mild are the new rules that they were greeted rapturously by agricultural corporations. The National Association of Food Processors, for instance, says the administration plan "reflects recommendations that we've made repeatedly." If anything, the new rules seem destined not to ease fears but to rouse greater opposition while those fish eggs await approval on Prince Edward Island.

"What both sides are missing" in these new rules, says Jeremy Rifkin of the Foundation for Economic Development in Washington and author of "The Biotech Century," "is that there is no way to measure the risk. There is no predictive methodology." As long ago as 1985, Rifkin says, federal regulators promised to develop a risk-assessment system for genetically modified food. They haven't.

What's more, Rifkin says, it is not only ecologists and organic farmers who are skeptical. Insurance companies, probably the most pragmatic corner of corporate America, are refusing to cover genetically modified products against long-term catastrophic impact like that of asbestos. "They are saying they can't assign risk. That goes to the heart of the problem."

Rifkin says the new regulations "are designed to create the veneer of seriously looking at the problems of genetically modified products." But the real political pressure, he says, is coming from the global marketplace. "Europe has spoken. Asia has spoken. Now McDonald's has spoken." Rifkin predicts that "the market won't buy genetically modified products, and the genetically modified products won't deliver on their promises."

"Companies like Monsanto keep arguing that genetic modification will feed the world, but that is specious," argues Jonathan Kimmelman, a bioethicist at Yale University. "The financial benefits from genetic modification will flow mostly to the very largest agricultural producers, putting local agricultural economies at a tremendous disadvantage. That is really the central issue here."

There are also real questions about food safety. In England, Sir Robert May, Tony Blair's chief science advisor, has declared himself "absolutely at one" with organic farmers and other critics who worry about the unknown long-term impact of genetically modified food.

The whole debate over genetically modified agriculture goes to the heart of cultural interplay in the global economy. Japanese consumers, for instance, don't like genetically modified products: They will pay up to 10 times as much for unmodified tofu, even though their government has passed labeling requirements far more stringent than the new U.S. rules. As a result, farmers in Minnesota are now turning away from genetically engineered corn and soybeans in a desperate effort to salvage their $3 billion per year in sales to Japan.

Some 70 percent of the land planted with genetically modified crops worldwide is in the United States. As the Frankensalmon saga suggests, genetic engineering almost inevitably has become a matter of American agriculture vs. the world.

Indeed, the Investor Responsibility Action Center reports that genetic modification is the subject of more shareholder resolutions at companies like Coca-Cola and Heinz than any issue since South Africa a decade ago.

An unequal political fight, perhaps, but Celtic mythology had a phrase for such a battle: a "salmon leap."
salon.com | May 5, 2000

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon