GE: An analysis of the politics of GE food

[GEN lists <genetics@gn.apc.org>]

Two insightful pieces posted by GENET
--------------------------------------------------

1The politics of genetically engineered foods:
        The United States versus Europe
2 As biotech FrankenfoodsΠare stuffed down their throats, 
consumers rebel 
======================================
1
>-------------------------- GENET-news ---------------------------
>
>TITLE:  The politics of genetically engineered foods:
>        The United States versus Europe
>SOURCE: Phil Bereano & Florian Kraus, University of Washington,
>        Seattle, Washington, USA
>        sent by the Loka Institute, USA
>DATE:   November 1999
>
>----------------- archive: <http://www.gene.ch/>http://www.gene.ch/
------------------
>
>
>THE POLITICS OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS:
>THE UNITED STATES VERSUS EUROPE
>
>by Phil Bereano and Florian Kraus
>
>Friends & Colleagues:
>
>Why are genetically modified foods ("gene foods") more hotly
>contested politically in Europe than in the United States? In
>this Loka Alert, Phil Bereano and Florian Kraus argue that
>actually U.S. citizen concern about gene foods is growing, and
>that U.S. government policies may, as a result, be shifting. They
>also dissect factors -- ranging from contrasting political
>systems to cultural, historical and technological variations --
>that help explain why the politics of agricultural biotechnology
>have been playing out differently on opposite sides of the
>Atlantic Ocean.
>
>This Alert also offers brief updates on the Loka Institute's
>project to create a Community Research Network and on other
>initiatives worldwide to make research, science and technology
>more democratically responsive.
>
>This is one in an occasional series on the democratic politics of
>research, science, and technology issued free of charge by the
>nonprofit Loka Institute. To be added to the Loka Alert E-mail
>list, or to reply to this post, please send a message to 
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>
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>
>Cheers to all,
>Dick Sclove, Founder & Research Director
>The Loka Institute
>P.O. Box 355
>Amherst
>MA 01004
>USA
>
>E-mail: Loka@Loka.org
>Web: <http://www.loka.org/>http://www.Loka.org
>Tel. +1-413-559-5860
>Fax +1-413-559-5811
>
>*****
>
>
>(I) THE POLITICS OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS: THE UNITED
>STATES VERSUS EUROPE
>
>by Phil Bereano <phil@uwtc.washington.edu> and Florian Kraus
>University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
>
>"Why are people in the United States seemingly untroubled by a
>technology that causes Europeans so many difficulties?" --
>Science magazine, on genetically engineered foods (16 July 1999)
>
>The clash over foods made from genetically modified plants ("gene
>foods") highlights the clash between economic, scientific, and
>cultural interests in the world that is being shaped by the World
>Trade Organization. U.S. agricultural exports were worth $50
>billion last year, more than 7 percent of the nation's total
>exports. Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat has warned
>that the resistance of the European Union (EU) consumers to
>genetically modified crops "is the single greatest trade threat
>that we face."
>
>"In Europe, across the whole food technology front, confusion and
>hysteria have displaced reason and economics, with incalculable
>costs to those who are trying to bring new and beneficial
>innovations to the market," editorialized the Wall Street Journal
>recently. Using intemperate and emotive language, the Journal
>referred to the European "Luddite tides," charging that "in
>Europe, on matters of trade and technology, the mob has been
>running the show for awhile."
>
>This growing controversy over genetically altered foods has
>recently occupied the U.S. radio waves, appeared in front page
>stories of national and local newspapers, and been featured in
>the major electronic 'zines.
>
>In early June, when the EU's environmental ministers agreed to a
>de facto moratorium on the approval of genetic foods for several
>years, the San Francisco Examiner noted that "the biotechnology
>industry -- led by Monsanto, Novartis, Dow, DuPont, AgrEvo, and
>Zeneca -- calls rising criticism in Europe 'hysteria and hype'
>from the food scare over 'mad cow' disease in England and dioxin
>in feed, poultry, beef and butter in Belgium."
>
>
>THE "OFFICIAL LINE"
>
>The bioindustry and U.S. government officials have united in
>denying that genetically engineered foods are significantly
>different from natural ones. "A tomato is a tomato is a tomato,"
>said Brian Sansoni, of the Grocery Manufacturers of America,
>evoking the image of Gertrude Stein plopping down to a summer
>salad. Trying to quarantine the "contagion" threatening American
>exports and corporate profits, their spin on the situation
>consists of three main arguments: the Europeans are technophobic,
>they are anti-American, and they have a strong distrust of
>government regulators.
>
>Jim Murphy, an Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, attributed
>European timidity to old-world conservatism: "They are culturally
>risk-averse to try new things," he said, adding that he jokes to
>his European friends that "the definition of an American is a
>risk-taking European."
>
>"Agricultural protectionism" was the reason offered by The New
>York Times: "Europe resents the fact that many of the patents on
>genetically modified crops with bred-in high yields and
>resistance to parasites are held by American companies like
>Monsanto, DuPont and Dow." Science magazine blamed regulatory
>distrust.
>
>According to Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, "[the
>Europeans] just don't have, really, the same kind of
>sophisticated mechanism to scientifically examine food products
>and determine if they're safe that we do." (This ignores the
>reality that 76 million Americans are food poisoned annually,
>despite such vaunted U.S. regulatory vigor.)
>
>However, consumers in the United States are demonstrably
>concerned about genetically engineered foods. Why, then, has it
>been so easy to establish the myth that Americans are "accepting"
>of this technology? We suggest three reasons:
>(1) unlike in Europe, a very large proportion of Americans are
>ignorant about the extent to which genetic engineering is
>affecting the foods they already consume;
>(2) there has been active corporate/governmental collusion (with
>media cooperation) in the U.S. to pacify the development and
>expression of any such concerns; and
>(3) American political culture provides a limited range of
>possibilities for such concerns to be expressed and debated.
>
>
>IGNORANCE AND COLLUSION
>
>A poll this summer by the world's largest independent public
>relations firm found that 62% of Americans were unaware that gene
>foods were already being marketed. In actuality, 35% percent of
>the 1999 U.S. corn acreage and 55% of soy acreage has been
>genetically modified. It is estimated that approximately 60% of
>the processed foods in a U.S. consumer's shopping cart may have
>genetically engineered constituents.
>
>In the 1980s, the Republican Administration decided that the new
>technology of genetic engineering should be handled by using
>existing regulatory statutes rather than -- as in Europe -- going
>to the legislature for a new comprehensive law. As a result,
>there was little public discussion and the resulting U.S.
>"regulatory" scheme is makeshift, full of absurdities and
>loopholes, as a cover story in The New York Times Magazine
>entitled "Playing God in the Garden" documented a year ago.
>
>Based on a policy authored by his industry Council on
>Competitiveness, then-Vice President Dan Quayle announced in May
>1992 that the U.S. government would consider genetically
>engineered crops to be no different from those bred
>traditionally. The official Food & Drug Administration(FDA)
>document asserted that "the agency is not aware of any
>information showing that foods derived by these new methods
>differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way."
>
>In fact, under records uncovered in the course of a pending
>lawsuit, we now know that the U.S. Government ignored the advice
>of its own FDA scientists that gene foods should get special
>evaluation because of their risks of producing toxins and
>allergies. One FDA scientist had written that"there is a profound
>difference between the types of unexpected effects from
>traditional breeding and genetic engineering, which is just
>glanced over in this document," adding that aspects of genetic
>engineering "may be more hazardous".
>
>Another staffer characterized the FDA as "trying to fit a square
>peg into a round hole," concluding that "the processes of genetic
>engineering and traditional breeding are different, and according
>to the technical experts in the agency, they lead to different
>risks."
>
>President Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture has railed against
>the EU's apprehensions by saying, "We will not be pushed into
>allowing political science to govern these concerns." The new
>U.S. Ambassador to the EU has chided Europeans to "separate
>science-based risk assessment and regulations from the political
>process." And in Europe in recent weeks, three top officials of
>the U.S. Commerce Department have lectured Europeans to stop
>their "irrational and collective fear" and adopt a process "based
>on science and not on anxiety."
>
>Yet, it is the U.S. government that has hypocritically elevated
>politics and economics above a reasoned scientific assessment of
>gene foods.
>
>
>U.S. CITIZEN CONCERNS
>
>Actually, there has been a considerable amount of U.S. citizen
>concern about the applications of new biotechnologies, as even
>the Wall Street Journal noted earlier this summer.
>
>Numerous consumer surveys have shown that huge majorities of
>Americans support mandatory labeling of genetically modified
>foods and would avoid buying them if they were clearly labeled.
>Two years ago, even biotech giant Novartis found 93% of Americans
>in favor of labeling; the last poll conducted by the U.S.
>Department of Agriculture, in 1995, found 84% in favor, and a
>Time magazine survey within the past year put the percentage at
>81.
>
>Why aren't these polls more effective in determining U.S. policy?
>Dick Morris, former policy director in the Clinton White House
>(who relied extensively on surveys and focus groups for advising
>the President) has indicated that government officials ignore
>such majorities to pursue the goals of elite minorities, "just as
>they ignore the 72% who want to increase taxes on the wealthy,
>and the 77% who feel that corporations have too much power, and
>the 64% who want guaranteed health care for all."
>
>This spin is exemplified by a recent major article in the New
>York Times which suggested that U.S. consumers "seem hardly to
>care" about genetic alterations of what they eat. Media and
>policy makers conveniently forget that the 1992 Food & Drug
>Administration deregulatory initiative stimulated almost 4,000
>comments, with many calling for safety testing and the vast
>majority asking for labeling. Among those making such requests
>were the Attorneys General of 8 U.S. states, the American
>Association of Retired Persons, and the trade association of US
>chefs.
>
>Consumers Union, the oldest and largest association of American
>consumers, has repeatedly and persistently opposed -- on behalf
>of its 4.7 million member households -- U.S. government failures
>to adequately handle this new technology. In its September 1999
>issue of Consumer Reports, it called again for gene food
>evaluation and labeling. The National Nutritional Foods
>Association, a trade group representing the retailers and
>manufacturers of dietary supplements and natural foods, has
>called for U.S. labeling on the simple ground that "the public
>has a right to know what they are eating."
>
>Last year, almost 270,000 letter writers testified in opposition
>to a proposal of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture that would have
>allowed gene foods to fall within the definition of "organic."
>(The agency has now apparently agreed to exclude them). And last
>June, a petition carrying 500,000 signatures in support of
>labeling was presented to the White House, Congress, and U.S.
>governmental agencies.
>
>Thus, there is plenty of evidence that U.S. consumers are
>becoming aware of gene foods and support mandatory labeling so
>that they can avoid consuming them. This is hardly the mark of
>apathy.
>
>
>IS U.S. GOVERNMENT POLICY CHANGING?
>
>Corn and soy exports from the U.S. have been drastically reduced
>because U.S. producers have not segregated the genetically
>engineered varieties. Buyers, especially in the EU, won't buy the
>tainted mixtures. As a result, U.S. corn farmers have probably
>lost about $200 million this year. One of the largest domestic
>exporters, Archer Daniels Midland Corporation, has announced that
>farmers and grain elevators must segregate corn for export; and
>Gerber baby foods is making its domestic and European practices
>consistent by refusing to use genetically modified ingredients.
>Such actions by major producing corporations will bolster the
>economic value of growing unmodified varieties.
>
>Despite efforts of members of U.S. Congress (led by Senator John
>Ashcroft of Missouri, where Monsanto is headquartered) to get the
>Administration to push for "success in world markets" by
>"removing unfair trade barriers" to engineered foods in Europe,
>the Administration may be signaling some change in its policies.
>
>Last April, in a speech at Purdue University, U.S. Secretary of
>Agriculture Glickman noted:
>
>"We cannot be science's blind servant. We have to understand its
>ethical, safety and environmental implications. Our testing has
>to be rigorous....We also can't force these new genetically
>engineered food products down consumers' throats....[D]ismissing
>the skepticism that is out there is not only arrogant, it's also
>a bad business strategy....Also, we have to be careful about
>ratcheting up the expectations on some of these technologies.
>There is no one silver bullet that will allow us to meet all of
>tomorrow's agricultural and food security challenges....[L]et's
>not put all of our eggs in the biotech basket."
>
>Meanwhile, a recent report for the Deutsche Bank, Europe's
>largest, recommended that investors sell their holdings of
>genetic engineering stocks. It noted that:
>
>"The European concerns are very real. In the past month, a senior
>manager at a European-based chemical giant expressed serious
>reservations to us about the benignness of GMOs [genetically
>modified organisms] and said that given a choice, he would select
>non-GMOs any day. By the way, the company he works for is
>actively involved in ag-biotechnology."
>
>
>U.S.-EU SOCIETAL DIFFERENCES
>
>While North Atlantic culture is highly homogeneous when
>contrasted with other portions of the globe, there are still
>considerable differences between Europe and the United States.
>However, the explanations for their biotech policy differences
>are not those offered by official industry and government
>apologists attempting to justify the American failure to provide
>oversight. Five areas probably account for the significant
>distinguishing factors.
>
>- Contrasting political mechanisms;
>- The role of industry in the political economy;
>- The role of the media;
>- Geographic factors; and
>- Historic and cultural factors.
>
>
>POLITICS
>
>In Europe, the electoral system is based on proportional
>representation systems. Like-minded groups, such as the
>environmentalists who formed the Green parties, are represented
>in the legislative bodies as long as they attract a sufficient
>number of votes to cross a relatively low threshold (normally
>5%). From this position, they have been able to insert genetic
>engineering concerns into public discourse. However, due to the
>"winner take all" electoral system in the U.S., minorities of 49%
>(and their issues) can be ignored by legislative representatives.
>
>
>THE AGRIBUSINESS/GOVERNMENT REVOLVING DOOR
>
>A major Canadian national paper, Toronto's Globe and Mail, has
>observed:
>
>"Monsanto, which makes large donations to both the Democratic and
>Republican parties and to congressional legislators on food
>safety committees, has become a virtual retirement home for
>members of the Clinton Administration. Trade and environmental
>protection administrators and other Clinton appointees have left
>to take up lucrative positions on Monsanto's board, while
>Monsanto and other biotech executives pass through the same
>revolving door to take up positions in the administration and its
>regulatory bodies."
>
>One Monsanto Board member is Mickey Kantor, the chairman of
>Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and a former U.S. Chief
>Trade Negotiator. Marcia Hale, another former Clinton aide, is
>now Monsanto's international regulatory director. At the cusp of
>the Bush and Clinton Administrations, when the Food & Drug
>Administration (FDA) was drawing up its position against the
>labeling of gene foods, one of the key decision makers was
>Michael Taylor, previously a lawyer for Monsanto. When the FDA
>approved recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) for use in cows
>in 1993, the regulatory process was guided by former Monsanto
>employees, then at the FDA, who subsequently went back to work
>for the company.
>
>A 1998 analysis of Monsanto's workings in the St. Louis Post
>Dispatch found that "where Monsanto seeks to sow, the US
>government clears the ground." Administration officials have
>taken the lead in lobbying for the company and the rest of the
>biotech industry in trade confrontations with Europe, New
>Zealand, and Asia.
>
>
>ROLE OF THE MEDIA
>
>The variety of opinions reflected in the media of the United
>States is limited, and coverage of biotech issues has been
>sporadic and generally uncritical. As Max Frankel of the New York
>Times editorial board has put it, "a corporate plutocracy
>dominates political speech in America."
>
>The choice and coverage of topics in the U.S. media appears
>strongly dependent upon two factors: corporate ownership
>patterns/interlocking boards of directors, and sources of
>advertising revenues. Furthermore, the companies controlling U.S.
>media have steadily consolidated during the last decades, as the
>recent CBS/Viacom merger typified. In Europe it is nearly
>impossible to have such a concentration of media power in the
>hands of a few companies.
>
>
>GEOGRAPHICAL FACTORS
>
>Compared to agribusiness in the U.S., farm land in Europe is much
>more integrated into citizens' daily lives. Government planning
>provides sharp urban boundaries where farms exist, and commuters
>may even pass livestock daily. Europeans have more contact with
>farming, in part because many more of their relatives still live
>in rural areas. There is heightened awareness in Europe of the
>way food is produced. The production of food is not a mystery,
>only visible in terms of its output, plastically wrapped on
>supermarket shelves.
>
>In America, farming and everyday urban life are largely
>separated. The actual share of people working on a farm is only
>two percent of the population. The EU rural population is 50%
>larger.
>
>
>OTHER CULTURAL AND HISTORIC FACTORS
>
>The American self-image is one of pioneers and adventurers. Thus,
>one news magazine recently surmised that "Americans may be
>culturally more inclined to embrace new technology than are
>Europeans." Yet any visitor to Europe knows that it is chocked
>full of power plants, telecommunications gadgets, and consumer
>goodies. The problem with biotechnology may be not that it is a
>technology, but that it is dealing with food.
>
>The noted science journalist Daniel Greenberg agreed in the
>Washington Post: "The transatlantic difference may be that
>Americans are accustomed to a steady stream of novel products
>from a highly competitive food industry, whereas Europeans tend
>to be more traditional about what they eat." Every American
>traveler to Europe is aware of the fact that food occupies a
>place of high importance in the European lifestyle, far beyond
>what is common in the United States. Major European cities are
>still full of many small markets and specialty food shops.
>
>In contrast to the homogenization fostered by U.S.
>multinationals, Europeans prize the variety of local foods;
>Churchill once referred to France as a "nation of 350 cheeses."
>For many foodstuffs, national laws are in place to intricately
>regulate the wording on their labels -- Appenzeller cheese is
>only from one place in the world, as is Chateau Neuf-du-Pape
>wine.
>
>Whereas the US word "farm" symbolizes an agribusiness production
>facility, the European notion encompasses something traditional,
>rural, and idyllic. Travel agencies in Germany, France and Italy
>offer vacation holidays on the farm, so that individuals or whole
>families can get back to their bucolic roots.
>
>
>TECHNOLOGICAL FIASCOES
>
>In recent decades, Europe has experienced a series of severe
>negative impacts from the use of modern technologies, undoubtedly
>playing some role in shaping that continent's attitudes. European
>caution is often chided as childish anxiety by U.S. critics,
>rather than a mature willingness to learn from experience. The
>modification of agricultural products in foods to create "super
>organisms" evokes the memory of the Nazi plan to create a "super
>race" by genetic selection.
>
>However, it is the experience with Britain's mismanagement of
>"mad cow disease" which has convinced European consumers that it
>is best to proceed cautiously with food technologies. In June
>1987 the British government knew that the feeding of meat and
>bone meal to cows were the main infection routes. Stating that
>there was no evidence that humans could catch the disease, it
>allowed infected cows to be sold for human consumption. This
>calculus, placing short-term economic interests (this market for
>beef and veal is worth $3.1 billion) over human health, made
>European consumers extremely suspicious of governmental
>regulators. The recent discoveries of dioxin in Belgian
>foodstuffs and tainted Coca-Cola have perpetuated this consumer
>demand for prudence.
>
>Other technologies touted as totally safe and necessary for a
>modern economy, most notably nuclear power, have had disastrous
>consequences in Europe. The meltdown of the Chernobyl plant in
>1986 exposed millions of Europeans to high levels of radiation,
>and resulted in the necessary destruction of huge amounts of
>plant and animal foodstuffs.
>
>
>PRUDENCE IS A VIRTUE
>
>According to Gillian K. Hadfield, a professor of law at the
>University of Toronto:
>
>"It's wrong to view consumer resistance as just anti-science
>hysteria. Many people make food choices based on ethical
>considerations, deciding not to eat veal, or mass-produced
>chickens or non-organic produce. If biotechnology raises ethical
>and environmental concerns for them, it is not irrational for
>them to act on these."
>
>The fundamental ideology in Europe is not "timidity" but rather
>the Precautionary Principle. Europeans prefer to step back in the
>face of uncertainty and act prudently rather than recklessly. The
>U.S. used to abide by this approach in public policy, but it has
>increasingly abandoned it under pressure from powerful
>corporations seeking short-term profits.
>
>There are many reasons suggested above for the early European
>heightened concern about genetic engineering. But U.S. public
>discourse is now approaching that common in Europe. Today,
>transnational corporations which have agreed to leave genetically
>engineered components out of their European foods are being
>pressed to do the same for American stomachs.
>
>In democratic societies, citizens have the right to protect
>themselves from having risks thrust upon them for the economic
>benefits of others. "Look before you leap" -- requiring adequate
>risk assessments of genetically altered foods, requiring the
>proponents of these technological changes to demonstrate that
>they are safe, and requiring labeling so that citizens can make
>informed choices these are reasonable public policies on both
>sides of the ocean.
>
>****
>
>ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Phil Bereano <phil@uwtc.washington.edu> is a
>professor at the University of Washington in Seattle specializing
>in technology and public policy. He is a member of the Loka
>Institute's National Advisory Board
<<http://www.loka.org/>http://www.Loka.org>, and
>also active in the Council for Responsible Genetics <<http:/>http:/
><http://www.gene-watch.org/>www.gene-watch.org>. Florian Kraus is a German
Fulbright scholar
>who has been doing graduate work at the University of Washington.
>An edited version of this essay appeared in the Seattle Times
>newspaper (8 November 1999). 
>
>====================================================
2
-------------------------- GENET-news ---------------------------
TITLE: As biotech FrankenfoodsΠare stuffed down their throats, 
consumers rebel 
SOURCE: The Nation, USA, by Maria Margaronis 
DATE: December 27, 1999
----------------- archive: <http://www.gene.ch/>http://www.gene.ch/
------------------

As biotech FrankenfoodsΠare stuffed down their throats, 
consumers rebel
A year ago, Monsanto chairman Robert Shapiro had the future in 
his pocket. His vast "life sciences" corporation was at the 
cutting edge of the new agricultural revolution, genetic 
modification; the spread of GM seeds throughout the United 
States, he told his shareholders, was the most "successful launch 
of any technology ever, including the plow." The little matter of 
European distaste for the new crops would, he felt sure, be 
resolved by the right kind of PR and some careful scientific 
reassurance. As Ann Foster, the company's personable British 
flack, patiently explained to anti-GM campaigners here, "people 
will have Roundup Ready soya, whether they like it or not."
So far, things have not gone according to plan. The European 
Union has a de facto moratorium on the commercial growing of GM 
crops, pending further discussion (the only exception is the 
Swiss company Novartis's Bt corn, currently being grown in 
Spain). Austria, Luxembourg, Italy and Greece have total or 
partial bans on the technology. Even the Blair government, in 
love with the sleek promises of high-tech business and keen to 
keep Clinton sweet, has bowed to public pressure and put off the 
commercial planting of GM seeds in Britain for at least three 
years. (Environment Minister Michael Meacher, whose views on the 
subject are carefully tracked by the CIA, has reportedly said in 
private that GM crops will never be grown commercially here.) 
Shoppers have rejected GM food in droves, prompting a breathless 
race among the supermarket chains to go GM-free. As a report by 
the British government's Science and Technology Committee put it, 
"At the current rate at which food manufacturers are withdrawing 
GM ingredients...from their products, there will be no market for 
GM food in this country."
US soy exports to Europe are down from $2.1 billion in 1996 to 
$1.1 billion in 1999, and anxiety about GM crops (or genetically 
engineered crops, as they're generally known in the United 
States) is blowing across the prairies. Last spring and summer a 
series of reports by the influential Deutsche Bank urged 
investors to pull out of agricultural biotechnology altogether: 
"The term GMO [genetically modified organism] has become a 
liability. We predict that GMOs, once perceived as the driver of 
the bull case for this sector, will now be perceived as a 
pariah." In October a chastened Shapiro apologized to Greenpeace 
for his "enthusiasm," which, he acknowledged, could be read as 
"condescension or indeed arrogance." Monsanto's stock has gone 
seriously pear-shaped, and the board has reportedly considered a 
company breakup.
What happened? How did a loose assemblage of European 
environmental activists, development charities, food retailers 
and supermarket shoppers stop a huge multinational industry, 
temporarily at least, in its tracks?
* * *
The first protests against genetic modification took place in 
America in the late seventies, when activists from a group called 
Science for the People destroyed frost-resistant strawberries and 
delayed the construction of Princeton's molecular-biology 
building. Then they fizzled out. Americans, by and large, trust 
the FDA to keep the levels of toxicity in their daily bread down 
to a psychologically manageable level and don't worry too much 
about the source of the goodies that fill their horn of plenty. 
The great grain factories of the Midwest work their magic far 
from the places most people visit to enjoy nature. In much of 
Europe, though, nature and agriculture go hand in glove, 
occupying the same physical and social space. Europe's layered 
patchwork of farming and culinary landscapes has taken shape over 
2,500 years, altered by small and large migrations, the conquest 
and loss of colonies, wars and revolutions. Europeans feel 
strongly about what they eat: Food is a matter of identity as 
well as economy, culture as well as nurture.
The most dramatic changes in European farming in this century 
came about partly as a result of the experience of famine during 
World War II: The much-reviled Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 
of the European Union has its origins in the determination that 
Europe should never again see mass starvation. By protecting and 
supporting their farmers against the vagaries of trade while 
simultaneously investing in intensive agriculture (a 
contradiction in terms, you might say, since roughly 80 percent 
of Europe's farm subsidies go to 20 percent of its farmers), 
European governments hoped to insure long-term food security for 
their people. But, as they usually do, the contradictions 
eventually came home to roost. "The fourth agricultural 
revolution," says Tim Lang, professor of food policy at Thames 
Valley University and one of the new food movement's intellectual 
lights, "is beginning just as the third one--agrochemicals and 
intensive farming--is unraveling." The unraveling has made itself 
felt both in the economic crisis that affects many of Europe's 
farmers and in a series of food-safety scandals caused by 
deregulation and overintensive production. The outbreak of bovine 
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Britain's cattle in the 
eighties and its appearance in humans as the fatal new-variant 
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the nineties was the most powerful 
catalyst for the public's loss of faith in governments and food 
producers. In one terrifying package, BSE tied together the new 
"economical" farming practices (in this case the feeding of 
ground-up cow carcasses to cattle), the easing of health and 
safety standards, and government's willingness to lie for the 
food industry even at the cost of human lives.
So far, new-variant CJD has killed forty-three people in Britain; 
the chief medical officer recently warned that millions may still 
contract it from beef they ate fifteen years ago. By some 
estimates, the whole affair has cost about $6.5 billion, much of 
it put up by the European Union. Elsewhere in Europe, similar 
stories break with depressing regularity. Last summer, for 
instance, a cover-up of dioxin contamination in animal feed 
brought down the Belgian government and part of the Dutch Cabinet 
and had worried gourmets across the continent throwing out 
chickens, eggs and Belgian chocolate to the tune of $800 million. 
(The Coca-Cola crisis that followed, in which 30 million cans and 
bottles of the elixir of life were poured down the drain after a 
number of people reportedly fell ill, turned out to be a genuine 
case of mass hysteria.) The anxiety is only partly contained by 
sideshows like the Anglo-French beef war, in which the British 
agriculture minister decided to boycott French food in 
retaliation for France's refusal to lift its ban on British beef 
with the rest of the European Union--simultaneously publicizing 
an EU report that found sewage sludge processed into French 
animal feed. The happy tabloid trumpeting that ensued momentarily 
restored the beef of Old England to its rightful place as a 
bulwark against the filthy Frogs, allowing the Daily Mail to 
boost its circulation with pictures of cows in berets and toilet 
paper necklaces amid cries of "Just say Non!"
* * *
The biotech companies danced into this minefield with all the 
grace of an elephant in jackboots.
Ten years ago, agricultural biotechnology was debated only by 
what Labor MP Joan Ruddock (former leader of the Campaign for 
Nuclear Disarmament) calls "men in white coats and men in gray 
suits," with environmental NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of 
the Earth reporting on their activities but mounting no large 
scale protests. In 1990 the first GM additive approved for use in 
British food, a GM baker's yeast, was swallowed without qualms; 
so was the GM tomato paste sold by Sainsbury's supermarket in 
1996, at a lower price than its conventional equivalent. The 
trouble started that same year when the American Soybean 
Association, Monsanto and the US trade associations told British 
food retailers that they could not--would not--segregate American 
GM soybeans from the conventional kind, undermining the golden 
rule of consumer-friendly capitalism: Let them have choice. 
Around the same time, media and public awareness of the issue 
reached critical mass, and the supermarkets started getting 
worried letters from their customers asking them not to use GM 
ingredients. The arrogance with which the American biotech firms 
approached the European food industry is the stuff of legend. 
Bill Wadsworth, technical manager of the frozen-food chain 
Iceland, recalls a meeting in September 1997 at which a biotech 
executive actually said, "You are a backward European who doesn't 
like change. You should just accept this is right for your 
customers." A few weeks later Wadsworth was on a plane to Brazil, 
where he found a grower and processor of non-GM soybeans and 
began to set up a vertically integrated supply chain for 
Iceland's processed foods. Iceland began to raise the issue's 
profile with its customers, pointing out that while Iceland's 
foods were GM free, those of the other supermarkets were 
contaminated. Before long every supermarket chain in the country 
was inundated with mail and phone calls about GM food and had 
begun to follow suit. In June 1998 a poll showed that 95 percent 
of British shoppers thought that all food containing GM 
ingredients should be labeled.
* * *
Meanwhile, the field testing of GM crops in Britain by Monsanto, 
AgrEvo, Novartis and other companies gave a dramatic focus to the 
environmental arguments against genetic modification. Media-savvy 
eco-activists in decontamination suits or grim reaper outfits 
began to pull up trial plantings and leaflet supermarkets; by the 
summer of 1998, hardly a week went by without reports of some 
new, inventive, nonviolent protest. English Nature, the 
government's own environmental watchdog, and the Royal Society 
for the Protection of Birds both added their authoritative voices 
to calls for a moratorium on planting, citing the unpredictable 
and uncontainable dangers of releasing the new organisms into the 
ecosystem. Gene transfers could produce herbicide-resistant 
"superweeds"; crops genetically engineered to be toxic to insects 
might well affect the whole food chain, further damaging the 
biodiversity of a landscape already impoverished by intensive 
farming. In a country where the membership of environmental and 
conservation groups outstrips the membership of political parties 
by four to one, the disappearance of cornflowers and skylarks 
from fields and hedgerows is a political issue. Prince Charles's 
entry into the fray on the side of the green campaigners did much 
to enhance the post-Diana credibility of a man who not so long 
ago was widely ridiculed for talking to his plants.
By the time Monsanto launched its too-clever-by-half ad campaign 
to sell biotechnology to the British public in the summer of 
1998, the bonfire had been prepared. The united front of 
environmentalists, shoppers and food retailers, animated in part 
by fury at the hubris of multinationals' trying to pull the wool 
over their eyes, was joined by an army of development NGOs 
outraged by Monsanto's efforts to corner Third World seed markets 
with a technology that could destroy farmers' livelihoods while 
pretending to "feed the world." The spark that lit the flames was 
the broadcast that August of a television documentary about the 
work of Dr. Arpad Pusztai, a researcher at a government-funded 
institute who claimed that feeding GM potatoes to laboratory rats 
had slowed their growth and damaged their immune systems. Dr. 
Pusztai rapidly lost his job amid assertions that his work was 
flawed and incomplete, but the whole affair catapulted GMOs into 
the tabloid firmament. With its usual brash enthusiasm The 
Express launched a populist crusade against "Frankenfoods," and 
pretty soon not a man, woman or child in Britain was left in the 
dark. The GM controversy even made The Archers, BBC radio's 
venerable daily soap about an English farming family: To the 
relief of fans everywhere, young Tommy Archer was recently found 
not guilty of criminal damage after destroying a test crop of GM 
oilseed rape in one of his uncle's fields. Downing Street has 
remained largely unmoved by all this protest, allowing Tory 
leader William Hague (who has himself been caricatured as a 
genetically modified vegetable) to make political hay out of 
Labor's urban unconcern for the environment and dazzled obeisance 
to the biotech firms. To Tony Blair, pro-business to his 
toenails, the GM revolution is part of the white heat of new 
technology that will carry the British economy through the next 
century. In the words of the government's Chief Scientific 
Adviser, Sir Robert May, "We have played a hugely 
disproportionate part in creating the underlying science: are we 
going to lose it like we lost things in the past?" Dolly the 
sheep, after all, was cloned here.
If we do "lose it" in the long run, it will be in part because of 
the government's serious misreading of the public mood. Had they 
proceeded from the start in an open and careful manner, 
acknowledging all the unanswered questions about genetic 
modification and treating the population as intelligent citizens 
instead of superstitious children, the eventual outcome might 
have been different. But even if--in some parallel universe--that 
had been New Labor's way, the biotech firms and the American 
growers in their thrall would never have allowed such caution. 
Blair may be predisposed to favor all kinds of high-tech 
business; he is also, as the environmentalist and writer George 
Monbiot puts it, "having his balls bust by Clinton."
For the United States, Britain is the gateway to Europe--and 
Europe is, if anything, even less enamored of biotechnology, 
despite the efforts of homegrown firms like Novartis and Zeneca. 
In Britain, Germany and elsewhere, resistance to GMOs has been 
led by green activists and consumers. In France, it has also 
involved the Confederation Paysanne, the country's second-largest 
farmers' union and political home of Josi Bovi, famous for taking 
apart a new "McDo" in Millau to protest American food 
imperialism. Last year Bovi was one of 120 farmers who destroyed 
silos-full of Bt corn--a GM variety that has been shown to affect 
lacewings, bees, ladybugs and monarch butterflies--then being 
grown in France. At his trial Bovi made a passionate speech 
explaining his actions: "When were farmers and consumers asked 
what they think about this? Never. The decisions have been taken 
at the level of the World Trade Organization, and state machinery 
complies with the law of market forces.... Genetically modified 
maize is...the symbol of a system of agriculture and a type of 
society that I refuse to accept. Genetically modified maize is 
purely the product of technology, where the means become the end. 
Political choices are swept aside by the power of money."
* * *
Since then France has reversed its decision to grow the corn, for 
environmental and health-related reasons, and--after a timely 
intervention by Greenpeace and activist Jeremy Rifkin with the 
prime minister's advisers--has argued for an EU moratorium on 
further approvals of GM crops. In spite of stubborn British 
opposition, the moratorium is effectively if not officially in 
place: France, Italy, Denmark, Greece and Luxembourg have 
declared that they will block the issue of any new licenses until 
new regulations have been agreed. In addition, all foods sold in 
Europe that contain a significant percentage of GM ingredients 
now have to be labeled--a decision that immediately rebounded on 
US agribusiness, pushing giant grain traders like Cargill and 
Archer Daniels Midland to segregate their silos.
* * *
In the war over the fourth agricultural revolution, the first 
round seems to have gone to the citizens. But this is only the 
beginning. The global food economy is regulated by the awkwardly 
interlocking gears of bodies like the EU and the WTO, themselves 
dominated by transnational corporations with budgets larger than 
those of many small countries. The patterns of competing 
interests and overlapping jurisdictions are dizzying. The Anglo 
French beef war was partly a tempest in a teapot over market 
share, partly a struggle to determine whether the European Union 
or France's own freshly minted food-safety authority gets to vet 
what French people eat. The Clinton Administration has used the 
WTO to declare Europe's exclusion of American hormone-fed beef 
illegal (allowing the United States to levy $117 million in 
sanctions), and unless the great salon des refusis that gathered 
in Seattle wins some significant victories, it will almost 
certainly do the same with Europe's attempts to restrict GMOs. 
The loyal Blair government has already challenged Europe's de 
facto moratorium as a violation of WTO trade rules.
Like all victories, however partial, this one offers valuable 
pointers for the future. The opposition to GMOs in Europe has 
been informed and led by environmental organizations like 
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth--part of the tidal wave of 
campaigning groups that filled the vacuum left by government in 
the neoliberal eighties. But the foot soldiers who really blocked 
the biotech firms' confident advance are the women and men who 
refused to buy their products--consumers, or citizens of global 
capitalism, voting in the only way they can. In the European 
movement against GM food, Ralph Nader's old strategy of 
organizing consumers at the point of consumption has found its 
best vindication yet.
Consumer politics, though, has its limitations. Transnational 
corporations are many-headed hydras, with the capacity to sprout 
new body parts in the blink of an eye. Once it had seen the 
writing on the wall, Monsanto immediately set about regrouping; 
at a series of closed meetings with environmental organizations 
earlier this year, it offered to use its gene databases to help 
farmers create new varieties of crops through traditional 
crossbreeding methods. Not surprisingly, Monsanto has also tried 
to push forward into countries where it believes people have more 
pressing worries than the possible risks of eating GMOs. In 
Georgia, for example, it held illegal trials of GM potatoes for 
two years before being exposed by Greenpeace and Elkana, a 
Georgian organic-farming group.
The challenge facing the great Internet-linked coalition of 
activists that makes up the new food movement is to keep on 
thinking globally while acting locally. In Europe, the GM debate 
has brought people's concern about the safety of what they eat to 
critical mass: British shoppers' demand for organic food has 
increased by 40 percent in the last year, as evidenced by the 
advance of pricey, rustically packaged organic produce--70 
percent of it imported--along the shelves of Sainsbury's and 
Safeway. Farmers are slower to catch up, although some are 
trying. The government's program for organic conversion had 
exhausted its budget for 1999-2000 by March of this year, in 
spite of a $17 million top-up; Labor MP Ruddock has introduced a 
bill to increase the amount of land under organic cultivation 
over the next ten years. The Iceland chain, ever at the cutting 
edge, has begun a drive to provide affordable organic food by 
buying ingredients from places where conditions allow intensive 
cultivation with a minimum of chemical assistance--for instance, 
wheat from western Canada. Bill Wadsworth's strategy for the 
future is based on extending the principle of vertically 
integrated supply--"Grow me my soybeans that will go into my 
beefburger." But what will this mean for producers in poorer 
countries? Are we looking at a new United Fruit scenario, in 
which tropical islands grow wall-to-wall organic pineapples for 
Northern supermarkets while their people eat genetically 
engineered mush peddled by Monsanto's subsidiaries?
In November nine Indian farmers visited Britain, sponsored by 
Iceland and an international exchange group called Farmers' Link. 
Crammed into a small meeting room in Westminster, they told 
Ruddock about their intense frustration at being shut out of the 
WTO discussions that will determine their future. In India, where 
75 percent of the population is directly involved in agriculture, 
trade liberalization has had a devastating effect: Importing 
cheap food means importing unemployment. "Your people have 
rejected GM food," said Vivek Cariappa, an organic farmer from 
southern India who is active in his country's thriving anti-GM 
movement. "Where will it go? It won't go into the sea. It will go 
to countries like ours." With careful honesty, Ruddock explained 
to the farmers that their British colleagues, on the whole, don't 
share their concerns: "Britain has been run as multinational 
farming enterprises with subsidies from the CAP. It is mostly 
people in urban areas, pressure groups, pushing for change in 
agricultural practice, except for a small organic minority." When 
Juli Cariappa asked if Britain really wants to leave its food 
basket in the hands of the multinationals, Ruddock paused, looked 
her in the eye, and said, reluctantly, "Yes."
* * *
If the biotech companies have their way we could soon be on 
course for William Gibson's nightmare future, in which the rich 
eat real food grown by artisan farmers and the poor eat 
genetically engineered "vat stuff" when they eat at all. As long 
as food is treated as a commodity like any other and traded to 
maximize profits, there is little chance of a reduction in world 
hunger or of a significantly safer diet for the fortunate few. As 
Tim Lang puts it, "We have to see that it is the production of 
food that matters, not just its consumption." Or, in the crisp 
words of Josi Bovi, "We are faced with a real choice for society. 
Either we accept intensive production and the huge reduction in 
the number of farmers in the sole interests of the World Market, 
or we create a farmer's agriculture for the benefit of everyone." 
The shape-shifting global coalition that tripped the advance of 
genetically modified crops in Europe and staged the carnival of 
protest in Seattle has its work cut out for it. But the genie is 
out of the bottle. Food--which in its progress from seed to 
stomach links ecology, labor, poverty, trade, culture and health 
-will be a key item on the menu of the next century's struggles 
for democracy against the arbitrary power of the giant 
corporations.
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Maria Margaronis is a Nation contributing editor living in 
London. Thanks to D.D. Guttenplan for additional reporting on 
this piece.