Biotech Myth #1: Biotechnology
is nothing new. The use of genetic engineering to improve food crops
is merely a natural extension of plant breeding techniques that
have been used since time immemorial. Promoters of agricultural
biotechnology insist that genetic engineering is just a faster and
more precise way to improve crops than traditional plant breeding
methods, which can take several generations of breeding and therefore
be a lot more time-consuming.
Fact: While it is true that
conventional breeding methods have yielded a wide variety of plants
and animals that did not exist previously, the genes that produce
those traits have come from within their own or closely-related
species. Modern genetic engineering can take genes from a species
such as a fish or a virus and place them into an entirely different
species, such as a tomato. This gives humans--actually, corporations--radical
new powers, with unpredictable consequences.
Biotech Myth #2: Biotech foods
are the most extensively researched and regulated food products
Fact: Every industry likes
to pretend that its products are the most extensively researched
and regulated products in existence. The nuclear power industry
has made this claim, as have the makers of vinyl chloride, dioxin,
fen-phen, MSG and Olestra.
Back in 1992, the FDA decreed that genetically
engineered foods were no different than conventional foods. Under
FDA law, unless a food is "generally regarded as safe"
(GRAS), a legal determination, it must be thoroughly tested. Because
biotech foods have been determined "GRAS," they undergo
no independent safety testing. Instead, government regulators rely
on biotech companies to do their own safety tests and also determine
themselves if the product in question is GRAS.
Testing biotech crops for their environmental
safety is equally lax. It is up to the USDA to ensure that genetically
modified crops are ecologically safe. The New York Times recently
reported that the agency has not rejected a single application for
a biotech crop and that many scientists say "the department
has relied on unsupported claims and shoddy studies by the seed
Biotech Myth #3: Genetically
engineered crops will allow us to reduce, if not eliminate, environmentally
toxic pesticides and fertilizers. Biotechnology is therefore good
for the environment.
Fact: So far, the opposite
has been true. The vast majority of genetically engineered crops
currently on the market have been modified to either withstand herbicide
(so that more can be sprayed) or produce their own insecticide.
This year, more than half of the US soybean
crop was genetically engineered to survive spraying with Monsanto's
best-selling weedkiller, Roundup. An analysis of 8,200 university
research trials revealed that farmers planting Roundup Ready soybeans
are using two to five times as much of the herbicide as farmers
growing conventional varieties. Chuck Benbrook, who reported the
results of the studies, said nobody is testing the crops for increased
residues of Roundup. The EPA, moreover, has raised the allowable
residue limits for Roundup on forage crops.
Producing a plant that can make its own insecticide
so that farmers don't have to spray insecticides may sound like
a good idea, but anything more than the most superficial consideration
reveals otherwise. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a natural soil
bacterium that destroys the digestive tracts of certain very pesky
insects, like the Colorado Potato Beetle and the European Corn Borer.
It is one of the safest insecticides known and has been used in
spray form by organic farmers for years. Biotech companies have
engineered crops--corn, cotton, canola, and potatoes--with a Bt
gene so that Bt crops express the toxin in every cell of the plant.
Such widespread use of the toxin will eventually make the bugs it
targets resistant to it. That's just evolution, plain and simple.
The loss of Bt, which is currently used sparingly by organic farmers,
will deprive sustainable agriculture of one of its most effective
Another point that biotech promoters never
mention is that unlike other forms of pollution, genetic pollution
produces live organisms that can grow, reproduce, mutate, and migrate.
For that reason, genetic pollution may cause greater long-term harm
than the petrochemical toxins now plaguing the planet, as Jeremy
Rifkin observes in his book, The Biotech Century.
Already there have been instances of genes
escaping much farther than anyone predicted. Harvard geneticist
Richard Lewontin was quoted in a New York Times Magazine article
last year saying, "There's no way of knowing what the downstream
effects will be or how [genetic engineering] might affect the environment.
We have such a miserably poor understanding of how the organism
develops from its DNA that I would be surprised if we don't
get one rude shock after another" (emphasis his).
Biotech Myth #4: Biotechnology
will increase crop yields, help farmers and rebuild rural economies.
Fact: So far, the opposite
has been true. Aside from throwing corn and soybean growers into
a tailspin because of the international consumer revolt against
genetic engineering, 8,200 university research trials comparing
the performance of different varieties of soybeans show that yields
of genetically engineered herbicide resistant soybeans are lower
than comparable conventional varieties. Since more than half of
the soybeans planted this year were Roundup Ready varieties, the
5-10 percent yield drag is a significant drop--some 80 to 100 million
The contracts governing the use of transgenic
seeds are not exactly farmer-friendly, either. Genetic engineering
turns the seeds themselves into "intellectual property,"
so the farmers using the seeds don't legally own them. Monsanto
likes to use the analogy of leasing a car--at the end of the lease,
the car is returned. This new ownership arrangement makes it illegal
to engage in the time-honored practice of saving seeds, a practice
which is especially common in the Third World. In the United States
and Canada, Monsanto pressed this concept to the point of hiring
private investigators to swipe plants from farmers who didn't buy
their seeds to see if they are planting Monsanto's transgenic varieties.
Monsanto has also encouraged its farmers to snitch on neighbors
they suspected of planting transgenics without paying for them.
There's even a case in Canada of an elderly farmer who is being
sued by Monsanto for intellectual property theft. He swears he never
planted Monsanto's transgenic seed, yet it showed up in his field,
quite possibly through genetic drift--i.e., contamination of his
crops by wind-blown, genetically-engineered pollen. While this type
of harassment continues, genetic engineering can be considered a
"benefit" to rural communities only insofar as farmers
enjoy living in a police state.
Biotech Myth #5: Biotechnology
is the only hope we have to feed a growing world population.
Fact: Starvation and malnutrition
are very real problems, but they are caused by unequal distribution
of wealth, not by food scarcity. According to the United Nations
World Food Program, there is currently more than enough food produced
to feed everyone on the planet an adequate and healthy diet. The
reason that approximately 800 million people go hungry each year
is that they don't have access to food by either being able to afford
it or grow their own. Biotechnology, by turning living crops into
"intellectual property," increases corporate control over
food resources and production. Rather than alleviate world hunger,
biotechnology is likely to exacerbate it by increasing everybody's
dependence on the corporate sector for seeds and the materials
Reprinted with permission of
Center for Media & Democracy
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