Fostering the Bad Seed

Monsanto Co., a naive and innocent little chemical corporation, was engaged in a benevolent scheme to make a better world through genetically engineered crops. Last year, the company offered its humanitarian products to what should have been a grateful peasantry around the world, but alas, unpleasant things began to happen.

In India, unhappy farmers torched Monsanto’s test plots of genetically engineered cotton in an outburst of fury called “Operation Cremation Monsanto.” In Ireland, ungrateful protesters sabotaged fields of genetically engineered potatoes. French farmers staged a raid on a cache of modified seeds, sprayed it with fire extinguishers and then urinated on it.

Gee. Such Luddites. How can it be that all over the world people are raising Cain about GMOs (genetically modified organisms) while in this country, we hear not one discouraging word?

Well, perhaps one; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in Monsanto’s hometown, ran an excellent investigative article last month on the company’s misadventures around the globe. In his article, Bill Lambrecht explained that Americans have no entry into a regulatory system. “In 1986, Monsanto and allies persuaded President Reagan’s administration to adopt a framework that would operate with no new legislation. This strategy assured that genetic engineering would, for the most part, remain out of the domain of the Congress and therefore away from the forum where people sound their concern.”

The Food and Drug Administration has been our most aggressive regulator on food safety issues, but it has limited authority because genetic traits are not considered food additives. The Department of Agriculture is both regulator of biotechnology and its ardent booster. The result: bureaucratic impotence.

But what exactly is the problem? If Monsanto can make vegetable seeds that are resistant to bugs, what’s not to like?

Some of Monsanto’s problems are traceable to greater European skepticism about science in general. And the continent just went through the experience of mad cow disease in which 11 million cattle had to be slaughtered; that certainly increased people’s suspicions about food safety and their doubts about the adequacy of government regulation.

The British paper, the Guardian, reported in November, “Monsanto, the world’s leading genetic food company, is facing public meltdown in Britain and Germany with a ‘society-wide’ collapse of support for its radical technologies, according to leaked internal documents. Amid deepening media problems, and resentment by supermarkets, only senior civil servants have shown support for Monsanto’s controversial technologies in the past year.”

One nightmarish product Monsanto plans to acquire is “The Terminator,” a new genetic technology designed to render the seeds of crops sterile. It was invented to block farmers from saving seeds, ensuring that they buy the jazzed-up, genetically improved varieties. The official name is Technology Protection System, but it’s called The Terminator all over the globe, and farmers, who have been saving seeds and resowing for millennia, are terrified of it.

According to Agence France-Presse, “Critics of biotechnology worry that seeding farmland with transgenic crops could spread genetic pollution, upset the balance of nature and release uncontrollable food allergens.” Jane Rissler with the Union of Concerned Scientists told Agence France-Presse, “The purpose of biotechnology is to increase the profits of the manufacturers by persuading farmers to use more herbicides.”

But aren’t these fears without evidence? The problem is that Monsanto has a record. The Post-Dispatch noted that the company manufactured virtually all the PCBs in the U.S. until they were finally banned in 1976, and taxpayers are still shelling out to clean up PCB-riddled waste sites. Monsanto also manufactured Agent Orange, which is linked to cancer and reproductive problems in Vietnam War vets. And the company makes pesticides, which contaminate ground water. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Monsanto is a “potentially responsible party” at 93 Superfund sites.

In other words, this is a company that has put its faith in technology before without bothering to properly research the consequences.