A Matter of Taste

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15765 A Matter of Taste John Feffer,

The American Prospect

April 28, 2003Viewed on April 29, 2003

 

At the Sunday market at the Place de la Bastille in Paris, the produce proudly

announces its origins. There are bananas from Martinique, olives from Spain,

artichokes from Brittany and broccoli from St. Malo, the place names written

just above the prices. Signs tell which family dairies the cheeses come from and

whether the lamb grazed on salty coastal grasses. The provenance of the wine on

display is even more precisely noted. The open-air markets in France are a good

place to understand terroir, the French belief that local conditions such as

soil and weather produce distinctive tastes.

 

The markets are also a good place to understand why the French -- and most other

Europeans -- are so up in arms over genetically modified (GM) crops. In Europe,

people want to know how their food was raised and made. For quality control,

they generally trust farmers over biotechnicians. In 1998, responding to

consumer demands, the European Union (EU) blocked the commercial introduction of

new GM products and required the labeling of all foods containing -- by design

or by accident -- 1 percent or more of GM ingredients. The EU is now considering

legislation that would lift the ban but lower the threshold at which labels are

required. The EU also wants the food industry to establish a precise paper trail

for all GM ingredients. This " traceability " would lead investigators back to the

culprit should some unfortunate Swede inexplicably keel over after eating chow

mein stir-fried in GM canola oil.

 

In the United States, open air markets are comparatively rare, and most

Americans have no idea where their food comes from. An orange from Florida, an

orange from Brazil -- what's the difference? Most Americans, too, have

obliviously ingested several years' worth of genetically altered soy beans,

canola oil and corn. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers a

tomato that's genetically modified for longer shelf life to be essentially the

same product as an ordinary tomato -- novel enough to be patented, as Michael

Pollan points out in his best-selling book, " The Botany of Desire, " " yet not so

novel as to warrant a label telling us what it is we're eating. "

 

For a European who appreciates the entire process by which food is grown, the

FDA focus on end products is just another example of the irrevocable vulgarity

of the United States -- Alice Waters and other terroir-influenced American chefs

notwithstanding. For their part, two successive U.S. administrations have argued

that European fear of genetically modified organisms (GMO) is the result of

emotionalism and unsound science. The Americans insist that biotechnology will

end world hunger, decrease the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizer, and

even solve critical medical problems.

 

The latest round of this sparring match has coincided with a ratcheting up of

tensions between the New World and " old Europe " over war in Iraq, which has

added animus to the Bush administration's previous impatience. It now seems more

likely than ever that the administration will act on its threat to haul the

European Union before the World Trade Organization (WTO). The administration

claims that EU policies on transgenic food and feed are largely a cover for

plain old protectionism and have already lost U.S. companies an estimated $300

million.

 

But money isn't all that's at issue. This is a clash of civilizations, of

terroir versus McWorld, of Old World cautiousness versus New World impetuousness

-- and on the GMO front, at least, there is little hope of real compromise.

 

Genetic Revolution

 

In five short years, from 1996 to 2001, genetically modified crops moved from

scientific experiment to mainstream product. Worldwide, the farmland devoted to

such crops increased 30-fold. By 2001, nearly 50 percent of all soybeans grown,

including 75 percent of U.S. soybeans, were genetically modified. The spread of

GM crops and the resulting contamination of conventional crops have been so

significant that the U.S. seed industry -- the world's largest -- can no longer

guarantee that its seeds for ordinary soybeans, corn or canola are entirely

GM-free.

 

Genetic engineering has become the centerpiece of U.S. governmental and

corporate strategies for maintaining a lead in agriculture and for addressing

food deficits in the developing world. Scientists expect greater yields from GM

crops and, when they insert pest-resistant genes into common crops, dramatic

reductions in the amount of pesticides used in commercial farming. GM animal

feeds could provide an alternative for farmers in Europe and elsewhere looking

for a cheap, high-protein substitute for the bone meal feed that is the probable

cause of " mad cow disease. " Meanwhile, a second generation of crops is being

heralded for its medical virtues. Genetic engineering has reduced the level of

mycotoxins in corn, with the potential to lower the risk of certain cancers.

" Golden rice " promises to reduce vitamin A deficiency throughout the developing

world.

 

The U.S. government insists that genetic engineering is safe, and indeed GM

foods have not yet been implicated in any major health or environmental

problems. Most foods pose some risk, points out Gregory Jaffe, the director for

the Project on Biotechnology at the Center for Science in the Public Interest:

" If you did a risk assessment for a peanut today, it would not necessarily be

approved. " With this general proviso, his influential organization has accepted

GMO. " In general, " Jaffe says, " we have looked at the food safety of the current

biotech crops and the evidence from independent scientists, and we are

comfortable in telling our 800,000 rs that these products are safe to

eat. "

 

The critics, however, are not satisfied. Some scientists have tried to link the

resurgence of infectious diseases over the last generation to genetic

modifications in the American food supply. Other skeptics point to studies

showing immune system damage in rats fed GM potatoes and what might have been

allergic reactions among people who ate taco shells contaminated with StarLink

corn, a GM animal feed.

 

Because of the Starlink incident, which led to the recall of 300 corn products

in 2000, fissures have also opened up between the food and biotech industries.

Kathleen Hart, author of " Eating in the Dark, " says, " The food industry got

burned after StarLink. People were saying off the record, and sometimes even on

the record, why should the food industry take the bullet for the biotech

industry? "

 

More recently, when corn genetically engineered for pharmaceutical use showed up

in soybean shipments -- leading to the destruction of 155 acres of corn in Iowa

in September and the quarantine of 500,000 bushels of soybeans in Nebraska in

November -- the food industry went ballistic and won approval for much stricter

U.S. regulations separating pharmaceutical crops from the food supply (though

the industry's enthusiasm for GM food continues unabated).

 

But of all those who have expressed reservations about biotechnology, the

Europeans have emerged as the toughest and the most influential. The EU is not

categorically opposed to genetic engineering. Since the early 1990s it has

allowed the sale of such diverse GM products as pesticide-resistant corn, rabies

vaccine and carnations modified to be more colorful.

 

In general, however, the EU has been cautious. And European consumers have been

adamant. Some 70 percent of them don't want to eat any GMO at all. A GMO label

in Paris or Bonn reads practically like a skull-and-crossbones, so that even

legally permitted GM foods are rarely on the shelves of European supermarkets.

European activists have trampled GMO test plots, sponsored boycotts, and filled

the streets with placards and noisy demonstrations. High-profile protestors such

as French farmer Jose Bove -- he of the handlebar moustache and the sledgehammer

approach to McDonalds -- have gone to jail for their preemptive strikes against

GM crops.

 

The tolerance for GMO can be very low indeed. In its June 2002 issue, the French

consumer magazine Que Choisir published evidence of contamination in 16

products. The story made waves in France, but the article's worst offender, a

dietetic chocolate hazelnut protein bar, contained only 1.8 percent transgenic

soya, a mere fraction above the level currently allowed without a label.

 

Are Europeans being overly sensitive? The bottom line, the skeptics insist: We

just don't know yet. Meanwhile, they say, European policy makers are wise to

adhere to the precautionary principle of better safe than sorry. If GM products

were to hit European supermarkets without labels, the competition from these

lower-priced foods would gradually force many European farmers to switch to the

new technology. And once GM crops were being grown on a large scale -- in the

kind of corporate operation that favors monocropping over crop diversity,

long-distance transport over local use, efficiency over sustainability, and

price over taste -- the inevitable cross-pollination and contamination would

quickly make it impossible to preserve GM-free foods, or Europe's culinary

traditions.

 

Inside European Politics

 

For the last year, Europe has been at work on a new GMO policy. The negotiations

have not been easy to conduct, nor to follow. Food politics in the EU is a

multi-tiered enterprise, with action going on in 15 member states, the European

Parliament, and an assortment of executive agencies, committees, and councils of

ministers. Parliament passed draft legislation in July 2002. In October and

December, the agriculture and environment ministers of Europe met and hammered

out their own proposed variations, with results that require almost Talmudic

powers to interpret. Still to come is a second reading in Parliament,

reconciliation of rival versions of the legislation, and a final decision --

perhaps as early as May -- by Europe's collected heads of state. Until then,

it's difficult for someone outside (and maybe inside) the black box of European

politics to tell which side is winning.

 

In fact, it can even be difficult to determine what the sides are. European

biotech lobbyists, unlike their American counterparts, support some variant of

labeling and traceability, while most European national governments actually

want the GMO moratorium lifted as soon as possible, if only to stanch the

current biotech brain drain to the United States. In Brussels, more stringent

proposals for the labeling of GM-contaminated foods seem to be going forward

alongside proposed regulations on seed purity that are not strict enough to

prevent contamination. As Geert Ritsema, the GMO campaign coordinator for

Friends of the Earth Europe, put it recently, " The [EU bureaucracy] is

contradicting itself. On the one hand, it is saying that consumers have the

right to choose, but on the other hand it will allow a high threshold for seeds,

undermining the GM-free food supply. "

 

For that matter, the EU, in its aversion to risk and its passion for

standardization, has favored regulations that undermine both terroir and local

farming: It has restricted the sale of certain vegetable varieties and even

considered banning raw milk cheeses. About all that enables European

bureaucrats, activists and agribusiness to achieve a rough consensus on GMO is

the threat of a common enemy--the United States.

 

Trade Wars

 

In 1999, the European Union blocked imports of hormone-treated beef, citing

safety concerns. The U.S. and Canadian governments called the action a

non-tariff barrier to trade, took the EU to the WTO, and won three times. The EU

dutifully paid its penalty. And has continued to block U.S. beef from entering

Europe.

 

The transatlantic dispute over genetic engineering threatens to be much more

divisive. The United States is considering two separate WTO challenges -- one

over Europe's current moratorium on new GM products and another over labeling.

For the moment, both are overshadowed by the Iraq crisis, but the U.S. Trade

Representative is quietly rounding up partners for the claim against Europe. If

the United States and France continue to feud over Iraq, one place the Bush

administration can be expected to seek revenge is the WTO.

 

Not that this would resolve anything. Challenging the EU moratorium would likely

only delay current plans to lift it. As for the labeling complaint, Jean

Halloran, executive director of the Consumer Policy Institute, points out that

the WTO will rule against labeling requirements only if they are applied

inconsistently; and for this reason, according to one EU official, speaking off

the record, beer and cheese produced using European GM processes may soon be

subject to the same labeling rules as GM food and feed coming from North

America. But even if the United States were to prevail on the labeling issue,

the EU could fall back on its previous tactic of paying the penalty and keeping

the regulations. And EU consumers, already furious at U.S. unilateralism in

other realms, could doom GM products in the market as effectively as any

official ban.

 

In the long run, the United States may not care. As food industry consultant Don

Westfall confessed to the Toronto Star in January 2001, " The hope of the

industry is that over time the market is so flooded that there's nothing you can

do about it. " While the EU fights to restrict GM food and feed, the United

States is spreading its seed around the world. With the help of Argentina and

Canada, it's also exerting pressure outside the EU. When China, South Korea,

Croatia, Sri Lanka, and others have proposed policies on labeling and

traceability, the U.S. government has brandished the WTO stick.

 

Indeed, the main significance of the current U.S.-Europe dispute over GMO may be

that agriculture ministers the world over are watching it very carefully.

Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi -- African countries on the edge of

famine -- all made headlines last August when they refused U.S. gifts of surplus

GM corn. At first blush it seemed that their refusal was nonsensical. Surely the

risk of starvation exceeded the risk of consuming GM food. But as African

leaders pointed out, if their farmers had planted kernels of the U.S. corn, the

gift ultimately might have destroyed their ability to export food to European or

Japanese markets. Only when the United States finally agreed to mill the corn

before sending it did the shipments -- except to Zambia -- go through.

 

Of course, the larger issue for the southern hemisphere is government-subsidized

overproduction in both the United States and Europe, which propels the two

agricultural giants to dump food overseas, with devastating effects on Third

World farming. Increasing American and European crop yields through genetic

engineering can only add to that problem -- a problem neither Europe nor the

United States is willing to tackle.

 

Instead, over the next few months, Brussels will remove a moratorium on GM

products knowing that a shadow moratorium imposed by consumers will take its

place, and Washington will make a great deal of noise about European regulations

while seeking to render them irrelevant by spreading GM seeds as liberally as

possible. The conflict over GMO will rage on because Europeans are protecting

something (terroir and a more cautious approach to food safety), and Americans

are pushing something (a powerful new technology that might help end hunger and

disease), and neither side understands or trusts the other.

 

Is it possible to explore the benefits of biotechnology without committing us

all irrevocably to a world of generic, flavorless and potentially dangerous

food? Given the transatlantic clash of cultures, the hard economics of farming,

and the sheer sexual promiscuity of plants, such a substantive compromise is as

elusive as a ripe, juicy tomato in mid-winter.

 

John Feffer, editor of the forthcoming " Power Trip: Unilateralism and Global

Strategy After September 11 " (Seven Stories, 2003), is working on a book about

food in Asia.

 

 

 

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

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