Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
'Who the hell is going to be in charge? A handful of corporate greed-heads, or we the people?' That's what it comes down to. Who's going to be making the decisions in a society that supposedly is self-governing?' – Jim Hightower, writer, editor, and former Texas Agricultural Commissioner
This is a book that shouldn't need to be written. If we lived in a sane country, at a sane period of time, what I am about to write would all be commonsense.
I should need only to write that dousing 97 per cent of our food with highly toxic chemicals is stupidity beyond belief; and that it is inconceivable that we should then want to genetically tinker the food that has served us so well for tens of thousands of years, when the only beneficiaries will be the multinational corporations who invented this so-called technology. End of book.
But sadly, we live at a time when the all-pervading Big Business lobby, and its huge influence on the media, has shifted received wisdom far away from commonsense and brainwashed us with half-truths, bad science, and outright lies. Nowhere have they done this more effectively than the GM debate, where the biotech lobby has poured colossal resources into its aggressive and proactive PR machine. Those scientists who have the temerity to oppose GM crops are set upon with insults and vitriol, often losing their reputations, sometimes their jobs.
This book, therefore, is written in large part to counter this campaign of misinformation. But it is also much more than that. If Big Business is up to all these dirty tricks in the GM arena, it is almost certainly doing the same thing in all areas of our lives. Therefore, I would like to propose a more radical hypothesis, which is that the world is run by the rich and powerful for the benefit of the rich and powerful – essentially an amalgam of state and corporate power. The rest of us are useful only to the extent that we create and consume their products.
Only when all the inconsistencies of modern life are viewed from this angle do the horrors of the world begin to make any sense. When we understand that what suits Big Business is generally what goes, everything then starts to slot into place. It explains why apparently simple and commonsense decisions like disallowing GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) are made so complicated. Or why the net destruction of the environment grows each year and yet we do nothing, because we are told 'we need more studies'. Or why the growing cancer epidemic, which kills 40 per cent of Britons, is never discussed in terms of being a disease of industrial chemicals and pollutants. Or why the US spends $360 billion a year on 'defence', when more than 25 million Americans depend on charities to eatand food shortages affect 800 million in the poorest countries. Or why SARS received endless coverage and killed only 774 people in 2003, yet AIDS killed 2.4 million Africans in 2002 alone and is largely ignored. Or why we have endless media coverage of plane or train crashes, murders, sport, and celebrity prittle-prattle, but virtually nothing on the really big issues.
The hypothesis I am proposing will, however, require that we let go of the comforting notion that those in power are essentially acting in our best interests – give or take a few colourful indiscretions here and there – rather than doing what is best for a small, powerful elite. Or as leading American playwright Arthur Miller once said: 'Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.'
This book gives enough evidence, I believe, to put this hypothesis on a pretty strong footing. And, hopefully, it might in some small way help to shift some of that internal denial and allow the average person to make more sense of this ever more nonsensical world we live in.
The struggle between people and corporations will be the defining battle of the twenty-first century. If the corporations win, liberal democracy will come to an end. – George Monbiot, author, environmentalist, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Environmental Science, University of East London
CHAPTER 2
An Overview
Genetic engineering is the biological equivalent of splitting the atom and has equally, if not greater, hazardous consequences for humankind. – Dr Robert Anderson, Member of the Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics (New Zealand)
Within ten years, we will have a moderate to large-scale ecological or economic catastrophe [from the use of GMOs]. – Professor Norman Ellstrand, ecological geneticist at the University of California
SETTING THE SCENE
Firstly, let's get one thing straight: the Genetic Engineering debate can be boiled down to a single sentence. We risk potential health, environmental, and agronomic calamities just so that a handful of corporations can sate their voracious appetite for profit by patenting the seeds of the very food we eat, and then go on to control the global food chain. All else is froth and distraction.
Secondly, the term Genetic Engineering (GE) is an insult to the noble profession of engineering. Engineering implies accuracy, and if there is one characteristic trait about GE – and its proponents, for that matter – it is a complete lack of the virtue. Its proponents would like us to believe that GE is simply a case of carefully removing the desired gene from its source and inserting it into just the right place in the recipient genome (an organism's DNA). But Dr Arpad Pusztai, a scientist with 35 years of lab experience and the world's leading expert on plant lectins (plant proteins that are central to the GM controversy), doesn't agree:
Think of William Tell, shooting an arrow at a target. Now put a blindfold on the man doing the shooting and that's the reality of the genetic engineer when he's doing a gene insertion. He has no idea where the transgene [a GM gene inserted into a new host] will land in the recipient genome.
So, when I use the term Genetic Engineering or Genetically Modified (GM) or technology, think GT – Genetic Tinkering.
Out-of-date science
According to Dr Barry Commoner (and many other scientists): 'The biotechnology industry is based on science that is forty years old and conveniently devoid of more recent results.' 'The fact that one gene can give rise to multiple proteins ... destroys the theoretical foundation of ... [this] industry.'
Dr Michael Antoniou, Reader in Molecular Genetics at Kings College, London, Guy's Hospital Campus, adds to this:
But what really makes GE out of date is the fact that it is based on the idea that genes are isolated units of information that can be moved around and still have the same effect. This is early 1980s thinking. Now we know that genes work as part of complex interconnected networks and that no gene works in isolation of other genes. When you insert a new gene, the function of both the transgene and the host's genome are disrupted. If you take a gene out of context, you can't predict the outcome and you will not have complete control over the result. This is the key conceptual flaw with GE. This is why GE will never work. It is based on flawed science.
A BRIEF RECENT HISTORY
Let's go back to the beginning, to where it all started.
The history of industrial agriculture
The 1940s saw the birth of industrial agriculture in the developed countries, where it is now ubiquitous – 96 per cent of farmland is industrially farmed in Britain. Industrial (otherwise known as chemical, conventional, or high-input) agriculture is the practice of farming with artificial fertilisers and agrochemicals, such as herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides. Agrochemical usage began to take off in the 1950s, peaked in the late 1980s, and is still used in massive amounts to this day. This new form of agriculture appeared to be a great success at first, with record yields in the developed countries in the 1950s and in the developing countries in the early 1960s.
Industrial agriculture was introduced to the developing countries in the 1960s, with the ostensible aim of increasing food production. This was known as the Green Revolution, and it too was based around high-yielding varieties (HYVs) that relied on high inputs of fertilisers, pesticides, and often irrigation. These HYVs were developed by the International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs) – which were set up in the developing countries in the early 1960s – and promoted to small-scale and subsistence farmers by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the IARCS.
Yields did increase for a while, but then so did a long list of problems that accompanied the Green Revolution. Far from helping the poor, it concentrated wealth and land into the hands of the wealthier farmers, who could afford the expensive inputs, and drove thousands of subsistence farmers into debt or off the land. The steep increase in agrochemicals led to a huge loss of natural biodiversity and has poisoned farmers, groundwater, land, and the environment. Irrigation has depleted water resources, and increased salinity, often leaving land unusable. Nutrient levels in the soil and crops dropped, instigating new problems of nutrient deficiency. Pests and diseases often got worse, as HYVs were less pest resistant than traditional varieties and relied on monocultures. Yields that at first rose, plateaued, and are now falling. In the process, agriculture was transformed from subsistence farming into agribusiness, so opening it up to agricorporations and their products.
The hunger that the Green Revolution was meant to eradicate has remained stubbornly intransigent, with the number facing hunger and malnutrition worldwide remaining at 800 million.
Macro-economic policies
A look at world politics will give some hints as to why there is so much need amid so much plenty. It also helps to explain the unprecedented ascendancy of the transnational corporations (TNCs).
In the 1970s, the two OPEC oil price rises were accompanied by a lending spree to poor countries. This money was often invested in transforming subsistence agriculture into chemically farmed tropical cash crops, like bananas and cocoa, for export (resulting in the best land becoming unavailable to feed local populations). There then followed a mix of a fall in commodity prices, a recession in the developed countries where these commodities were bought, and increasing interest rates, which led to the long-term debt of the developing countries soaring. With massive defaults in the offing, the World Bank and IMF reacted by imposing Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). This meant stringent cutbacks on education and health spending, a reduction in workforces (that is, mass unemployment), the deregulation of environmental controls, and a heavy emphasis on export earnings (with yet more cash cropping). The financial institutions used this situation to dictate advantageous entry terms for foreign corporations in the developing world, thus opening up national industries and natural resources for plunder. Many believe this was an intentional policy by the rich countries. Certainly, it has increased the power of the biotech corporations. Meanwhile, though, most developing countries have been unable to pay off their debts, and hunger and famine still abound.
Some debt cancellation was agreed in Cologne in 1999, but as of March 2005, it was still only about 10 per cent of that owed by the world's poorest countries. In September 2004, the UK government announced it would help 21 poor countries with debt service relief on money owed to the World Bank and African Development Bank. However, while encouraged by this step, critics want to see debt actually cancelled, and they want it to be applied to all poor countries, without the stringent economic requirements that are usually attached. Furthermore, they also want to see more and better aid plus justice in world trade, which currently robs poor countries of £1.3 billion a day – 14 times what they get in aid.
SAPs are a part of the ideology of free trade, which has been on the increase since the 1980s, promoted by corporations in the World Trade Organization (WTO), with the backing of many developed countries. Under free trade, state intervention in the economy is discouraged, particularly measures that protect industry; yet the US and the European Union (EU) carry on subsidising their farmers, to the point that developed world farmers are unable to compete (another cause of poverty). National and international regulations and treaties protecting the workforce and the environment are often contested through the WTO – which has legislative and judicial powers over sovereign nations – as barriers to trade, thus expanding the rights of corporations. Free trade purportedly spurs competition between corporations, and yet these companies run near monopolies around the world, with 90 per cent of the export market for wheat, corn, coffee, tea, pineapple, cotton, tobacco, jute, and forest products controlled by five companies or less.
In 1994, the US government managed to move the matter of intellectual property from the World Intellectual Property Organization to the WTO, thus making protection of patents on micro-organisms obligatory. This was a real coup, providing the first global mechanism for patents on living beings, and laying the foundation for the gene revolution and the patenting of crops.
The corporate takeover of the food chain, part 1
As with most areas of business, a handful of corporations now dominate the international food chain, with over 60 per cent of it controlled by just ten companies, which are involved in seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, processing, and shipments. For example:
• Cargill and Archer Daniel Midland control 80 per cent of the world's grain;
• Syngenta, DuPont, Monsanto, and Aventis account for two-thirds of the global agrochemical market.
By the early 1990s, almost all the major product sectors of European food were controlled by two or three companies. For example:
• the top three biscuit suppliers accounted for 70 per cent of the market;
• the top three suppliers of breakfast cereals for 64 per cent;
• the top three manufacturers of snack foods for 91 per cent.
And in the UK:
• just eight processors accounted for 60 per cent of the entire UK food market in 1994;
• the biggest five supermarket chains now sell almost 75 per cent of groceries in Britain.
The agbiotech industry began to consolidate in the 1990s. It had become more and more expensive for the agrochemical corporations to create new pesticides; furthermore, some of its main products would soon come off patent. Biotechnology opened up a vast new arena for profit – that is, the patenting of new or changed genes. Whereas a new pesticide takes $40-100 million to bring to market, it only costs $1 million to market a new plant variety. Hence, these corporations went on a spending spree of small seed companies in the 1990s, so that by 2001, only four corporations sold practically all GM seeds, with a staggering 91 per cent sold by Monsanto alone. We can expect a further consolidation of the non-GM seed market as biotechnology allows the agbiotech corporations the means and incentive to close in on crops that were previously unprofitable.
The Gene Revolution
This brings us to the so-called Gene Revolution – the cosy label given to genetic engineering in agriculture – which, like the Green Revolution before it, is being heralded as the saviour of the poor. And like the Green Revolution, it too relies on a very one-dimensional approach to hunger – the genetic improvement of crops, and the agrochemicals required by the high-yielding varieties. Yet, as we have seen, the Green Revolution has failed the majority of farmers, the environment, and the hungry – although large-scale farmers and, more importantly, the agricorporations have benefited enormously. It failed mainly because of this simplistic approach to dealing with hunger, while ignoring the fundamental tenets of good farming, such as water management, mixed cropping, soil fertility, and other sustainable practices, which are easily able to double yields. Therefore, far from learning from the Green Revolution, the proponents of GE are simply continuing with more of the same. But why? Is it because the real agenda is not the feeding of the poor at all, but the corporate takeover of the food chain? There is certainly a lot to play for – a huge untapped market for their products, with 90 per cent of African farmers still saving their own seeds and large parts of the developing countries still farming organically.
WHAT IS GENETIC ENGINEERING AND WHO WILL BENEFIT?
Genetic Tinkering is the process of adding a gene or genes (the transgene) to plant or animal DNA (the recipient genome) to confer a desirable trait, for example inserting the genes of an arctic flounder into a tomato to give antifreeze properties, or inserting human genes into fish to increase growth rates.
But, as we are about to discover, this is a technology that no one wants, that no one asked for, and that no one but the biotech companies will benefit from. This is why the biotech lobby has such a vast, ruthless, and well-funded propaganda machine. If they can reinvent our food and slap a patent on it all, they have just created an unimaginably vast new market for themselves.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Genetically Modified Food"
by .
Copyright © 2006 Andy Rees.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
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