Hudson
Institute

Bio-Food Is Winning Public Acceptance

Activists opposing biotechnology in food production will seek the spotlight at this summer's Republican and Democratic national conventions, but they already are fighting a futile, rear-guard action.

Transgenic crops have swept across the world more rapidly than any previous farming technology, mainly because they protect crops more effectively, using less pesticide. The world's farmers are likely to plant record amounts of land to biotech crops in 2000, to reduce pesticide usage and get modestly higher yields.

Most of the biotech plantings will be in the United States with nearly 75 million acres devoted to corn, soybeans, canola and other crops. Argentina will plant 17 million acres, mostly corn and soybeans, and Canada 10 million acres, mostly canola. China, Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Spain, France, Portugal, Romania and Ukraine also are planting transgenic crops.

New breakthroughs continue to emerge from the laboratories. Among them:

A new "super-rice" incorporates a corn gene for a higher rate of photosynthesis -- so it yields 35 percent more grain per acre. Frost-tolerant crops will survive temperatures perhaps 10 degrees colder than traditional crops, meaning higher yields for Canada and Russia, and more double cropping for the United States and China. Researchers are breeding a natural substance into crops to protect them from storage insects-eliminating the need for the usual storage pesticides.

One of the key biotech triumphs to date has been "golden rice," which should prevent the Vitamin A deficiency that blinds or kills millions of children each year in poor rice-eating countries. The new rice contains beta-carotene, like carrots; the body converts the beta-carotene into Vitamin A.

Meanwhile, the European Union has embarked on a quixotic global tour to explain why it should be allowed to block imports of transgenic foods under a "precautionary principle" because its consumers are frightened of them -- even though there is no proof that any of the foods are dangerous. Currently, the World Trade Organization demands scientific proof of danger to bar imports If Europe is allowed to block imports for reasons of public fear, then fear campaigns could become trade barriers against virtually all imported products.

Hong Kong could say that its consumers think French wines cause cancer and must therefore be banned. France might retaliate by saying Hong Kong textiles are made with "Frankenstein cotton" and must be banned in turn.

Today's globalizing world could be pitched back into the tariff-war days of the 1930s -- and perhaps another Great Depression.

That would be tragic. Small Chinese farmers are planting more than 700,000 acres of pest-resistant biotech cotton this year, half of it from China's own research labs. The biotech cotton needs no more than one pesticide spray per year instead of the current 15. The new cotton is putting an extra $150 in profits per hectare into the pockets of 1 million Chinese farmers who now make only $500 to $1,000 per year.

China says biotech cotton has also saved its biggest source of jobs. The cotton bollworm had developed resistance to pyrethroid insecticides and would have driven cotton production out of the country. China's cotton industry employs many millions of farmers and textile workers.

The Chinese also have commercialized tomatoes, tobacco and cucumbers, and are actively researching biotech varieties of corn, wheat and canola, along with many fruits and vegetables.

Based on the Chinese experience, an Indian government committee has recommended that India release its own biotech cotton varieties.

Dr. Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for breeding the "miracle wheat" of the Green Revolution, is enthusiastic about biotech crops. He warns that organic farming could not feed more than 4 billion people -- the world already has more than 6 billion -- even if we plowed down all the forests on earth for more plantings.

The world's most distinguished scientists agree with Borlaug in a new report issued by the academies of science in Brazil, China, India, Mexico and the United States along with the Third World Academy of Sciences in Trieste and the British Royal Society.

The report, released earlier this summer, calls biotech foods crucial to overcoming hunger for 800 million food-short residents of poor countries, and preventing the deaths of 6 million children under 5 who die each year from malnutrition.

Surprisingly, the activists opposed to bio-foods are not protesting the use of biotechnology in medicine, where new developments hold the promise of saving millions of people from colon and breast cancer and AIDS.

Ethically, of course, there's no justification for using biotechnology to help the sick, but not the hungry. Fortunately, the activists won't have to wrestle with that dilemma much longer. The march of progress already is leaving them behind.

Dennis T. Avery is a former Department of Agriculture official who now serves as director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute, a public policy think-tank. Readers may write him at Hudson Institute/Washington, 1015 18th Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20036.