The Economist

Food For Thought

As grassroots movements go, the crowd that gathered a few weeks ago in rural Essex was a model of biodiversity: there were turbans and T-shirts, lawyers and new-age travellers, youthful dreadlocks and hoary beards. What united them was opposition to a technology that, on the face of it, might be thought rather a good thing: the precise tailoring of crops by direct genetic manipulation, rather than by relying on the old and haphazard processes of hybridisation and selective breeding.

Genetic modification, or GM, is a way of adding genes conferring resistance to insect, fungal and viral pests to plants that might otherwise succumb or require pesticides. It can also foster herbicide-resistance, meaning that weeds can be easily killed even among standing crops. All this increases yields and should (at least in a free market, which is admittedly a rare occurrence in agriculture) reduce prices. In future, its proponents hope, it may also enhance a cropÕs nutritional value.

Yet despite these benefits, protests against GM are mounting, especially but not only in Europe. GM crops are unpopular; many people positively hate them. As one Essex protester put it, "My only objection to genetically modified foods is that they're unsafe, unwanted and unnecessary."

And seemingly unstoppable. In 1990 there were no GM crops in commercial cultivation in the western world. By the end of this year, an estimated 40m hectares (100m acres) will be covered with them, according to Clive James, director of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (see chart on). Many GM crops (not all of them foodstuffs) are widely planted. Some, notably a herbicide-resistant strain of soyabean, are so popular with farmers that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find the unmodified variety. Until now, food manufacturers who wanted it had to rely on old stockpiles or other sources such as Brazil. But that country, too, has just announced that it will permit the commercialisation of some GM crops. It thus joins the other main converts to genetic modification: America, Argentina, Australia, Canada, China and Mexico.

In Europe, though, things are different. Although there are small-scale field trials in all European Union member states, only Spain has sizeable plantings of GM maize. (Europe has always imported its soyabeans.) A legislative provision means that countries can refuse to accept GM crops already approved by the European Commission if they have new evidence of risk; recently France, Austria and Luxembourg exercised this right to reject some types of genetically modified maize and oilseed rape. Although nine varieties of GM crops have been approved for commercial planting or import in the EU since 1994, there is so much tension over GM foods that no new species have been added to the list since late last year.

Official rejection in much of Europe is matched by unofficial resistance on the part of consumers. Their objections rest on three main claims. The first is that genetic manipulation is unnatural and so inherently nasty. The second is that the food it produces is dangerous. And the third is that it is bad for the environment.

Advocates counter the first of these arguments by noting that all crops are unnatural. If they were not, people would be making bread out of stuff that looks like grass and eating salads concocted from weeds. The second argument falls, too. No scientifically reputable test has shown any of the GM foods currently on the shelf to be in the least toxic (a much-publicised experiment carried out on potatoes in Britain has been roundly discredited). After all, the process works by transferring single genes, designed to do particular jobs, from one species to another. If the products of these genes are harmless (something that can and has been tested) it is difficult to conceive of any way in which human health might be damaged.

The third objection carries more weight, though there are few data on it. Possible environmental damage includes the "escape" of transplanted genes from crops to related wild species. That might confer insecticidal properties or herbicide-resistance on them. Another widely publicised experiment, on the caterpillars of Monarch butterflies, has shown a potential risk to non-pest insects from eating the pollen of a crop with the insecticide gene. There is also the risk that crops which make their own insecticides will stimulate the evolution of resistance in the pests that insecticides are aimed at.

It is precisely to test these risks that the field trials which attract so many protest groups are being carried out. But even if environmental damage is demonstrated, there are two counterbalancing arguments. The first is that agriculture is, by definition, destructive of the natural environment. Only if GM crops were worse than existing farming practices would there be a strong case to answer. The second is that at least some genetic modifications should help rather than damage the environment. If crops contain their own insecticide, spraying becomes unnecessary. That means non-target insects, including butterflies, should be better off.

None of this, however, seems to cut much ice with the public-particularly in Europe. Genetic engineering has drawn activists from many different causes, from Greenpeace to Christian Aid, largely because it fits neatly into other agendas. Those who object to, say, the industrialisation of traditional agriculture or corporate control of farming or even the construction of roads in rural areas were already fighting their corners before GM crops. For the average shopper, though, objections to GM foods are based mainly on the suspicion that the stuff will, in the long term, prove unhealthy.

Politically, such fears are understandable. European governments have a distressingly bad record of suppressing "inconvenient" scientific data and, when that does not work, of simply lying about food safety. With experiences as diverse as BSE (mad-cow disease), bacterially contaminated meat and (most recently, in Belgium) cancer-causing dioxin in poultry, pork and beef to draw on, consumers have developed a healthy scepticism about the things that officialdom tells them are or are not safe to eat. Even before the recent furore, roughly 25% of Britons were opposed to GM food. Now, according to a recent MORI poll, only 1% of them believe that it offers any benefit at all.

Some foreigners clearly have difficulty understanding the vehemence of the European response. Certainly nobody has been more surprised than Monsanto, an American life-sciences company that owns patents on several GM crops. Its £1m ($1.6m) advertising campaign in the British press last year, which was designed to persuade consumers of the merits of genetic engineering, achieved precisely the opposite effect. For a British public then only dimly aware of biotechnology and its effects on the contents of their frozen dinners, Monsanto's announcement that souped-up soyabeans and maize were on their way to a shop and a field near them came as an unpleasant surprise.

When ignorance is not bliss

This transatlantic difference highlights an intriguing feature of the whole debate. Even as it rages in Britain and Europe, in America-where three-quarters of the world's GM crops are grownÑthere is almost no public discussion of the subject.

There are at least four possible explanations for this. First, Americans may simply feel more positive about technology in general, and thus more willing to accept its biological version. Second, because America keeps its agricultural heartland separate from its rural playgrounds, concerns about the environmental effect of GM food may be less intense. Third, Americans have a stronger economic incentive than Europeans, since it is often their companies that produce the stuff and their farmers who grow it. And fourth, Americans may already have made their peace with GM foods after debating their regulation in the early 1990s.

Or Americans may simply be woefully ill-informed about what is going on. American tourists in London can, according to urban mythology, be heard marvelling at British newspaper reports of "Frankenstein foods" and thanking their stars that such products are not sold back home. But the myth reflects a truth. According to a poll by the International Food Information Council in Washington, DC, almost half those surveyed thought their groceries were free of biotechnology, when in reality almost 60% of the country's processed food is affected. Bruce Silverglade, of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit food policy group in Washington, reckons that it is precisely this ignorance that has muted public discussion of GM crops in AmericaÑat least until now.

Such ignorance is understandable, given that nowhere in the dense list of product ingredients and nutritional values on the side of a tin of beans is there any mention of genetic modification. This is because of a 1992 ruling by America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The agency decided that as long as a GM food is no more toxic, allergenic or any less "substantially equivalent" than its standard counterpart, it need not be labelled to show the process that created it. That is in sharp contrast to European labelling laws, introduced in 1997, which require that any food must be recorded as a GM one if it contains residues of engineered DNA or protein.

Inquiring minds want to know

It is surprising that America, a country famous for consumer power, should give its citizens fewer rights to information about food than their European peers. A growing number of American customers have also been struck by this paradox. Some 440,000 signed a petition, demanding the mandatory labelling of GM food, that was presented at a conference this week sponsored by Mothers for Natural Law, a lobby group opposed to genetic engineering. Meanwhile, Andrew Kimbrell at the International Centre for Technology Assessment (ICTA) has filed a lawsuit against the FDA that also demands labelling and would have genetic modification reclassified as an additive.

This is not as strange as it sounds, since the FDA already requires that many additives be tested by producers for safety before they reach the market. The reclassification would thus achieve what the ICTA wants. As it stands companies may, and often do, consult the FDA before putting a genetically modified product on the market, but they are not obliged to. The ICTA thinks they should be. EU authorities, however, must put each novel food through its paces for food safety and environmental impact.

Few American activists expect concerns about GM foods in America to reach the fever pitch of Britain. On the whole, Americans have too much faith in their regulatory agencies, particularly the FDA, to plunge into a European-style panic. But the activities of organisations such as the ICTA are not the only straws in the wind. When, for example, the American Department of Agriculture suggested last year that GM crops might be classified as organic foods, it had to go back to the drawing-board after 280,000 people complained.

Since the European row began, environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, which had once steered clear of the issue, have become newly interested. The government is beginning to respond. A group of high-ranking officials has been meeting under the auspices of the National Economic Council for the past six months to discuss American strategy in the face of the European flap. And earlier this month, the agriculture department announced the formation of an advisory committee drawn from academia as well as industry and public-interest groups to look at the social, scientific and economic impact of agricultural biotechnology. Some industry groups, such as the Grocery Manufacturers of America, are also bracing themselves for debate. They say they are ready to halt the spread of Europe's "contagion" with public awareness campaigns, presenting scientists and companies in a united front to support the technology.

They have good reason to act before it is too late. Although executives from European companies are publicly bullish about their prospects, private meetings among them are "a little tense" these days, according to one industry observer. No wonder. AstraZeneca, for example, has seen British sales of its genetically modified tomato paste, once more popular than its conventional rival, slump dramatically since the GM controversy flared up in February. David Evans, head of agrochemical research at the company, says it may have problems keeping supplies up, because the original business plan was based on growing the tomato in Europe by now, rather than having to continue importing paste from California.

Matters are not much helped by the fact that Britain's largest food retailers have gone the way of some of their continental counterparts-promising to remove GM ingredients from their own-brand products and labelling the rest as containing GM material. In response, Unilever and Nestlé, two big European food manufacturers, have announced plans to supply the shops with GM-free food. Several other food companies have pulled out of supplying GM food. How much farther this goes depends on the strength of the grain handlers who supply the manufacturers, the farmers and the companies that produce the technology.

Down on the farm

Although the European storm may spark debate among American consumers, most American farmers are likely to stay well earthed.They have been swift to adopt GM crops, converting 55% of the country's soyabeans, 50% of its cotton and 40% of its maize since 1996. Their incentive is mainly economic, says Rosemarie Watkins of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Although higher yields are hardly an attraction to western farmers faced with food surpluses and rock-bottom prices, the prospect of lower chemical costsÑthrough fewer applications of pesticides-is more enticing.

Troubles in Europe, though, can cause turbulence at home. American maize farmers are anxious about this autumn's harvest, according to Ms Watkins. About 5% of the current crop consists of GM varieties that have yet to receive regulatory approval in the EU. But separating contraband corn from acceptable varieties is no easy task, despite education campaigns for farmers and attempts by the country's big grain handlers, such as Archer Daniels Midland, to divert unapproved crops away from export channels. Contamination by unapproved grain can scupper the whole export harvest. In 1998, America sent $200m-worthÑalbeit less than 1% of its total crop-to Europe. This year, nothing is expected to get through.

Such problems might not arise if "identity preservation"-keeping certain varieties of grain apart from each other-were a simple business. But America's grain-handling system is designed for bulk, not discretion. According to Kim Nill, of the American Soyabean Association, there are ten points on the trip from farm to ship at which different types of soyabeans are deliberately mixed to improve their quality. The ultimate value of some varieties, such as organically grown or special tofu soyabeans for Japan, largely depends on their purity. Such small harvests can be kept separate, but at a price: Japanese beans are three times more expensive than the ordinary ones.

Trying to set up a similar system for the vast quantities of soyabeans and maize that flow through America would roughly double the final price of non-GM varieties, according to an industry-sponsored study by Allan Buckwell at Wye College in Britain. For food manufacturers, such as Unilever, this would mean a 25% premium on the final cost of goods.

It is not clear who would be willing to pay that price. In the case of, say, organic produce, consumer benefits mean that customers are willing to fork out more. But with the current backlash against GM foods, which appear to hold little positive interest even for consumers who do not actively oppose them, passing on such costs would prove unpopular-and in any case, genetic modification is supposed to lower prices, not raise them. The upshot is that the cost will probably have to be borne by middlemen. Indeed, executives at Unilever reckon that absorbing the cost themselves might mean short-term discomfort, but long-term gain in winning consumers round to the idea that the new crops are, actually, a good buy.

Meanwhile, some firms are trying to build businesses based on the idea of identity-preservation for the unmodified part of the crop. Although some of America's big grain handlers are cagey about their plans, one company has already taken the plunge. Protein Technologies International, part of DuPont, has set up a distinct processing system, from farm to final product, in order to sell "GM-free" lecithin, an important processed-food ingredient.

Well, at least 99.5% free; some contamination is apparently unavoidable. As a result, the company is still having trouble selling "GM-free" goods in the EU, which has yet to decide just how pure "GM-free" needs to be to qualify for the label. The absence of such standards puts many companies in a difficult position. Food manufacturers and retailers who have promised consumers in some EU countries, such as Britain and Austria, that they will provide "GM-free" products, cannot do so until someone decides what this actually means.

This ambiguity also frustrates American trade officials, who consider European labelling laws, both in theory and in their rather confused practice, to be a technical barrier to trade. They have threatened to complain to the World Trade Organisation, which might have to rule on whether the laws are impartial and based on sound science. But since the EU has never rejected a GM crop outright, either for import or for domestic cultivation (though some of its member states have), tensions have not escalated into a trade war-yet.

So far, official America has been diplomatic enough to view the EU stance on genetic modification as a matter of consumer preference and not of agricultural protection, though privately some officials think science is being misused to justify trade bans. Dan Glickman, the American agriculture secretary, has said that it does America little good to be seen "force-feeding genetically modified organisms down people's throats". A subtler approach is called for. One initiative is a pilot project to allow companies to submit new GM crop applications simultaneously to both EU and American regulatory authorities, and to facilitate scientific dialogue between them in the process.

Biotechnology comes a cropper?

The bottom line for agricultural biotechnology in Britain and in most of the rest of the EU is that, at present, the public's perception of risk far outweighs its view of the possible benefits. The best, though belated, efforts by governments and scientists to quell such fears do little to slow the anti-GM momentum. Some companies are trying to keep their heads down and weather the storm. Others are banding together to co-ordinate communication on agricultural biotechnology to a sceptical media and public. Yet others, such as Novartis, are slowly building bridges back to consumers, and informing them of biotechnology's benefits, through honest brokers such as teachers and doctors who can translate the science for the public. They are also hoping that the next generation of GM foods, with obvious consumer benefits such as better flavour and enhanced nutrition, will win the day on their merits.

Yet some are less confident than others. DuPont's high-tech soyabeans, genetically engineered for improved oil production, are already held up in the EU approval process, although they are a good example of the sort of "output" traits the industry is promising. Winning the public over is becoming harder each day, and the newest GM foods will have to be impressive if they are to make it. "These companies have great faith in their technology," according to Rod Stacey, a consultant with Verdant Partners, "They see themselves as the semiconductor industry of the 21st century." But given the size of public opposition, proponents of GM foods could be risking the fate of a rather different technology that once looked high-tech and futuristic-nuclear power.

Links

Genetix Snowball's campaign against GM foods is explained in its handbook. Friends of the Earth has also joined the campaign against GM foods. Mothers for Natural Law takes up the fight against GMOs in the United States. Monsanto, AstraZeneca, Novartis and AgrEvo present their arguments. Two British supermarkets, Sainsbury's and Tesco, have issued statements on the debate. The Royal Society published two reports on GMOs, in April 1999 and September 1998. Dr Arpad Pusztai's response to those reports is published on his site. The British Medical Association released its interim statement on the subject in May. An American group, the Union for Concerned Scientists, has produced a collection of briefing papers on the use of biotechnology in agriculture. The US Food and Drug Administration has produced a series of publications on biotechnology and food. Details of the International Food and Information Council's survey on consumers' attitudes toward food biotechnology in the United States are available from the IFIC site. Britain's National Farmers' Union has produced a set of guidelines for farmers growing genetically modified crops.