The London
Free Press

Junk Journalism Unfairly Taints Biotech Food

On a recent visit to France, I saw a magazine cover depicting a tomato with a burning fuse and "La Cuisine du Diable" spelled out in big bold letters below. It wasn't about a recipe for devil's-food cake with tomatoes, but about food developed through biotechnology.

A more influential magazine contains an article that could be called "La Cuisine du Diable Lite." September's issue of Consumer Reports presents a more honest look at biotechnology than the French magazine. Considering the magazine's growing tendency to find corporate-produced horrors behind every bush, that's an achievement.

Indeed, the article stated, "There is no evidence that genetically engineered foods on the market are not safe to eat," adding that genetic engineering could lead to consumer benefits like lower cholesterol and increased cancer resistance.

But like Darth Vader, Consumer Reports embraces the dark side. It repeats false claims about biotech foods, says biotech development doesn't have enough safeguards and recommends mandatory labelling of foods containing genetically engineered ingredients.

You can be sure that Consumer Reports wasn't about to weaken its case by explaining that there is no inherent difference between bioengineered food and nonbioengineered food. Virtually nothing we eat is truly "natural." From cattle to corn, apples to artichokes, today's food is the result of cross-breeding experiments dating to the dawn of history. Many plant varieties we consume didn't exist a century ago. With biotechnology, you isolate a specific gene or genes with the desired features and splice them into the organism you want to improve. It's faster, surer and safer than the old technique of cross-breeding.

Henry Miller, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, notes that the few harmful plants developed before gene-splicing would have been much less likely to occur under biotechnology.

Can biotechnology guarantee food that is utterly, absolutely, 101 percent safe? No. There is no technology that can. But biotech food regulations are at least as tough as those for other foods and often needlessly tougher.

Since biotech is merely an extension of the sort of food development that's always been going on, there's no justification for additional scrutiny.

But even major U.S. government agencies is split -- the Food and Drug Agency sees no reason for more scrutiny, while the heavily politicized Environmental Protection Agency burdens it with worthless tests. But the greatest problem for companies investing billions of dollars in these foods is not with government regulators. Rather, they suffer under a constant barrage of false claims from environmental activists, organic farmers and media crusaders. They are besieged by European governments that perceive (correctly) that their heavily subsidized farmers will need even more subsidies to compete with cheaper biotech crops.

If companies actually committed the sins they're accused of, the resulting media attention and lawsuits could destroy them. The Sierra Club has already sent chilling notices to individual researchers warning they will personally be held legally liable for problems.

So the food is safe. Why label it then? Simple, says Consumer Reports: "Consumers have a fundamental right to know what they eat."

That sounds nice but doesn't mean much. Consumer Reports and other biotech labelling advocates note many European governments mandate biotech food labelling. Yet few mandate nutrition labels on food to the extent required in North America.

If we are to label biotech foods, why don't we require labels informing us where the ingredients were grown, slaughtered or synthesized? Why not tell us the specific variety of blueberry in that muffin, or grapes in that juice? Because it's not important. Since biotech food differs from other food only in the way it was developed, there's no purpose to labelling it. But activists and media allies continue to fight for such labels, in hopes that a biotech label will scare consumers away.

Furthermore, because labeling requires food testing at every stage of transport from picking to processing, it increases the cost of those foods by as much as 30 per cent.

What the public needs is a label on all the scientifically inaccurate articles and press releases on biotech food. Perhaps: "The following piece contains five per cent half-truths, 10 per cent obfuscation and 85 per cent rubbish."