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News :: Agriculture : Children : Civil & Human Rights : Elections & Legislation : Globalization : Health : Political-Economy |
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The Next Green Revolution: The Vote of Three Counties in a Non-Swing State May Decide the Fate of the World |
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by Andrew Christie
(No verified email address) |
24 Oct 2004
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Dr. Dan Peterson made the “don’t stop the march of progress” argument, making the analogy to the early days of the automotive industry: Dangerously unsafe early vehicles gradually improved, their defects eliminated through research. We didn’t ban cars; the technology was allowed to advance.
One of the audience members pointed out that a car cannot pass along the characteristics of a bad muffler to other cars. She might well have added that they also can’t transfer bad-muffler traits to other species, nor pass along characteristics that go undetected for a generation or two before triggering unforeseen reactions in combination with viruses that have lain dormant for millions of years, nor cause problems that cannot be corrected -- say, a legacy of birth defects or an unstoppable plague -- even if you recall every defective vehicle you produced. |
On March 2, 2004, voters in Mendocino County, rugged individualists on California’s rugged north coast, approved a ballot measure making it the first municipality in the United States to ban the growing of genetically engineered plants and animals. The proponents of the ban, outspent 7 to 1 by a torrent of corporate biotech money funneled into the county via a front group for Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical et al to kill the measure, won with 57% of the vote. A few months later, just north of Mendocino, the Trinity County board of supervisors, not waiting for a ballot measure, followed suit. Three more California counties now have their own versions of Mendocino’s GE crop ban on their November ballots.
It may turn out to be the most important ballot line in the country. To understand why, it helps to know the story of Dr. Ignacio Chapela.
When it comes to the perils of uttering a discouraging word about genetic engineering and the $220 billion industry peddling it, Chapela knows whereof he speaks. Three years ago, the UC Berkeley biotech researcher had the misfortune of leading the team that first discovered and reported transgenic DNA pollution in the maize of southern Mexico, the cradle of the world’s seed stock for corn. The specter of Mexco’s multiple corn varieties overwhelmed by a genetically engineered strain would be an international disaster for biodiversity and food security, and Mexico had been assured by the backers of NAFTA that the free-trade flood of GE corn from the US would not create that problem. Dr. Chapela’s revelation therefore was keenly unwelcome in the halls of corporate biotech and by those trying to sell the GE bounty elsewhere in the world. His findings, published in the scientific journal Nature, were instantly and intensely attacked -- his data, methodology and conclusions were slipshod, prejudiced, bad science, etc. Under industry pressure, Nature published an unprecedented apology for publishing the paper. UC Berkeley, which had just signed a $25-million research & patents deal with Swiss biotech giant Novartis, denied Chapela tenure despite the unanimous recommendation of his department. An investigation by The Guardian of London later uncovered evidence that the attack on Chapela was orchestrated by a Washington p.r. firm that specializes in biotech industry clients.
Five subsequent studies have confirmed what Chapela reported in 2001: Transgenic corn from the US is contaminating the native maize of Mexico. The papers' authors have not been able to get them published anywhere.
When Dr. Chapela came to San Luis Obispo’s Unitarian Fellowship Center on October 10 to speak in support of Measure Q, the ban on growing GE crops in the county, he didn’t go into the details of his harrowing personal story, but his qualifications -- a resume spanning the biotech industry, government and the groves of academe -- were obvious as he laid out the problem: Genetically engineered crops were seen from the inception of the technology as a huge cash cow waiting to be milked. In the rush to commercialize the science, “we had to look the other way” in terms of the lack of data or risk studies. Now, 25 years down the road, “the green light and blank check” that was issued to biotech to get the product to market in a hurry means the data we should have been collecting isn’t there; only about 10 studies on human health and GMO’s have been performed, and half of those have discovered reasons for concern -- including malformed organs, tumors, and early death in lab rats. The measures now on the ballots of three counties in California, he said, are needed to buy the time necessary for the research to catch up to GE's runaway engine of commerce.
There were two scientists on the panel from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo’s training center for future farmers and engineers. Speaking after Dr. Chapela, and clearly not yet having found themselves in a position to learn what Chapela has learned about the world and the way it really works, they ignored everything he had said and trotted out their arguments opposed to a crop ban.
First, they tried a magic trick. Dr. Scott Steinmaus instructed audience members who had each been given two ears of corn upon entering to partially peel back the leaves on the ears marked with a minus sign. All discovered the browned, disheveled tips that are the hallmark of the corn ear worm. Then -- reminding the audience that he had just picked these ears from Cal Poly’s fields that morning, and, of course, couldn't say what they’d find -- Steinmaus asked the audience to semi-shuck the “+” -marked ears, from the college’s GE field, which were all found to be be pearly yellow perfection and corn ear worm free. He beamed. (As a kid, when I was assigned the task of shucking and boiling the corn for Sunday dinner, I would flick off the worm, if present, cut off the brown tip with a two-dollar paring knife and drop the corn in the pot. Little did I know that I could one day circumvent this low-tech solution to this vegetable emergency thanks to a $220 billion industry that would also draft me into an experiment that may bequeath to my descendants liver failure or congenital deformities.)
Then Dr. Dan Peterson made the “don’t stop the march of progress” argument, making the analogy to the early days of the automotive industry: Dangerously unsafe early vehicles gradually improved, their defects eliminated through research. We didn’t ban cars; the technology was allowed to advance.
One of the audience members pointed out that a car cannot pass along the characteristics of a bad muffler to other cars. She might well have added that they also can’t transfer bad-muffler traits to other species, nor pass along characteristics that go undetected for a generation or two before triggering unforeseen reactions in combination with viruses that have lain dormant for millions of years, nor cause problems that cannot be corrected -- say, a legacy of birth defects or an unstoppable plague -- even if you recall every defective vehicle you produced.
GE’s defenders at the table opined that they're just biologists, not trained in the social sciences, and were having to learn how to deal with the “emotionalities” around the GE debate. But as the questions from the well-behaved audience mounted, the scientists had no opportunity to practice grappling with emotions; rather, they seemed to have problems with the application of logic.
Dr. Peterson said he was sure corporations would never come to patent and own all the seed stock used to grow the world’s food crops. When informed that this is, in fact, Monsanto’s stated business plan, he said he didn’t doubt the reality of a company _intending_ to do so, but doubted they could ever actually achieve it. When pressed as to exactly what would stop a transnational giant with billions of dollars in resources -- with which it is rapidly buying up seed companies -- from achieving that goal, he said he hoped corporations like Monsanto would also be selling non-GE seed from the companies they purchased, even though the point of that exercise is to alter one characteristic of a seed’s DNA, patent it, own it, and thereby charge eternally for its use. He affirmed his faith in the marketplace, as many people clearly prefer to buy organic non-GMOs rather than Big Ag’s manipulated product, therefore consumer choice would effectively thwart the corporate plan for 100% penetration of genetically engineered foods. When asked what role consumer choice could have in the matter once GE crops had succeeded in cross-pollinating and contaminating non-GE crops, extinguishing the organic option, he held his hands up in front of his chest and said he was not going to get into a discussion of Monsanto’s business plan because that wasn’t his field.
Peterson and Steinmaus both affirmed that a crop ban was not the way to go because it will not take food products containing genetically engineered ingredients off supermarket shelves, nor label them, nor fund more safety testing. They urged concerned members of the public to instead “call their Congressmen.”
On the other side of the table, Dr. Brian Rees gently pointed out that the people of San Luis Obispo are not in a position to prod the federal government into an action it is not inclined to take, nor bring about a national labeling program. “We cannot effect that,” but, he suggested, “If you’ve got an oar and some water, you stick your oar in the water and start to row. This is what you can do now.”
About two weeks after the Unitarian Center debate, organic farmer Brian Rich stood on the sidewalk of Higuera Street in downtown San Luis Obispo and watched a protest parade of huge, shiny new tractors and industrial agricultural machinery trundle down the street in a show of “family farmer” solidarity against the GE crop ban. (Talking points: The measure is “poorly written,” “unenforceable,” “economically devastating” and “restricts farmers’ freedom of choice.”) None of the giant machines looked like it cost less than $100,000, and all looked like they had rolled out the factory doors of International Harvester and John Deere earlier that day.
A bemused Rich pulled out his cell phone and called the organizers of the SLO GE-Free ballot initiative. “Looks like Monsanto has arrived,” he said.
More than 100 million acres of the American midwest are now covered with GE crops. California’s massive agricultural sector, still relatively untouched, is the next prize. On November 2, the residents of San Luis Obispo, Butte and Marin Counties will let Big Ag know if that golden prize is nearly in hand or if an anti-corporate Boston Tea Party, 21st-century West Coast division, has commenced. If the latter, then -- as usually happens with things that begin in California -- it will surely spread.
Andrew Christie is chapter coordinator for the Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club in San Luis Obispo. |
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