Undoubtedly Postal employees are already groaning under sacks of Greenpeace mailings after a recent Journal story (reference omitted). It told how, after receiving a Greenpeace fax, Novartis, the big Swiss drug and biochemicals company, instantly agreed to stop using genetically engineered strains of corn and soybeans in its Gerber baby food line. The company said it wanted to be "ready" just in case European food phobia jumps the Atlantic.
As with all of Greenpeace's most highly publicized quests (the campaign against polyvinyl chloride comes to mind), this one is purely quixotic. Biotechnology is already everywhere. Coke has been using high-fructose corn sweetener made from genetically modified corn for years. Half of the soybean fields in the U.S., the world's largest producer, are planted with genetically modified seeds. Soybeans and their derivative products are estimated to exist in some form in 60% of processed foods. No one has sprouted wings.
But Greenpeace needs a bogeyman, and biotech promises to be a fund-raising bogeyman for decades to come. Novartis, which has its own bioengineering businesses, probably should have weighed the long-run costs before launching its preemptive surrender.
In Europe, across the whole food technology front, confusion and hysteria have displaced reason and economics, with incalculable costs to those who are trying to bring new and beneficial innovations to market. The EU has a trade war going on with the U.S. over beef hormones. Its regulators have stopped reviewing applications for new genetically modified plant varieties. Now a "scientific steering committee" is proposing a ban on antibiotics in animal feed even though there is no scientific evidence for the claim that this increases antibiotic resistance in humans.
On such Luddite tides ride a lot of unrelated interests. Putatively responsible people like Prince Charles, who farms "organically" on his ancestral estates, has joined the attack on "frankenfoods," thereby putting himself on the same side of the argument as Britain's worst tabloids. Another gentleman farmer, Greenpeace Director Lord Melchett, who made his money by inheriting a chemicals fortune, was jailed recently for leading a band of his zealots to destroy a government-run experimental farm. Never mind that the farm was seeking the sort of biotechnology-safety answers the group says it wants.
Such copycat attacks have been proliferating in recent weeks, becoming a genuine epidemic. The British government is ruefully considering conducting future tests at secret sites. Nor is it a coincidence that these are the same criminal tactics that European farmers use against each other, intercepting cattle and produce at the border and burning them.
The breakdown in public order and government authority is only partly traceable to the mishandling of "mad cow disease," tainted blood scandals and the Belgian kiddie-porn capers. In Europe, on matters of trade and technology, the mob has been running the show for a while.
Monsanto, the big life-sciences group, had this blow up in its face when, beginning last year, it decided to make a point of not segregating genetically modified soybeans from regular soybeans for the European market. It wasn't Greenpeace but the supposedly responsible leaders of the supermarket industry who led the backlash. Malcolm Walker, head of the Iceland grocery chain, posing as the defender of "consumer choice," denounced Monsanto in ads and interviews. At Safeway, Chairman David Webster stormed a podium recently to declare that his company was "fighting back against the tide of genetically modified foods and ingredients hitting U.K. shelves."
Such blather may be good marketing, but it encourages public distrust and lawlessness. Just last week, a Monsanto farm in Ireland that was testing a new sugar beet was attacked by vandals who poured petrochemicals on the crop, damaging 60% of the acreage. The real danger to public safety in Europe today is food paranoia and vigilantism.
So far, fingers crossed and the Gerber decision notwithstanding, the U.S. public has kept its head about bioengineered foods. Jeremy Rifkin, who has been belaboring the frankenfoods theme in books for years, has been pretty much on his own. We admire our farmers as high-tech businesspeople, whereas the Europeans see theirs as zoo exhibits. Alan Greenspan and low unemployment have left Americans with relatively greater confidence in government.
All of these things, plus the fact that biotech could be painted as a conspiracy of U.S. agribusiness, have worked against the industry in Europe. When the Iceland grocery chain decided to use genetically-modified foods as a wedge issue, it ran a picture of Bill Clinton with the tagline "The U.S. President doesn't care what you put in your mouth." One hesitates to speculate what Americans would have made of the slogan. The best lesson we could learn from Europe is the foolishness of allowing food technology and safety to become politicized merely for the benefit of fund-raising by the fringe.
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