SPRING 1999 - ISSUE NUMBER 47
SPRING 1999 - ISSUE NUMBER 47
Book Review
Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food
By Marc Lappé and Britt Bailey
1998, Common Courage Press: Monroe, Maine $14.95
(Go here to buy the book online)Indian farmers are making headlines as they destroy test plots of genetically modified cotton. French farmers are openly defiling genetically modified seed. Japanese consumers are unwilling to purchase transgenic soy beans or soy products. Luxembourg, Switzerland and Denmark have taken special steps to ban or limit the importation or use of genetically engineered crops. Yet, in the United States, according to Marc Lappé and Britt Bailey, the public is virtually oblivious to the dangers that presently attach to the brave new world of biotechnology and its silent but growing presence in our food supply. The dangers, they argue, are biological and sociocultural in nature -- firmly tied to concerns of ecological stability, human health and political power.
It is because of the magnitude of these perceived dangers that Lappé and Bailey want to make them visible and problematic. This, then, is the purpose of their book, Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food (1998). It is to reveal and question the sanctity of the technology, the ethics that guide it, and the processes that oversee it, nationally and internationally.
Against the Grain is a small book that asks many large questions and finds little, if any, comfort in the answers. The authors, both of whom work for the Center for Ethics and Toxics, question the stability of genetically modified crops, using Roundup Ready® (soy, corn, cotton) and Bt technologies (Bollgard™-cotton, Yieldgard™-corn, New Leaf™-potato) as their principal cases in point. They explain that the transfer of DNA from one organism to another, frequently unrelated, organism is hardly an exact science, but largely a hit or miss proposition, a matter of bombarding plant cells with protein 'bullets'. Furthermore, only single traits are being transferred and not a complex of mutually interdependent and biologically balanced characteristics. Just where these isolated 'bits' of genetic material will lodge is neither uniform nor fully controllable. Just how they will express themselves, or how they will interact with (or interfere with) the expression of an organism's existing traits is still, despite corporate and governmental assurances to the contrary, uncertain. The problems recently encountered with Bollgard™ cotton are illustrative as well as cautionary.
From an ecological standpoint, the authors express concern that biotechnology, as it is currently being developed, will only increase pesticide dependence and pesticide residues in food world-wide. There is reason to believe, for instance, that Roundup Ready® soybeans (which are now being grown on five continents) will not be able to grow adequately without pesticide. Equally critical is the development of pest resistance and the possibility that genetically engineered traits in domestic crops will cross over to wild and weedy relatives -- conditions that threaten crop stability and compromise biological diversity.
Given these scientific uncertainties, the authors question the speed with which genetically modified organisms have been released as commercial products. "According to Hartz Seed Co., a Monsanto subsidiary, Monsanto plans to have one half of the U.S. soybean crop, or some 30 million acres genetically engineered with Roundup Ready® genes by 1998. ... In year 2000, Monsanto plans to have one hundred percent of the soybeans in the U.S. converted with the Roundup Ready® gene technology" (5). This speed, they point out, serves corporate needs, but not those of the consumer or the environment. It comes, they believe, at the expense of adequate testing and system tracking.
Unlike traditional plant breeding strategies which observe organisms over the course of several generations and can retrieve the original genetic material from multi generational crosses, the outcome of biotechnology under corporate domination threatens to be irreversible and seriously short-sighted. The long-term impact on soil chemistry and microorganisms as well as on human health is simply unknown. According to the authors, little attention is being paid to third or fourth generational performance or to secondary developmental or interactive consequences. Far too much, they feel, is being ignored -- the toxicity of 'inerts,' the breakdown of bromoxynil (the 'active' ingredient in BXN cotton) into DBHA an equally toxic compound, the use of genetically modified cotton in edible oils and animal feed, the effect of Bt on the flora and fauna within the human gut. These unknowns together with an impressive array of unintended consequences (e.g., arthritic pigs, severe allergies) should give us pause -- transgenic crops are already being used in the manufacture of our favorite snack foods while Roundup Ready® soybeans have found their way into infant formula world wide.
Because the authors would substitute the conservative 'least harm' directive for the commercial "opportunity principle," they question the review process currently in place for transgenic crops. They are critical of the USDA, EPA and FDA, regulatory agencies taking their directives (and science) from industry. They point to flaws in the determination of tolerance levels and risk assessments; they note that no protocol is in place to handle 'accidents' nor any "comprehensive statute addressing the environmental risks of agriculturally engineered plants..." (77). They explain that FDA audits can be preempted and a corporation allowed to inspect itself, the results kept from public scrutiny. In a similar manner, APHIS can and does permit major corporations "to field test many of their crops without prior regulatory review. Once deregulated, all oversight (with the exception of pesticide tolerances) ceases for transgenic crops..." (74).
Consistent with this, the FDA effectively considers foods derived from genetically altered and non-altered crops equivalent, requiring no segregation or labeling. According to the authors, consumer sovereignty -- the right to know and the right to act on that knowledge -- is being dangerously disregarded. The fact that 93% of the U.S. population wants labeling of some kind for bioengineered foods serves to underscore their point.
Still, is this the price biotechnology must exact for being able to feed a growing world population? Here again, the authors question the glib (and self-serving) corporate and governmental claims that biotechnology is the answer to global food shortage and hunger. Lappé and Bailey are quick to point out that the vast majority of transgenic crops are raised to feed animals, not people. At the same time, there has been little, if any, increase in their productivity. In fact, they note that genetically modified soy has realized consistently lower yields than its non-modified counterpart. Neither has there been any nutritional up-grade along the way. Crops are not being designed to withstand droughty conditions, or salinization, to deliver greater protein or serve multiple, subsistence-linked purposes. Rather, they are being developed to improve aesthetic or processing attributes and to articulate with a complex of costly chemicals. Least we forget, the transnational corporations now embracing the "life sciences" are first and foremost chemical companies. "In 1996 global sales of pesticides topped $30.5 billion and is predicted to rise to $33.1 billion by 2001" (102). Big money follows chemical dependence.
The public, Lappé and Bailey believe, "is at the mercy of corporate ethics" -- ethics that place privatization and profit at their core (24). They illustrate their point using the case of Bt. Through biotechnology and monocultural practices, insects are developing a resistance to this naturally occurring toxoid and it is expected to lose its effectiveness within the next ten years. Anticipating this, those companies that currently own Bt patents can actually benefit from pushing (not restricting) the use of Bt technology before their patents expire. Doing so not only allows them to reap vast financial rewards, but it has the added advantage of eliminating future Bt competitors. The fact that it will simultaneously destroy an environmentally-benign biological of particular importance to organic farmers and IPM practitioners is merely the cost of doing business. But, once again, it is not business that pays the cost.
For the authors, it is the scale and scope of the technology and not the technology itself that they ultimately question. It is being inserted into monocultural regimes world wide by monopolistic owner-managers. The process is replete with (and enabled by) all the problems of industrial agriculture &emdash; the technological treadmill, the market competition, the loss of biological and cultural diversity, corporate secrecy and control, social and economic inequity, governmental impotence, and public disenfranchisement and ignorance. According to the authors, this scientifically-derived technology, advanced without ecological limit, open review or appropriate scale, pushes farmers into economic crisis, "dislocates major cultural values and creates a 'defacto' acceptance of human domination over nature" (113). It is the ultimate irony that as our technology becomes more and more totalizing, our survival rests on our ability to consult and activate our collective consciousness (and consciences), and not our science.
These, then, are some of the major questions and critical discussions presented by the authors in Against the Grain. Their topic -- the impact of biotechnology on food and farming -- is awesome and their knowledge is also impressive. Yet, for all of that, the book is not as informative nor as dynamic as it might be. Part of the problem stems from its organization. The reader is not grounded in the domestication of plants (and animals), the history of industrial agriculture or the primary directives of a corporately-controlled food system. Rather, these subjects are embedded in, and quite secondary to, a somewhat disjointed scientific and regulatory critique of a set of technologies. Stated somewhat differently, the book does not clearly situate its subject within a larger ecological, sociocultural and/or historic context. It does not build a framework for understanding the many relationships that exist between biological systems and the human manipulation of those systems (and what can happen). As a result, and despite its brevity (150 pages), the book is quite redundant, wandering back and forth, reiterating arguments and data and/or alluding to issues not yet presented.
A possible reason for this disorganization (or misorganization) is that the authors have not adequately identified their audience. If they are writing to enlighten the general public, then they need to discuss concepts like diversity, domination, and sustainability as they relate to industrial society, the environment and the agrofood system before addressing the mechanisms of Roundup Ready® technology (see, for example, Gussow 1991, Fowler and Mooney 1990, Shiva 1993, Raeburn 1995, Krimsky and Wrubel 1996, the work of RAFI). If they are addressing environmental and food activists, then they need to provide a fuller and more nuanced discussion of the science of biotechnology, governmental regulatory behavior, and corporate culture (see, for example, Doyle 1985, Busch et al 1991, Rifkin 1998, Kneen 1995). Pollan (1998) manages to do both quite well in his recent article in the New York Times.
Finally, Against the Grain would have been more effective if it had provided its readers with the means to further explore and engage the issues. The book ends with a set of reasonable, but rather status-quo preserving regulatory recommendations, and no clear strategies for implementation. The book would have benefitted from an annotated bibliography as well as a review of those individuals and organizations actively researching, rethinking, and reforming the place of biotechnology and corporate power within agriculture and the global food system. Against the Grain is a good book and very timely, but it is not a great book, nor is it the first (or last) book a reader should consult on the subject.
Works Cited:
Busch, Lawrence and William B. Lacy, Jeffrey Burkhardt, Laura R. Lacy. 1991. Plants, Power and Profit: Social, Economic, and Ethical Consequences of the New Biotechnologies. Basil Blackwell, Inc.: Cambridge, MA.
Doyle, Jack. 1985. Altered Harvest: Agriculture, Genetics, and the Fate of the World's Food Supply. Viking Penguin: N.Y.
Fowler, Cary and Patrick Mooney. 1990. Shattering: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity. University of Arizona Press: Tucson.
Gussow, Joan Dye. 1991. Chicken Little, Tomato Sauce & Agriculture: Who Will Produce Tomorrow's Food? The Bootstrap Press: N.Y.
Kneen, Brewster. 1995. Invisible Giant: Cargill and Its Transnational Strategies. Fernwood Publishing: Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Krimsky, Sheldon and Roger P. Wrubel. 1996. Agicultural Biotechnology and the Environment: Science Policy and Social Issues. University of Illinois Press: Urbana.
Pollan, Michael. 1998. "Playing God in the Garden." The New York Times Magazine October 25, 1998. Sec 6: 44-51, 62, 63, 82, 92, 93.
Raeburn, Paul. 1995. The Last Harvest: The Genetic Gamble that Threatens to Destroy American Agriculture. Simon & Schuster: New York.
Rifkin, Jeremy. 1998. The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World. Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Putnam: N.Y.
Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI). Web site:
http://www.rafi.org.
Return to the Index of Synapse 47, Spring 1999