SERIOUS
MISCHIEF
Recently, Britain's Labor
Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered Prince Charles to shut down his royal
Web site. The prince refused point blank the prime minister's command.
The Prince
is speaking out about Monsanto's international PR and lobbying blitzkrieg
on behalf of GM (genetically modified crops)--called
GE in the U.S. (genetically
engineered crops). He wants to encourage lively debate.
Monsanto
is making $1.5 billion a year from bovine growth hormone, rBGH, according
to Alexander Cockburn of the Nation, who says "the haul from Monsanto's
Round-Up Ready soybeans, potatos and corn and its terminator seeds could
be tens of billions more." The European Union has been opposed
to allowing these products into its markets, but with recent arm wringing
from U.S. politiicians such as President Clinton and V.P. Gore, the
E.U. has relented.
Cockburn
chided the prince's "cosmic holism and organic communitarianism"
but that is another way of saying the prince may be seeing the big picture.
Those qualities win him the Dendrite Forest Award for
RADICAL
CONNECTIVITY
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The Prince of Wales asks: Is genetically modified food an innovation
we can do without?
A selection of your email responses appears below.
Professor Henry I Miller,
of Stanford University, USA, said:
Plants and micro-organisms have long been genetically improved by mutation
and selection and used to make biotechnology products as varied as yogurt,
beer, cereal crops, antibiotics, vaccines, and enzymes for laundry detergents.
For decades, genes have been transferred widely across natural breeding
boundaries to yield common food plants including oats, rice, black currants,
pumpkins, potatoes, tomatoes, wheat, and corn.
These "genetically engineered" plants are not those found in laboratories
or test plots but are the very same fruits, vegetables, and grains that
consumers buy at the local supermarket or greengrocer. The techniques
of the "new biotechnology" - gene splicing, tissue cultures, and the
rest - essentially speed up and target with greater precision the kinds
of genetic improvement that have long been carried out with other methods.
New biotechnology, according to a worldwide scientific consensus, lowers
even further the already minimal risk associated with introducing new
plant varieties into the food supply. The use of these sophisticated
techniques makes the final product even safer, as it is now possible
to introduce pieces of DNA that contain only one or a few well-characterized
genes. In contrast, the older genetic techniques transferred a variable
number of genes haphazardly. Users of the new techniques can be more
certain about the traits they introduce into the plants.
Thousands of products from plant varieties engineered with the older
techniques have entered the marketplace in the last three or four decades,
and only three products (two squash varieties and one potato type) had
unsafe levels of toxins; in addition, one celery variety caused allergic
skin reactions in some farm and supermarket workers. But today's more
precise gene-splicing techniques mitigate against any repetition. Even
though the safety level is exemplary, a few anti-technology advocacy
groups have pushed for labels that disclose the use of certain genetic
engineering techniques. Such labels would add significantly to the costs
of processed foods made from fresh fruits and vegetables. The precise
costs will vary according to the product. But, for example, a company
using a gene-spliced, higher-solids, less-watery tomato (which is more
favorable for processing) would have the additional costs of segregating
the product at all levels of planting, harvesting, shipping, processing
and distribution. Labels would have to appear on vegetable soup, indicating
the presence of any amount of gene-spliced tomato, potato or other products.
The added production costs are a particular disadvantage to products
in this competitive, low profit-margin market. Unnecessary and arbitrary
regulation constitutes, in effect, a punitive "tax" on regulated products
or activities, which, in turn, creates a disincentive to their development
and use. Consumers, whose prices will be raised and choices diminished
by this regulatory tax, would be better served by industry spending
its resources on research and development to create new, safer products.
Time is on the side of the new biotechnology: virtually all of the tomato
paste in the UK already is derived from gene-spliced tomatoes, for example,
and thousands of European processed foods will soon contain derivatives
of gene-spliced soya or maize. In a decade or two innumerable products
made with the new biotechnology will be as much a part of our routines
as microwave ovens and televisions are today.
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