Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto--The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest
by Peter Pringle.
Simon & Schuster, 2003.
Review by Rob Hardy
One of the hardest contemporary stories to cover is genetically modified food. It is tangled with pure science, technology, industrialization, profiteering, and world politics. In the past ten years, there have been loud boasts and loud denunciations about GM crops. Those who invent and stand to profit from new herbicide-resistant, insect-resistant, salt-resistant, nutrient-added species have promised that farmers, starving third-world children, and the environment will all be benefited. On the other side are those equally insistent that "Frankenfood" promises nothing but superweeds, distorted genomes for traditional crops, allergies, decimation of fauna, and benefit to no one but giant corporations. Peter Pringle has entered this zone of contention almost like a war correspondent, and his bulletins from the front form Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto - The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest (Simon & Schuster). Pringle has tried not to take sides, but to report on the curiosities, colorful characters, and paradoxes of the new technology. Because of this, the volume will probably be unsatisfactory to anyone with strong feelings on one side or the other, but it is a good overall look at the controversy. Pringle insists that people are going to have to make informed decisions on these issues, and his book is a good step in that direction.
Pringle starts with the story of Ingo Potrykus, one of the researchers who invented "golden rice." Potrykus coaxed genes from daffodils (of all things) into rice so that the grains contained beta carotene, which can be converted in the body to vitamin A. Vitamin A is a nutrient which many third-world poor people don't get enough of. Potrykus had been funded by the Rockefeller Foundation initially, and this particular GM effort was one that put a humanitarian face on the worrisome technology. The prospect of vitamin A getting to poor kids and preventing blindness was trumpeted by the media and by the biotech industry. It was certainly true that the third world had received no benefit from GM plants before golden rice came along. But the techniques Potrykus had used of gene splicing were patented and required permission to use. Eventually, Potrykus had to allow a mega-company, Astra-Zeneca, to market golden rice in developed countries so that the seed could be given to poor farmers in the third world; thus profit-making interfered with the direct benefit the farmers could have gotten. Even so, Potrykus was swamped in controversy. The biotech industry was accused of systematically destroying traditional fruits and vegetables that would supply Vitamin A naturally, and it was said that the rice's beta carotene was preserved in cooking by microwave but not by boiling, which would be the main means of cooking, and that it would not give enough of the vitamin unless people ate huge quantities of it. Far from making GM food cuddly and acceptable, golden rice only exposed the deficiencies of the system that had produced it.
As Pringle is a British journalist, it is not surprising that much of his coverage has to do with the reception of GM foods in Britain. He examines the misguided warnings of the British geneticist and biophysicist Mae-Wan Ho, who had opposed biotech from its beginnings as "crude, unreliable, uncontrollable, and unpredictable." In the 1980s, the secret of a virus that infected members of the cabbage family was discovered; it had a promoter that can start driving cauliflower and cabbage genes at a frenetic pace. It does nothing to harm humans. But when the promoter was isolated and used as a tool to kick start "hidden" genes in other vegetables, Ho singled it out as a particular recipe for disaster. She insisted that it could promote unwanted genes, and also humans could eat it and it could promote cancers. It did no good to argue that for as long as we have been eating cabbage we have eaten the promoter with every bite. Ho had not done any original research to back up her assertions, and all the research from the biotech industry as well as the non-commercial scientific regulatory organizations showed there was negligible risk, but Ho loudly continued attacks. Pringle writes, "Ho is an unhelpful tutor, leaving the consumer caught in the middle, mistrusting both her voice and the voices of her critics. Consumers lurched from complete ignorance. to a full blown panic."
While Pringle accuses Ho and a bunch of well-intentioned environmental activist organizations of scaremongering, he has the most criticism for Monsanto and its fellow corporations. Even if, say, the cabbage virus has no chance of causing cancer, there are legitimate concerns that the industry has tried to play down, or has discounted in stupid fashions. For instance, there is a Bt toxin made by a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, which is lethal to plant pests. The toxin was spliced into potato plants, but there was worry it might harm birds and the friendly bugs that might gather around the crop. The Environmental Protection Agency (whose failure to protect either environment or consumers is a frequent theme here) asked for Bt samples from the new potato so it could check. Monsanto helpfully sent the toxin, but not from the potatoes; it was from bacteria into which the gene had been inserted. It is cheaper to get that way. Not only did Monsanto thus make meaningless any evaluation of the toxin, the EPA accepted the sample and tested it, for all the good that did. Bt also played a role in the uproar over the supposed decimation of the Monarch butterfly. Corn with the Bt gene would send pollen all over, the argument went, and some of it would fall on leaves eaten by Monarch caterpillars. (Undoubtedly, if they had only risked injuring the larvae of some unloved stinkbug we would not have heard about it.) In laboratory tests, yes, such leaves did the Monarchs no good, and the anti-biotech activists pounced. They did not acknowledge that lab conditions aren't field conditions, they simply insisted that the corn was poisoning the beloved Monarchs. Equally without evidence, Monsanto sent out a press release saying far more Monarchs were smashed on windshields than could ever be affected by the corn which had such potential for profit. It would have made sense for the tests in field conditions to have been done before the corn was released, but this did not happen. Bt was also involved when its corn was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for animal food, not human. But there is no U.S. system for keeping the two feeds separate (the FDA could be expected to know this) and inevitably we started eating it ourselves.
There is potential that GM crops might help us, but we are stumbling. Environmental activists shout whenever there is any product from GM agriculture, and the corporations have a skuzzy record of bullying Mexican bean importers and Canadian rapeseed growers for punitive royalties, as well as lying about the possible dangers of the crops. The dangers are considerable; what is going to happen, for instance, when genes to produce medicines are inserted into our grain and we get tetanus vaccine in our corn flakes? The industry has done so bad of job of safety issues that rightly or wrongly, the European Union will not import GM plants, and starving Zimbabwe has refused relief from GM corn. There is surprisingly little evidence that GM crops actually help in any way; even the financial benefits of Bt crops have been no better than marginal. The problems are not going to go away; having tinkered with the basics of plant identities, humans are unlikely to stop. _Food, Inc._ is a thoughtful and unalarmist look at the problems. GM plants have promise and hazard, and neither their promoters or detractors, nor governmental regulators, are providing sufficient service to those of us at the bottom of the food chain.
Reviewer Rob Hardy is a psychiatrist from Columbus, Mississippi who has written book reviews for The Times of Acadiana in Lafayette, Louisiana, and the Columbus Commercial Dispatch.
