Genetically Engineered Food: Promises & Perils

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Eden Foods, a company that produces a wide range of organic foods, including Edensoy organic soy milk, recently announced efforts to create a sustainable sup ply of non-bioengineered organic corn for its products. The effort, which is modeled on their system for procuring organic soybeans , involves close collaboration with seed suppliers, 100 organic corn growers, and malting and milling companies. Each follows specific protocols to guarantee that the corn is protected from transgenic contamination. These steps are documented, and the corn is tested every step of the way. "This process—the paperwork, the storage of the corn samples so that we can duplicate any tests we do, and the storage of the tests themselves—is more difficult, time-consuming and costly than everything we do to certify that our products are organic," says Eden chairman and president Michael Potter. Besides requiring nearly two sets of full-time staff, making sure their corn is GMO-free has doubled the cost of the corn and increased their malt costs by 24 percent.

Farmers who don't go to such trouble and expense to ensure their crops remain uncontaminated are being harassed by biotech companies when the company suspects patent-protected transgenic plants are growing on the farmer's land. Farmers like Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian canola grower, and the Rodney Nelson family, wheat and soybean growers in North Dakota, are screaming foul. Schmeiser, who is both appealing a ruling against him and counter-suing, maintains he never planted Monsanto's herbicide-resistant canola and his land was contaminated by their bioengineered product.

The Nelsons acknowledge they planted and paid for the company's herbicide-resistant soybeans in 1999. But by autumn that year, they'd decided to forgo the GM beans because of low yields. Nevertheless, Monsanto accused the Nelsons of planting more than they bought, a charge the family vehemently denied. After hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and tremendous stress on the family, the Nelsons reached a confidential settlement with Monsanto earlier this year.

A Just and Democratic Technology?

Crop diversity is already threatened by our modern industrial farming system that plants a relatively small number of varieties across millions of acres. Biotech patents will further erode any remaining crop diversity, making both farmers and the public more dependent on agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and DuPont that produce genetically engineered seeds.

Civil society groups around the world are challenging corporate claims on life patents. Activists from more than 50 countries are pressing for a treaty that would establish the Earth's gene pool as a global commons. More than 300 organizations have signed onto the effort and are now working to enshrine the treaty in legislation around the globe.

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