Crop circles: spin notwithstanding, can GM food still save the world?

Natural History, Oct, 2003 by Marc J. Cohen

The case of GoldenRice, engineered by Ingo Potrykus, a plant biologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, highlights some of the pitfalls now faced even by scientists at public institutions, funded through philanthropic foundations, who get caught in the intricate web of corporate patents. Pringle shows how the development of GoldenRice, which at first seemed a triumph in the war against malnutrition, turned into a nightmare snarl of ownership claims covering dozens of processes and genes. He points out that the public-sector scientists were hardly to blame for their partnership with the private sector: the European Commission required them to partner with a European company in order to get public funds. The company then obtained the exclusive right to market GoldenRice in the industrialized world, in exchange for making it available free of charge to poor farmers in developing countries.

Nestle is much more sympathetic than Pringle is to the critics of food biotechnology. She argues that they have couched their criticisms in the language of food safety, particularly in the United States, because regulatory policy has limited debate strictly to scientific questions. Social and political issues--the concentrated corporate control over biotechnology, the lack of transparency in decision making, the corporate resistance to food labeling that could make consumers better-informed about their choices--are not on the scientific agenda. Thus, Nestle maintains, critics have no choice but to demonstrate, litigate, and, on occasion, engage in provocative rhetoric, often disseminated quite effectively via the Internet. (Despite her sympathies, however, Nestle, like Pringle, condemns acts of violence that opponents of biotech have sometimes directed against test plots and laboratories.)

Nestle devotes a lot of attention to the globalization of food safety and biotechnology. She rightly points out that food-safety standards in industrialized nations are often little more than tariff barriers by another name: they protect domestic growers by keeping out competing agricultural products from developing countries. She also explains how the debate about labeling has gone global: the European Union, for instance, is seeking to have biotech imports separated from conventional produce, and documented as to their source.

But Nestle's presentation is marred by errors and omissions. She does not discuss the formal U.S. complaint to the World Trade Organization-which she repeatedly and incorrectly refers to as a UN agency--that the Europeans are violating global commercial rules by discriminating against GM products. She also writes that an international agreement called the Biosafety Protocol permits countries to ban GM food imports because of concerns about environmental safety, but she fails to mention that the U.S. government vociferously rejects that interpretation.

Like Pringle, however, Nestle does not reject food biotechnology outright. She, too, regards it as a tool for alleviating hunger--despite her criticism of corporate tactics. She calls upon the industry to "tithe," donating 10 percent of its profits to research into the food needs of developing countries.