Dec '00 / Jan 2001

A Gift Given, A Gift Received: Water
to Iraq
By Edilith Eckart

Election Analysis Progressive
Directions?
By Bill Thomson

Modernizing Our Electoral Rules &
Practices
By Rob Richie

Democracy 101
By Blair Bobier

Clean Money: Campaign Finance
Reform
By John Moyers

Book Review: The Cultural Creatives
Paul H. Ray & Sherry Ruth
Anderson Reviewed by
Peter Montague

Remembrance: Robert Theobald
By Bob Stilger

Transforming Our Dreaming
By JosŽ Stevens

Democracy and the Airwaves
By Suzi Aufderheide

StarLink: More Bad News for Biotech
by Ronnie Cummins

The US Is Warned "Wake Up To Global Warming Threat"
By Environmental News Service

U.S. Position Threatens to Derail Climate Change Negotiations
By Cat Lazaroff

Martin Luther King, Jr: Global and
Social Shaman
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.

Sexual Union, Inside and Out
By Peter Moore

A Pagan Speak to Jesus
By John Darling

Cosmic Calendar
By Salina Rain

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(continued) StarLink: More Bad News for Biotech
by Ronnie Cummins


No Labeling and No Safety Testing

The US government's "no labeling" and "no safety testing" policy has become a serious liability and a source of controversy. The Center for Food Safety and other public interest groups filed a major lawsuit in 1998 in US Federal Court to take GE foods and crops off the market. Last October the lawsuit was headed off by the FDA, but only by admitting in court that they actually have had no real policy in place on genetically engineered foods and crops since 1992. In effect, all so-called "regulation" up until now has been completely voluntary on the part of Monsanto, Aventis, and the rest of the biotech industry. Commenting on the October 2nd decision, Center for Food Safety attorney Andrew Kimbrell stated, "This court decision means that for almost a decade these novel foods have gone virtually unregulated in the United States. American consumers have been used as unknowing guinea pigs ·"

Inside sources report that the FDA has postponed publishing new proposed regulations on genetically engineered foods, at least until after the November elections. In the aftermath of the StarLink controversy, the FDA understands that its forthcoming proposed regulations (no mandatory labeling, no mandatory safety testing, no required liability insurance) will likely set off a huge public backlash during the legally required public comment period. But federal officials and the Gene Giants are caught in a terrible bind. If they do what most of the public wants and require mandatory pre-market safety testing and labeling, leading food corporations and supermarkets will do what they are already doing in Europe and Asia-remove GE foods and ingredients from their brand-name products. Stores won't sell products branded with the "skull and crossbones" of the GE label, and farmers will be very reluctant to grow these crops. On the other hand, if the FDA, USDA, and EPA continue to do the bidding of the biotechnology industry, they risk losing billions of dollars in US export sales, not to mention the political risks of provoking the ire of US consumers, who are now apparently awakening to the GE food controversy with a vengeance.

On the international front, the leading producers of genetically engineered crops-the US with 74% of all GE crops, Canada with 10% and Argentina with 15%-face a similar dilemma. If they try to use the hammer of economic sanctions from the World Trade Organization to force Frankenfoods down the throats of the WTO's other 131 nation-state members, they risk provoking a trade war and possibly even a meltdown of the entire global "Free Trade" system. If they don't use the police and enforcement power of the WTO, however, more and more countries are going to make it harder and harder for untested and unlabeled GE products to get into their countries. For example:

• Europe, which has not approved a new GE crop since April 1998, told the US on Oct. 11 "· the only way the European Union's de facto moratorium on new GM (genetically modified) seeds is likely to be lifted is for US farmers to be required to segregate genetically modified crops from those grown from traditional seeds ·"
  Meanwhile new human health fears over antibiotic resistance genes in GE cattle feeds are prompting Europe's leading food producers and supermarket chains to ban GE animal feeds in their meat and dairy production. Recently a government advisory board in Britain, the Advisory Committee on Animal Feeding Stuffs, admitted that antibiotic resistant marker genes found in genetically engineered foods and animal feeds may be able to transfer antibiotic resistance to the bacteria in animals' guts, giving rise to dangerous pathogens in humans that can't be killed by traditional antibiotics. German scientists earlier this year-in a story widely reported across Europe-found that antibiotic resistant genes from GE rapeseed plants were combining with bacteria in the stomachs and intestines of bees. BBC reported on Oct. 6 that the UK's major grocery chains are all removing GE ingredients from animal feed. A recent UK poll commissioned by Friends of the Earth found 63% of British shoppers want supermarkets to drop GM ingredients from animal feeds. The European Commission and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations are now both calling for mandatory labeling of animal feeds, a move that analysts predict will all but kill non-segregated, GE-tainted US grain exports to Europe and Asia.
  
  
• Cargill, the world's largest grain company, announced in September that they are expanding their contract production and marketing of non-genetically engineered corn, and will strictly segregate these varieties at their processing plants in Paris, Illinois, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Liverpool, England. As Cropchoice News reported in September, "Cargill's latest parlay into non-GMO comes at time when it and other big grain processors continue to downplay the demand for non-biotech grain. But like ADM and ConAgra, Cargill is making moves into the non-GMO market even as they suggest it is unimportant." Cargill's shift reaffirms the conclusion of a recent study carried out by professor David Bullock at the University of Illinois which found that US grain handlers can efficiently and economically segregate GE and non-GE grain varieties by simply designating specific grain elevators, grain processing plants, and transportation facilities as either GE or non-GE.
  
  
• Government officials in Taiwan announced in October that they will follow the lead of other Asian and Pacific countries and require mandatory labeling of food with genetically engineered ingredients. According to officials, labeling requirements will come into force in 2001-with similar measures being implemented in South Korea and Japan. Taiwan is a major importer of US grains, importing over 4.5 million metric tons of corn last year. According to Cropchoice News, "The government's decision is in response to intense pressure and follows publication of a Gallup poll in which 74% of Taiwanese said they expected the government to require labels on GMO food." According to Reuters news agency, Uni-Food Enterprises, Taiwan's largest food company, reacted to the news by promising to comply with the labeling requirements and move toward using non-genetically engineered ingredients. Uni-Food Enterprises, with $2.6 billion in annual sales, produces animal feeds, dairy products, frozen foods, instant noodles, and soft drinks.
  
  
• According to an Associated Press story in October Japanese authorities have warned the United States not to export StarLink corn to Japan. Government officials were embarrassed after a public interest group, the Consumers Union of Japan, announced in Tokyo that it had found traces of StarLink corn in snack foods sold in Japanese stores as well as in imported animal feed. StarLink corn is prohibited in both human and animal feed in Japan. An earlier AP story reported that an entire 55,000 ton shipload of US corn destined for Japan was rejected after testing positive for StarLink, "sending shock waves through importers in Japan as well as other Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan." According to the AP "Japan imports about 60 percent of its food, much of it from the United States. In 1999, Japan imported 15.9 million tons of corn from the United States, including 10.8 million tons for animal feed, the Foreign Ministry said. The remaining 5.1 million tons were for food, mostly for corn starch." Korea imports about eight million tons of corn per year from the US. The Consumers Union of Japan and allied consumer groups in South Korea are calling for a moratorium on the importation of all GE foods into their countries. In a recent poll 82% of Japanese consumers said they were opposed to genetically engineered food-the highest level of resistance in the world.

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