Feb/March 2001
It
Does Pay to Fight
by Jackie Alan Guiliano
Bipartisanship
at the Expense of the Citizenry
by Howard Zinn
The
Greens Great Opportunity
by Blair Bobier
DLC
Says Gore's Presidential Bid Ruined by Populist Message: Others Disagree
by Brian Hansen
Letter
from Porto Alegre
by Norman Solomon
Doing
the Right Things, Without Making Someone Wrong
by John Darling
Globalization
From Below
by Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello & Brendan Smith
Book
Review by Suzi Aufderheide
No Logo: Money, Marketing and the Growing Anti-Corporate Movement
by Naomi Klein
Book
Review by Gerry Cavanaugh
Hannibal
by Thomas Harris
Money
Talks
by Kayla Starr
America's
Food Safety Crisis Intensifies
by Ronnie Cummins
Coming
Home
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
The
Secret of the Valentines Angel
by Peter Melton
A
Prescription for Well-Being
by Peter Moore
Age-old
Concepts Benefit Modern Babies
by Pamela Jorrick
Cancer:
An Unexpected Way to the New Being
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.
Book
Review by Kent Shew
Quantum Touch
by Richard Gordon
Cosmic
Calendar
By Salina Rain
America's
Food Safety Crisis Intensifies
By Ronnie Cummins
She is an independent
thinker of sound judgment and vast experience. She knows the science, the
politics, and she knows how to make a sound decision on complicated and difficult
issues. We are delighted with her selection, it is hard to imagine a better
choice.
The Biotechnology industry commenting on the nomination of former agbiotech
executive Ann Veneman as George Bush's Secretary of Agriculture Corporate
agribusiness and the biotech industry had a bad year in 2000. After promising
Wall Street that genetic engineering and American-style factory farming were
about to conquer the world and that free trade, monopoly patents on living
organisms, and the enforcement powers of the World Trade Organization were
going to whip consumers and the world's 2.4 billion farmers and rural villagers
into line, Year One of the Biotech Century turned out to be something of a
disaster. Behind the bravado of public relations and the reassurances of government
bureaucrats, the food industry and the Gene Giants are in serious disarray.
For the first time in five years the amount of global acreage devoted to biotech
crops has leveled off and appears headed in 2001 for significant decreases.
Longstanding industrial agriculture practices such as feeding antibiotics and rendered animal protein to animals are being banned in Europe and are generating controversy even in the US. The second wave of the Mad Cow crisis is sweeping across Europe, prompting a massive decline in beef sales—with recent revelations suggesting that North America may be heading for a similar crisis of its own.
FDA Says No
Labeling, No Safety-Testing Required
On Jan. 17, the Food and Drug Administration issued its long-awaited proposed
federal regulations on genetically engineered foods and crops. As anticipated
the FDA refused to call for mandatory labeling or mandatory safety-testing—despite
numerous polls showing 80-95% of Americans want labeling and safety-testing
and the fact that scientists who are not affiliated with the biotech industry
feel strongly that unless rigorous, independent, pre-market safety testing
can demonstrate that GE foods and crops are safe, these products must not
be allowed. There will now be a 75-day period for the public to comment on
the FDA rules, and to demand a moratorium. Check our websites soon (www.organicconsumers.org
or www.gefoodalert.org)
for guidelines on how to send a letter or fax to the FDA on this issue.
Over the past few months, things have gone from bad to worse for the agbiotech lobby. Among recent developments are the following:
- Two potentially
massive class-action lawsuits were filed in December in Illinois and Iowa
by farmers against Aventis, the manufacturer of StarLink seeds. According
to the plaintiffs in Iowa, they suffered severe financial losses after "Japan
cut its US corn purchases by more than 50% and South Korea, the second largest
U.S. corn export market, banned the importation of U.S. corn altogether.''
In late-December, Reuters reported that Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon
demanded that Aventis post a $25 million bond "to ensure the company
had sufficient funds to compensate farmers and grain handlers hit financially
by StarLink."
Last October a group of consumers filed a lawsuit in Chicago, alleging they were poisoned by StarLink-tainted Kraft Taco Bell shells, and 44 people filed complaints with the FDA claiming StarLink products caused them to suffer rashes, diarrhea, vomiting, itching and life-threatening anaphylactic shock. On November 28, the EPA heard from a Scientific Advisory Panel that StarLink may be already setting off food allergies. For the full testimony of Dr. Michael Hansen from the Consumers Union on StarLink and Bt corn allergenicity see www.purefood.org/ge/hansenstarlink.cfm
- The safety
of genetically engineered foods came into question in Decemebr when the
prestigious journal Science published an article by two fellows from the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. The article, by Dr.
LaReesa Wolfenbarger and Dr. Paul Phifer, emphasized that there has been
almost no peer-reviewed scientific research published which shows that GE
crops are safe for the environment. In their study, Wolfenbarger and Phifer
state that researching environmental risks is likely to be complicated,
with risks varying over time among crops, among strains of a single crop,
and between environments. Some risks, they say, may be all but impossible
to assess.
In a related story, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, the UK's most well-know critic of biotech, after surveying the world scientific literature on animal feeding studies, found a grand total of only four peer-reviewed articles on genetically engineered foods, despite Monsanto and industry claims that scores of scientific papers have proven their safety. Pusztai's own safety studies in the late 1990s, conducted at the Rowett Institute in Scotland, caused a major stir in Europe, when lab rats fed genetically engineered potatoes spliced with lectin suffered serious damage to their vital organs.
-
An Expert Panel of the International Cotton Advisory Committee reported in November that in two provinces of China, cotton boll worms, a major pest, are developing resistance to genetically engineered cotton plants spliced with Bt. Critics of Bt crops have warned for years that "super pests" will inevitably develop, threatening the livelihood of organic or low-chemical input farmers who use non-genetically engineered Bt sprays as an emergency pest control tool on cotton, corn, and other crops. Meanwhile Bt-resistant pests have been reported in Australia and perhaps at a "threateningly high level" according to scientific experts.
- Barbara Keeler and Marc Lappe reported in a potentially explosive story in the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 7 that the FDA apparently ignored troubling data which Monsanto published in the Journal of Nutrition in March 1996—data which strongly suggests that Roundup Ready soybeans, the world's most widely cultivated genetically engineered crop, may set off food allergies in humans. According to the authors, data in Monsanto's study "shows that, relative to conventional soy meal, raw Roundup Ready soy meal contained 27% more trypsin inhibitor, a potential allergen that interferes with protein digestion and has been associated with enlarged cells in rat pancreases." According to Keeler and Lappe "This important measurement was camouflaged in a table on unrelated information." After toasting the GE soy meal several times, the levels of another allergen, called lectin, were nearly double those in conventional soybeans.
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