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[ 03-06-2003 ]
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Playing Health Roulette With Monsanto's Soybeans
(10/4/96)
Soybeans, long one of the United State's premier food commodity exports, may soon be in for a rough welcome from many of its overseas customers. Such treatment will most likely stem, however, not from increased foreign competition nor adverse weather, but rather from the fact that the Monsanto Corp., a major multinational agribusiness, wants to realize greater profits from the marketing of its already widely-used chemical poison Roundup.
As this year's crop of U.S. soybeans are harvested and sent abroad they will contain a mixture of regular soybeans and new RRS (Roundup Ready Soybeans) variety, resistant to the world's largest selling toxic herbicide Roundup, and therein lies the problem. These new beans, gene-spliced and genetically engineered by Monsanto, are already the center of a growing protest and likely consumer boycott campaign in Europe in spite of heavy-handed pressure by the company and the U.S. government to get European food manufacturers to accept the new beans for use in their food products.`Soybeans and its deratives are used in a wide variety of manufactured food including salad dressing, margarine, chocolate, soy burgers, tofu, vegetable oils, baked goods, cereals, dairy substitutes and infant formula. Geraldine Schofield of the British Food and Drink Federation points out that two thirds of all the items on supermarket shelves contain soya products as the total world production is more than 120 million tons a year.
Not only is this new soybean variety to be used in such foods, but despite the fact that numerous surveys indicate that the vast majority of consumers are concerned about the safety of genetically engineered food and want the government to impose mandatory labeling on such products, Monsanto and other chemical-biotech companies are adamantly opposed to such labeling.
Already Eurocommerce, the European Union's retail and wholesale representation group, and the European Green Party have launched campaigns to urge clear labeling of such soybean products. It is also the first time a genetically engineered food product has failed to win the backing from a majority of EU member states and their objections have taken U.S. officials by surprise.
The anti-RRS campaign in Europe, having largely gone unreported in the U.S. press, is being launched prior to the delivery of the 1996 U.S. soybean crop, 40% of which is slated for export. It is estimated that approximately two percent of that crop will be made up of the RRS variety.`"We have to leave the consumers the choice between genetically-modified and non-genetically modified food," declared Henrik Kroner, Secretary-General of Eurocommerce. "In order to allow the consumer to make this choice, the soybean harvest has to be segregated in the U.S. so that the food products can be labeled correctly."`European Green Party spokesperson and a member of the European Parliament Hildrut Breyer indicates that a boycott of such products, as long as there is no labeling attached, is a very real possibility.
Breyer and Kroner will join Bill Christianson, a Missouri soybean farmer and vice president of the National Family Farm Coalition and Jeremy Rifkin, of the Foundation on Economic Trends, at a National Press Club press conference in Washington, D.C. on October 7 at 9:30 a.m.`It is anticipated that at that press conference the Pure Food Campaign and the Foundation on Economic Trends will announce an international boycott of genetically engineered soybeans and corn.
Ms. Breyer points out that consumer-labeling of such genetically-engineered products is possible because a patented test kit ("Genetic ID," developed by a small Fairfield, Iowa laboratory services company), has been introduced as the first testing service that identifies genetically-engineered foods. `"Genetic ID's proprietary technology positively detects genetically-altered foods," explains Jeffrey Wells, Ph.D., general manager of Genetic ID. "Our laboratory protocol scans the DNA structure of the crop samples sent to us to precisely identify any altered gene sequences. This is an extremely sensitive and accurate test. Even the tiniest fragment of foreign DNA can be detected."`Despite such technology, however, Monsanto is adamantly resisting the idea of labeling. In addition, it is putting behind-the-scenes pressure on Nestle's and Unilever, two of the world's and Europe's largest food manufacturing companies, to incorporate such soybeans into their food processing operations.
Faced with a lack of ready suppliers since organic supplies are insufficient, Argentinean supplies have already been bought up and Brazilian supplies are unsuitable for food use, food distributors can do little about the forthcoming American supply, except insist on labeling.
Sainsbury, the United Kingdom's biggest food retailer, has indicated that "our preference is to label genetically-modified products. We believe customers should have the right to choose."`Yet a company spokesperson relates that when company representatives met with the American Soybean Association in Brussels in early September the Association was asked if U.S. soybean growers realized that there was a growing resistance by European consumers to the new soybeans they answered "no."`Prior to the Brussels meeting, however, Eurocommerce's Kroner sent a July 1 letter to J. Zak, Regional Director of the American Soybean Association in Brussels urging that the genetically-engineered beans be segregated.`"As you know, European Commerce represents one third of all European enterprises, which employ more than 20 million people and generate 14% of Europe's value added. Also, EuroCommerce members are in daily contact with Europe's 370 million consumers, ceaselessly working towards responding to consumer wishes.
"We are writing to you on behalf of our members to urge your members to secure segregation of genetically modified raw materials in order to ensure complete and truthful labeling of foodstuffs for the food chain."
Scientists have warned that RRS and other unlabeled, genetically engineered foods may cause allergies. Splicing foreign genes into genetic codes of traditional foods such as soybeans is playing "health roulette." As the New England Journal of Medicine has noted, the "allergenic potential of these newly introduced microbial proteins is uncertain, unpredictable and untestable."
Or, as Margaret Mellon, director of agriculture and biotechnology programs at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington D.C.-based research and lobbying group, points out: "It's all work this out as you go and hope to God it works! We've still got a lot to learn."`RRS, as an "alien plant," could also lead to "genetic pollution" of the environment as RRS herbicide resistance might spread to weeds, such as ryegrass, turning them into "super weeds."RRS will assuredly cause an increase in the use of Roundup. There is evidence, however, that the herbicide can cause harm to the environment even at current levels of use. Roundup can pollute the water, kill fish, and decrease wild plant diversity. It also harms beneficial soil microorganisms, earthworms, and fungi. Its residues have been found on strawberries, lettuce, carrots and barley. It's active ingredient - glyphosate - was the third most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness in farm workers.
Aside from the health questions the growing resistance from abroad to RRS would have an unwanted negative impact on the already fragile U.S. farm economy and rural America, affecting $1.6 billion in annual soybean sales to Europe.
For Monsanto genetically-engineered products such as RRS are a potential gold mine. `"Until now, biotechnology has been exciting, but it has been expensive excitement," Hendrik A. Verfaille, vice-president in charge of agribusiness for Monsanto, told the New York Times. In explaining the need for licensing fees and seed-use restrictions, Monsanto representatives have told farmers it has spent $500 million over the last ten years just to develop Roundup-resistant plants.
According to Monsanto, "Roundup(R) and other glyphosate-based herbicides face competition from generic producers in certain markets outside the United States. Patents protecting Roundup(R) in various countries expired in 1991, while compound per se patent protection for the active ingredient in Roundup(R) herbicide continuesin the United States until the year 2000.
"Management expects that manufacturing process and formulation patents that are important to Monsanto's cost position will help maintain our competitive position after the expiration of this other patent. Monsanto has introduced new formulations of Roundup(R), called Roundup(R) Ultra and Roundup(R) Pro herbicides, in the United States.Significant growth potential for Roundup(R) remains in conservation tillageapplications worldwide."
The company's Agricultural Products division 11% yearly increase in sales ($2.5 billion in 1995), was based mainly, according to Monsanto, on increased world-wide sales of Roundup.`Many U.S. soybean farmers acknowledge that they are nervous over accepting the new RRS product. Farmers must procure a technology license required by Monsanto complete with a $5-a-bag "fee" that the company charges separately from the seed price. Under the agreement, farmers must promise not to sell or give away any seed or to save any for planting the following year. They must also use Roundup, and allow inspection by Monsanto officials.
"When I read through the contract, I almost scared myself out of doing it,"admitted one Illinois soybean farmer.Obviously responding to the concern for genetically engineered products abroad the Central Soya Co. has written to Ohio farmers that it is requesting non-RRS beans at its Cincinnati soybean crushing plant, one of its six such facilities in the Midwest.
According to the Bridge News Service when word of Central Soya's letter to Ohio farmers requesting a guarantee that delivered soybeans would not be of the RRS variety, some "cash sources"believed it could be a positioning by the company for European business. Norway is already reported to be inquiring about RRS-free soybeans from U.S. exporters.
Striving to take the leadership in the corporate dominated age of biotechnologically engineered agriculture and food is the Monsanto Company, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. By setting out to forever change how food and fiber are produced, the near 95-year old chemical firm has asserted that as a corporation "Monsanto is developing a way to use Mother Nature to modify organisms to serve us better." `"Research and development isn't part of the strategy. Research and development is the strategy," Richard J. Mahoney the recently retired company chairman and chief executive officer has emphasized.
Congress's Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) estimates that some 400 companies may now be spending over $2 billion a year on biotechnology research and development. Clearly, Monsanto, with 1995 sales of $8.96 billion and net income of $739 million, wants to be the leader in this growth industry.
"Two years from now every crop in the world will be easily manipulated. Ten years from now, in some plant we'll know every gene, every protein, every function. The door is wide open. There are no longer any technical restraints," Robert T. Farley, of the company's plant molecular biology group, declared in 1990.
Already the company has developed a variety of crops - soybeans, tomatoes, potatoes, alfalfa, tobacco and cucumbers - that are resistant to viral infections. In addition they have also altered cotton, tomatoes and potatoes with bacterial genes that produce proteins fatal to bud worms, boil worms and other pests. They are also the developers of the highly controversial rBGH, the bovine growth hormone, Nutrasweet, the artificial sweetener, and have a majority interest in Calgene, the company that introduced the gene-spliced mutant tomato called 'Flav Savr.'
"The kind of biotechnology that Monsanto has embarked upon is silver-bullet technology that will prolong the system of agriculture we have now," warns Jack Doyle, author of Altered Harvests. "We have the potential to understand biological systems in agriculture as never before, such as understanding the entire cycle of how pests attack crops and how crops respond. But the way the very technology is being capitalized and developed, we're intervening for the convenience of a product." "Monsanto sees all living creatures as resources to be subject to whatever manipulations are required for the market," adds the Foundation on Economic Trends' Jeremy Rifkin.
Monsanto's principal industry segments are in crop chemicals, animal sciences, chemicals, capital equipment, NutraSweet and pharmaceuticals. With main offices and research laboratories in the St. Louis area, it also has research and production facilities in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia.
Abroad it has facilities in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom. It employs 28,500 people worldwide.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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