[Call the "lavender men" - the Heartfield cistern is overflowing again. Jim, this anti-green idée fixe of yours has got to go. The notion you're being a bold revolutionary by snuggling up to Monsanto and the like while assailing the anti-GMO crowd as so many peasants with pitchforks is lunacy. The NY Times had not one but two prominent articles on Sunday -- shown below -- discussing the growing political force of opposition to genetic engineering. This is a movement the left should lead, not oppose.]
New Trade Threat for U.S. Farmers
Washington -- American farmers paid premium prices this spring to sow many of their fields with genetically engineered corn and soybeans, but now as the fall harvest nears, more of the international buyers they depend upon are saying they do not want those crops.
Consumers and food companies in a growing number of countries are shunning the new crops created by genetic engineers at such companies as Monsanto, DuPont and Novartis. Foreign consumers say they do not wish to eat the new foods like corn that have been altered to produce their own pesticide, and some companies are reacting quickly to consumers' desires even though no clear evidence exists that the crops are unsafe.
This week in Japan, for example, the Kirin Brewery Company announced that starting in 2001 it would use only corn that has not been genetically engineered. While bowing to customers' concerns, Kirin made clear that it did not think the products were unhealthy. A day later, Kirin's competitor, Sapporo Breweries, announced that it, too, would revert to traditional corn, which is an ingredient in some types of beer.
The biotechnology industry plays down the recent decisions of some food companies, saying they are overreacting to threats that aren't real. Most consumers, the industry says, do not mind these new products.
Until a few months ago, opposition to genetically altered foods was largely confined to Europe, and trade officials in the United States have been battling the European Union, which has stopped buying all American corn. But this summer, the Clinton Administration's efforts have grown increasingly urgent, in an attempt to contain the aversion to these crops that is leaping from continent to continent.
Japan, which now wants mandatory labeling of gene-altered products, is the largest importer of American crops, and Mexico, whose top producer of corn flour for tortillas is avoiding altered grain, is the second largest importer of American corn.
"This is a very significant trade threat," said Peter Scher, who directs the agricultural negotiations for the United States Trade Representative's Office. "The only thing I can tell farmers is that we are doing everything we can to sell their products overseas."
About a third of American crops, including soybeans and corn, are exported. This year, American farmers planted an estimated 60 million acres (the size of the United Kingdom) with genetically engineered corn and soybean seeds, accounting for nearly half of all soybeans in the United States and about a third of all corn.
Most farmers still expect that they will find a market for much of this year's corn and soybean crops, industry officials say. But they have already been told that seven varieties of gene-altered corn, representing about 5 percent of the expected harvest, will be rejected by corn exporters. Most of that will be ground into animal feed.
Next year's harvest looms as more troublesome, with public sentiment changing, foreign markets shrinking and the agriculture industry struggling to adjust.
For the first time this summer, many corn growers are dealing with costly new issues.
Local grain elevator operators, who buy and store wagonloads of corn to sell to the exporters, have begun asking farmers to separate some types of gene-altered corn from ordinary corn to appease international buyers.
Dennis Mitchell, a farmer in Houghton, S.D., has been an enthusiastic producer of gene-altered corn and planted 600 acres this spring, 80 percent of which is a crop altered to produce a toxin that kills the European corn borer.
He boasts that the new seeds have increased his yield by at least 15 percent, and he has received assurances from local elevator operators that he will be able to sell his grain this year.
But he is paying close attention to the tremors in the marketplace, especially now that American companies like Gerber and Heinz baby foods have announced that they will not use genetically altered corn or soy ingredients. And he is uncertain what he will do next year when spring planting season arrives.
"I wish we could get this cleared up," he said. "I certainly can't raise anything I can't market."
Such uncertainty only adds to the problems of American farmers, who point out that this year's crop prices are the lowest in more than a decade.
"This is such a hard time for us, and then you compound that with this uncertainty," said Gary Goldberg, the chief executive of the American Corn Growers Association, a group that has been opposed to some practices of the biotechnology industry. It represents 14,000 independent farmers.
"Farmers are going to get caught in the middle," he said.
Clinton Administration officials have repeatedly assured consumers that all of the genetically engineered crops that have been approved in the United States are safe for people to eat. And, indeed, there is no compelling scientific evidence that shows the foods are unsafe. But the crops are so new that there is not enough evidence to prove the foods' safety to a minority of scientists who say further studies need to be done.
Dan Glickman, the Secretary of Agriculture, said that the consumers' concerns seemed to be spreading like "an infectious disease."
"This technology," he said, "got a little bit ahead of the politics."
He and Federal trade officials have spent the summer pressing European leaders and agricultural ministers to reconsider what is essentially the European Union's moratorium on new types of gene-altered crops. They have threatened some countries with intercession by the World Trade Organization, arguing that restrictions on these foods run counter to the current science supporting their safety.
Genetic engineering is a process in which scientists splice one organism's genes into another. For example, scientists created the pesticide-producing corn by inserting a gene from a bacterium.
Most of the corn and soybeans have been altered to either produce their own pesticides or to be resistant to herbicides. The first gene-altered seeds were offered to farmers in 1996, and growers snatched them up, quickly making the new biotechnology into a multibillion-dollar business for the seed companies.
The biotechnology companies say that the food companies are caving in to pressure from environmental advocates who have written letters saying that consumers do not want these products.
"Consumers are turning away from these foods in enormously smaller numbers than the activists would have you believe," said L. Val Giddings, a vice president for food and agriculture at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group of more than 800 companies in Washington.
Still, farmers and trade officials point to new problems. In Mexico, which bought $500 million of American corn last year, Grupo Maseca, the company that is the leading producer of corn flour, said recently that it would avoid importing genetically modified grain. The corn flour is made into tortillas, the Mexican staple.
In South Korea, another large importer of American grain, corn-processing companies said they were considering buying corn from China instead of the United States because of concerns about the gene-altered crop.
And, in Japan, the Government passed a law requiring food companies to label products that have been genetically engineered. (In the United States, Federal officials have only recently said they will consider voluntary labeling.) Preparing for awareness generated by the labeling in Japan, a subsidiary of the Honda Motor Company said this week that it would build a plant in the United States and hire farmers to supply it only with unaltered, conventional soybeans. The soybeans, which would be exported back to Japan, would be made into tofu.
In the United States, where there has been little uproar over the foods, the baby food makers Gerber and H. J. Heinz were the first large food companies to reject the new products. Then Iams, the pet food company, said it would not buy the seven varieties of gene-altered corn that have not been approved by European regulators. Iams's announcement shut down an alternative route that farmers had for that corn that exporters will not accept.
The agricultural industry has begun responding, with exporters trying to devise new methods to bridge the growing gap between farmers and consumers. A two-price system -- higher prices for conventional crops and lower prices for genetically-altered crops -- is clearly developing. For example, this year, the Archer Daniels Midland Company has been paying some farmers an extra 18 cents for each bushel of non-altered soybeans.
The American Corn Growers Association, which represents mostly family farms, told its members last week that they should consider planting only conventional seeds next spring, unless a host of questions can be answered, including whether the United States will be able to export the genetically altered crops.
The National Corn Growers Association, which is about twice as big as the American Corn Growers Association, and has a financial partnership with Monsanto and some of the other agricultural companies, has not followed suit.
Susan Keith, the group's senior director for public policy, said that the association, which is based in St. Louis, was keeping farmers informed of what types of genetically altered corn could be the hardest to sell, but had not suggested that they consider planting only conventional seeds.
The worries about international trade have deepened farmers' fears of a bleaker economic future.
Prices for most crops are the lowest in 10 years, and farmers say they are concerned that grain prices are falling even further now that foreign consumers are turning away from genetically altered crops. But experts say prices have mostly been affected by the larger harvests in other countries, which have reduced the demand for grain from the United States. In addition, the financial crisis in Asia caused exports to fall last year and prices to drop. And overproduction of some crops continues to hurt prices.
For now, uncertainty about the next planting season is bedeviling the nation's farmers. They cannot predict where the next food backlash will surface and sometimes, even if they do, it is too late.
"It wasn't until May that farmers got word that Europe had not approved certain kinds of corn," Goldberg said. "By then, the corn was in the ground."
[end of article one]
Fearful Over the Future, Europe Seizes On Food
By Roger Cohen
Paris -- Fist raised, mustache bristling, José Bové looked defiant as he handed himself in to French police in the southern town of Montpelier a few days ago. "My struggle remains the same," this farmer declared to an appreciative crowd. "The battle against globalization and for the right of peoples to feed themselves as they choose."
A Parisian-turned-sheep-farmer who moved to southwest France 20 years ago, Mr. Bové emerged this month as a sort of Subcomandante Marcos of the French countryside, the leader of a self-styled, anti-imperialist revolt over food. His crime, committed on Aug. 12, was to lead the ransacking and demolition of a McDonald's restaurant nearing completion in the southwestern town of Millau.
It was only the most conspicuous of a rash of recent protests against McDonald's, targeted not so much for anything the company has done but as a symbol of the United States and of what Mr. Bové has called "the multinationals of foul food." His efforts have struck a chord. French labor unions, ecologists, communists and farmers have joined to demand his immediate release, burying other differences in a shared politico-gastronomic outcry.
An army, Napoleon noted, marches on its stomach, and the European forces gathering this summer in protest against what is seen as American-led globalization have abruptly focused on food. Where it was once the deployment of American Pershing-2 missiles that caused alarm, it is now McDonald's, Coca-Cola, genetically modified American corn and American beef fattened with growth hormones that have Europeans up in arms.
"Behind all this lies a rejection of cultural and culinary dispossession," said Alain Duhamel, a French political analyst. "There is a certain allergy in Europe to the extent of American power accumulated since the cold war's end, and the most virulent expression of that allergy today seems to be food."
Of course, it is not just culture or the kitchen that is at stake. Enormous economic interests are also involved. Large quantities of American corn and soybeans, to name just two crops, have been "genetically modified" over the years -- that is, rendered more productive, more hardy, less vulnerable to fungal and viral pests through scientific alteration, including the addition of genes.
No discernible harm to Americans has occurred. But if Europe and possibly other parts of the world reject or ban such products, the economic consequences may be measured in the billions of dollars. Already, a federal judge in Brazil has banned sales of the Monsanto Corporation's Roundup Ready soybean seeds -- gene-altered to resist fungus and weeds -- and Japan has announced that it will require labels on genetically modified food. E UROPE seems to be gripped right now by a kind of collective madness, and we don't want that to spread to the rest of the world," said Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, the head of the Senate agricultural committee, who was in Germany this month.
"In the United States, we have not seen a scintilla of ill effects, and on my farm alone we've been modifying corn and soybeans since the 1930's, raising productivity by a factor of three."
Behind the "madness" several factors appear to lurk. The specter of nature being rendered more uniform by scientists in America has meshed with a wider fear of an increasingly undifferentiated planet where national distinctions fade. Europeans see on the horizon a uniform, global culinary culture dominated by multinationals -- a Hollywood of the kitchen drowning any European distinctiveness with sheer marketing muscle.
At the same time, a rash of health scares -- including the outbreak of mad cow disease in Britain in 1996, and the discovery this year of dioxin-polluted chicken in Belgium -- has provoked widespread fear of any "tampering" with nature. This mood clearly lies behind Europe's refusal to drop a ban on American beef raised with growth hormones -- a decision that prompted the United States last month to impose a 100 percent tariff on some European food products, including Roquefort and foie gras.
That American decision -- targeting foods that nestle very close to the prickly French soul -- added fuel to a fire already raging.
Attacks or complaints directed at American food and beverages have been almost constant lately as American marketers move to exploit what they see as an underserved European market. The reasons for the attacks have differed, but not the common thread of an American target.
Coca-Cola, still reeling from the effects of a poorly handled health scare that saw supposedly contaminated drinks removed from shelves in Belgium and France, is now the object of a European Commission investigation that involved dawn raids on offices in Germany, Britain, Austria and Denmark last month. The company is suspected of abusing a dominant market position to damage its competitors. In Italy, where Coke has an 80 percent share of the cola market, a separate national investigation was begun this month.
"There is no anti-American conspiracy here," said Stefan Rating, a spokesman for Europe's competition and anti-trust policy regulators in Brussels. "That Coke is American is undisputed, but not unlawful. What we are looking into are possible abuses." Coke denies any wrongdoing, and is known to be piqued by the extent and repetitiveness of its recent European travails.
This month in Belgium, a McDonald's near Antwerp was destroyed, the latest of several attacks, and a number of McDonald's in France have had rotting fruit and vegetables dumped on them since the Clinton Administration's decision to apply punitive duties to French products.
"We are attacked because we are a No. 1 global American brand," said Alessandra di Montezemolo, a McDonald's spokeswoman in Europe. "But people should understand we are local partners in the national economies."
McDonald's, which operates 750 restaurants in France, tried to calm protests there by issuing a statement saying that "80 percent of the products we serve are made in France," adding that they were "cooked by local employees." But la France profonde -- the heartland of the imprisoned Mr. Bové -- was not impressed.
"Culinary sovereignty is imperative," said Patrice Vidieu, the secretary-general of Peasant Confederation, the growing farmers' movement founded by Mr. Bové in 1987. "What we reject is the idea that the power of the marketplace becomes the dominant force in all societies, and that multinationals like McDonald's or Monsanto come to impose the food we eat and the seeds we plant."
Mr. Vidieu's movement derives much of its intellectual inspiration and direction from Attac, a growing association founded last year in France to fight globalization and to campaign for a tax on international financial transactions that would be used to help the world's poor and fight social inequality. Among the leaders of Attac (the French acronym for the Association for Taxation of Financial Transactions in Order to Aid Citizens) are Viviane Forrestier, whose anti-globalization book "The Economic Horror" has had enormous sales in France, and editors of the prestigious Le Monde Diplomatique.
It is this merging of militants against global finance and global food that has given the current outcry some of its curious virulence. Mr. Lugar, who would like to see scientific testing of genetically modified crops in Europe, confessed to being amazed. His argument is simple. The population of the world will probably grow to nine billion from six billion by 2050. Available acreage for planting has already been identified. So, unless food productivity is increased -- which will not happen without scientific intervention -- people are going to go hungry.
"The Europeans think they are protecting humanity," he said, "but we think they want to starve the rest of the world. These are big issues. I've been telling the Europeans that there's a big difference between the Kosovo war and genetically modified corn: For many Americans corn is more important."
But Philippe Folliot, the mayor of a St. Pierre-de-Trivisy, a small town in the Roquefort-growing area, is unimpressed by such arguments. He has imposed a symbolic 100 percent tax on Coca-Cola sold in the town. "Here we cannot make plastic cheeses and hormone beef," he said. "Roquefort is unique, a symbol of our battle against the globalization of taste."
[end of article two]
Carl