A Bumper Crop of Alarmism
TUCKER, WILLIAM
A Bumper Crop of Alarmism Rachel Carson would have loved this corn. Why don't environmentalists? BY WILLIAM TUCKER When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962, she decried the use of chemical...
...Some of this has been encouraged by European farmers, as always seeking protection from U.S...
...Only about 2 percent of the population suffers food allergies, usually involving the big eight (cow s milk, eggs, peanuts, wheat, fish, crustaceans, soy, and tree nuts...
...The principal opponent in England has been Prince Charles, who has sworn that no genetically modified food will touch the royal table...
...imports...
...Golden rice has been bred to produce beta-carotene, the precursor to Vitamin A. Rice grown throughout the tropics does not produce Vitamin A, and tens of millions of people suffer from vitamin-A deficiencies, causing blindness in about half a million children every year...
...No cases of Cry9C allergy, it should be noted, were ever reported...
...Now the corn plant itself pr^oduc^es the pesticide...
...If consumer resistance develops, its going to be a disas -ter for American farmers, says L yn-den Peter, executive director of the American Corn Growers Association...
...Therefore it was judged safe for animal consumption...
...F armers started planting the variety in 1998...
...McDonalds Europe announced it would no longer serve hamburgers made from cows that have supped on BT corn or similar products...
...Through the new techniques of genetic engineering, they were able to implant various strains of the Cry protein in the corn plant...
...This led the EPA to speculate that it might cause an allergic reaction...
...Y et this precautionary principlewhich environmentalists want to apply to all technologyhas one fundamental aw . It doesnt evaluate the costs of excessive caution...
...When the first genetically modified crop, a frost-resistant strawberry, was introduced in 1990, the EPA also grabbed control, claiming frost itself is a pest...
...Beneath the pseudo-science of environmentalism there has always been a clear nature-worship...
...Allergic reactions are triggered by antibodies, but its highly unlikely that anyone would have ever developed antibodies against a protein that human beings almost never encounter, says Steve T aylor, head of the University of Nebraskas Department of Food Science and Technology and a leading expert on food allergens...
...One factor in the European antipathy is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease...
...Cargill and several other wholesalers announced they would not accept shipments of corn tainted with even one kernel in 400 of Star-Link...
...Under Carsons prodding, BT (as it is affectionately known to organic gardeners) became more widely used in agriculture...
...In the United States, all this amounted to little more than a run-of-the-mill environmental panic...
...By 2000, BT corn made up 18 percent of the American corn crop...
...By October, environmental groups were barricading Liverpool docks to prevent the unloading of American corn...
...Others questioned this reasoning...
...The time has come to stop planting it...
...In a move everyone was later to regret, the EPA issued StarLink a dual registra-tio^t for animal feed but unfi t for humans...
...We have known for a long time that people dont want to eat [such] food, said Lord Melchett, executive director of Greenpeace, one of the accused...
...Last June, however, environmental groups became suspicious that StarLink harvests werent being segregated from other corn...
...Anyone suggesting we can understand nature or manipulate it to our advantage is thus irting with sacrilege...
...The panic over StarLink brought fears to a boiling point...
...The result was an astonishing environmental coup...
...Two of the strongest supporters of modern genetic plant science in the United States are Jimmy Carter and George McGovern, both involved in international humanitarian efforts...
...Whats more, their oppositioncom -bined with weak-kneed science at the Environmental Protection Agency is now ruining our export trade with Europe and Japan and may eventually cost American farmers hundreds of billions of dollars...
...But Aventiss StarLink gave pause...
...BY WILLIAM TUCKER When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962, she decried the use of chemical sprays, arguing for more benign and natural biological pesticides...
...Non-harmful insects and other wildlife are spared, since the protein acts only against insects trying to eat the plantin this case the voracious European corn borer...
...BT corn developed by Monsanto and several other companies passed muster...
...Last April, a British jury acquitted 28 protesters from Greenpeace and other groups who had dug up and destroyed a six-and-a-half-acre plot planted with Aventis corn...
...Sure enough traces of Cry9C showed up in Kraft Foods Taco Bell taco shells and Frito-Lays Chee -tos...
...One of her favorites was Bacillus thuringiensis, a common soil bacterium that produces a crystalline spore lethal to some insects...
...With 18 percent of American cornfields now planted with insect-resistant corn, pesticide spraying in 1999 declined for the first time in history...
...But in Europe, it has become a major international issue that may permanently affect trade relations between the two continents...
...The FDA ordered a recall...
...Shortly after eating foliage coated with this toxin the larva suffers paralysis, stops feeding, and soon dies, wrote Carson...
...Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth commissioned a sampling...
...Although completely unrelated (it is a virus that spreads when animal remains are used to feed other animals), mad cow disease has become fused with genetic plant science under the rubric of public distrust...
...Similar barriers are now being raised in Japan, which will start labeling genetically engineered food this spring...
...The problem was particularly acute for farm cooperatives, where crops from neighboring farmers are ordinarily mixed together...
...Aven-tis quickly withdrew StarLink and has agreed to compensate farmers for the damagesgenerally estimated to begin around $100 million...
...This is] an enormous advantage, for crop damage stops almost as soon as the pathogen is applied...
...The product never made it through testing...
...Agronomists say it will be difficult if not impossible to improve crop productivity without genetic engineering...
...But nobody asked us...
...As the EPA is proving to American farmers, staying in bed all day carries its own risks...
...over the country...
...But no, environmentalists are opposed to the effort...
...Yet environmentalists say there is greater concern in the possibly unknown consequences of fiddling with natures handiwork...
...What is really at stake is the future of agricultural research...
...In a cows alkaline stomach, on the other hand, Cry9C does break down immediately...
...The princes efforts have been opposed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has warned of an anti- scientific attitude and says genetically modified food products will be necessary to feed the worlds people...
...The problem has arisen from a single variation of the proteinCry9C marketed under the brand name Star-Link by Aventis CropScience, a French conglomerate...
...There is virtually no risk associated with the ingestion of StarLink corn in this situation...
...Seeds for golden rice, a new variety devel -oped for Third World countries, already sit in a grenade-proof bunker in Switzerland awaiting the outcome of several patent disputes plus litigation by environmentalists to stop its export...
...Activists have destroyed experimental plots and trashed laboratories...
...ConAgra shut down several milling plants and spent weeks trying to clean out the residues...
...Nevertheless, guided by the precautionary principlea current favorite of environmentalists that says, in effect, if you cant prove when you wake up that nothing bad is going to happen to you, you should spend the day in bedthe EP A pronounced Cry9C unfit for human consumption...
...By October, the StarLink panic was causing major disruptions in the Midwest...
...The soybean cropnow more than half genetically engineeredwill be particularly at risk...
...Most Cry proteins break down immediately in the human stomach, but Cry9C was found to take about 30 to 60 minutes...
...Aventiss StarLink had a 3 percent share of the BT market, making it .5 percent of the entire American crop...
...Then in 1990, molecular biologists isolated its insecticidal protein, dubbed Cry (for crystalline...
...Meanwhile, half the American diet now contains foods that have been in some small way genetically engineered...
...Emboldened by royal and aristocratic approval, European environmentalists have become much more violent in their opposition...
...Europe has been in a snit for years over genetically engineered food cropsgenerally considered an American technologyand in 1998 banned its own farmers from planting them...
...Ordinarily, the introduction of new crop varieties requires no approval from the Food and Drug Administration...
...There is no more need for indiscriminate chemical spraying...
...If anybody had asked us, we would have told them it would be impossible to keep the two separate, says Jim Bair, vice president of the North American Millers Association...
...In a bureaucratic land-grab, however, the EPA has claimed jurisdiction over insecticidal corn on the grounds that the plant itself is a pesticide...
...Perhaps more significant has been the fact that environmentalism, a movement fundamentally aristocratic in its origins, finds much more support in Europe among people in high stations...
...Youd think champagne glasses would be clinking in the headquarters of environmental organizations all William Tucker is the author of Progress and Privilege: America in the Age of Environmentalism...
...Corn delivery trucks spent hours outside grain elevators waiting for their crops to be tested...
Vol. 6 • February 2001 • No. 21
