The Philadelphia Inquirer | November 1, 1999 | By Andrea Knox, The Philadelphia Inquirer | Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
You wouldn't normally eat a petunia. And you're not crazy about the idea of bacteria in your food.
So does it worry you to learn that genes from petunias and bacteria are spliced into some of the food you eat? Would you like food labels to tell you about such genetically modified ingredients?
The Food and Drug Administration says genetically modified foodstuffs - present in an estimated 60 percent of American food products, from cereal to corn chips to candy bars - are so safe that there is no need to label any of those now on the market.
That opinion isn't shared by dozens of consumer, environmental and natural-food groups. They say genetically modified foods, which began appearing on supermarket shelves about five years ago, are so revolutionary that they could pose unknown hazards allergies, for instance.
The activists are gearing up a campaign to change FDA rules so that labels would be required on all genetically modified foods.
American consumers, meanwhile, don't know quite what to think. In surveys, a majority say they know little about gene-spliced food and are not afraid of it - but they would like it labeled anyway.
Typical was consumer Nan Barrish's reaction upon being told last week that most packaged food had genetically modified ingredients.
"Wow! I didn't know that," said Barrish, vice president of an advertising agency. "It doesn't scare me, but, then, I've never given it any thought."
One reason that she and others haven't thought about genetically modified food is that labels don't mention it. And that, the activists say, needs to be changed.
"Consumers have a fundamental right to know what they are eating," said Jean Halloran, director of consumer policy at Consumers' Union, which publishes Consumer Reports magazine.
She noted that orange juice from concentrate must be labeled, as must food that has been frozen.
"Those, in our opinion, are smaller changes than if you genetically engineer food," she said.
But the prospect of mandatory labels worries the food industry.
"Mandatory labeling implies that something is wrong with the product," said Gene Grabowski of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a trade group in Washington. "I think there is a good chance that labeling would create misgivings among a significant number of consumers, and that could set back the technology."
Labeling could hurt, too, by giving groups that oppose genetic modification more visible targets. When the Dutch company Unilever voluntarily began labeling genetically modified products sold in Britain in 1997, such groups as Greenpeace welcomed the move but immediately called for a boycott of the products anyway, Unilever spokesman Mike Haines said.
British consumers had seemed to have few qualms about buying these products until Greenpeace and other groups stepped up their attacks last year. Unilever has since discontinued the products.
At Sainsbury's and Safeway supermarkets in Britain, genetically modified tomato paste, introduced in 1996, initially outsold the conventional variety but was discontinued this year in the face of rising consumer resistance. So said Jon Scharingson, field-crop manager in the agricultural-biotechnology group of AstraZeneca, the British chemical and pharmaceutical firm that created the genetically modified tomato seed.
In the United States, the FDA requires labeling only if added genes change a food's nutritional features, for example by enhancing vitamin content or adding a potential allergen. None of the genetically modified food now on the market - mostly oils, sweeteners and starch from soybeans, corn and cottonseed - fits this profile, so none of it is labeled. These crops have been altered not to add nutrition but to help farmers by resisting herbicide sprays or producing toxins that kill insect pests.
"Under a microscope, they don't look any different from traditional plants," Grabowski said.
These three crops show up in a multitude of foods. Corn is a primary ingredient in many chips, tortillas and breakfast cereals. Corn sweeteners are used in sodas and fruit drinks, spaghetti sauce, pancake syrup, hot dogs and even salsa. Cottonseed, soy and corn oils turn up in bread, salad dressing, granola bars, cake mixes, and hydrogenated peanut butter. Veggie burgers and sausage look-alikes may be soy-based.
Some of these products may, in fact, not contain genetically modified ingredients. The only foods that must legally be free of genetic modification are those labeled "organic" and those that manufacturers voluntarily label as not containing genetically modified ingredients.
Though skeptics concede that there have been no known health problems from genetically modified food, they contend that the FDA's labeling standards aren't rigorous enough.
And they say environmental difficulties - danger to monarch butterflies, genetically engineered corn pollen drifting onto stands of organic corn - are already cropping up.
Drawing inspiration from the European Union, where activists have been instrumental in raising consumer resistance, U.S. critics have in recent months coalesced around the issue of labeling and are becoming increasingly vocal.
The labeling debate has been relatively slow to get off the ground here. The European Union, Switzerland and Japan - where consumer suspicion of genetically modified food is widespread - have adopted mandatory labeling for a wide range of genetically modified products, and similar laws are under study in Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.
A petition drive mounted by Mothers for Natural Law - part of the Natural Law Party of Fairfield, Iowa, whose founders were transcendental-meditation teachers at Maharishi University there - collected 500,000 signatures last spring in support of labeling. Consumer Reports, noting that there have been no documented reports of health problems to date, called in its September issue for labeling.
A coalition of more than 30 groups, including Consumers' Union, Friends of the Earth, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, has made labeling a priority. Coalition representatives are working with U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio) to draft a mandatory-labeling bill.
"Perhaps the outrage in Europe has given us reason to believe there are ways to fight back in this country," said Wendy Wendlandt of the California Public Interest Research Group, part of the 30-group coalition.
American government officials are becoming increasingly sensitive to the issue. Twenty-five members of Congress have signed a letter asking the FDA to require labeling.
The FDA has scheduled hearings in Chicago and Washington for next month and in Oakland in December to explain its determination that genetically engineered food is safe and to hear consumers' and scientists' views.
"We need to ask why those concerns exist and how we can address them," Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said.
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, appearing on Nightline on Oct. 25, conceded that "more aggressive labeling" may be needed "at some point in time." His department is involved because it oversees field testing of genetically engineered crops, which can crossbreed with conventional crops and with weeds.
The FDA is responsible for food-safety issues; the Environmental Protection Agency monitors the environmental impact of crops that are genetically engineered to produce insect-killing toxins.
At the heart of the labeling debate lies a fundamental disagreement over the risks involved in moving a gene from one species to another: a petunia gene into a soybean, for example, or a bacterium gene into corn.
Such skeptics as Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington say moving a gene from one species to another is a radical change in plant breeding.
"You cannot get pigs to breed with corn," she said. "You cannot get the gene combinations with natural breeding that you can with gene-transfer technology."
Although pig genes have not been transferred into corn, Mellon worries about transferring genes into the food supply from such organisms as bacteria and petunias, which could cause unexpected allergic reactions or produce toxins.
Proponents reply that genes cross species lines all the time.
The fact is that genes "jump" so frequently "it almost makes no sense to talk about plant species," said Val Giddings, vice president for food and agriculture at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, another trade group in Washington.
Allegations that gene-splicing would introduce allergens and toxins into foods are "completely unsupported by the facts," Giddings said.
Mellon disagrees. Arguing that science can never rule out unexpected results, she said she would like to see labels give precise information about what genes have been added.
"It would be easier if we had labels to tell us where the genes in food have come from," she said, "so we could begin to keep records" of which new genes had been eaten by people reporting food allergies.
