Philadelphia Inquirer | November 28, 1999
Europe's demand for unaltered food is felt on the farm. A rejection of genetically modified seeds may force many U.S. farmers to give up their easier growing methods.
By Andrea Knox, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Burlington County farmer Larry Durr will be looking over his shoulder at European food fears when he makes up his seed order in December.
Will he stick with genetically modified soybeans, which are more expensive but make weed control easier, or go back to conventional varieties?
The answer will depend on how threatened Durr feels by Europe's hostility to foods grown from gene-spliced seed. That threat moved closer last week, when the nation's biggest grain-buying company asked farmers to separate genetically modified crops from non-modified crops to satisfy demands from European customers.
Durr, like most Pennsylvania and New Jersey farmers, doesn't sell to the company in question, Archer Daniels Midland of Decatur, Ill. But once such a request has come from heavyweight ADM, which buys about 30 percent of America's soybeans and 25 percent of its corn, farmers such as Durr can only wonder how soon other grain buyers will follow suit.
Durr's crops, like most of the corn and soybeans grown in this area, are sold to local processors to become feed for hogs, cattle and chickens. Most of those animals wind up on American dinner tables, but it's possible that some are exported. In that case, the feed mills to which Durr sells might someday ask for grain that hasn't been genetically modified.
ADM, which sells 20 to 25 percent of its products abroad, is seeing an increasing number of European and Japanese customers say they will no longer buy genetically modified products, said senior vice president Martin Andreas. With growers in other countries eager to offer non-genetically modified products, "we need to offer them, too, in order to protect our business," Andreas said.
ADM said in a statement that while it supports both the science and the safety of bioengineered food, "we must produce products that our customers will purchase."
Americans give a variety of reasons for European resistance, including bad food experiences with mad cow disease and dioxin-contaminated chickens, a desire to protect their own farmers, and anti-Americanism. But talks with consumers in France reveal also a much greater emotional attachment than Americans feel for foods that seem to come direct and unadulterated from the farm.
Concern about genetically modified foods is also rising in Japan, an important outlet for U.S. corn and soybeans. Last Wednesday, Japan's Fuji Oil Co. Ltd. said it would stop using genetically modified soybeans by next April because of consumer-safety concerns, and some Japanese breweries have said they would stop using genetically modified corn and ingredients made from it.
For American farmers, the request to separate crops could mean they would have to build extra bins. That cost, plus the uncertainty over market acceptance, could negate the advantages of using genetically modified seeds. Durr says the biggest benefit from growing genetically modified soybeans isn't financial but operational - it's easier to control weeds and insects in the field of a genetically modified crop.
"We like it, but I guess we will really have to re-evaluate this year whether we will stick with it or not," Durr said.
In the United States, which has been the world leader in developing genetically modified seeds, farmers have embraced the technology. About half the U.S. soybean crop this year is being grown from seeds engineered to make weed-control easier. About a third of the corn and a substantial portion of the cotton will be grown from seeds tweaked to provide plants with a natural toxin, Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, that is fatal to many insects.
And companies, including Wilmington's DuPont, have embarked on a second wave of gene-splicing that seeks to create foods with improved value to consumers, such as soybeans that will produce oil with a higher percentage of heart-healthy mono-unsaturated fat.
To date, American consumers have blithely eaten foods that contain the products of these bioengineered seeds, which include Ovaltine Malt beverage mix, Old El Paso taco shells, many brands of soy burgers, Jiffy corn muffin mix and several brands of soy-based powdered infant formula, according to the September issue of Consumer Reports magazine.
Industry advocates say Americans have accepted modified products in their diets because of widespread confidence in the U.S. testing and regulatory system. They frequently assert that one reason for European fear of such foods is that the continent has no regulatory agency as powerful and independent as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, one of three agencies charged with different aspects of the GM food approval process.
But activist groups ranging from the Union of Concerned Scientists to Greenpeace contend that most Americans are unaware that their food contains genetically-modified ingredients - in part because the FDA doesn't require labels to list them. And indeed, two-thirds of the respondents in a recent industry-sponsored survey said they knew little or nothing about biotechnology and genetic engineering.
The FDA and industry say food labels aren't needed, because testing has shown genetically modified foods to be virtually identical to non-modified foods. (Consumers Union commissioned its own tests to create the list of brand-name modified products it published in Consumer Reports.) Critics reply that noting genetically modified ingredients on labels would allow consumers to choose whether or not they want to eat such foods - and would not harm producers if the foods' safety and public acceptance are as high as the industry and FDA say they are.
