Independent (London) | editorial | October 25, 1999
IF THERE are two words guaranteed to frighten the pants off multinational corporate executives they are "class" and "action". The biotechnology companies will be alarmed, therefore, by the news, which we report exclusively today, that they are to face legal action in the United States - and probably in the European Union too - over the sale of genetically-modified seeds.
They will be right to be alarmed. The only pity is that, inevitably, legal remedies tend to come rather late. There is a British snobbery about American corporate litigation. But the class actions on behalf of smokers have certainly brought the tobacco industry to account - and have revealed a great deal about how much the tobacco companies knew and when they knew it.
In the early days, the biotechnology industry promised to cure incurable diseases, feed the world's poor and reduce humankind's depletion of the Earth's resources. Somehow that vision has been distorted. Instead, it has given us crops that can tolerate higher doses of pesticides and weed-killer, which will do more, not less, damage to the environment; the "terminator gene" which will force farmers to buy new seeds from their supplier because crops will not produce their own seeds; and vast US supplies of genetically-mod)fied soya beans which have been mixed with the ordinary kind so that we cannot tell what it is that we are buying.
This is not some morality tale about the evils of capitalism. It was not simply the pursuit of profit that distorted the utopian dreams of the biotech pioneers. The statecontrolled economies of the communist bloc were capable of inflicting as much damage on the environment as the consumerconscious economies of the West.
The real failure has been one of regulation, of lax enforcement of the rules that ensure that capitalism does not turn into a monopolistic conspiracy against the public. We should adopt the same law-based approach as to the problems of British beef and French pork. The current furore surrounding these issues greatly strengthens the case for international courts enforcing international laws. In the case of France, this means the European Court.
In the case of the biotechnology companies, it means, initially at least, a class action in the American courts to enforce US laws against anti-competitive practices and unsafe foods. On the face of it, the case is a good one. This newspaper has always been strongly in favour of pushing forward the boundaries of knowledge, and of casting aside Luddite taboos about science.
However, we have also always been in favour of regulated, competitive markets, and it was no part of our vision of genetic science that it should simply be used as a tool for building monopolies in the supply of seeds to farmers - or for the further intensification of agriculture without regard to environmental costs.
This legal action may be the best way to force the food companies to do what they should have done from the start: prove that their innovations are in the public interest.
