Frankenstein's kitchen

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

This is a corn field in Iowa. It is no coincidence that this state is called America's granary. The life of the local people gravitates around seeding, cultivating and gathering these crops. The corn cobs are even an important element in the state's symbols, they feature in the local art, in the customs of the people... It has been like that for many decades. But with one minor change today. These days, probably the only people still growing natural corn in Iowa are the Amish. Everything else is a genetically modified organism (GMO), a product of genetic engineering. Be it the BT bacteria which produces a poison that kills pests, or a special gene for complex protection. As far as the gaze can reach, everything is GMO.

The local families are enjoying a much higher productivity. They work with firms like Monsanto and Pioneer to grow their crops, and they are using the advanced machines of John Deere. These are the dominant names on the food market in the US. And the local producers are happy. How wouldn't they? With nearly 90% of all food crops being GMOs, the yields are much higher than the "natural" version. The big advantage is the use of the cutting edge technologies in the field, which makes everything much easier. Now the machines go across the fields and spread the seeds. Another machine gathers the harvest. All processes are computerised, no hard physical labour is required. And the yield is naturally much higher. Several times higher.

The bigger quantities produced compensate for the increased expenses for seeds. Before, most expenses used to be for herbicides and pesticides; now they are for seeds, but the produce is much bigger. And of better quality. Most local producers say they are happy with that, and they do not feel too dependent on the big corporations. They say having three companies is enough to garner enough competition and keep prices reasonable - the three big players on the market are of course Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta. The farmers get discounts due to the big quantities, the banks give them easy credits at a 5-6% interest. In result, the net profit could reach 25% and more.

The downside of all that is being completely overshadowed by the high profits. The discussion about food safety remains somewhere far in the background. You would hear farmers say things like "Safety is important, but I am sure that it is all safe. There have been so many tests that it cannot be unsafe, it is just impossible". That sounds sort of like "It must be true, because I heard it on the TV, those guys cannot be lying"...

Others are slightly more critical and they are willing to explore the disadvantages. One of those, a strictly commercial aspect of the problem, is the dependency on just two or three monopolist companies, regardless of the denial that some farmers prefer to be in. Another is the piling examples of pests undergoing various unpredictable mutations and developing a resistance to the genes that produce pesticide poisons. But as a whole, satisfaction seems to dominate.

Today less than 10% of the farmers in Iowa stay away from using GMOs. But those work for specific markets, most of their production goes for export - for clients who explicitly do not want GMOs. But the number of those farmers is constantly decreasing, one could say that they are an endangered species. The financial side of the issue remains the most important factor. In fact, the average consumers do not ask themselves what they are eating. They are happy to have cheap food, period. Some are raising the question about safety, it indeed is an argument sometimes, but the discussion in the US is much more muted than in other parts of the developed world. For most Americans, how exactly the food has been produced matters much less if there are large quantities of it, and if it is cheap. Perhaps we would like to make the connection with the obesity problem in the US, but that is another story...

GMOs are the new norm now - from agriculture, to the kitchen table, to the national and global politics. According to the official stats of the agricultural authorities in the US, 88% of all corn crops for 2009 were some form of GMO. Genetically modified maize, which is used for a whole variety of foods and fodder, is practically everywhere. Another proof that it gets accepted everywhere is the official policy of the US food authorities about the labeling of food products. Assuming that genetic engineering is not harmful by default, they do not consider it necessary to notify the consumer whether a food item contains genetically modified components or not. There is no such requirement on a federal level, it is merely a choice of the producing company whether they would put such a label.

It is exactly this lack of labeling that opens the door to criticism from those who are not entirely convinced of the 100% safety of the GMOs. Some people do expect to be able to make an informed choice and to know what food they are giving to their families. Some people are not convinced that GMOs have been tested enough, and their effects completely understood. Granted, there are those of them who just "feel" that GMOs "must be" unsafe without knowing anything in detail about them. It is an irrational, intuitive impression that they got either through the media or by just thinking about it, without being specialist.

And then, there are those producers who have taken the exact opposite road, and are producing bio-foods. There is a relatively small but vibrant market of bio products in the US, and a whole culture of people who are very careful about what they are eating, what restaurants they are bringing their families to. They do their best to avoid the big fast-food chains, they eat only at restaurants they know well, etc. It is a small group but it is very active.

Their main argument against GMOs are researches like that of the Rodale Institute, which encompasses a period of 30 years and shows that the yields of transgenic production hasn't been considerably larger than the organic one. Meanwhile, bio-agriculture does not damage the environment as much as GMOs. There is a growing trend among people who want to be informed what they are eating, they are trying to shop locally, and there is a newly emerging debate on GMOs.

The US is of course by far the leader in GMO production and research. American corporate interests (Monsanto, most prominently), have been pushing very hard abroad, lobbying with governments in other countries to introduce GMOs and open up their markets. The "GMO norm" is about to move into other parts of the world - it finds fruitful soil especially in countries where food is not a choice, but a luxury. It is no coincidence that Obama's administration and the big players on the market are making a concerted effort to step on the African, Asian and Latin American markets. In some countries like Brazil and Ethiopia the door has already been opened.

This process is additionally encouraged by the increasing demand for food and the crisis with the high food prices (one of the reasons for the Arab spring by the way). There was a time when in the US there was so much excess of food produce that people were wondering what to do with all of it - give it to the livestock or store it. But presently the food demand is increasing at higher rates than the farmers' producing capabilities. The fundamental question now is how to produce more, not what food to produce. So the GMO issue may become moot in a few years... We cannot ignore the fact that there is a vast gap between the supply and demand worldwide. That is why using new technologies in a maximum number of places is becoming a question of life and death, not of choice. This is the strongest argument of the GMO advocates - "soon the food will not be enough for all of us".

For the European who is standing at the sight of the GMO field in Iowa, the first question is how assured the responsible institutions are about the safety of the product they're allowing on the market. The arguments against GMO are stemming from the notion about the "Frankenstein game", the tinkering with the genes whose effects we still do not completely understand - the claim is that genes mutate and lead to developing a pest resistance. There are already many such examples. US farmers are reporting of cases when the defence of the GM seeds is cracking. As far as the possibility of harming the human organism, particularly by causing nausea and allergies, science continues to ask questions and it has not found all the answers yet. All these factors are giving more reasons for a more conservative approach to the issue.

On the other hand, the GMO advocates use the following argument. We are making constant testing at all stages of the genetic research. If there is even the slightest suspicion about something we don't understand at the moment, something that could cause unpredicted effects, then we stop the entire process. Besides, the testing continues even after the product has been released on the market. Granted, we cannot use people for that, so we do what we can to simulate a test on a real human organism as much as possible.

There is always some risk in science, everyone knows that. The question in the American and European case is whether the public would accept the levels of risk that already exist. Europe has a more cautious approach to such technologies - it wants to get more information about them. Americans on the other hand are more prone to say that the risk is so small that it is negligible and it is not worth even putting for discussion. They would argue that there is no data of considerable harmful effects from GMOs. That could of course change tomorrow, but science has been doing its best. There were indeed products which did use to cause allergies, but those were at a testing phase. And here comes the responsibility of the producing firms - would they still venture into commercialising those risky products, or they would refrain from that? Which is a nuance that does not sound too reassuring.

All that said, the genetically modified products are making the biggest inroads in countries suffering from a severe food shortage, or where the consumers are most sensitive to food prices. For instance, while Europe continues to ask questions about the safety of these new technologies, and resist the invading "Frankenstein kitchen", the anti-GMO barricade is beginning to crack even there. Some European countries have already made their choice, opting for the lower price at the expense of extra safety. Meanwhile in large parts of the world, especially in the Third World, governments cannot even afford the luxury to have that argument. But still, the battle for GMO is yet to get really heated, and it is certainly far from over.

Comments

[weswilson]

Thank you for your input.

Living in middle-class America, the push against GM crops has felt like a premium case of privilege in action. Organic farming, while advancing in many, MANY ways over the past few decades, is not the solution to our future world hunger issues. The push against GM foods feels like bootstrap demands. "Well, if you just gave up pesticides and started farming holistically, it would all work out." There are definitely areas where organic farming is teaching us more about how to create sustainable agriculture... but for the most part, an large portion of our food supply being organic appears to be a luxury. And demonizing other agriculture feels like shaming.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

This, exactly.

I have nothing against organic agriculture, but it has its drawbacks, including a greater risk of contamination, lower yields, and perhaps most obviously, prices so much higher than normal food that lower income people are effectively barred from buying it. Sure, I'd love to buy my entire grocery list at Whole Foods...if I made like $100,000 a year.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

don't let them threaten you, or your folks, with that 'Exponential population growth' stuff ... hogwash!

if our country should become so irresponsible at family planning then naturally they can put all their children to maintain the family garden! there are soooOOOo many innovative gizmoes for urban gardens too nowadays (: so please don't be fooled

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

While the benefits from GE crops are undisputable, there are some concerns that are real and are important to address. The big appetite for a place on the GMO market comes from the fact that the GM seeds are designed in such a way that they would not self-reproduce. In normal circumstances, when left on its own, an organic crop would naturally produce new seeds for the next cycle. But the GM seeds are programmed not to do that. Secondly, more and more of those sorts are being designed in such a way that once they are used, the time for possibly reverting to organic crops would be very long, which is unreasonable from a commercial point of view.

In a way, agro business looks very similar to the oil industry, with this difference that this "new oil" is of vital importance for everybody, not just those who have a vehicle. Once you start using GM seeds, you are "tied" to these very few companies who are calling the shots on the market. This is probably the reason for the aggressive offensive of the US government and US business, which is pushing very hard overseas to recruit other markets on their side, and "tie" them to their products. And once this is done, there is practically no untying even if they wanted to. This is particularly visible in the Third World. Once this process has reached an advanced stage and the GMOs become the dominant form, the risk is very real that these companies could dictate the food prices for vast numbers of people, even dictate the policies of entire countries.

The main argument against GMOs is that you literally "import" genetic information from other species (or one you have created in the lab), which would otherwise have never been present in the conditions of a natural selection. The "Terminator" technology that you mentioned is simply making those seeds sterile. Not only does this not create a naturally viable crop, but it is a crop that is not designed to give any yields for the next cycle. There are of course many details in this, but generally the process is this - you import information that makes the seeds need specific herbicides, which as you might have guessed, you would need to keep buying every year from the same several companies. The problem with Monsanto's influence on the US and UK government for example, has become a very serious one in recent years. There are concerns that these companies are already beginning to call the shots on the entire policies of Third World countries.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Then we are in agreement. I would go a bit further and propose that generic GMO production should be liberalised and smaller individual producers be allowed to step into the market. The way the market is being shaped at the moment is setting some traps for the long-term future. Traps mostly of political character, not so much technological.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Not without the relevant oversight, of course! =)

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Another very serious concern is the insufficient medical research on the effects of GMOs on human health. As one might expect, the scarce information and understanding on the subject has a very good reason. The fact is that in the US and UK, these medical researches are subject to control. Government control, which, in turn, happens to be subject to immense pressure from business interests and lobbyist activities.

And there is this problem too... The thing is that the GMOs are patented, i.e. they are property of the respective company. Even if you had some GM crops growing on your farm for any reason other than buying seeds from these companies (like for example seeds brought by the winds or insects or some other way), if any GM quantities are found on your land (even 1%), then your entire crop and your entire produce becomes intellectual property of the respective bio-technological company. The most recent example is the case of Percy Schmeiser in Canada.

So yes, while the upsides are many, the downsides are being dangerously neglected right now, and that is probably the main reason why this debate is still ongoing with intensity. Unless these issues are addressed properly, people would remain wary of the GMOs, whether they need them badly or not.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

You assume GMO is always artificially modified in a chemical laboratory.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

you literally "import" genetic information from other species (or one you have created in the lab)

This is specifically what I said. The effect is genetic modification, whether it is done through manipulation in a laboratory or via artificial selection on the field. There are a whole myriad of possible outcomes from genetic experimentation, and yet the ones that are being overwhelmingly favoured by the monopolist producers are the ones that effectively produce sterile seeds that are designed to give one-year yields, and would require further introduction of GMOs in order to sustain multi-annual yields. And that, of course, has only one possible source, and comes for a steep price.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

The problem might be that scientific research in this field is intertwined with big business - albeit indirectly, through the way the government regulations are designed - again, through being shaped under influence from special interests. This naturally casts some suspicions about the veracity of the majority of that research.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

you know there are a few counties i can think of in Northern California which do not allow for GMO seeds to come into the country. Come to think of it...they are mostly the counties where ly the vineyards for some of the world-renowned wineries ...hmmmm...

Round-Up ready cocaine

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

You just have to read on...
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/columbia.html

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

There was a scandal here last year when the US ambassador to my country pressed real hard on our prime-minister, lobbying for the introduction of GMO. All those talks were off record, on the phone. It later surfaced. There was some outcry. The prime-minister backpedaled and quit his intentions to submit to the pressure from the US ambassador.

It was yet another piece of evidence how our rulers are in turn ruled from outside our country, behind the back of the people who have elected them. But this time the people didn't let it happen.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

I can't wait till corn tastes like chicken.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Baconnaise!

[404.livejournal.com]

Humans have been genetically modifying what they grow for as long as they have been growing food. This is just an outgrowth of that.

[hey-its-michael.livejournal.com]

We are using GM on a crop that didn't exist in nature until humans, over centuries, created it? The OUTRAGE!

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Also, bananas. In the spirit of the month, they are a conspiracy! =)

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

also high thc yield marijuana.

and blue, grey and yellow colourful budgies/parakeets (which turn green after release back into the wild)

and all breeds of dogs, cats and horse and cattle

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

"Mommy, mommy, what is that?"
"Blue plums, dear."
"But... why are they red?"
"Because they're still green, my dear."

=)

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

All corn is GMO. Corn cannot exist in nature and there is no such thing as "wild corn."

It takes too many nutrients from the soil and can only be grown in fertilized cultivation, and this had been true for 3000 years.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

I guess I am using the term "GMO" as in "something modified over a very short of time and introduced into the system shortly after that"... as opposed to "something resulting from a selection process spanning over centuries of time".

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

Yes, but is a change in the time that it takes to create new species that much of a concern.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

It is the effects on an ecosystem that is not designed to be able to cope with changes of that magnitude, scope and speed. Every action has a reaction, and when abrupt changes are introduced into a system, the system tends to respond in many crazy and unpredictable ways.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

The US Constitution and code of law is ill-equipped to deal with new-age technologies. As a document, it's woefully outdated and the consequence is we have absurd laws regarding utility patents, software patents, and everything regarding genetic modification. The law is simply too vague, which is why we have companies like Monsanto that make claims on other people's crops.

I fully encourage GMOs, but the law needs to be brought up to speed so that we don't have monopolies on what should be typical variations/strains.

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

I want further gene-tweaking of my corn to the point that it can scream at me in terror as I prepare to cook it. Then it'll have the same appeal as eating meat. Because in the words of Dennis Leary, "Meat tastes like murder and murder tastes good!" >:D

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

OK, daily quote nomination!! =)