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By Brian Halweil
Worldwatch Institute
Worldwide, the area planted to transgenic crops jumped more than twenty-fold in the last four seasons, from 2 million hectares in 1996 to nearly 40 million hectares in 1999. In the United States, Argentina, and Canada, over half the acreage for major commodities like soybeans, corn, and canola are planted in transgenics. (These three nations account for 99 percent of the global transgenic acreage, pointing to the limited global acceptance.) But with a growing number of food manufacturers and grocery chains in Europe taking products containing transgenics off the shelves, the market for these crops has been shrinking. American exports of soybeans to the European Union plummeted from 11 million tons in 1998 to 6 million tons last year, while American corn shipped to Europe dropped from 2 million tons in 1998 to 137,000 tons last year: a combined loss of nearly one billion dollars in sales for American agriculture.
In fact, top commodity handlers, such as Archer Daniels Midland and A.E. Staley, have already begun to discount transgenic crops because of this greater financial risk. Commodity traders have followed suit fearing the loss of export markets as Japan, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, the members of the European Union, and other nations draft laws requiring mandatory labeling of food products containing transgenic ingredients. Most major food companies have already announced that they will avoid transgenic ingredients in their products for the European market. But now recent surveys indicate that consumer tastes are souring on the other side of the Atlantic as well. Several food manufacturers, including Gerber, Frito-Lay, and natural food retailers Wild Oats and Whole Foods, have said that they will avoid transgenic ingredients in their products sold in the United States—the largest consumer market for transgenic crops. If more American manufacturers hop on the bandwagon, the drop in demand would be devastating for transgenic growers and seed producers. Share prices for biotech seed companies that were Wall Street's darlings a few years ago are sinking towards all-time lows. Investors in Monsanto Company, the industry leader which has born the brunt of public criticism, have watched the corporation's share price lose nearly one-third of its value in the last year, falling from a high of $50 in February of 1999 to a recent low of just $35. Brokerage houses have been advising major players in the biotech industry to spin off their ailing agricultural divisions. Novartis and AstraZeneca both followed this advice in December of 1999. Dupont had been considering issuing a new stock that would track its much-celebrated and nascent ag biotech division, but decided in early 2000 to indefinitely postpone the stock's release. And struggling to recoup nearly $8 billion in seed company and agricultural biotechnology investments, Monsanto merged with pharmaceutical and chemical giant Pharmacia Upjohn at the end of 1999. The new firm quickly decided to turn Monsanto's agricultural unit into a separate company. Further complicating the financial picture are concerns about uninsured liabilities for farmers and agribusiness companies. In November 1999, 30 farm groups, including the National Family Farm Coalition and the American Corn Growers Association, warned American farmers that "inadequate testing of gene-altered seeds could make farmers vulnerable to 'massive liability'from damage caused by genetic drift—the spreading of biologically modified pollens–and other environmental effects." In December, a group of high-profile lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto, on behalf of American soy farmers, charging that the company has not conducted adequate safety testing of engineered crops prior to release and that the company has tried to monopolize the American seed industry. To many observers, the rapid release of transgenic crops and the ensuing financial disarray is disturbingly reminiscent of the earlier uncritical bandwagons for nuclear energy and chemical pollutants like DDT. A combination of public opposition and financial liability eventually forced retrenchment of these earlier technologies, after their effects on the environment and human health proved to be far more complex, diffuse, and lingering than the promises that accompanied their rapid commercialization.
The precautionary principle holds that when a new technology carries suspected harm, scientific uncertainty of the scope and scale of the harm should not necessarily prevent precautionary action. Instead of requiring critics to prove that the technology poses potential dangers, the producers of a technology shoulder the burden of presenting evidence that the technology is safe. Industry has long labeled the precautionary approach as reactionary, arguing that it stifles research and prevents economic progress. On the contrary, advocates realize that all stakeholders—including consumers, government, and industry—benefit from an open and democratic attempt to anticipate any undesirable social and financial surprises. The goal is to apply wisdom and judgement about the potential effects of a new technology before flooding the marketplace with the products of that technology. The rapid rollout of genetically engineered crops over the last four years stands the precautionary principle on its head. Widespread commercialization of transgenic crops has come before—not after—any thorough examination of the benefits and risks associated with these crops. The regulatory framework devoted to transgenics is inadequate, nontransparent, or completely absent. And there has been essentially no public discussion about the many potential consequences of large-scale planting of transgenic crops. For example, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman only recently called for studies assessing the long-term ecological effects of these crops. But more than half of the U.S. soybean crop and nearly as much of the corn crop are already genetically engineered. Another recent illustration of our lack of precaution was presented in a December 1999 article in Nature reporting that the insecticide produced by a widely planted variety of transgenic corn can accumulate—in its active form—in the soil for extended periods of time. The authors note that the effects on soil organisms and soil fertility are largely unknown, but potentially enormous. But, like earlier laboratory studies showing that pollen from this same corn could be lethal to certain beneficial insects, the fact that such effects had not been considered prior to planting tens of millions of hectares in this crop raises concerns about the adequacy of existing safeguards for ecological and human health risks. |
After four years of stupendous growth, farmers are expected to reduce their planting of genetically engineered seeds by as much as 25 percent in 2000, as spreading public resistance staggers the once high-flying biotech industry. Stock prices for agricultural biotech companies are falling, exports of transgenic crops are tumbling, and questions are mounting about the liability for what is turning into a major debacle for farmers. At the same time, some 130 nations just signed an international biosafety agreement prescribing caution.
In an effort to avoid this same dismal cycle with the introduction of each new "revolutionary" technology, public policy advocates have called for the adoption of the precautionary principle. Under current policy, a technology is all too often judged safe until it is definitively proven harmful. 
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