Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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good” campaigns to try to convince people that GMOs are beneficial (Jaffe
2001). But there are several current and potential problems with GE crops
and their regulation. The FDA claims that there are no “special labeling
requirements for bioengineered foods as a class of foods” because they have
“no basis for concluding that bioengineered foods differ fromother foods in
any meaningful or uniform way” (USFDA 2001). The process for approval of
a GE crop is the following: the corporation that developed the gene altered
seed voluntarily supplies safety data to the FDA for review, then the FDA
issues the statement that it has “no further questions . . . at this time” (Jaffe
2001). There are no long-term health or environmental studies on GE seeds,
crops, or food. We are relying solely on the biotech industry's voluntary
submission of its own testing and safety data.
Potential and realized problems with GE crops include unwilling spread of
GMOs through cross-pollination; increased pest resistance and evolution of
“superbugs” or “super weeds”; occurrence of food allergies due to unknown
genetic materials in our food; varying nutritional content of GE foods; lack
of freedom for farmers as they must sign proprietary agreements with the
GE corporations; and reduction in export markets (Pollack 2003;
New York
Times
, February 19, 2003; Jaffe 2001; Cummins and Lilliston 2000;Grogan
and Long 2000; Pimentel et al. 1989a). U.S. exports have been in jeopardy
because other nations have refused to accept GE crops. The British Medical
Association “calls for a moratorium on the further growing of commercial
GM crops in the UK until more research has been carried out into the long-
term health and environmental consequences” (BritishMedical Association
1999).
Thus American farmers are caught on the industrial treadmill once again,
being told that GMOs will earn more profit, but then realizing that GE yields
are highly variable and require high input costs (Altieri 2001). In addition,
export markets refuse engineered crops due to consumer uprising. Farmers
are also faced with the issue of pollen drift, so if a neighbor plants GMO corn,
their corn could “become” GMO by harvest time, due to cross-pollination.
Finally, farmers are caught within the legal grips of the agribusiness giants
again, as they are forced to sign proprietary agreements with the GMO corpo-
rations, promising to use only their brand of pesticides and noting that they
are not allowed to save seed from one year to be used the next (Phillipson
2001). Federal patent law prohibits anyone from harvesting more than one
crop from their GE seeds, thus assuring the corporations of “return cus-
tomers,” as farmers must buy more seed each year, rather than saving their
own seed (International Center for Technology Assessment 2001). Farm-
ers in the United States and Canada are being sued by the billion-dollar
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