Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Commission 2010, 20). The archetypal image is that of “Frankenfoods.” Thanks to the
preceding decades of environmental activism, many people and organizations were
predisposed to criticism of transgenics—labeled as “GMOs,” and in this way very suc-
cessfully separated in the public mind from other genetically engineered products, such
as insulin, that have been widely accepted (Herring 2010). Multilateral organizations
responded to these real or imagined fears at an early stage. The 1992 UN Conference
on Environment and Development (popularly called the Earth Summit) launched the
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which, after its adoption in January 2000 (though it
came into force only in 2003), created the beginnings of an international regime for reg-
ulating transnational trade in GMOs. Most significantly, the protocol followed a precau-
tionary approach that gave developing countries the option of rejecting GMO imports in
order to protect the environment or human health if it was felt that there was insufficient
scientific evidence to prove a product safe. The critics of this precautionary approach—
such as the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (1999)—argued, as we pointed out earlier, that
it is impossible for science to predict or account for all the possible dangers of any new
product, including transgenics. There will always be insufficient scientific evidence to
prove the absolute safety of any product (GM or not), but disallowing its use negates any
and all benefits that might be gained if the product is approved.
Anti-GMO activists' greatest success was Europe's turning away from transgen-
ics, beginning in 1999, with a moratorium on approving more transgenic products for
commercialization. Greenpeace blockaded Monsanto's first introduction of unlabeled
GM crops into Europe, gaining instant press coverage. In the next three years, public
opinion shifted dramatically in Europe. The European Parliament became increasingly
anti-GMO, and the European public dismissed the potential benefits from cultivation
of transgenics (while simultaneously reaping the benefits of pharmaceuticals produced
by comparable genetic engineering). Europe's anti-GMO stance had ramifications for
agriculturally dependent poor countries, which feared the economic effects of having
their crops rejected or arable land “tainted” by transgenics. Many developing countries
moved to stop GM seeds from passing their borders. And international development
institutions, depending in part on European budgetary allocations, have not been big
supporters of transgenics (Paarlberg and Pray 2007).
The Left has largely couched its resistance to corporately controlled agriculture—and
the role of transgenics in that control through seed ownership—under the banner of
“food sovereignty,” as we noted earlier. The food price spikes of 2008, when staple prices
increased by as much as 500 percent in many poor countries, lent force to the idea of
limiting the “commodification” of food, by treating it as an exceptional product that
shouldn't be allowed to be controlled by WTO rules. Such concerns about food sover-
eignty and about the destruction of the lifeways of rural people at the hands of a small
number of capitalist corporations are enhanced by the history of aggressive tactics on the
part of the corporations, and by knowledge of the intimate connections of these compa-
nies with state agencies that are responsible for food safety in the United States (see, e.g.,
Weis 2007, chapter 4). What are seen as aggressive tactics includes the development of
the “terminator gene,” which would create sterile seeds, and thus clearly be of enormous
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