Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power
.
—Jacob Bronowski (1908-74), British scientist
Just a decade into the twenty-first century and more than 365 million acres of genetically engineered crops
are being cultivated in twenty-nine countries; this represents 10 percent of the globe's cropland.
1
The Un-
ited States has become the world leader in GE crop production, with 165 million acres, or nearly half of
the globe's production.
2
In just fifteen years, U.S. cultivation of these crops grew from only 7 percent of
soybean acres and 1 percent of corn acres in 1996 to 94 percent of soybean and 88 percent of corn acres in
2011.
3
How did our regulatory agencies allow biotechnology to escape regulation, almost without exception?
The answer is a story of public policy for sale across five presidential administrations—regardless of polit-
ical affiliation. This failure to adequately regulate the biotech industry has had a long-lasting and negative
effect on food and farming. Genetic engineering has many unintended consequences, from causing food al-
lergies to increasing consumers' exposure to carcinogenic artificial hormones. Genetic engineering of crops
that are tolerant of specialized co-branded herbicides has been documented to have dramatically increased
the use of these polluting and health-threatening agrochemicals. No one really knows what the long-term
consequences of manipulating the gene pool of plants and animals will be.
Escaping regulatory oversight for biotechnology was not a scheme that began in the cutting-edge labor-
atories of the University of California or Stanford, where the biotech revolution began, or in the dozens of
start-up companies that employed ambitious young technocrats. The subversion of the regulatory system
started at Monsanto, the industrial chemical company that had survived the regulatory wars of the 1970s and
the hundreds of legal challenges that were a result of manufacturing deadly PCBs (now banned industrial
coolants) and Agent Orange. Monsanto's corporate culture made it a cunning and ruthless giant with the ex-
perience and resources to challenge nature at its very core.
In 1979 a scientist with a vision for biotechnology's future took Monsanto by storm. Howard Schneider-
man was recruited to revitalize the company's research and development program. A developmental biolo-
gist by training, he had been dean of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California-Irvine
before being hired as chief scientist at Monsanto.
Schneiderman had a colorful history. He grew up in New York City and, ironically, attended Ethical Cul-
ture Society schools—they were sponsored by a humanist organization founded to encourage respect for
humanity and nature, and one his parents were active in. He and his wife were married at the Brooklyn Eth-
ical Society School after he graduated from Harvard, having finished his postdoctoral work there. In 1953,
he began his career at Cornell, later moving to Case Western Reserve University, where he obtained a large
grant from the Ford Foundation as part of its green revolution research initiative. Schneiderman's work shif-
Search WWH ::
Custom Search