DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 155

Although Monsanto was prohibited by federal regulators from purchasing Delta in 1998, it was suc-
cessful in acquiring the company and its Terminator patents in 2006. Rebecca Spector, CFS's West Coast
director, says that the huge public outcry against the terminator seed changed the equation in the debate
over biotech: “Farmers have been saving seeds for ten thousand years. People were shocked that the in-
dustry would actually breed seeds for planned obsolescence. The whole idea of seeds only being usable
for one season outraged a broad range of organizations, including farm groups. It brought enormous new
energy to the movement.”
Spector is one of the leading voices advocating against genetic engineering. She grew up in suburban
Connecticut, where her neighborhood bordered on a dairy farm with its own ice cream shop. Her father
would take her walking in and around the neighboring farms that are now covered with condomini-
ums—imbuing her with a keen appreciation of the natural world and an environmental ethic. While in col-
lege, she found her interest in the environment intersecting with a desire to create a new vision for agricul-
ture. After graduating from the University of Michigan with an MS in environmental policy, she moved to
California, where she helped run an organic farm in Half Moon Bay, California, for nine years. It was be-
cause of the implications of GE for organic farming that she became alarmed about the technology. Spector
began working with the grassroots organization Mothers & Others—an early voice against the biotech in-
dustry—before moving to CFS.
The late 1990s saw a raging debate over organic standards, a debate that galvanized the movement and
brought many new actors into play. In 1997 the USDA released the National Organic Standards for public
review, and the proposal allowed genetic engineering to be used in organic production. Almost overnight,
a mass grassroots movement emerged opposing inclusion of the technology. More than two hundred thou-
sand people wrote in their comments to the agency that genetic engineering should be excluded from the
organic standard. The activism around this federal regulatory process galvanized people from around the
country into taking action on food issues, and this movement has increased dramatically in size since that
time.
Spector says that she was really inspired by the effectiveness of grassroots action after the huge victory
in keeping these technologies and practices out of organic food. She joined CFS in 2000 because of the
need to gear up grass-roots activity and legal action on GE issues in response to the industry push to ap-
prove new GE products. The organization decided that there was a deep need for a visual portrayal of how
biotechnology was spurring even more industrialization in agriculture.
Spector was one of the editors, along with Andrew Kimbrell, of Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industri-
alized Agriculture , a bible of the good-food movement. The large coffee table-size topic has 250 pictures
and essays by a range of people, from Vandana Shiva to Wendell Berry. Besides addressing the lack of
viability for monoculture agriculture produced with petrochemicals, the topic dispels the myths about the
efficiency and increased productivity of biotechnology. It created a surge of interest in the issue and, along
with its smaller companion “reader,” is still an important tool a decade later. Spector also wrote Your Right
to Know: Genetic Engineering and the Secret Changes in Your Food and the California Food and Agri-
culture Report Card on Genetic Engineering .
As someone who has advocated for effective regulation of the industry, Spector says, “The Clinton ad-
ministration was a big booster to the biotechnology industry. Their refusal to take any action during the
eight years in office to effectively regulate biotech is an unfortunate legacy. We have no real way to assess
biotechnology, because we are left using old and outdated statutes to regulate completely new and danger-
ous technologies.” 17
The potential long-term risks from eating GE food are unknown. The FDA contends that there is not
sufficient scientific evidence demonstrating that ingesting these foods leads to chronic harm. 18 But GE
varieties became the majority of the U.S. corn crop only in 2005 and the majority of the U.S. soybean