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Over the course of three presidential administrations,
the biotech industry was able to put Washington in its hip
pocket. And yet, through a series of astonishing mishaps and
bad decisions, Monsanto and other biotech companies have bungled
their position of power so badly that they are now in a crisis
situation.
That's one of the conclusions of an amazing
full-page New York Times exposé that ran on January
25, 2001. The Times writes that Monsanto gained "astonishing"
control over its own regulatory industry, through the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the Food
and Drug Administration.
"In this area, the U.S. government
agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked
them to do and told them to do," Dr. Henry Miller, who
was in charge of biotechnology issues for the Food and Drug
Administration from 1979 to 1994, told the Times. The result?
"Food biotech is dead," Dr. Miller said. "The
potential now is an infinitesimal fraction of what most observers
had hoped it would be."
According to the Times, "Genetically
modified ingredients may be in more than half of America's
grocery products. But worldwide protest has been galvanized.
The European markets have banned the products and some American
food producers are backing away. A recent discovery that certain
taco shells manufactured by Kraft contained Starlink, a modified
corn classified as unfit for human consumption, prompted a
sweeping recall and did grave harm to the idea that self-regulation
was sufficient. The mighty Monsanto has merged with a pharmaceutical
company.
"How could an industry so successful
in controlling its own regulations end up in such disarray?"
"'Somewhere along the line, Monsanto
specifically and the industry in general lost the recipe of
how we presented our story,' Will Carpenter, the head of the
company's biotechnology strategy group until 1991, told the
Times. 'When you put together arrogance and incompetence,
you've got an unbeatable combination. You can get blown up
in any direction. And they were.'"
Biotech companies lobbied hard to convince
the government to declare that genetically engineered foods
were "substantially equivalent" to non-GE foods.
Dr. Louis J. Pribyl, one of 17 government scientists working
to create a policy on GE food, believed that new toxins could
be created during genetic engineering.
"This is the industry's pet idea,
namely that there are no unintended effects that will raise
the F.D.A.'s level of concern," Dr. Pribyl wrote in a
fiery memo to the F.D.A. scientist overseeing the policy's
development. "But time and time again, there is no data
to back up their contention."
The Times summarizes the article by noting
that "even some who presumably benefited directly from
the new policy remain surprised that it was adopted. 'How
could you argue against labeling?' said Roger Salquist, the
former chief executive of Calgene, whose Flavr Savr tomato,
engineered for slower spoilage, was the first fruit of biotechnology
to reach the grocery store. 'The public trust has not been
nurtured,' he added.
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