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New York Times exposes major league biotech industry bungling

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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