December, 1999
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Brazil's farmers dispute ban on genetically modified food

December 28
Wall Street Journal

JULIO DE CASTILHOS, Brazil -- Along Brazil's remote southern border with Argentina, a battle over contraband is raging.

Government inspectors raid storage sheds and conduct on-the-spot lab tests. Tipsters have a toll-free hotline to rat on smugglers. Police burn fields and seize sacks of seeds.

The target isn't cocaine or heroin. It's soybeans.

In one of the strangest twists in the dispute over genetically modified food, the government of a Brazilian state has gone to war with its farmers over their use of soybeans altered to permit use of a certain herbicide. And while the dispute is rooted in local politics, it touches on international business: the efforts by multinational food companies to meet demand, especially in Europe, for food free of "GM" ingredients.

That's because unlike the U.S. and Argentina -- the two other top soybean producers -- Brazil hasn't yet approved the planting of bioengineered beans, and thus has emerged as the world's premier source of the regular kind. So food companies, which use soybean oil or soybean meal in everything from chocolate to tofu, have been turning to Brazil's beans for their non-GM product lines.

Favored fowl

Indeed, European supermarkets cite their use of Brazilian soybeans as evidence that their product lines are "non-GM." One British chain, Iceland Group, even says it imports its frozen chickens all the way from Brazil because there they can peck at feed made of conventional soybean meal.

But a visit to the big soybean-growing state of Rio Grande do Sul suggests that Brazil's soybean supply isn't quite as claimed by marketers. Many farmers here openly plant genetically modified soybeans, with or without federal sanction.

The European Union, which requires labeling of GM foods, plans a limit of just 1% bioengineered residue in any ingredient for foods to avoid the label. But agriculture officials in this Brazilian state estimate that 13% of its 7.5 million acres of soybean fields are growing a genetically modified crop this season. Farmers put the percentage higher still, and they note that these GM soybeans are routinely mixed with conventional soybeans before shipment abroad.

No guarantees

European importers who've traveled to the region recognize there's a problem. "It is obviously something that concerns me," says Sonny Arora, managing director of Soya International Ltd. in Manchester, England, which imports more than 15,000 tons of Brazilian soy a year and supplies it to supermarket chains for their private-label goods. He says lab tests on Brazilian soybeans in the past year have found "some contaminated product." And a spokesman for Cargill Inc., which sells Brazilian soybean oil and meal, says, "We have been aware for some time that there are no GM-free guarantees, if you like, on Brazilian soya."

Braulio Dias, a specialist on the issue at Brazil's federal environmental-protection agency, says national officials are confident that "the great bulk of the harvest isn't transgenic." Some experts say GM soybeans have made few inroads in the farm lands of western Brazil. But the agriculture secretary of Rio Grande do Sul, whose office has become a kind of clearinghouse on the issue in Brazil, says he has reliable information that GM is being used in other states besides his. In fact, the secretary, Jose Hermeto Hoffmann, says his state may have less transgenic soybean than the others, which aren't enforcing the law.

The gulf between Brazilian farmers and their European customers is wide. Farmers here shrug when asked about the GM controversy. They don't seem to believe that consumer demand for non-GM food is rising as a result of environmental groups' warnings that GM crops could have unintended effects. Mention the anti-GM group Friends of the Earth, and they think of a local farmers' organization by the same name -- one that advises farmers on the advantages of GM seeds.

A cost issue

What the farmers know for sure is that their competitors across the border in Argentina are permitted to use the new seeds -- and thereby reduce their production costs -- while they aren't. With world soybean prices at unprofitable, 25-year lows, "we have to lower costs because we're at the end of our rope economically," complains Hilario Ceolin, mayor of the town of Estrela Velha. His is one of several communities that have passed measures defying the federal and state governments and declaring legal the bioengineered crops, known here as transgenicos.

Brazil's soybean squabble arose earlier this year after the federal Agriculture Ministry approved use of Monsanto Co.'s "Roundup Ready" soybeans. These beans, thanks to a bacterium gene inserted by Monsanto, can survive a dousing by Roundup herbicide, also made by Monsanto. Farmers say that by using Roundup, they can avoid more-expensive weed-killing chemicals and cut their overall herbicide costs by 20%.

But environmental activists fear that these soybeans' resistance to Roundup could somehow spread to neighboring plants, leading to out-of-control "superweeds." Brazil's chapter of Greenpeace, along with a consumer group and Brazil's environmental-protection agency, won a court ruling in August that halted use of the seeds pending an environmental-impact study, which is expected to take at least a year. An appeal by Monsanto has yet to be heard.

In Rio Grande do Sul, many farmers aren't waiting. They've been growing genetically modified soybeans for two or three seasons, from seed originally smuggled across the border from Argentina. They won't say who supplies the seed. "Bags of it just fall from trucks and people plant it," jokes farmer Fabiano Scapin. He says he doesn't use it but knows plenty of people who do.

The farmers might have gone on this way with impunity but for a political shift. Thirteen months ago, the state narrowly elected as governor Olivo Dutra, from the leftist Workers Party. Although GM soybeans hadn't been a campaign issue, the party's new agriculture secretary, Mr. Hoffmann, soon got a briefing on them from Greenpeace. Told of the GM backlash in Europe, he went to France and Britain to gauge its force, and says he returned convinced that bioengineered soybeans were a dead-end street for Brazilian growers.

Few listened to him. "We were ridiculed in the media for talking about transgenics," Mr. Hoffmann says. "It sounded like a crazy thing."

Surprise inspections

With the seeds' status in limbo as the planting season began last month, the state government moved to halt their use. It launched an informational campaign with thousands of colorful posters that say, "Transgenicos. Don't Plant This Idea." They list a hotline to report violators.

The most controversial part of the program has been its inspections. Teams from the state Agriculture Ministry began showing up on farms with test kits designed to determine within minutes whether soybeans have had a gene added. Under federal law, a farmer could face one to three years in jail for possessing such seeds.

Farmers, who largely voted against the Workers Party, see this as Big Brother behavior. "The government acts as though it's worse than planting marijuana," says Paulo Pigatto, a farmer from the town of Julio de Castilhos, who says he planted a little more than 100 of his 1,800 acres with GM seeds.

But Marta Elena Angelo Levien, head of the inspection program, says ensuring that regular soybeans are planted is a "matter of national security." She adds: "It's a technology that is dominated by a few big businesses forming a cartel. By adopting transgenicos, Brazil would become dependent on an oligarchy for food technology."

Authorities burned soybean seeds that had been seized in a farm-supply shop late last year. They also destroyed some plants grown during the prior gubernatorial administration at a state-run experimental farm. When state inspectors first visited Julio de Castilhos, they found transgenic soybean seeds on six of the first seven farms they checked, says Elgart Egon Renner, a farmer and agrarian consultant who says he uses them, too.

Bean bust

Then one morning last month, a federal police cruiser and three cars from the state agriculture ministry's office appeared in front of Forgiarini Barbecue, a restaurant in the shadow of local grain elevators.

Word that a soybean bust was coming down traveled fast in this dusty town, where farmers walk about with cell phones clipped to their jeans, and tractors bump up and down the cobblestone streets. Soon about 100 producers had gathered near the restaurant parking lot. Forming a convoy of pickups, they tailed the authorities as they started their inspections.

About six miles from the town center, the soybean sleuths decided to abort their mission. They made a U-turn and headed back, with the convoy of farmers still dogging them. The officials finally pulled over at the edge of town and engaged in a tense, hourlong standoff with farmers.

"We asked them to read to us the warrant to search lands, and they wouldn't," says Mr. Renner, the farmer.

It wasn't the only such incident. For 30 hours, angry farmers in the town of Tupancireta practically held inspectors hostage. "We did let them go to the drugstore and to the supermarket, but we wouldn't let them step on our land," says farmer Jorge Moraes. Soybeans, he says, "are our great weapons for the future. The inspectors are risking their life going on people's property."

The fight has spilled into the state assembly, which is still controlled by a conservative party. "We are at an impasse, a showdown between farmers and the government," says Elvino Bohn Gass, a Workers Party legislator whose office walls are emblazoned with anti-GM fliers and a big Che Guevara banner.

Two weeks ago, busloads of angry farmers poured into Porto Alegre, the state capital, to protest against the inspections. For hours, they milled around outside the assembly building while, across the street, a dozen Greenpeace activists stood in front of a yellow placard listing the names of pro-GM legislators beneath the words: "Congressmen who could make you a guinea pig for transgenicos."

Conspiracy theories

One farmer, Rudinei Cherubini, was convinced the GM opponents were part of an international conspiracy to keep Brazil from getting the new seeds. "Europe doesn't want us to use trangenicos because European companies that produce herbicides will lose market here," he said.

In contrast, the opponents suspect that the pro-GM farmers are secretly financed by Monsanto, although they, like Mr. Cherubini, offer no proof. They say they find it strange that the company, which has sued some U.S. farmers for planting beans they had grown from Monsanto seed instead of buying new seed each season, hasn't taken any legal action in Brazil. A Monsanto spokeswoman says the company has asked Brazilian authorities "to take appropriate legal measures to stop" such practices here and will wait for the results of an investigation to know whether there is any infringement of its patent on the soybeans.

On Dec. 8, state legislators voted 28 to 13 to halt the farm inspections. The bill said they could be carried out only by the federal government, which has shown little interest in doing so. But the Workers Party governor has vowed to veto the bill. He also has announced a $5 million subsidy program for farmers who swap their GM seeds for conventional ones.

So the soybean saga in Brazil rolls on. Mr. Renner, the pro-GM farmer and consultant, argues that ignorance of science is behind much of the fear of transgenicos. "All of us are transgenic," he says at a table at the Forgiarini Barbecue. "After we are born, we receive vaccines to make us resistant to disease, so we ourselves become transgenic."

But Maria Guazzelli, an agronomist who favors organic farming and opposes GM seeds, sees things differently. The arguments, she says sadly, have "become too emotional to be anything connected to science."

In defense of better food

December 28
Boston Herald editorial

Associated Press reporter Anne Gearan noticed that President Clinton seems captivated by the Human Genome Project. He referred to it 20 times in remarks during a single month, everywhere from Kosovo to Seattle.

This exciting $3 billion effort led by the National Institutes of Health is aimed at finding out the structure, location and function of every one of the roughly 120,000 human genes. The results will offer previously undreamed-of insight into many diseases and clues to cures.

The president likes to slide into observations that all human beings are basically the same, that real genetic differences are trivial. It's hard to criticize a president for what he doesn't say, but it would have been nice (at least for some of the overseas audiences) not to slide into a plea for tolerance but to defend one of the already successful fruits of the same revolution in genetics that led to the Human Genome Project: improved food.

Two examples are corn that's resistant to pests and herbicide-resistant plants that let a farmer really zap the weeds without harm to his crop. American farmers quickly adopted these techniques, and most American corn recently has been of this kind.

But Luddite opponents in Europe have won many converts, including Prince Charles of England, with quite unjustified scenarios of environmental disaster.

There's a concrete U.S. economic interest in overcoming these fears. They give cover to government ministries in the pocket of farm lobbies that like nothing better than to keep American products out of their markets.

Despite what the Luddites say, scientists agree that how the genome of a plant is modified means nothing - the point is what the modification is. Cross-breeding has modified organisms for centuries.

Cheaper, better food, grown on fewer acres with less effort, is an unqualified benefit to humanity. How sad that it must be defended.

Biotech crop-busting comes to Canada

December 27
National Post, Michael Fumento commentary

'We Canucks wanted to put Canada on the map as inhospitable to the mad science of genetic engineering," said a spokesman for a group calling itself Reclaim the Genes. It "will not be tolerated," he said.

The method: A ballot box? No. A civil demonstration? No. An ad campaign? No. Instead, during the nights of Oct. 27 and 31, this group and another chopped down, stomped on and uprooted more than 3,500 trees they believed were being grown for genetic engineering research in plots in Vancouver and Saanich, B.C. Within three weeks, biotech-bashers struck again, this time at a grove in Summerland, B.C. They called them "Frankenfruit" trees.

What crime did these trees commit? They're being used to grow wood that will be cheaper for consumers, use fewer pesticides, be more environmentally friendly when converted to paper, and grow more rapidly.

For that, they had to die.

So far this year, vandals have struck 17 crop sites in North America, spanning the continent from Maine to British Columbia and California. And however one feels about biotech crops or biotech in general, the attacks and the media's general willingness to ignore them tell us much about biotech opponents and those who succour them.

The North American vandals directly acknowledge the inspiration from overseas, especially Britain, where wrecking crop plots that offend one's sensibilities is commonplace. "Many thanks to our comrades in other countries for the inspiration to join them," declared a communique from Reclaim the Seeds, one of the more active U.S. crop-busting groups.

The British attacks are not random and are not exclusive to tiny fringe groups. Indeed, some have been the work of the world's most prominent environmentalist group, Greenpeace, while other environmentalist groups that don't join in nonetheless refuse to criticize them.

In Europe, anywhere between 150-200 experimental biotech fields and forests have been damaged or destroyed. On this side of the Atlantic, the crop-busters are just getting started but are making up for lost time in a spectacular fashion. "There was only one [attack] that I know of in the U.S. in 1998," according to Jeffrey Tufenkian, spokesman for an anti-biotech American group that tracks crop wrecking, Genetix Alert of San Diego.

And it isn't just fields and forests coming under attack.

On the last day of September, two groups wrecked sites growing melons, corn and sunflowers in Woodland, Calif. In addition to destroying the crops, they disabled an irrigation system and vandalized three greenhouses. Earlier in the month, the Bolt Weevils whacked a biotech corn crop at Pioneer Hi-Bred's Minnesota facility. In addition to trampling 50 rows of research corn, they damaged company vehicles, and spray-painted graffiti on sheds.

Nor do the plans stop even there. "Crops, research facilities and corporate offices are all sources of this technological threat and should be targeted," say the Weevils. "Our view is that if corporations, governments and universities have any relationship to biotechnology, they are targets."

Crime against property is serious. But the rationalizations and euphemisms given are beyond ludicrous. Consider a Greenpeace U.K. press release: "At 5:15 a.m. today in a peaceful direct action, a Greenpeace decontamination unit removed genetically modified pollution from the third farm-scale experiment to be disrupted in the U.K. over the last eight weeks." So trespassing on private land and ripping up crops is "peaceful," while destroying something you don't like is "direct action" or "decontamination." And it wasn't the science of gene transfer under attack, but rather "pollution."

Greenpeace's British executive director, Lord Peter Melchett, who was arrested for personally "decontaminating" crops, even claims it "is not lawlessness." Really? Trespass and vandalism are legal in Britain?

In this instance yes, says Lord Melchett, because "we act within strong moral boundaries." Thus the criminality of an act can be negated by the actor's opinion. If you feel morally justified in "peacefully decontaminating" your spouse via "direct action" with a shotgun, your actions are "not lawlessness."

North American groups have adapted the euphemisms. Reclaim the Seeds speaks of its ripping, cutting, tearing and shredding as "nonviolent direct action." They also make claims of heroic acts of sacrifice. "We are risking jail and injury, as well as sacrificing time, energy and sleep," declaim the Reclaimers. Time, energy and sleep?

These aren't just a bunch of silly self-serving euphemisms and statements. Rather, they reveal the mindset of bullies who strike by night and slip away, then convince themselves and others that they are bold warriors who aren't just above the law; they make it.

Brock Ohlee of the U.S. crop vandalization group Future Farmers declared, "Direct action against corporate greed is both a political necessity and a moral imperative," thus "the people have the right and the responsibility to fight back." "The people," of course, is as defined by these Future Fascisti.

After Reclaim the Seeds ripped up a sugar beet field at the University of California at Davis, it proclaimed "these acts as self-defensive measures on behalf of all beings against Monsanto, UC-D and the university system's corporate boot-licking, and the global GE takeover!" (emphasis added). So it's not just "The people" any more; they now speak for everything in existence right down to the lowliest amoeba.

But what's the real motive here?

After crunching a corn crop, the Reclaimers cried: "Modern agri-business and genetic mutilation is a capitalist machine that must be dismantled," and its vandalism "is a direct action that destroys corporate power and authority."

Thus bio-engineering has become representative of every evil any corporation has perpetrated (or, shall we say, everything corporations have done that members of these groups don't like); therefore, attacking biotech is just another way of attacking capitalism and technology. The Luddite analogy is one that anti-environmentalists have practically worn out. But here it fits almost too well.

Politics are arguable, but whenever the crop-busters venture into scientific territory, they trip over their shears.

This is no more clear when they proclaim themselves as protectors of Mother Nature.

After Reclaim the Seeds "decontaminated" seven acres of California corn, they declared, "We believe that protecting the result of more than three billion years of evolution is a duty to ourselves, all living beings, and the generations to come."

They might be shocked to hear that corn itself was invented more than 5,000 years ago by native Americans crossing two types of wild grass. Indeed, virtually nothing we eat other than non-farm fish and things that contain the word "wild" in them (like Ewell Gibbons' "wild hickory nuts") evolved that way.

How many environmentalist groups have decried this vandalism? Only three I've been able to find, and then just mildly. The vast majority has kept mum.

The mainstream British media have "uncritically embraced this phenomenon," says Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at the University of Kent at Canterbury. "The activists, it is said, are the good guys," who, "unlike sleazy politicians," are "untainted by corruption or self-interest."

In North America, at least, the media have shown no support for biotech crop bashing. It's routinely referred to as "vandalism," and the opinion pieces on the topic have been critical.

The problem is that aside from Canadian papers printing a few articles on the Canadian incidents, the major North American outlets have acted as if the problem doesn't exist.

Still, there's a silver lining to this dark cloud hanging over North American science and consumers. To use the groups' own analogy, history shows that terrorism is a desperation tactic of guerrillas who've abandoned hope of winning the "hearts and minds" of the people. As a Portland Press Herald editorial stated, "Seeds of Resistance has unilaterally decided that there is 'absolutely no benefit to humanity' from the corn its members destroyed. How do they know? By turning to vandalism, they destroyed the chance to learn."

That's the whole point. The eco-terrorists know that just around the corner is the second wave of biotech foods, in which not just farmers and the environment will benefit, but consumers as well. They know that pressure could build in the Third World for crops to relieve terrible malnutrition problems that lead to crippling, blindness and early death. When that happens (or in biotech-bashers' thinking, if it's allowed to), they know that in the ensuing war of ideas and choice they cannot win.

Michael Fumento is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who specializes in science and health issues. He is currently writing a book on advances in biotechnology.

GMO crop use may boost food costs - Chicago Fed

December 27
Reuters

Use of genetically modified (GMO) crops in the food system will likely increase handling and processing costs and retail food prices to some extent, a Federal Reserve Bank economist said on Monday.

In a quarterly letter on the farm economy, Chicago Fed agricultural economist Mike Singer said biotechnology and GMO crops hold great promise to improve the environment and better human health.

``However, concerns over the safety of these foods and the environmental impact of genetically enhanced crops have risen dramatically in recent months,'' Singer said.

``Though it seems highly unlikely that the continued development and use of these products will be banned, labelling and perhaps additional regulation may increase costs in the food system and, ultimately, affect retail food prices.''

GMO crops, which in recent years caught on widely with U.S. farmers, usually contain genes inserted into seeds to help the plant withstand herbicide applications, diseases or serious crop pests such as the European corn borer.

More than a third of U.S. corn and more than half U.S. soybeans were planted to GMO seeds this year, before a firestorm of consumer protests led many food processors and distributors in Europe and Asia to call for GMO segregation, further testing and labelling.

Disputes over the safety and evaluation of GMO crops contributed to the breakdown of the latest World Trade Organization talks in Seattle earlier this month.

Singer said that given the level of consumer concerns and their effects this year on food processors, it was likely that next year's GMO crops in the U.S. will have to be segregated, tested, labelled and further regulated -- all adding to costs that would be pushed further down the food chain.

``The problem today is one of infrastructure, i.e. most farmers, handlers and processors are not prepared to segregate grain,'' he said, noting that segregation will demand either considerable downtime during harvest or purchase of additional equipment and storage devoted to keeping GMO identity intact.

``Either approach entails a significant additional cost,'' Singer said. ``Complete segregation may be all but impossible,'' he added.

Singer said that by next year's harvest testing procedures and standards must be developed, ``perhaps similar to standards already in existence for levels of foreign matter allowed in various commodities.''

Singer said it would be no surprise to see a reduction in plantings of GMO crops next year by U.S. farmers.

``Many may decide to reduce the amount of GMO seed planted because of concern over price discounts and demand uncertainty,'' Singer said.