Twenty years ago last week, Dan Quayle went against scientific consensus to publicly proclaim that genetically engineered foods were “substantially equivalent” to non-GE food, and that he would therefore work to ensure that GE food would not be “hampered by unnecessary regulation.” In the pivotal 1992 FDA ruling that Quayle then proudly claimed as part of his “regulatory relief” agenda, the flood gates for GE were opened.
We’ve been living in that wake ever since because a small clutch of biotech “true believers,” ideologically anti-regulatory government officials and industry lobbyists have kept that flood gate open against great odds.
Agricultural biotech has consistently failed to deliver on promises, inspired a global backlash and remained suspect to consumers for twenty years. Yet our regulatory agencies play a game of hot potato, each devising more creative ways than the last to avoid taking a hard look at the fact that GE corn, soy and now alfalfa are the backbone of the industrial food system, and cover hundreds of thousands of acres of countryside without having passed any meaningful scientific scrutiny as to their safety (in part because scientists can’t get their hands on GE crops to study them). USDA actually has, as a declared tenet of their strategic plan, the global proliferation of GE crop technologies.
“Regulatory relief.” Is that code for “we don’t want to do our jobs?”
How is it that a famously stupid politician, citing an illegitimate principle, can have precipitated 20 years of effectively unregulated GE crops? Short answer: He had an army, and they’re still marching to the same “regulatory relief” tune. The Obama administration itself has kept lock-step by appointing no less than five high-profile colonels from the “Biotech Brigade.” Let’s take this alphabetically:
When government officials are consistently opposed to the idea of regulation (i.e. the implementation of rules of governance) one wonders what they’re doing in their posts... other than jockeying for a better-paid exit when they next waltz through the revolving door.
A fine tradition
To sum up: After 30 years of publicly subsidized research and 14 years of commercialization, agricultural biotechnology -- despite its aggressive promotion by the Biotech Brigade, and facing precious few of those “unnecessary regulations” -- has failed to deliver its promises of higher yields for U.S. farmers, or drought-resistance for developing country farmers.
What we have instead are skyrocketing herbicide use, an epidemic of resistant “super-weeds,” indebted farmers, polluted waterways, public health threats, pollinators dying en masse, and unparalleled corporate consolidation in the agrochemical and seed industries such that the top ten agribusinesses control 89 percent of the agrochemicals market, 66 percent of the biotech market and 67 percent of the global seed market.
Because that’s how the Biotech Brigade rolls.
Laura Klein: Organic Food Legend: Organic Valley's CEO George Siemon
It is paid activists like the author Pilatc pushing their truthiness that has slowed the use of drought-resistant crops in developing countries at the great cost of starving infants. Does she just not care about them?
GMO feeds have been used for 10 generations in pigs and almost 40 generation in chickens, where the breeding farms are looking at their health and performance in more detail than most humans receive and you don't see these very sophisticated "high technology breeding operations" shifting their diets to non-GMO feeds.
We have been eating GMO foods for 20 years with no document effects. No smoking guns may imply no gun.
-It does? I don't feel like her article says anyone was forced to buy GMO seeds. She is saying that research has stated that the intrinsic yield and operational yield gains that were promised by GMO crops have not been delivered. Most yield gains in the past decade or so are attributable to non-genetic engineering approaches.
“Why do farmers have higher yields and higher (record) profits?”
-”Farmers” is a big label. Which farmers are you referring to. If you have a graph to share we can look more closely at which farmers you are talking about and how/if/why they are profitable.
-True, they are getting value. But don't confuse value with yields. While thousands of trial crops have been studied only a handful of GMO crops are available commercially today. The majority of which are from one of two camps. One that is resistant to RoundUp and the other creates it's own Bt proteins. Because Roundup Ready crops are immune to glyphosate's disruption of the enzymes involved in aromatic amino acid synthesis, you no longer need to avoid spraying your crop during herbicide application. You can soak a whole field and the only thing left standing will be the RR crop and any other plant that has developed tolerance. And despite Monsanto's false claims that RoundUp is safe for the environment, the truth is Monsanto has not quit choosing profits over people. RoundUp is nasty stuff and we are significantly more likely to ingest it with it's indiscriminate use in foodstuffs. This isn't about increasing yields for farmers it's about selling pesticides. And the Bt product is also a product of convenience. Farmers have been using Bt solutions for a long time. Now the corn, makes it's own crytoxin which requires less input and work from the farmers. Although now you can't just wash it off the surface as it's now part of the finished product.