Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [109]
The inherent ambiguity of the agency’s position seemed certain to—and did—elicit contentious comments, but the FDA did not respond to them. In the meantime, countries throughout Europe used concerns about antibiotic resistance as a basis for bans on the development and growth of transgenic food plants, and U.S. groups also used the issue to raise objections about food biotechnology. In 2001, when the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the FDA’s parent agency, released the Action Plan to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance, its principal recommendation to prevent such problems was a public education campaign to reduce the clinical use of antibiotics—not to reduce antibiotic use in animals.25
Overall, the relaxed regulatory environment demanded by the food biotechnology industry raises many of the outrage issues listed in table 2. No matter how remote the health hazards might be, the industry’s antiregulatory stance does little to inspire trust. If anything, the stance invites criticism on safety and other grounds. As we will now see, similar considerations affect issues related to the environmental effects—risks and benefits—of genetically modified foods.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: RISKS AND BENEFITS
The mandate of the FDA is to assure the safety of drugs, medical devices, and foods, and the agency’s policy for food biotechnology focuses on consequences that might present direct risks to human health. In approving transgenic foods, the FDA does not consider whether they might pose ecological risks. They might, for example, displace existing plants and animals, create new plant pathogens, disrupt ecosystems, transfer genes to weeds or wild relatives, reduce crop diversity, or “contaminate” native plants or organically grown foods. Widespread planting of Bt crops, for example, might encourage the proliferation of insects resistant to the Bt toxin. Similarly, widespread use of herbicide-resistant crops might transfer that resistance to undesirable weeds or encourage further reliance on chemicals—such as Monsanto’s Roundup—as pest-management strategies.26 Despite such concerns, plantings of transgenic crops increased from negligible acreage in 1995 to hundreds of millions of acres within just a few years. Agricultural producers quickly adopted transgenic soybeans, corn, and cotton, largely because they simplify the control of weeds and insect pests by requiring fewer applications of the more toxic chemicals. Farmers, apparently, perceive significant benefits from growing transgenic crops, but how are we, as citizens and consumers, to reconcile the risks and benefits? Let’s begin by looking at the risks.
Environmental Risks
When researchers began to examine questions of environmental risk, their early results provided plenty of justification—albeit highly preliminary—for concern. In 1996, for example, farmers planted 2 million acres with Monsanto’s Bt cotton, but lost thousands of acres when the toxin failed to protect against a bollworm infestation. This event raised the uncomfortable possibility that such huge plantings might promote Bt resistance.27 According to investigative accounts, EPA officials asked Monsanto to evaluate whether the surviving bollworms were indeed Bt-resistant, but the agency could not force the company to cooperate: “Further evaluation of the crop is entirely dependent on Monsanto’s own reporting.”28 Also in 1996, researchers reported that transgenic oilseed (canola) plants readily transmitted herbicide resistance to related weeds. Because weeds reproduce rapidly and compete for nutrients with crop plants, this finding raised fears that cross-pollination might create herbicide-resistant “superweeds” that could overrun cropland and cause an ecological catastrophe. EPA officials revealed the consequences of the regulatory gap, however, when they explained that monitoring of herbicide resistance is