Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [116]
My reading of this extraordinary scientific effort to prove the obvious comes to a slightly different interpretation: negligible under some circumstances, but not others. The papers provide substantial evidence that certain types of Bt corn produce more lethal pollen than others. They find that monarch butterflies are more likely to survive in fields planted with lower amounts of genetically modified corn, treated with lower levels of insecticides, and weeded less vigorously (unweeded fields contain more milkweed plants). The butterflies survive better when they are not near the center of the fields where pollen counts are higher, and when rain washes the pollen off the milkweed plants.
Such results may be debatable, but no such debate took place—for reasons of politics. The papers were to appear just at the time the EPA was about to decide whether to renew the licenses (registrations) for planting Bt corn and cotton. The EPA asked the journal to release the papers on the Internet prior to publication so the agency would appear to have considered the results in coming to the decision—one it had already made.60 In announcing the decision, the EPA said: “Adhering to a process that emphasized up-to-date scientific data and methodologies, numerous opportunities for public involvement, and balanced decision-making, EPA maintained a transparent review process to ensure that the decision was based on sound science.”61 Critics did not find the process so transparent, not only because they had no chance to review the studies beforehand, but also because some of the data had been classified as “confidential business information” in an unusual concession to the industry. When the EPA did make the confidential information available, it required readers to agree not to copy or discuss it. In this instance, as in so many others, science alone cannot settle social questions of transparency or trust.
THE POLITICS OF RISKS AND BENEFITS
When dealing with questions about the risks of genetically modified foods, industry leaders are fond of saying that nobody has died yet from eating them. This may be a correct assessment, but it misses the point. In a situation in which the risks of genetically modified foods are questionable but so are the benefits, point of view becomes the critical factor in interpretation. Regardless of the remoteness of safety concerns, the intensity of criticism—and the vulnerability of the industry—have prompted government agencies to take safety issues seriously. In 2002 alone, the General Accounting Office (GAO) chided the FDA for not doing a better job of validating information provided by food biotechnology companies, disclosing its evaluation methods, and developing new testing methods to ensure the safety of genetically modified foods. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy asked the FDA, EPA, and USDA to strengthen restrictions on field testing to prevent escape of transgenes, and scientific panels of the National Academies urged more careful safety evaluation of genetically modified plants and animals.62
Regardless of the outcome of such actions, the safety questions discussed here—whether genetically modified foods cause allergies, antibiotic resistance, higher production of lectins, or the death of monarch butterflies, and whether they decrease or increase the