Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [88]
The speakers at the Tufts conference were intoning the mantra of the food biotechnology industry, the theoretical promise that its products will solve world food problems by creating a more abundant, more nutritious, and less expensive food supply. I emphasize theoretical because this promise is not yet realized; the industry is still in its infancy. The speakers were right to be concerned about public acceptance. The commercial products of food biotechnology have caused no end of controversy. In the United States, and particularly in Great Britain, people view the new foods with suspicion, often with dread and outrage. The results: boycotts, destruction of plantings (“ecoterrorism”), legal bans, and trade disputes. Such reactions reflect misgivings about the risks of technological manipulations of food, not only to human health, but also to the environment, to the world economy, and to society as a whole. They also reflect distrust of the motives of the food biotechnology industry and of the ability of government to regulate that industry. This sense of unease—specific for some, vague for others—translates most easily to a simple response: rejection. As people often tell me, “I don’t want any GM in my food.”
To industry officials and scientists who view risk through a science-based lens, statements like that are antiscientific and irrational. In the early 1990s, they characterized any criticism of food biotechnology as ignorant, irresponsible, hysterical, or—my favorite—troglodyte, and as a prominent symptom of a new psychiatric disorder, biotechnophobia.3 They lamented that well-funded activist groups were deliberately “interweaving political, societal and emotional issues . . . to delay commercialization and increase costs by supporting political, non-science-based regulation, unnecessary testing, and labeling of foods.”4 In that tradition, the Tufts conference speakers complained about the generous funding available to Greenpeace, another irony in light of the disparity between that group’s resources and those of the agricultural biotechnology industry.
From its inception, food biotechnology has raised political, societal, and emotional issues: What are the risks of genetically modified foods? What are their benefits? How are risks and benefits distributed? Who makes decisions about them? How will genetically modified foods affect local, national, and international food systems and economies? How should the foods be regulated? Should they be labeled? And: Is it ethical to create such foods in the first place? The questions about risk can be answered scientifically, but the other questions are value-based and social. Because questions about ethics and other social matters threaten the very foundation of food biotechnology, the industry and its supporters tend to restrict discussion to questions of safety. From a science-based perspective, if genetically modified foods are safe, there is no sensible reason for regulating, labeling, or opposing them.
The focus on science, safety, and risk obscures the social issues, particularly those having to do with the distribution of economic benefits. Food biotechnology is a huge business, and huge profits are at stake. To survive, the industry must make products that farmers or the public will buy. Politics enters the picture because other stakeholders in the food system have different agendas and hold different values. Scientists want to work on challenging problems that might produce health or economic gains, and, as a necessary benefit, research funding. Government regulators want to ensure that foods are safe, but they also want to avoid congressional intervention and industry lawsuits. As consumers, we