Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [89]
The debates about food biotechnology are especially complicated because the science itself is so complicated. That most people cannot understand the science behind genetically modified foods is a given. But anyone, trained in science or not, can grasp whether democratic political processes are at work in making decisions about these foods. We will see how questions of democracy—and the lack of an institutional venue for debating the social implications of food biotechnology—underlie much of the distrust of the industry and its government regulators. The desire for democratic processes and the trust they inspire explain why the lack of labeling of genetically modified foods is such a critical point of debate. Labeling places the power to make decisions in the hands of consumers, not the industry.
Although the safety of genetically modified foods is an important issue, it is not the only one of interest. But because safety appears to be the only legitimate ground for criticism, it acts as a surrogate for concerns about democratic processes and social implications. The StarLink corn affair is an example of the use of safety as a surrogate; the arguments focused on allergenicity (science), but the real issues had to do with the company’s control over the food supply and evasion of democratic processes of government oversight (social values). The politics of food biotechnology matter because the disputes shift attention away from the underlying issues. If, for example, the roots of world hunger lie in poverty, we should be debating options for redressing economic imbalances. If we want to meet the food needs of the twenty-first century, we ought to be considering a broad range of alternatives, among which biotechnology may or may not be the best. Social problems are manifestly difficult to address, as their causes are multiple and complex. It is understandable that we might find simple, “reductionist” approaches to such problems—like genetically engineering vitamins into rice—preferable to the messy business of political action to address world poverty.
This part of the book deals with how and why the safety of genetically modified foods became a surrogate for concerns about larger social issues.5 In telling this story, these chapters continue many of the themes noted earlier: industry promotion of economic self-interest at the expense of health and safety, the industry’s political efforts to prevent imposition of regulatory controls and labeling requirements, the fragmentation and consequent weakness of government oversight, the imbalance in power between corporate and public interests, and the use of science as a rationale for self-interested actions.
The discussion of these themes begins in chapter 5 with an introduction to the food biotechnology industry—its methods, promises, and realities. Much of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of the “poster child” for the benefits of genetically modified foods, Golden Rice, a rice bioengineered to contain beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. Chapter 6 evaluates the benefits claimed for genetically modified foods, as well as their safety risks: allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, and environmental impact. In chapter 7, I discuss the politics of government oversight of genetically modified foods and describe how the industry convinced federal regulatory agencies to use a strictly science-based approach to risk evaluation, thereby allowing companies to plant first, then deal with problems (rather than requiring premarket testing). Chapter 8 focuses on the important societal issues that spark protests against genetically modified foods: consumer choice at the marketplace (labeling), inequities in ownership of plant resources (intellectual property rights or “biopiracy”), the accidental movement