Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [93]
Monsanto applies its research budget for agricultural biotechnology, which exceeds the combined total of all the publicly funded tropical research institutes in the world, almost exclusively to temperate-zone agricultural problems. The company brilliantly designs its principal agricultural products to establish control of the entire industry. Its flagship product is the herbicide Roundup. Monsanto scientists genetically engineer soybeans and corn to be “Roundup Ready,” so their crops grow happily when doused with that herbicide while the competing weeds are killed. Farmers who buy Monsanto’s seeds also buy Monsanto’s herbicide. The company began selling Roundup Ready soybeans in 1996; just two years later, farmers planted them on one-third of U.S. soybean farmland, covering 25 million acres. The company’s research “pipeline” mainly emphasizes Roundup Ready crops designed for animal feed. Monsanto’s emphasis on these crops is understandable; annual sales of Roundup exceed those of the next six leading herbicides combined. The company also produces a variety of crops genetically engineered to contain a toxin derived from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). As we saw in the introductory chapter, the Bt toxin inhibits the growth of insect pests and has been used for years as a spray on organic farms. Monsanto’s patent-protected innovation was to genetically engineer the Bt toxin into the plant itself so that insect resistance would not wash off in the rain.
Monsanto’s crops grow mainly in the United States and other industrialized countries. Because developing countries lack a viable market for such products, few agricultural biotechnology companies can afford to invest in solutions to the food problems of the developing world. The agricultural needs of developing countries are well defined, and numerous private and public agencies support useful projects, but these funding sources are not coordinated and often tend to favor the priorities of donors more than recipients.12 For years, Dr. Roger Beachy, the director of a U.S. biotechnology research institute devoted to improving crops in developing countries, complained that he could get little support from industry beyond permission to use patent-protected techniques “for specific crops under certain circumstances.”13
As complaints about the disparity between the promises and the realities of food biotechnology became more strident, companies began to put more resources into projects that might benefit the developing world. Monsanto’s scientists, for example, are genetically engineering oilseeds to contain beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. This vitamin is especially lacking in undernourished populations, and its addition to the diet produces an almost miraculous range of health improvements.14 Development of such products is time-consuming and expensive, and success is uncertain. Companies introduced genetically engineered papaya in Hawaii, for example, to replenish an entire industry ravaged by viral disease. The fruit grew well in the first seasons, but its developers remain cautious about its long-term viability: “We’d all be nuts to say that this is the final solution. . . . Biological systems evolve.”15 This comment reflects yet another reality; it is one thing to develop a food in a laboratory but quite another to grow it successfully under field conditions. A 1994 statement by one business analyst still applies: “Nearly 20 years into the gene-splicing revolution . . . no one has cured cancer or produced a bioengineered miracle of loaves and fishes for a hungry third world. The industry is still peddling dreams.”16
Such doubts enrage industry supporters in the United States and, sometimes, in developing countries. Florence Wambugu, for example, is a plant pathologist from Kenya who has worked with Monsanto since 1992 to develop a genetically modified sweet potato that can survive infection from a virus that