Genetically engineered vegetables may make the scientists and farmers happy – but do people want to eat them? Michael Durham reports from London
AFTER years of tinkering in vast laboratories and locked greenhouses, agrochemical companies are ready to unleash their discoveries on the world: genetically changed plants and vegetables, programmed by the addition or subtraction of tiny slices of DNA to grow and behave exactly the way scientists want them to.
Suddenly there are soya bean plants tailor- made to withstand heavy doses of herbicide, so weeds around them wither while the beans live on. There are ears of corn designed to kill any pest that takes a bite, while leaving benign insects unscathed. There are tomatoes that never go squashy; soon there’ll be potatoes that don’t soak up fat when being fried.
But will people want to eat foods they know have been tinkered with by scientists, refashioned according to a relatively new technology and usually for the benefit of biochemical companies and farmers, rather consumers?
Already, there are signs that the gene food revolution will not go unchallenged. In the United States, pressure groups are urging consumers to avoid genetically modified soya and maize. In the United Kingdom, supermarkets have fought, unsuccessfully, to prevent their indiscriminate introduction. The food lobbyists and gene scientists are preparing for war – and the outcome will influence the future of food as we know it.
There is nothing unusual, on the face of it, about the new genetically engineered soya beans, which grow on plants indistinguishable from normal ones: perhaps they are slightly greener and a shade taller. But they are the product of 11 years of research.
Scientists working for the US agrochemical company Monsanto followed a simple brief: to create a soya bean plant that would not die when sprayed with the company’s own herbicide, tradenamed Roundup. The advantages are evident: farmers could plant “Roundup Ready” seeds, then spray the plants with a herbicide that killed everything else. The advantages to Monsanto are even clearer: farmers must buy Monsanto’s seeds, then spray them with Monsanto’s Roundup.
About 10 000 farmers in the American Midwest have signed up, dreaming of clean fields and higher yields, while others have adopted a wait-and-see attitude.
To create the new plant, Monsanto’s white- coated scientists laboured over Petri dishes and spliced in a small strand of DNA from the common soil-resident microbe, which they knew would endow the plant with its immunity to Roundup.
Similar acts of genetic reconstruction are becoming commonplace. Monsanto has developed other Roundup Ready crops – sugar beet and rape – as well as insect-resistant potatoes, maize and cotton. Other agrochemical companies are devising their own genetically modified products. Within five years, most food production could be the horticultural equivalent of Frankenstein.
Ronnie Cummins of the Pure Food Campaign, a US pressure group which has called for a consumer boycott of genetically engineered soya and maize, says: “In the past, biotechnology has fallen flat on its face. About 80% of consumers don’t want it. There’s a big battle ahead, and we are going to win.”
In the UK, groups such as the Genetics Forum, Greenpeace, the Safe Alliance and the Consumers’ Association are protesting last month’s introduction of the soya beans to British supermarkets. The campaigners say biotechnology is risky: it could lead to resistant weeds and insects, and the use of more herbicides.
But the issue for consumers is labelling. Monsanto insists it will be impossible to label any food containing the new soya because modified beans and normal ones will be mixed throughout the food production process.
Although only 2% of this year’s US crop is modified, it could be anywhere in the food chain. British supermarkets, which initially mounted a spirited campaign to keep the gene beans separate, have admitted defeat.
Says Julia Sheppard of the Genetics Forum: “I have no reason to think the soya is a dangerous product. But the way it is being handled could set a dangerous precedent: it is the first in a long line of commodity products. If we let this through without segregation, it could be very difficult in the future.
“We are prepared to accept that gene technology could bring real benefits. But we object to applications that don’t bring any benefit to the consumer – and which could do the opposite.”