25.02.1999

Challenge for working class

Genetically modified food

A new scientific and technological revolution is imminent. Biotechnology, the science of the new century, is already starting to have an impact on our lives, with the appearance of genetically modified food and the controversy surrounding it.

Genetic engineering involves introducing genetic material from one organism into the cells of another, maybe quite different one. The foreign DNA can be made part of the genome of the host organism, which then synthesises the protein coded for by the inserted gene.

The design of the £2 coin indicates the potential importance for the bourgeoisie of the new technology. It shows in the centre circle cogs and gears representing the first industrial revolution, while in the second circle electronic circuits symbolise the age of computer technology. The outer circle contains pictures of chromosomes, the tiny packets of genetic material contained in every living cell which are modified by the techniques of genetic engineering.

The biotechnology industry does have the potential to manufacture many useful products. Scientists currently developing the techniques of gene transfer, and the biotech companies which hold the patents on their discoveries, are keen to advertise these benefits to consumers. We hear of plants modified to produce in photosynthesis not sugars and starches, but hydrocarbons which could be used as fuel when the world runs short of oil. Gene therapy is attempted, whereby the normal equivalents of faulty genes are introduced into the cells of sufferers from metabolic disorders such as cystic fibrosis. There are plans to insert genes for human vaccines into plants, which would simplify the process of vaccine production and increase the supply.

These applications of biotechnology are still mostly experimental, but the production of genetically modified food is already well advanced. Of course, for thousands of years humanity has been slowly improving its livestock and crops through selective breeding, but genetic engineering is a faster, more direct method capable of producing organisms with characteristics which could never be achieved by breeding. Again, the biotech companies promise huge benefits from GM food. Their ‘smart foods’ will apparently be genetically modified to contain more health promoting ‘nutriceuticals’. GM wonder-crops will, they claim, eliminate hunger from the planet, thanks to their massively increased yields and ability to grow in a wider range of environments. And GM varieties with inbuilt resistance to insect pests and plant pathogens are promised, reducing the need for insecticide and pesticide treatments.

As with all advertising, this tells only part of the story, and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It need hardly be said that the principal motive of biotech companies is not to feed the world and enhance health, but to make profits and outsmart their competitors. First of all, their claim that GM crops will overcome famine. In fact the world already produces enough food to go round, if only it was rationally distributed. The charity Action Aid estimated, in a letter to The Guardian (February 13), that in 1994 world food production could have fed 6.4 billion people. It makes the point that “it is inequitable distribution of food that keeps millions hungry: the result of landlessness, unemployment, debt repayment and poverty” - in other words, it is capitalism.

In fact reliance on genetically modified crops may increase the poverty of third world farmers. The biotech companies try to make the GM crops incapable of setting their own viable seeds, so that instead of being able to save seeds for subsequent years farmers have to continually buy them from the company. The GM food giant Monsanto has produced a GM strain of soya which is unharmed by herbicide. Monsanto also produces the herbicide and, as farmers can use more on their fields of soya, the company sells more.

Most of the GM strains of crops such as oil seed rape currently being grown in the fields of agricultural research stations across Britain have been modified to be more resistant - not to disease, contrary to the promises of their developers, but to pesticides and also to herbicides used as weedkillers. This raises three concerns that the biotech companies have not adequately addressed. First, the resistance of these crops to pesticides means farmers will use more chemicals on them to eliminate pests and weeds, which means higher levels of toxic residues in the final food product. Secondly, high levels of herbicides could mean wild flora such as hedgerow plants being eliminated, destroying the basis of the food web supporting bird and animal wildlife and impoverishing the natural ecosystem. Thirdly, modified genes conferring resistance to herbicides could be transferred to other plants: either plants of the same species by cross-pollination, or - less probably, but more seriously - to other plants, such as weeds, by viral gene transfer.

Concerns have been expressed recently about potential damage to the environment because of the use of genetically modified crops. But it is the possible direct threat to human health these ‘Frankenstein foods’ might pose that has really caught the attention of both the public and the press. As the New Scientist put it (February 20), “Nothing sets a nation’s pulse racing like a food scare.” People naturally feel suspicious of GM food, especially after the experience of the BSE/CJD cover-up scandal. When Tony Blair stated that he is sure GM food is safe and he and his family are happy to eat it, he was ridiculed in the tabloids and compared to John Gummer getting his daughter to eat a beefburger. The public does not trust the government, at least on food safety, which is an encouraging sign.

The recent explosion of hostility in Britain to GM food was triggered by the fate of Arpad Pusztai, a biochemist at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen. He is an expert on lectins - proteins which are toxic to insects and produced by some plants as a defence against insect attack. It is lectins which make some beans unsafe to eat raw. He transferred the gene for a lectin from snowdrops into potatoes, and fed these genetically modified potatoes to rats. Other rats he fed ordinary potatoes laced with lectin extracted from other plants, and a control group of rats were given just ordinary potatoes. The rats in the second group fared as well as the control group, but the rats fed the GM potatoes developed abnormalities in their gut lining, liver and other organs, grew poorly and had weakened immune systems. This suggested to him that it was not the lectin itself - the product of the transferred gene - that harmed the rats, but something involved in the process of genetic engineering. This alarmed him so much that on August 10 1998 he warned on a TV documentary that GM foods were being sold without adequate testing.

Obviously the worst nightmare is that genetic material that has been transferred from another organism could be unstable and interfere with the DNA of the organism eating food containing it. But a more likely explanation of the harm suffered by his experimental rats is that potatoes forced to synthesise alien protein suffer disruption to the rest of their biochemistry and are consequently of poor nutritional quality. This in itself has alarming implications for GM food intended for human consumption.

Four days after appearing on TV, Pusztai was forced to retire from his post at the Rowett Institute, which published a distorted account of his results, pretending that no GM potatoes were used. Earlier this month a group of 20 scientists from 14 countries who examined Pusztai’s work called for a moratorium on the commercial development of GM crops, and accused the Rowett Institute of bowing to political pressure in its treatment of him. The government rejected the call.

Three interesting facts came out in the subsequent press reports. First that the Rowett institute received £140,000 pounds in funding from Monsanto, and that the government had given away millions of pounds to biotech companies to encourage them to invest in Britain. Secondly, it was revealed that a member of the government, science minister Lord Sainsbury, owns millions of pounds worth of shares in biotech companies. So shameless is New Labour about its links with industry that its Invest in Britain bureau now boasts that the UK “leads the way in Europe in ensuring that regulations and other measures affecting the development of biotechnology take full account of the concerns of business” (The Guardian February 13). This was done partly by filling the advisory committee on releases to the environment - the quango which gives companies permission to set up GM crop test sites - with people closely linked to the biotech industry - although as a sop to public concern environment minister Michael Meacher has promised to appoint three ecologists or experts on farmland diversity to the committee. Finally it was also revealed that Europe imports from the USA soya protein manufactured by Monsanto, which refuses to separate the fraction derived from GM plants from the rest, and that the EU backed down from insisting on this, as it knew it would come off second best in a trade war with the US.

Given these facts, the public are perfectly justified in distrusting both the biotech industry and the government. To complete the New Scientist quote,

“Nothing sets a nation’s pulse racing like a food scare, especially one spiced with allegations that a whistle-blowing scientist has been unfairly sacked and gagged as part of a government-inspired cover-up.”

The Weekly Worker welcomes the debate around GM food, and endorses the call for an independent commission to investigate what dangers they pose to human health and the environment. While companies like Monsanto keep the results of their research secret for commercial reasons, we insist on openness and a full discussion of the issues to enable people to come to an informed decision about whether to eat GM food. We also demand that all food containing GM ingredients be fully labelled, so that people can put this choice into effect.

Choice about individual actions is a straightforward demand. The more complex question of how much potential damage to the environment ought to be tolerated in exchange for improved quality (not to mention company profits) must be decided democratically within society.

In the current conflict between biotech giants like Monsanto and their government backers on the one hand, and an alliance of greens and environmentalists, on the other, most people are siding with the greens. In my view, given the potential hazards of biotechnology, they are probably right to do so, until the risks have been properly assessed. But we ought not to support a permanent ban on GM food. Such a ban would probably be impossible to enforce in any case, given the momentum of the advancing technology.

One thing seems certain: biotechnology will be one science to develop with great speed in the new century. Whether it is used wisely by society collectively in a planned, democratic way for the benefit of humanity as a whole, or irresponsibly by capitalists to make profits for a few at the expense of the many, depends on whether the working class as a movement champions this question.

Mary Godwin