08.07.1999

Turning the GM tide?

Mary Godwin reviews 'Genetic engineering, food and our environment: a brief guide' by Luke Anderson

In the ideological struggle between environmental conservatives and the sellers of genetically modified organisms, Anderson does not pretend to be neutral. He writes, campaigns and speaks around the country on issues related to genetic engineering, and wants to persuade us to share his passionate opposition to the practice: “This book aims to highlight many of the issues relating to the human, political, and environmental implications of genetic engineering in food and agriculture” (p9).

His hostility to biotechnology does not rest on a Prince Charles-like, woolly-minded call to adopt “a gentler, more considered approach, seeking always to work with the grain of nature in making better, more sustainable use of what we have ...” (Daily Mail June 1), although Anderson does end his main text with a quote from Sarah van Gelder expressing such a metaphysical hope - “that the thousands of experiments and millions of choices to live more consciously will coalesce into a new civilisation that fosters community, provides possibilities for meaning and sustains life on the planet” (p121). But most of the book is packed with reports of scientific experiments and rational arguments to persuade the reader that GM food is both harmful and unnecessary. He supports his case with an impressive 11 pages of references from such respectable-sounding journals as Science and Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Anderson begins by explaining simply and clearly what genes are and how the modification process is carried out. Much of the recent press-driven panic about “Frankenstein food” was exacerbated by ignorance - apparently many people did not even realise that normal plants contained genes. Anderson is right to assume that informing people is the way to convince them.

His description of how genes are copied and inserted into the DNA of other species enables him to refute the claim that genetic engineering is simply “the latest in a ‘seamless’ continuum of biotechnologies practised by human beings since the dawn of civilisation” (p10). Having described the method used to produce and culture GMOs, he is also able to explain how it can give them characteristics neither desired by the manufacturers or admitted to by them.

The presence of genes for antibiotic resistance in most trans-genic plants is a simple example of such a side-effect. A more complicated example is the likelihood that disrupting the genome with a foreign insert may alter the pattern of gene expression: “The new gene could, for example, alter chemical reactions within the cell or disturb cell functions. This could lead to instability, the creation of new toxins or allergens, and changes in nutritional value” (p13). This may have been what was happening in the transgenic potatoes which appeared to poison the rats fed them by Arpad Pusztai (see Weekly Worker February 25).

Anderson does not refer to this controversy, but cites an example of fatalities produced by a GM product. The cause of Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome, which killed 37 people in the US and left 1,500 with permanent disabilities, was eventually traced to a previously unknown metabolic by-product present at levels of less than 0.1% in the food supplement L-tryptophan, which was produced by genetically modified bacteria manufactured by a biotech company called Showa Denko. The GM product was regarded by the regulatory authorities as “substantially equivalent” to L-tryptophan produced by non-GM bacteria and had not been specifically tested.

Anderson reports (pp17-18) that as soon as a link was suspected, Showa Denko destroyed all stocks of the genetically engineered bacteria, and claimed that the problem was not the genetic modification, but short cuts in the purification process, which they were willing to admit to. The fact that such shocking breaches went on apparently undetected by the US Food and Drugs Agency inspectors supports Anderson’s thesis that the desire of governments to create jobs and wealth by fostering the biotech industry with an “attractive” regulatory climate (p97) leads to unacceptable risks.

In chapter two Anderson discusses the possible effects of the traits biotech companies deliberately introduce into their GMOs and use to sell them. These problems - genetic pollution, loss of habitat diversity, transfer of herbicide resistance genes to weed species, poisoning of predator organisms feeding on the pests plants are genetically engineered to resist - have been widely discussed in the press. Anderson’s central point is that ecosystems are such complex and dynamic webs of interrelated processes that altering the balance at one point may lead to unexpected and undesirable results at others.

Anderson can be accused of presenting a very one-sided case. Claims by the biotech industry that food products from GMOs may have beneficial effects are hardly discussed except to be dismissed as a ploy “to attract consumers back to the genetically engineered foods they have so far rejected” (p104). His bias against the biotech companies can be excused to some extent, since, while they promise foods with “quality traits” and health-enhancing properties, “Most of the genetically engineered crops already on the market have been designed to be resistant to herbicides or insects.” In other words, to provide a quick profit for the manufacturer and tie farmers to the biotech company.

While genetic engineering techniques represent a qualitative break from earlier methods of controlling living things, the use of GM crops in the economic and political relationship between capitalists and ‘third world’ farmers is a continuation of the ‘green revolution’, in which food production was increased by replacing traditional crop varieties and farming methods “with a few high-yielding varieties dependent on expensive inputs of chemicals and fertilisers” (p54).

The introduction of GM crops accelerates the existing tendency of agricultural capitalism towards monopolisation. A co-president of Monsanto is quoted as saying: “This is not just a consolidation of seed companies: it’s really a consolidation of the entire food chain.” As we have argued, the answer is to bring GM technology under social control, so that the advances of science and technology are used for the satisfaction of human needs, rather than for profits. However, the only advice Anderson has is to go back to pre-capitalist farming techniques.

Anderson knows he can do nothing to save peasant and small-scale farming. He laments the fact that “by 1995, of the 100 most powerful ‘economies’ in the world, 48 were multinational companies, and only 52 were countries” (p86). It is by strengthening the opposition to GM food by consumers that he hopes to change the balance of forces. “Generations that have grown up with DDT, asbestos, PCBs, nuclear energy and BSE are understandably suspicious of official assertions of safety based on a lack of scientific evidence of harm” (p34). He wants to accentuate such suspicions, and thereby encourage people to become involved in campaigning. One notable feature of Anderson’s book is the full 10 pages at the end devoted to “resources” - groups to contact, magazines, e-mail information services, and addresses of campaigns to join.

The final chapter of his main text, ‘Turning the tide’, consists of an upbeat account of the successes of these campaigns, celebrating “the society-wide collapse of support for genetic engineering in foods” (p115). Self-evidently such a crusade against GM food can never defeat capitalism.

It remains to be seen whether Monsanto and other big biotech companies can overcome consumer resistance. For most people at the moment the key question is choice and labelling. They want the option of buying GM-free products. Such matters should not be dismissed. The task of communists is to integrate the demands of consumers into a programme where the product of human labour ceases to be under the control of the market and is returned to the control of the people - organised this time as a revolutionary association of producers.

Mary Godwin