WHEN RACHEL CARSON wrote Silent Spring in 1962, she decried the use of chemical sprays, arguing for more benign and natural “biological” pesticides. One of her favorites was Bacillus thuringiensis, a common soil bacterium that produces a crystalline spore lethal to some insects. “Shortly after eating foliage coated with this toxin the larva suffers paralysis, stops feeding, and soon dies,” wrote Carson. “[This is] an enormous advantage, for crop damage stops almost as soon as the pathogen is applied.”
Under Carson’s prodding, BT (as it is affectionately known to organic gardeners) became more widely used in agriculture. Then in 1990, molecular biologists isolated its insecticidal protein, dubbed Cry (for “crystalline”). Through the new techniques of genetic engineering, they were able to implant various strains of the Cry protein in the corn plant.
The result was an astonishing environmental coup. Now the corn plant itself produces the pesticide. There is no more need for indiscriminate chemical spraying. Non-harmful insects and other wildlife are spared, since the protein acts only against insects trying to eat the plant — in this case the voracious European corn borer. With 18 percent of American cornfields now planted with insect-resistant corn, pesticide spraying in 1999 declined for the first time in history.
You’d think champagne glasses would be clinking in the headquarters of environmental organizations all over the country. But no, environmentalists are opposed to the effort. What’s more, their opposition — combined with weak-kneed science at the Environmental Protection Agency — is now ruining our export trade with Europe and Japan and may eventually cost American farmers hundreds of billions of dollars.
The problem has arisen from a single variation of the protein — Cry9C — marketed under the brand name StarLink by Aventis CropScience, a French conglomerate. Ordinarily, the introduction of new crop varieties requires no approval from the Food and Drug Administration. In a bureaucratic land-grab, however, the EPA has claimed jurisdiction over insecticidal corn on the grounds that the plant itself is a “pesticide.” (When the first genetically modified crop, a frost-resistant strawberry, was introduced in 1990, the EPA also grabbed control, claiming frost itself is a “pest.” The product never made it through testing.)
BT corn developed by Monsanto and several other companies passed muster. But Aventis’s StarLink gave pause. Most Cry proteins break down immediately in the human stomach, but Cry9C was found to take about 30 to 60 minutes. This led the EPA to speculate that it might cause an allergic reaction.
Others questioned this reasoning. Allergic reactions are triggered by antibodies, but “it’s highly unlikely that anyone would have ever developed antibodies against a protein that human beings almost never encounter,” says Steve Taylor, head of the University of Nebraska’s Department of Food Science and Technology and a leading expert on food allergens. “There is virtually no risk associated with the ingestion of StarLink corn in this situation.” Only about 2 percent of the population suffers food allergies, usually involving the “big eight” (cow’s milk, eggs, peanuts, wheat, fish, crustaceans, soy, and tree nuts). Nevertheless, guided by the “precautionary principle” — a current favorite of environmentalists that says, in effect, if you can’t prove when you wake up that nothing bad is going to happen to you, you should spend the day in bed — the EPA pronounced Cry9C “unfit for human consumption.”
In a cow’s alkaline stomach, on the other hand, Cry9C does break down immediately. Therefore it was judged safe for animal consumption. In a move everyone was later to regret, the EPA issued StarLink a “dual registration” — fit for animal feed but unfit for humans. “If anybody had asked us, we would have told them it would be impossible to keep the two separate,” says Jim Bair, vice president of the North American Millers Association. “But nobody asked us.” Farmers started planting the variety in 1998.
By 2000, BT corn made up 18 percent of the American corn crop. Aventis’s StarLink had a 3 percent share of the BT market, making it .5 percent of the entire American crop. Last June, however, environmental groups became suspicious that StarLink harvests weren’t being segregated from other corn. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth commissioned a sampling. Sure enough — traces of Cry9C showed up in Kraft Foods’ Taco Bell taco shells and Frito-Lay’s Chee-tos. The FDA ordered a recall.
By October, the StarLink panic was causing major disruptions in the Midwest. Cargill and several other wholesalers announced they would not accept shipments of corn tainted with even one kernel in 400 of StarLink. The problem was particularly acute for farm cooperatives, where crops from neighboring farmers are ordinarily mixed together. Corn delivery trucks spent hours outside grain elevators waiting for their crops to be tested. ConAgra shut down several milling plants and spent weeks trying to clean out the residues. Aventis quickly withdrew StarLink and has agreed to compensate farmers for the damages — generally estimated to begin around $ 100 million.
In the United States, all this amounted to little more than a run-of-the-mill environmental panic. (No cases of Cry9C allergy, it should be noted, were ever reported.) But in Europe, it has become a major international issue that may permanently affect trade relations between the two continents.
Europe has been in a snit for years over genetically engineered food crops — generally considered an “American technology” — and in 1998 banned its own farmers from planting them. Meanwhile, half the American diet now contains foods that have been in some small way genetically engineered.
One factor in the European antipathy is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. Although completely unrelated (it is a virus that spreads when animal remains are used to feed other animals), mad cow disease has become fused with genetic plant science under the rubric of “public distrust.”
Perhaps more significant has been the fact that environmentalism, a movement fundamentally aristocratic in its origins, finds much more support in Europe among people in high stations. The principal opponent in England has been Prince Charles, who has sworn that no genetically modified food will touch the royal table. The prince’s efforts have been opposed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has warned of an “anti-scientific attitude” and says genetically modified food products will be necessary to feed the world’s people. (Two of the strongest supporters of modern genetic plant science in the United States are Jimmy Carter and George McGovern, both involved in international humanitarian efforts.)
Emboldened by royal and aristocratic approval, European environmentalists have become much more violent in their opposition. Activists have destroyed experimental plots and trashed laboratories. Last April, a British jury acquitted 28 protesters from Greenpeace and other groups who had dug up and destroyed a six-and-a-half-acre plot planted with Aventis corn. “We have known for a long time that people don’t want to eat [such] food,” said Lord Melchett, executive director of Greenpeace, one of the accused. “The time has come to stop planting it.”
The panic over StarLink brought fears to a boiling point. By October, environmental groups were barricading Liverpool docks to prevent the unloading of American corn. McDonald’s Europe announced it would no longer serve hamburgers made from cows that have supped on BT corn or similar products. (Some of this has been encouraged by European farmers, as always seeking protection from U.S. imports.) Similar barriers are now being raised in Japan, which will start labeling genetically engineered food this spring. “If consumer resistance develops, it’s going to be a disaster for American farmers,” says Lynden Peter, executive director of the American Corn Growers Association. The soybean crop — now more than half genetically engineered — will be particularly at risk.
What is really at stake is the future of agricultural research. Agronomists say it will be difficult if not impossible to improve crop productivity without genetic engineering. Seeds for “golden rice,” a new variety developed for Third World countries, already sit in a grenade-proof bunker in Switzerland awaiting the outcome of several patent disputes plus litigation by environmentalists to stop its export. Golden rice has been bred to produce beta-carotene, the precursor to Vitamin A. Rice grown throughout the tropics does not produce Vitamin A, and tens of millions of people suffer from vitamin-A deficiencies, causing blindness in about half a million children every year. Yet environmentalists say there is greater concern in the possibly unknown consequences of fiddling with nature’s handiwork.
Beneath the pseudo-science of environmentalism there has always been a clear nature-worship. Anyone suggesting we can understand nature or manipulate it to our advantage is thus flirting with sacrilege. Yet this “precautionary principle” — which environmentalists want to apply to all technology — has one fundamental flaw. It doesn’t evaluate the costs of excessive caution. As the EPA is proving to American farmers, staying in bed all day carries its own risks.
William Tucker is the author of Progress and Privilege: America in the Age of Environmentalism.
