England the epicenter of resistance to genetically modified foods
By Bill Lambrecht
Post-Dispatch
Washington Bureau
As rock music from Pink Floyd wafted across the farm
field, dozens of protesters in ghostly white uniforms
uprooted genetically engineered plants and tossed them
in the air with abandon.
The destruction in the English countryside last week
was Britain's biggest farm sabotage yet, a reflection of
Europe's fears of genetically modified food. Many
Europeans worry that plants with new genes inserted for
insect and weed protection threaten the environment and
even human health.
This time, the target was a test field of canola -- used to
make cooking oil and animal feed -- planted by the
Germany company AgrEvo. Six people were arrested.
Last month, protesters attacked an experimental plot of
sugar beets planted in Britain by St. Louis-based
Monsanto Co.
The "Stop the Crop" attack last Sunday was dismaying
to scientists hoping to use the government-sponsored
field trial to prove the safety of genetically engineered
crops.
The violence also demonstrated once more the gulf in
public opinion between Europe and the United States,
where genetically modified food is commonplace and
where farmers expect to export what they grow. All
signs point to a trade war in the coming months in which
American farmers and Monsanto are central figures.
Faces among the British protesters reflected the breadth
of the anti-genetic food movement. Most of the 500
people were committed activists, many of them
body-pierced, tattooed young people. But the gathering
also had a contingent of middle-age, middle-class men
and women, people like Dorothy Cussens, a government
nutritionist, and her husband, Chris, a computer
programmer.
"We've never done anything like this before," said
Dorothy Cussens, 61, clad in white coveralls to
symbolize the hazards of genetically altered crops. "But
we feel strongly that this is an unnecessary technology
being imposed on us against our will."
Gene-altered underwear
If things keep up, Europeans soon might need to prove
that their underwear is environmentally safe.
Last week, advocacy groups in London demanded that
department stores disclose whether the clothing they
sell comes from U.S.-grown genetically engineered
cotton. Stores responded that there's no test to tell.
The dialogue starts young. At a children's parliament in
the English city of Birmingham last month, children 10
and 11 debated this proposition: Genetic engineering,
which includes animal cloning and genetically modified
foods, is the biggest threat to mankind since the advent
of nuclear weapons.
With no known health threats from genetically modified
foods, the British concerns might be ignored -- if they
weren't having an impact across Europe and now in the
United States. England has become the epicenter of an
anti-genetic food movement that has slowed the march
of the biotechnology industry and forced the U.S.
government to soften its hard-line rhetoric.
The movement even has royalty behind it: Prince
Charles, who operates an organic farm, has denounced
genetic changes in food.
So far, 19 of the United Kingdom's 23 finest restaurants
-- so judged by Britain's Good Food Guide of 1999 --
have forsworn cooking with food containing genetically
modified ingredients. The genetically modified foods in
question: soya oil and flour; corn; tomatoes; and the
ingredient lecithin.
At one of the restaurants, The Square in London, you
can order a bottle of '45 Chateau Mouton Rothschild
wine for $8,400. About the time you've finished studying
the modern paintings on the mauve-colored walls, a
tuxedoed waiter might arrive with your appetizer of duck
foie gras followed by your entree of thinly sliced rump of
veal with borlotti beans.
That's for lunch.
Chef-owner Philip Howard said he is aware of the
potential of genetic science to improve food. But Howard
is troubled, he said, that neither genetic engineers nor
the traditional plant breeders pay attention to the taste
of what they create. "They want crops that yield better,
change the color of food and the like. But nothing is
done for taste," he said.
Meanwhile, leading British supermarkets are racing to
remove modified food from their shelves. Last week,
Sainsbury's, Britain's second-largest food distributor,
announced that it had succeeded in eliminating
gene-altered ingredients from every Sainsbury's-labeled
product in its 415 stores.
Sainsbury's spokeswoman, Gillian Bridger, said: "Our
customers were telling us, 'We just don't want it in there
at all.' So we decided to go whole hog and remove it all."
Outside a Sainsbury's near Buckingham Palace, eight of
10 shoppers interviewed one evening last week said they
objected to "GMOs," or genetically modified organisms.
Climbing into her blue Citroen sedan, Adrienne Shaw
summed up their sentiments: "I can't say whether it's
based on science or on my gut, but I don't think they
ought to be messing about with our food."
The question many Americans might ask is why. Why
is Europe reacting so strongly? And who is Britain --
notorious for its bland cuisine of fish and chips,
shepherd's pies and cold toast -- to criticize what
Americans eat?
"Mad cow" aftermath
To begin to understand the British attitude, you must go
back in time to the 1980s to the deregulating heyday
under former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
One of the industry-friendly changes back then relaxed
rules governing animal feed. As a result, fewer
precautions were taken -- such as sufficient heat to kill
bacteria and unwanted organisms -- when preparing the
remains of slaughtered animals to feed livestock.
A decade later, a public inquiry continues unraveling the
thicket of blunders that led to an epidemic of so-called
"mad cow disease," a brain malady that killed more than
30 people and whose financial cost to Britain ran into
the billions. In testimony last week, it was alleged that
Thatcher and her Cabinet ignored warnings in order to
protect the food industry.
The wrenching episode cost more than lives and money:
It cost the government and its scientists the faith of its
people. After all this time, the ban on British beef
exports finally will be lifted Aug. 1.
Food scares occur frequently in Europe. In Belgium,
dioxin-tainted food and contaminated Coca-Cola have
turned up since spring. Britain has endured outbreaks of
salmonella in eggs and contaminated orange juice, with
both cases mishandled by the government.
There's concern for the environment, too. The European
countryside differs from the rural Midwest, where you
might have to squint to see a farmhouse in a vast
expanse of corn. In Britain, homes and villages are
situated in the middle of crop lands that might be
consist of only a few acres. People stroll during the
evening alongside the food they grow. Many fear the
effects of wind-blown pollen and genetic crossing as a
result of technology they view as unproved.
In his office near Parliament, the British minister of
agriculture and food, Jeff Rooker, spoke of the
differences in farming between the two countries.
"In America, you grow your food in the prairies, and your
countryside is in national parks nearly as big as the
United Kingdom," Rooker said. "When you mix food
fears with environmental concerns," he added, "you get
a powerful cocktail."
The British government has steadfastly supported
testing the altered crops, but it has taken a beating for
that support. A special government unit set up last week
to handle the public unrest was met with a tabloid
headline: "OUTRAGE OVER GM SPIN TEAM."
Science vs. anti-science
At the stately Reform Club in London, one of the
"gentlemen's clubs" where the well-heeled British gather
in red leather wing chairs to chat, Dr. William Asscher
offered this assessment of the anti-genetic food
movement in his country: "It's unstoppable, absolutely
unstoppable. It has to do with the British bulldog
mentality in which we must know everything for
ourselves."
Asscher, who heads the 150,000-member British
Medical Association, added to that momentum in May
with an association report that warned: "We cannot, at
present, know whether there are any serious risks to the
environment or to human health involved in producing
GM [genetically modified] crops or consuming GM food
products."
If Britain's attitude is anti-science, which many people
believe, the antidote may have to be science itself.
Steps in that direction are beginning to occur. Since
spring, several reports from government agencies or
scientific groups have dismissed rampant public fears.
Ten days ago, Britain's John Innes Center may have
done more for genetic engineering than all the reports
put together with a discovery hailed with this headline:
"Stunted GM crop may help feed world."
Writing in the journal Nature, the John Innes scientists
reported finding the gene in wheat that controls the
height of plants. This is important because if it proves to
be transferable, it could enable rice and other plants to
direct more of their energy toward producing grain and
less toward unnecessarily high stalks. And that could
be successful in combating hunger.
Genetic engineering's potential to feed hungry people
won't be a winning argument alone in places like
England and in many nations in Western Europe, which
enjoy more than enough food already. Not until DNA
manipulation improves the wholesomeness or nutrition of
food or otherwise makes products of clear benefit to
people will the furor in his country subside, said Rooker,
the British agriculture minister.
"If they come up with something that is clearly perceived
to help the consumer, then I think that will crack it. But
as long as the products benefit only the farmer and the
chemical companies, there's going to be a suspicion,"
he said.
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