Biotech Genie Unbottled by Joseph A. Davis The horse is out of the barn. Well, maybe it’s not exactly a horse. We’re talking about the biotech horse. If exhaustive press coverage and thorough public debate are supposed to precede epochal, momentous public decisions -- well, it is a little late for that. Our nation made the decision during the 1990s to release genetically modified plants and animals into the environment, marketplace, and food supply with scarcely the batting of an eyelash by press, public, and policymakers. Oh, sure, there was some notice and debate about some parts of the decision. And some good journalism done. But for the most part, it slipped right by us. O.J. was a much bigger story. Today, the majority of processed foods in the United States now contain some genetically engineered ingredients. Now ... after the fact ... the watchdogs of the barn-door (that’s the news media, right?) are raising a hue and cry. The monarch butterfly and Starlink(tm) taco shells are the stories du jour. What do you mean we’re not doing a good job covering biotech? Biotech critics of the Jeremy Rifkin stripe, are of course happy to see the press now pre-occupied with stories of suspicion and alarm about biotech. Having completely lost their battle on the scientific, legislative, and regulatory fronts, they play a spoiler’s role in the areas of consumer acceptance and international trade. The new battlefront is one of emotions and perceptions. It is not one where evidence and reason make very much difference. It’s perfect for television. Jeremy Rifkin may have been right about one thing (if wrong about many others): The decision to go ahead with recombinant DNA technology and other biotechnologies was a profoundly revolutionary and irreversible one. As a society, we have avoided and glossed over that decision. It has been made by default. We have laws specifically controlling air and water pollution, pesticides, drugs, food additives, and the licensing of barbers, the positioning of billboards, and spitting on subways -- but none specifically controlling the release of GM organisms into the environment or marketplace. In lay terms, you could say that the official U.S. government policy on biotech is in essence: "Biotech? Oh, that’s nothing new." The doctrine of the "substantial equivalence" (between biotech products and conventional ones) was the foundation of the decision to regulate biotech products under the laws used for conventional ones. And when those conventional products -- like, let’s say, a tomato -- are "generally recognized as safe," that means not regulating them at all. So where has the press been while all this was going on? I searched an online newspaper index for articles on "biotech" during 1992 -- the year the FDA ruled that GM foods required no special regulations. A lot of major metro dailies did report on the FDA decision, and many did recognize its momentousness. But ... most of that coverage came out close to the date of FDA’s announcement. The story was: "This is what the FDA decided" -- not: "This is the issue the FDA is weighing, and here are the pros and cons." And if you look at biotech coverage for the whole year, those stories are a drop in the bucket. Most of the headlines were about the "Biotech Stock Bonanza." During most of the 90s, in fact, the preoccupation of many U.S. journalists was how biotech would affect the stock market -- not how it would affect consumers and the environment. It’s even more surprising that the press has been somewhat missing-in- action in the debate over labeling. Industry won that debate hands down in the 1990s, as government decided not to require labeling of biotech-based products, such as milk from cows receiving bovine growth hormone. Again, the basis of this decision was the substantial equivalence doctrine. Industry argued, and scientists and government largely agreed, that if there were no way to tell the difference between a biotech product and a conventional one, labeling was not needed. But the industry anti-labeling campaign went a step further. Industry (specifically Monsanto) argued, in the case of recombinant bovine growth hormone, that producers who knew their products were free of biotech-produced ingredients should not be allowed to label them as such or advertise the fact. The FDA ruled that such labels should (voluntarily) include a disclaimer of any safety superiority -- lending considerable legal support to the industry position. That’s where the media’s silence is surprising, because it involves the First Amendment right of free speech. If industry can narrow the right of commercial free speech, can it do the same to the media’s rights? Faith in good journalism was buoyed when the New York Times unloaded its January 25, 2001, mega-piece on biotech regulation, by Kurt Eichenwald, Gina Kolata, and Melody Petersen. They told the story of how the biotech industry, led by Monsanto, in the early 1990s abandoned a strategy of winning consumer confidence through openness and consultation -- "in favor of a strategy to erase regulatory barriers and shove past the naysayers." The result is that biotech products reached markets and fields fast -- perhaps faster than the public and consumers were ready to accept. The supply chain now has been thrown into costly disarray as big processors like Gerber and Frito-Lay forswear GM ingredients, and grain companies have to segregate or even recall their products. One of today’s big ironies is that it was anti-biotech consumer groups who did the food-supply testing that came up with taco shells "contaminated" with Starlink. Not FDA. And not the muckraking junkyard dogs of the media. Hmmmm. Who’s supposed to be the real watchdog after all? Reprinted with permission. Published in Environment Writer newsletter February 2001, by the National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center.