Frankenfoodaphobia - Irrational Fear or Substantive Argument

There is a fable from the Physiologus of the 2nd century A.D. about a mythical beast called the Fastiticalon. Known in ancient times as the Asp Turtle this creature would float on the surface of the sea waiting with its mouth wide and exuding its sweet smelling breath until enough fish were lured into its great jaws for it to sate its evil appetite. Reputedly the model for the Whale who swallowed Jonah and the Christian image of the Mouth of Hell, the Fastiticalon also, in its spare time, would deceive weary sea travelers into mistaking it for a safe moorage. Once ashore, secure in their landfall, the sailors would unwittingly lay a fire to cook their victuals and thus awaken the slumbering beast causing it to sound and take them to their watery grave. Each of the Physiologus’ tales of various creatures comes with a moral and the leviathans’ moral is this, “such is the way of demons, the wont of devils; they spend their lives in outwitting men by their secret power, inciting them to the corruption of good deed[s]…”

There are several other noteworthy myths and legends that provide cautionary tales that speak to our growing dependence on GM foods, but I’ve chosen to use the Fastiticalon because I think it best illustrates our belief that Genetically Modified Food amounts to some auspitious landfall on the banks of Food Security. GMO is often wrapped in this fleece of “Feeding the World” and Biotech in general is given the status of Silver Bullet not only to the economic woes of the United States but the food and health woes of the World. It promises us in the U.S. a renewed Economic Relevance in the World Marketplace and also plays upon an old saw in our National mythology that America will, not unlike the Lone Ranger, come riding to the World’s rescue. Feeding the world is no mean goal, and it would be laudable if it weren’t just another part of the false promise of GMO food. The fact of the matter is that world food production is already operating at a surplus. There is enough food to feed the hungry. So we have to ask ourselves. Why GMO foods? Will they be cheaper to produce? Will the surplus grow to such an extent that farmers will be forced to give away what they can’t sell?

It’s a confusing issue, and I want to apologize now for the bookish feel of this post. I want to try to get this right and somehow my usual off the cuff screeds don’t seem to promise much chance of that. So I’m going to be a little more analytical and a little less pissed off, though this topic is far from calming or reassuring to me. If you haven’t noticed already, I love food. I love fishing and I love gardening and I love everything about a wholesome, natural diet. So the idea that some scientist is going to sit in his sterile little lab and form my future food choices kind of irks me. Who the fuck asked him anyway? I mean, I haven’t exactly seen a line of picketers outside my neighborhood grocery store demanding more GMO foods. On the contrary, I think people on the whole are a little wary of them and would like nothing more than to at least know when they’re eating something Genetically Modified. That seems reasonable doesn’t it? I’d like to know what I’m putting into my body. I do read the labels and contrary to what the big wigs at Food Production Central (i.e. Monsanto, ADM, Kraft) say, I am not confused by them. I understand things like Milk, Sugar, Tomato, Carrot, Salt, etc… I have issues with some of the weirder compounds they’ve introduced into food like pyrophosphate, xanthum gum, sodium metabisulfite, calcium disodium EDTA, and the like so I just try to avoid processed foods containing them. I don’t think consumers (I hate referring to myself as a consumer, but that is the catchall for human these days so I may as well own up to it) should be deemed stupid for not holding an advanced chemistry degree. The onus should be on the food corporations for explaining their process and the chemicals they use to make their products. This however is not the way our marketplace operates.

Corporations are shielded from disclosing how they produce their food concoctions by citing proprietary concerns. They wouldn’t want their competitors finding out how they’ve managed to slip all this useless garbage into our food for fear that they might mimic them and drive up the price of their chemical fillers. Plus the chemical companies who produce the additives can’t chance having their processes discovered for the same reasons. What if someone just started producing pyrophosphate in their garage and undercut their business?

It’s all very absurd when you consider that most of the food production in this country is owned and operated by a very few corporate entities and many of their processes are industry standards. Who isn’t using high fructose corn syrup, or modified corn starch these days? Why can’t we see how that shit is made? They all know, so why are they still hiding it from us, the consumer?


It’s been suggested that the absence of truthful labeling (namely for GM products) and the secrecy surrounding the food industries additive addiction has to do with tracking the physical effects on the consumer. Since testing is largely in the hands of the companies who are petitioning the FDA for approval there really hasn’t been much objective study on these products and compounds. If there were accurate labeling then a connection might be made say, to a spate of ailments linked to a certain products consumption. This of course would not be beneficial to the companies producing these products. If say a GM food were to cause birth defects or unforeseen allergic reactions or any number of other poor outcomes then that company might be liable for damages. Instead they aren’t expected to be held responsible for the experiment they are conducting on us with their futuristic foods. Their word that the product is safe is good enough for the FDA, the USDA and the EPA, so why shouldn’t it be good enough for us?

Personally I’m a little skeptical of our government’s rubber stamp. I find it curious and a little frightening that the heads of many of these government organizations are former Food Corp executives. Most of them hail from Monsanto, who incidentally has the biggest stake in GM foods, on both the seed patenting side and the herbicide.

Just the idea that life can be patented, the human genome for example, or a specific type of seed, galls me.

Companies who engage in this patent process (Monsanto has over 11,000 separate seed patents) seek to make life itself their proprietary concern. This to me is the biggest absurdity, and the fact that our courts have allowed this to happen (Justice Clarence Thomas was once the head counsel for, you guessed it, Monsanto) should be reason enough to throw them out on their ears. No judge that deems this process a fair and reasonable standard of business should be sitting on our highest court, or any court for that matter.

Many of the patents now held are of unmodified organisms, meaning essentially that all that is required to take legal control of a thing is to describe it and enter a patent before anyone else.

Mapping the human genome was not a form of creation. The process of mapping is perhaps, but the subject matter, the actual thing described was already in existence long, long before it was ever “discovered” by man. It is in fact Man. To me this is reason enough to distrust the logic of anyone who would argue that our genes should be subject to patent law.

Often in our history “discovery” has been an automatic justification for ownership. We are finding however that this argument breaks down on certain levels. Columbus “discovered” the New World and claimed it for the Portuguese. Later other European nations sent explorers and they claimed portions of it for their kingdoms. Their ownership did not however go unopposed and they sought, despite their believed god given rights to the territory, to mollify the indigenous population by either buying the property from them or directing their attention toward other concerns, such as neighboring tribes who held more desirable property. Usually these contracts were drawn up in the “discoverers” favor and used terms and principles the natives were unfamiliar with. If the contracts were honored at all by the “discoverers” it was only on account of some provision that guaranteed that their ultimate ownership was legitimate and justified.

Now I’m not running a give back the land campaign for my friends the Native Americans or anything, I only bring this up to illustrate and draw parallels to what is happening today. Contracts on our lives have been drawn. Patents on our genes, on the food we eat, on the animals we hunt and raise for food threaten to put us under the same subjugation our European ancestors had the Natives and Slaves. I know that’s a strong statement but let’s look at some simple examples.

In the United States Monsanto has the right to sue any farmer whose crops can be shown to contain genes identical to the ones they have under patent. This may sound reasonable on the surface but take for example a farmer who resists using Monsanto’s products and has saved his own seeds for replanting. If his crops get cross pollinated or contaminated by neighboring crops carrying the Monsanto genes then Monsanto has the right to drag the farmer into court and sue them for damages. Farmers who resist Monsanto are often targeted by their agents who routinely trespass on their property to gather samples in the hopes of being able to sue them as a means of intimidation. Monsanto alone is involved in over 5000 of these cases a year.

And even if you have given in to Monsanto and bought their seed and it’s corresponding herbicides you are subject to penalties for saving and trying to replant seed from the resulting crops. Monsanto and other GM seed manufacturers have sought to make it part of the contractual agreement that seed only be used once and then repurchased every year. Unable to enforce this agreement in every case Monsanto and others have come up with something they refer to as a Terminator Gene that in effect makes it impossible for the resulting plant to reproduce.

And as if this Terminator Technology weren’t scary enough I come to find out that the co-owner of its US patent is our own friendly United States Government. Where is George Orwell when you need him?

There are also GM seeds in the works that will have to be sprayed with a proprietary chemical in order to germinate.

Wow!

By now you must be asking yourself, is it really the goal of these companies to feed the World?

We’ll get back to that in a minute. First I’m curious just how they do it? How is this amazing science performed? If you listened to the GM Food Corp spokes it’s all just as simple and natural as the original process of seed selection and cross pollination. It’s what farmers have been doing for thousands of years only better. It’s Agriculture “on steroids”. This I’m afraid is disingenuous to say the least. Fortunately for us the process by which plants and animals are genetically modified is not a proprietary issue and we’ve been able to see just how suspect and frightening it really is. For a more complete rundown I highly recommend Deborah Koons Garcia’s documentary “The Future of Food”, but in a nutshell here’s how it works.

A genetic trait from one plant or animal is inserted into the cell of another plant or animal using a vector, like a virus or bacteria, which are joined with the genetic material and used to penetrate the cell wall and change the composition of that plant or animal at the cellular level. Where do the virus and bacteria go once they’ve accomplished their task? How are they controlled in the process so as to make their presence wholly innocuous? We don’t know. Or at least that much wasn’t explained.

This to me seems like a very risky business. And one not to be undertaken with such a cavalier attitude. Man has never been known for his abilities of foresight. Typically he is a capricious and venal creature, more apt to favor the short money than the long view. He may profess all kinds of laudable goals but often his motivations are base and angled more toward his own enrichment.
Ronald Stotish chief executive of Aqua Bounty Technologies claims his product, the genetically modified salmon is a response to the threat of overfishing and increased demand. He says that by creating a fish that can grow at twice the rate and three times the size of the natural stock his company hopes to provide the “healthy kind of diet that Americans are used to…” (1) and hopes to counteract some of the stresses put on wild stocks by overfishing and industrialization. Faced with concerns about the possibility of escape into the wild his company promises to keep their facilities inland and further guarantees that their fish will not breed in the wild by making them all sterile.

Sounds terrific! When can we start? Honestly I just can’t take this guys word that all of these miracles of science will work out in the flawless, wholesome, American way that he’s cooked up. I mean, won’t the run-off and waste from his fish farms be contributing to the very industrial degradation that has caused the decline of wild fish? And should they escape, god forbid, and reproduce, won’t his fish pose a threat to wild fish by out-competing wild stocks for the limited resources in the already depleted industrial estuaries? And lastly, won’t his fish, should they gain a strong foothold in the natural environment be exactly that, his fish, making commercial salmon fishing some kind of trespass against Aqua Bounties patented property?

You can see why I’m having my reservations. Not only do I not want to see another form of industrialized farming come to prominence (genetic or otherwise) but I don’t care to see agriculture and civilization destroy one of the last truly valuable natural resources. Instead of trying to nullify the effects of industrialization by using science to artificially replicate the fruits of nature maybe we ought to try knocking down a few dams. Maybe try not to pollute our rivers and streams. Or try favoring the food that comes to us naturally to a pile of gold we might find at the end of some rainbow upstream (No Pebble Mine!).

We’ll leave off now with a word from the bible; “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil…” 1 Timothy 6, verse 7-10

It’s important to remember when you hear these stories about Feeding the World, these faith based pronouncements about how Science will save us from our bad behavior that the people promising these things are often doing it to some cynical purpose. Or maybe they’re not being cynical. Maybe they’re swept up in the faith themselves. Who knows. Just try to remember that this idea of speed, a faster growing fish, a bumper crop, etc, is not of a humanitarian origin, but of an economic one. Convenience, mass production, these things were not contrived for an egalitarian purpose, but rather in the service of numerical increase. Its money lust that drives these inventions. Believe me, Mother Teresa would never have captained a factory trawler, nor headed a multi-national Food Corporation in the hopes of doing some ultimate good for mankind. It’s bullshit. Don’t fall for it.

The best we can do short of Saving the World is to stay away from GM foods. We’re not going to get any help heading off this natural catastrophe from our government so we have to defund the operations by refusing to consume their products. We can eat wild fish. We can buy organic. We can patronize local farms and farmers markets. And we can get out the hoe and plant a garden ourselves. Do like they did in WW II and have yourself a Victory Garden. We’re fighting against the same forces here people, they’re just wearing lab coats and dollar signs this time instead of swastikas.

(1) Reuters