Should Monsanto – makers of PCB and Agent Orange – control our food supply?
The World According to Monsato
by Marie-Monique Robin
Reviewed by Peter Lehner and Vivian Wang
Each bite of food that we consume carries political and ecological implications – implications that Marie-Monique Robin unveils in her scathing indictment of the agribusiness giant, Monsanto. In The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of Our Food Supply, Robin traces the history of Monsanto from its production of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the 1930s and its supply of dioxin for Agent Orange in the 1950s, to its present-day manipulation of genes to produce bovine growth hormone and transgenic corn, soybeans, and cotton.
Robin marshals stories from government whistleblowers and farmers around the world, along with data from the FDA and studies suppressed by governments, to weave an alarming tale of the environmental
and health implications of Monsanto’s control of seeds and food. Monsanto’s market dominance – established, admittedly, by sound business efforts but also through the support of the suppression of science, patent litigation to control the seed market, and deceptive advertising, and facilitated by the government’s inadequate oversight – presents a serious challenge for citizens concerned about the sustainability of our food system.
Robin focuses particular attention on Monsanto’s effort to silence studies questioning the safety of genetically modified (“GM”) crops. Lectins are plant proteins that act as natural insecticides and the lectin from snowdrop plants has been found effective against aphid infestation of potatoes while being harmless to mammals. In the mid-1990s, the pro-GM British government asked Dr. Arpad Pustzai to test transgenic potatoes modified to produce the snowdrop lectin. Dr. Pustzai found that different lines of transgenic potatoes contained quantities of lectin varying up to twenty percent, despite the fact that the genetic manipulation process was supposed to produce a consistent effect. The potatoes also had unexpected health effects – rats fed the transgenic potato had underdeveloped brains and livers, atrophied pancreatic and intestinal tissue, pre-cancerous cells in their stomachs, and overreactive immune systems. Not long after Dr. Pustzai revealed these results to the UK advisory committee in charge of GM food safety, his research contract was suspended, his team was dissolved, and his research was discredited with claims that he accidentally used a toxic lectin instead of snowdrop lectin in his studies. (Subsequent studies have supported Dr. Pustzai’s findings that the transgenic potatoes may affect immune function.) Robin asserts that the British government had been pressured by the American government to suppress publication of Dr. Pustzai’s study and that the American government, in turn, had been under pressure from Monsanto, which feared that the study would harm the biotech industry.
A theme that emerges from Robin’s narrative is the inadequacy of government regulation. Federal agencies like the EPA and FDA are vulnerable to “capture” by industry – becoming unduly influenced by the parties they are supposed to regulate. This is in part because industry’s resources far outstrip those of the government, and regulators are often forced to rely on scientific data generated by industry. The government may be unable to independently verify the data, and, as Robin points out, may even be denied access to data on the grounds that they constitute confidential business information. The “revolving door” further fosters an uncomfortably close relationship between the regulator and the regulated. For example, Robin reports that Michael Taylor, FDA’s deputy commissioner in charge of setting policy on GM crops, was formerly an attorney for Monsanto and the International Food Biotechnology Council. Hired by the FDA in 1991, Taylor aided in decisions approving GM crops. After his government tenure, Taylor returned to Monsanto as its VP of public relations.
This problem of regulatory capture is not confined to food regulation, of course. Just consider the news footage of tens of thousands of barrels of oil that until very recently, hemorrhaged daily into the Gulf of Mexico. Investigations of the regulatory agency, Mineral Management Service, revealed a culture of lax oversight, with inspectors who accepted gifts from one oil company and an employee who conducted inspections of drilling platforms while negotiating for a job with the drilling company.
A Supreme Court decision issued in June demonstrates a fundamental challenge presented in Robin’s book – the role of regulation in the face of uncertain ecological risk. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Alfalfa (RRA) is an alfalfa crop engineered to tolerate glyphosate, the active ingredient of the Monsanto herbicide Roundup. In response to a Monsanto petition, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) deregulated two strains of RRA. Environmental groups and conventional alfalfa seed farmers filed suit. The district court agreed that APHIS violated federal law by failing to address whether deregulation would lead to transmission of the glyphosate-tolerant gene from RRA to organic and conventional alfalfa, and whether RRA would contribute to development of Roundup-resistant weeds. (Robin reports that before the advent of Roundup Ready soybeans, Argentina used one million liters of glyphosate annually. Because of increasing herbicide resistance, that figure reached 150 million liters by 2005.) The district court prohibited all future plantings of RRA pending APHIS’s completion of the required environmental impact assessment. The Supreme Court reversed this decision.
The legal issues presented in the Monsanto litigation (whether the district court correctly applied the standard for injunctive relief) is, for purposes of this discussion, less important than the underlying difficulties of risk assessment and the burden of proof in regulatory decisionmaking. Despite substantial evidence that RRA genes could transfer to other plants, APHIS agreed to unconditionally deregulate RRA. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens cited the district court’s detailed review of internal agency documents. Some APHIS scientists had warned that contamination of organic crops may occur, yet the agency concluded that the risk is “not significant because it is the organic and conventional farmers’ responsibility” to protect themselves and the environment. The agency reached this conclusion without having investigated whether farmers could in fact protect their crops from such contamination, given the variables of wind, bird, and bee pollination.
Whether it is the impacts of transgenic crops or the BP oil spill, mountaintop removal mining or natural gas drilling, the problem of inadequate regulation is a challenge for environmental and consumer advocates. What can be done? Raising consumer awareness is one crucial step. The pressure of an educated consumer base can force changes in corporate behavior. Witness the shift away from trans-fats, high fructose corn syrup, and milk from cows injected with bovine growth hormone. Legislative reform is another avenue for change. The burden of proof should be on companies to establish the environmental and human health safety of products before they are allowed on market. Whistleblowers need stronger employment protection. Other useful reforms include improving EPA and FDA coordination over health and environmental testing for GM crops and enacting strong consumer protection laws that prohibit false and deceptive advertising of products’ environmental attributes (“greenwashing”).
While Robin does not purport to set forth a battle plan against Monsanto’s domination of seeds and science, her book does an admirable job of drawing our attention to the forces that influence how we grow crops and what we eat – essential acts that merit far greater scrutiny from us and our governments.
Peter Lehner is the Executive Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Vivian Wang is a Legal Fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
