Book Review: Food Inc.

This article is reprinted with permission from the September 26, 2003 edition of the New York Law Journal. © 2003 ALM Properties Inc. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.

Friday, September 26, 2003
New York Law Journal p. 2, col. 3
Copyright 2003 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved

Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto - The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest
by Peter Pringle
Reviewed by David C. Wrobel

There’s good news and there’s bad news for our planet. The good news is that in the very near future it may be possible to eliminate world hunger. Every day scientists are making remarkable progress in unlocking the secrets of the gene, and farmers should be able to grow increasingly more crops, on less land, without the need for dangerous pesticides or herbicides. 

What’s more, the crops of the future can easily be made more nutritious. To take but one example, scientists have already developed a strand of rice which contains beta-carotene, the substance which causes the human body to produce vitamin A. The grains of ordinary rice — the largest staple food on this planet — contain no beta-carotene. As a result an estimated one million of Asia’s poorest children die each year from weakened immune systems and 350,000 more go blind. It doesn’t have to happen, and it won’t happen if “Golden rice” becomes widely grown.

Now for the bad news. The question of whether or how this marvelous future comes to pass is being debated by two equally untrustworthy groups. On one side are the so-called “green” activists, self-appointed guardians of our planet’s resources, who are tirelessly seeking to prevent the development of what they call “Frankenfoods” created by genetic modification. Opposing these activists stand the prime proponents of the new biotechnology, huge corporate conglomerates that stand to make billions through exclusively patented foods. This is not a fight in which you may want to choose sides.

In “Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto — The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest,” Peter Pringle has attempted to write an objective (dare I say “fair and balanced’?) book about the highly charged subject of genetically modified (GM) food. The book is non-alarmist, thoughtful and, at times, highly technical. It is specifically aimed at readers who “still have an open mind” on the debate now being waged primarily between fiery opponents of “unnatural” science and corporate public relations flacks.

The tactic of the anti-biotech forces is to sow fear in the hearts of consumers. This fear, Mr. Pringle points out, is often supported with dubious “science” and a quasi-mystical love of “nature,” which many find appealing but which is almost entirely irrational.

To demonstrate the flakiness of the anti-GM forces, Mr. Pringle quotes no less an authority than Prince Charles of Great Britain. Several years ago, when products containing genetically modified ingredients were being introduced into Europe, His Royal Highness took a firm stand against them, stating: “This kind of genetic engineering takes mankind into realms that belong to God, and to God alone. … I personally have no wish to eat anything produced by genetic modification, nor do I knowingly offer this sort of produce to my family or guests.” In subsequent interviews, the fuzzy basis for Charles’ position was fleshed out and it was an eye-opener. He stated that the best guide for what is right for the planet is not rational thought but “a wisdom of the heart, a faint memory of a distant harmony, rustling like a breeze through the leaves.” Huh?

The allegedly “pro-environment” position is that man should not upset the “Balance of Nature.” Unfortunately, we’ve been doing that since we developed the opposable thumb, and it’s getting a little late to stop. All agriculture is, in a sense, “unnatural,” and there is a strong case to be made that genetic engineering is the “natural” progression to follow centuries of agricultural development. If we were to go back to a completely “natural” past, we’d all starve.

So is the answer is to support the efforts of GM’s greatest proponents, multinational corporate giants like Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta? Not so fast, cautions Mr. Pringle. Driven by the need to make profits, these corporations, if left to their own devises, present a problem for us all. But it is not the “problem” that seems to preoccupy the thoughts of Prince Charles.

Following three fateful developments in American law, Mr. Pringle explains, the corporate biotech companies are gaining unprecedented power over farmers. First came the passage of the Plant Variety Protection Act by Congress in 1970, which gave patent-like rights to developers of food crops for the first time. Next came the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1980 decision to allow a General Electric microbiologist to patent a form of life, a bacterium created through genetic engineering. Finally came a 1985 ruling by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that granted broad patent rights to protect a new line of corn developed by a microbiologist named Kenneth Hibberd.

Before the Hibberd patents were granted, it was only possible for plant breeders to obtain rights in the seeds they produced. The Hibberd ruling created a brave new world however, in which patent rights were now available not only for seeds but for the plants they produced, indeed for the very DNA sequences found in the plant tissue. As a result, farmers who buy such patented seeds are legally prevented from doing what farmers have done from the dawn of civilization: saving the seeds produced by their crops and replanting them the next season.

From a purely financial point of view, the dream of corporate biotechnology is to hook farmers on patented seeds, year after year. To avoid “cheating,” the companies probably can and will develop plants that produce sterile seeds incapable of further growth. All the benefits of genetic engineering could be denied to those most in need of it, Third World subsistence farmers who can’t afford it.

In “Food, Inc.,” we learn to be wary of the facile arguments used by both sides in the current GM debate. Those out to “Save the Planet” may be doing us all a grave disservice. Beware of the man who promises you a future with unlimited bounties but has his eye on your wallet.

In sum, the future is too important to leave it in the hands of people who talk in sound bites.