Nine years ago, IATP was part of new coalition called GE Food Alert. The coalition included the Center for Food Safety, Organic Consumers Association, Friends of the Earth, U.S. PIRG, and the National Environmental Trust. We were taking on the biotech industry, demanding tougher pre-market testing for environmental and health risks before new genetically engineered foods entered the market, as well as labeling for consumers. To illustrate how little monitoring was going on with new GE crops, we tested Taco Bell taco shells and found that they contained a genetically engineered corn, known as StarLink, that had not been approved for human consumption because of allergy concerns.
The stakes were extremely high. Genetically engineered corn and soybeans were being grown throughout the Midwest, but there was little to no segregation going on – GE and non-GE crops were mixed together, and still are for the most part. Major food companies like Kraft were stuck using GE crops, whether they liked it or not. Government agencies like the USDA and EPA were doing very little monitoring in the fields – and still aren’t. In many ways, the entire agriculture and food industry along with government agencies were drawn into defending GE crops by their premature introduction into the marketplace.
So, there were some powerful forces challenging our campaign. We knew that. But a remarkable article by Jim Ridgeway in the new Mother Jones paints a bigger, and more alarming, picture of what we were up against. The article outlines how former cops and secret service agents worked at a private security firm that spied on GE Food Alert as well as Greenpeace, including searching through garbage, attempting to plant undercover operatives, collecting phone records, and penetrating confidential meetings. The firm had many clients, including public relations firms who worked for the major food and biotech companies.
For more details, you can listen to this interview with Ridgeway on Democracy Now and read Greenpeace's response to the story.
The article is a disturbing look at corporate espionage and the enormous stakes at play over GE foods. We still know very little about the long-term environmental effects of planting GE crops or the long-term health effects of eating them. The biotech industry has made a lot of money on corn, soybeans and cotton (mostly used as animal feed or ingredients in processed food) – but has struggled to introduce new GE crops, including wheat, that are more directly eaten.
Ridgeway’s article is important as we move forward. It once again begs the same simple questions we've been asking all along: why is the industry so scared of comprehensive pre-market testing and basic food labeling of genetically engineered food?
