Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food
© Tim King
Aug 31, 2000
Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food, by Marc Lappe, Ph.D and Britt Bailey, Common Courage Press www.commoncouragepress.com, 1998, 175 pages
"We are on the cusp of a major revolution in the way we grow our crops, a revolution fueled by biotechnology and driven by multinational corporations. This revolution is unique because it entails the first major agricultural transformation of food crops based entirely on genetic engineering. It is also remarkable from a sociological perspective. Many of the key innovations have occured behind academic and corporate doors with little public input."
So begins the brave and well written "Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food."
As a journalist and a reader I found Marc Lappe's and Britt Bailey's small book a pleasure to read. As an organic market gardener, an eater and a citizen it served well to fuel my already significant anxiety on this complicated subject. If you have an opinion, pro or con, on the subject of genetically engineered food I suggest you read this book. It will sharpen and clarify your thinking. It will allow you to be a more informed and therefore a better citizen.
Take BXN (Trademark) Cotton for example. You may be wearing clothing made from it. This genetically manipulated crop was fabricated by Calgene in 1995. Seed from these cotton plants contains a gene from a bacteria that detoxifies the herbicide bromoxynil. Bromoxynil is marketed by Rhone-Poulenc under the brand name Buctril (Trademark). Normally bromoxynil stops photosynthesis in plants. Not on BXN (Trademark) Cotton. The bacteria gene reduces bromoxynil to relatively benign carbolic acid and something called DBHA.
"DBHA has been found by Rhone-Poulenc's toxicity testing to carry comparable toxicity to its parent compound," Lappe and Bailey's review of USDA's documents found.
So what, you say. It's just cotton. Nobody eats the stuff.
"Cotton slash, gin mill leavings and related cotton detritus are widely used in animal foodstuffs, making up to 50 percent of traditional silage. Cotton seed oil is also widely used as a direct human food and cooking additive. In all three forms, we believe residual toxicity from DBHA poses a substantial and largely unmeasured risk," the authors write.
In a chapter on the labeling of genetically engineered food crops the authors make it clear that, at least for the time being, government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration have no interest in alerting you that you are eating DBHA laced food.
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