Essay 3 InstructionsRead pages 407—417, in Writing Arguments

Essay 3 Instructions
Read pages 407—417, in
Writing Arguments
, “Genetically Modified Food” by Arthur Caplan, “The Threats
from Genetically Modified Food” by Robin Mather, & "Wrong-
Headed Victory" Michael Le Page. Remember to read for ideas,
not facts.
Caplan, Mather, and Le Page offer differing viewpoints of the
same Issue. Adding your own thoughts, (being careful to
support your thinking and not to assume that your experience is
typical) into the discussion, utilize what you have learned from
Caplan, Mather, and Le Page about the topic. This is
not
an autobiographical essay nor is it a research essay on GMOs It
is an opportunity to discuss the ideas in the assigned readings!
You are encouraged to use your own insights, analysis, or
perspective but only after demonstrating a thorough knowledge
of the assigned articles. Indeed, if your approach is entirely
descriptive in nature (for example, you just reiterate what the
articles say), you probably will not receive an "A." The length
of your paper will depend upon the context you select, the
amount of previous research, and so forth. I'll be reading the
papers, not weighing them, to determine grades. That said, It is
hard for me to imagine that you could even begin to cover this
topic in less than 750 words. To ensure a good grade you will
want to write more!
Your writing should display your thinking ability; the ability to
understand theories, grasp complex concepts, discover
interrelationships, and generate your own insights. Naturally,
you should proofread your paper for grammatical and
syntactical errors. You should pay proper homage to published

authors by citing their works whenever you refer to their words,
ideas, or data. Your paper should conform to A.P.A. guidelines.
Do you remember how to properly cite and refer to a chapter or
selection from an edited book? I hope so! If not, don't expect a
good grade.
Although the content is going to be primary, organization,
spelling, and grammar are also important. Ensure that they are
all under your control before you hand in anything. In other
words, I expect you to do College Level writing. You should
use this as an opportunity to show off your ability to think
clearly, precisely, and logically, & completely, as well as write
elegantly!
To receive full credit for this assignment you must submit your
writing by noon, on the day specified in the syllabus, to
Brightspace. As always, ensure that your work is done in
Microsoft Word format.
University does use turnitin.com
Bid will not exceed the amount offered.
(Reading context below):
Genetically Modified Food: Good, Bad, Ugly
arthur l. caplan

Arthur L. Caplan is a professor and head of the Division of
Bioethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center.
He is the author or editor of 32 books and over 600 papers in
peer-reviewed journals of medicine, science, philosophy,
bioethics, and health policy. He won the Patricia Price Browne
Prize in Biomedical Ethics for 2011 and was chosen as one of
the ten most influential people in biotechnology by both the
National Journal
and
Nature Biotechnology.
This commentary was published in the
Chronicle of Higher Education
on September 13, 2013
.
Genetically modified food has had a rough year in what has
been a fairly miserable decade. In August, 400 farmers in the
Philippines stormed a government-owned GM (as it is known)
research field. The protesters destroyed 1,000 square meters of
Golden Rice, a variety genetically engineered to cut down on
vitamin A deficiency.A 2013 poll in the
New York Times
found that three-quarters of Americans have concerns about
genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their food; most are
worried about health effects. Thirty-seven percent of those with
worries fear that GM foods cause cancer or allergies.On the
Web site
Counter-Punch
this summer, Katherine Paul wondered what happens when
animals are confined in cramped, filthy environments and force-
fed monoculture diets of genetically modified corn and soy. A
lot, concluded Paul, who is with the Organic Consumers

Association: “Calves are born too weak to walk, with enlarged
joints and limb deformities. Piglets experience rapidly
deteriorating health, a ‘failure to thrive’ so severe that they
start breaking down their own tissues and organs—self-
cannibalizing—to survive.”The article described animals with
weak bones, dairy cows with mastitis, beef cattle with liver
abscesses. “It all adds up to a lot of misery for animals
unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of industrial
agriculture’s Big GMO Experiment,” Paul wrote.5 A
documentary,
Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of Our Lives
, proclaims GMO “the most dangerous thing facing human
beings in our generation.” And a headline in
Pravda
sneered at the decision to expand GMO agriculture in Russia,
under the headline “Russians to proudly poison themselves with
their own GM food.”But at the same time, the
Times
also noted that commercial farming of oranges and grapefruit is
in dire peril from an insect-borne bacteria that causes a disease
known as “citrus greening.” An uncontrollable fungal blight is
destroying the banana crop around the world. Coffee rust is
knocking out plants in Central and South America. Diseases like
rice blast, soybean rust, stem rust in wheat, corn smut in maize,
and late blight in potatoes destroy at least 125 million tons each
year of the world’s top five foods. The damage done to rice,
wheat, and maize alone costs global agriculture $60 billion per
year. The effects are especially catastrophic in the developing
world, where 1.4 billion people rely on these foods.There is a
way to get rid of such otherwise unstoppable plant diseases,
which waste scarce resources, bring about malnutrition and
starvation for hundreds of millions, and cost the world economy
billions of dollars. Genetically modified organisms.Specifically,
engineering plants to resist the diseases. So why don’t the folks
bearing the bad news about GMOs make a connection to the
huge problems that could be fixed by genetic engineering? The

answer is the bungling mismanagement of a potentially useful
breakthrough technology by the GMO industry, alongside
market forces that produce GMOs friendly to pesticides rather
than hostile to fungi.On September 10, 1999, I found myself in
Switzerland, on a mountaintop overlooking Lake Geneva. A
pleasure trip? Nope, I was giving a talk to CEOs about the
ethics of GMOs. I spent my time at the summit yelling, literally,
at the CEO of Monsanto. He was yelling right back at me—
neither of us calmed by the beauty of the setting. Or the
horrified looks on the faces of other guests.10 The subject
of the craggy debate was whether foods that contain GMOs
should be labeled as such. The head of Monsanto said
absolutely not. Since there was nothing unsafe about genetically
modified food, there was no reason to label. I thought he was
nuts.I argued that people had a right to know what was in their
food, regardless of the safety issue. In a land where you can
have a Slurpee and a couple of Slim Jims for lunch, and where
E. coli, listeriosis, yersiniosis, and salmonella outbreaks are
frequent occurrences, I was not too worried about the safety of
GMO food. But safety has little to do with labeling. Plenty of
foods are labeled “kosher,” “natural,” “halal,” “made in
Vermont,” or all manner of other terms not connected to
safety.By not labeling their foods, agricultural companies were
creating an environment of suspicion and distrust. The CEO,
however, was not convinced. Monsanto did not push labeling or
lobby for labeling. No other companies in the GMO business
did, either. Only restaurants and supermarkets that threw a
“GMO-free” label around, to appeal to consumers made nervous
by lack of transparency, bothered to label.Bad management thus
turned a technology that should have been greeted as a way out
of chemically based farming into a public-relations nightmare.I
actually had crossed paths with Monsanto years before. When I
was at the University of Minnesota, in 1994, the company
introduced a genetically engineered form of growth hormone,
rBGH, for use in dairy herds. The naturally occurring gene for
making rBGH had been inserted into bacteria, E. coli, which

went about merrily making as much hormone as anyone could
want. Monsanto sold the artificial hormone to dairy farmers
with the promise that they could get more milk from their
herds.15 That product had driven me crazy. Why create
more milk? My subsidized school lunches at Saxonville
Elementary, in Framingham, Mass., in the late 1950s had been
built on dairy products—a butter or cheese sandwich every
day—since the federal government did not know what else to do
with all the surplus. So had my younger sisters’ lunches, right
through the 1970s. Consumers did not need more milk. rBGH
milk is still sold throughout the United States. The Codex
Alimentarius Commission, a UN food-safety agency
representing 101 nations, has banned it. So has Canada. Milk,
butter, and ice cream remain abundant.Genetic engineering
started out trying to create more of foods that were already
abundant. It then tried to sell its products not to consumers, but
to farmers. No labeling was involved, no explanation of the
genetically engineered cow’s milk offered, no value added to
what the consumer got on the plate or in the glass. The pattern
of ignoring the consumer and selling to the farmer continued
with genetically engineered soy, corn, canola, sugar beets, and
cotton. No labeling. No value added for the eater.Even worse,
Monsanto, and later DuPont, Bayer, and other big companies
focused their GMO efforts on finding synergies between genetic
engineering and their existing pesticide, herbicide, and fertilizer
businesses. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans, introduced
throughout the world in the mid-to-late 1990s, made crops more
resistant to herbicides sold by—Monsanto.The companies
making lots of money from the pesticide and fertilizer
revolution that swept through agriculture in the 1950s and
1960s were not ready to gamble on losing that business if GMO
technology was used to make plants and agriculture greener,
cheaper, safer, and more capable of providing nutritious food
without their chemicals. GMO, which should have been the next
major technological revolution in farming, making the Green
Revolution even greener, instead was turned into a handmaiden

for an outmoded, highly polluting, and increasingly expensive
chemically based agriculture.Which brings us back to all those
diseases and bugs that have figured out ways to defeat our
herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, insecticides, and
microbicides while thoroughly enjoying global warming, war,
and human deforestation. Chemical agriculture has no answer.
Nor does organic farming.20 The only path toward a
continuous supply of a variety of foods, more nutritious food,
cheaper food, and an environmentally friendlier agriculture is
the genetic engineering of plants and seeds. Critics of genetic
engineering need to start to separate the technology from its
miserable history. Altering genes, which is going on in
medicine as a powerful tool against disease, has to be deployed
in the same way in the plant world.The route to getting rid of
chemical agriculture can run through organic farming. But it
must also incorporate genetic modification, lest entire
industries, such as those providing orange juice or coffee
products—and their jobs—disappear, and those who eke out a
living trying to farm on a warming planet, short on water, with
many blight-threatened crops, starve.There is plenty to argue
about regarding GMO foods. Controlling the dissemination of
genetically modified plants and animals needs a lot more
thought. Getting farmers off monoculture farming and adding
back more diversity to vulnerable foods are efforts that need
more than a few seed banks. And we must figure out labeling. If
it is not always feasible to label foods, trustworthy information
should be made available on the Web. Even industry knows
that—14 years after my shouting match on the mountaintop,
Monsanto has launched a Web site,
gmoanswers.com
.That said, the push to make GM food a complement to farming
rather than handmaiden to a rapidly failing form of polluting
agriculture must become a priority for all. If industry cannot use
the technology in an ethically responsible manner, then either
government or a philanthropy like the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation ought to be urged to step in. (Full disclosure: I

receive no support from food companies or agribusiness. But
while at the University of Pennsylvania, I did participate in a
project with DuPont to establish a code of ethics for its
biotechnology business. That project goes on.)Genetic
engineering is not yet solving the food challenges that face
humanity. Despite industry bungling, market failure, and a lot
of fearmongering, however, it is our last, best, practical, serious
hope.
The Threats from Genetically Modified Foods
robin mather
Robin Mather is a long-time food columnist and a senior
associate editor at
Mother Earth News;
this article was published in the April–May 2012 issue. Mather
has written about GM crops since the early 1990s, and is the
author of
A Garden of Unearthly Delights: Bioengineering and the Future
of Food
(1995), one of the first books on genetic modification written
for the general public, and
The Feast Nearby
(2011)
.
Eighteen years after the first genetically modified food, the
Flavr Savr tomato, came to market, the controversy about
genetically modified foods rages. The call to label GM foods
continues to build, yet the federal government has not
responded. GM foods, illegal in many countries, have been part

of the American diet for nearly two decades. As GMOs have
come to dominate major agribusiness sectors, a handful of
chemical/biotech companies now control not only genetically
modified seeds but virtually our entire seed supply.“Genetic
modification” refers to the manipulation of DNA by humans to
change the essential makeup of plants and animals. The
technology inserts genetic material from one species into
another to give a crop or animal a new quality, such as the
ability to produce a pesticide. These DNA transfers could never
occur in nature and are not as precise as proponents make them
sound.Some genetically modified crops have been engineered to
include genetic material from BT (
Bacillus thuringiensis
), a natural bacterium found in soil. Inserting the Bt genes
makes the plant itself produce bacterial toxins, thereby killing
the insects that could destroy it. The first GM crop carrying Bt
genes, potatoes, were approved in the United States in 1995.
Today there are Bt versions of corn, potatoes and
cotton.Roundup-Ready crops—soybeans, corn, canola, sugar
beets, cotton, alfalfa and Kentucky bluegrass—have been
manipulated to be resistant to glyphosate, the active ingredient
in Monsanto’s broadleaf weed-killer Roundup.5 These
two GM traits—herbicide resistance and pesticide production—
are now pervasive in American agriculture. The Department of
Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service says that,
in 2010, as much as 86 percent of corn, up to 90 percent of all
soybeans and nearly 93 percent of cotton were GM
varieties.You’re eating genetically modified foods almost daily
unless you grow all of your food or always buy organic. Federal
organic standards passed in 2000 specifically prohibit GM
ingredients. Other genetically modified crops—none labeled—
now include sweet corn, peppers, squash and zucchini, rice,
sugar cane, rapeseed (used to make canola oil), flax, chicory,
peas and papaya. About a quarter of the milk in the United
States comes from cows injected with a GM hormone, honey
comes from bees working GM crops, and some vitamins include

GM ingredients. Some sources conservatively estimate that 60
percent or more of processed foods available in the United
States contain GM ingredients, because most processed foods
contain corn and/or soy products.Genetically modified foods are
not labeled in the United States because the biotech industry has
convinced the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that GM
crops are “not substantially different” from conventional
varieties. The FDA, however, does no independent testing for
human or animal safety and relies strictly on the research
conducted by the manufacturers of the products. The main GM
producer, Monsanto, makes it nearly impossible for independent
scientists to obtain GM seeds to study. Meanwhile, many
countries require labeling (the European Union, Australia), and
some have even banned all GM foods (Japan, Ireland,
Egypt).Genetic modification technology does have
extraordinary potential. In the practice known as “pharming,”
animals are genetically modified to give milk, meat or blood
from which medicines are manufactured, as when GM goats
produce milk containing a blood-thinning drug called ATryn.
Research laboratories use GM mice to seek cures for diseases.
Yet with minimal oversight on the crops and livestock
produced, many people have serious worries about GMO
technology. Many of us simply want the
right to know
what is in our food.
Bt Crops: Is Built-In Pesticide a Boon or Bane?
Monsanto has led the invasion of Bt crops, starting with corn,
cotton and potatoes. Syngenta has developed Bt corn as well, as
have Bayer, Dupont and other companies. Such crops are
marketed to growers as pest-resistant.10 Some researchers
have concerns about the effect of Bt crops on human health.
Professor Emeritus Joe Cummins of the University of Western
Ontario told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

that “there is evidence that [Bt] will impact directly on human
health through damage to the ileum [the final portion of the
small intestine, which joins it to the large intestine] … [which]
can produce chronic illnesses such as fecal incontinence and/or
flu-like upsets of the digestive system.”Bt may also harm
beneficial insects such as honeybees and lady beetles.
Risky Business?
Roundup is one of Monsanto’s powerful broad-leaf weedkillers.
Because Roundup’s patent expired in 2000, a number of
companies now manufacture products using Roundup’s active
ingredient, glyphosate.Glyphosate is not made using genetic
modification. Instead, crops labeled Roundup-Ready are
modified to withstand drenching with this weedkiller.15
In a 2011 report called
Roundup and Birth Defects: Is the Public Being Kept in the
Dark?
, eight international scientists cited study after study linking
glyphosate to birth defects in birds and amphibians, as well as
to cancer, endocrine disruption, damage to DNA, and
reproductive and developmental damage in mammals, even at
very low doses. Moreover, the report said, Monsanto and the
rest of the herbicide industry has known since the 1980s that
glyphosate causes malformations in animals, and that
governments ignored these studies. Here in the United States,
the EPA continues to assert that Roundup is safe.Another
concern is environmental damage. Roundup ends up in wetlands
because of runoff and inadvertent spraying. In one study, the
recommended application of Roundup sold to homeowners and
gardeners killed up to 86 percent of frogs in one day, according
to University of Pittsburgh assistant professor Rick Relyea.
Roundup also damages soil. Two Purdue scientists, Professor
Emeritus Don Huber and G.S. Johal, said in a paper published in
2009 that “the widespread use of glyphosate … can significantly

increase the severity of various plant diseases, impair plant
defense to pathogens and disease and immobilize soil and plant
nutrients rendering them unavailable for plant use.” The pair
warned that “ignoring potential non-target side effects … may
have dire consequences for agriculture such as rendering soils
infertile, crops non-productive and plants less nutritious.”Huber
is point-blank about glyphosate’s dangers. “Glyphosate is the
single most important agronomic factor predisposing some
plants to both disease and toxins,” he said in an interview with
The Organic and Non-GMO Report
. “These toxins can produce a serious impact on the health of
animals and humans. The toxin levels in straw can be high
enough to make cattle and pigs infertile.”
No Independent Review
As the system now stands, biotech companies bring their own
research to the government body overseeing their products.“We
don’t have the whole picture. That’s no accident. Multibillion-
dollar agricultural corporations, including Monsanto and
Syngenta, have restricted independent research on their
genetically-engineered crops. They have often refused to
provide independent scientists with seeds, or they’ve set
restrictive conditions that severely limit research options,”
wrote Doug Gurion-Sherman of the Union of Concerned
Scientists in a February 2011
Los Angeles Times
op-ed.20 Concern about lack of independent review
extends to university-level research, which is often partly
funded and/or controlled by the agrochemical companies, which
often gives agrochemical companies exclusive rights to
academic discoveries—even though universities are taxpayer-
funded.It seems unlikely that scientists whose research is
designed and paid for by agrochemical companies would choose
to conduct studies that may reduce or remove that funding, even

if they could obtain the seeds they needed to do truly
independent research. Moreover, the agrochemical companies
refuse to release their own research, citing concern that
“proprietary information” could be disclosed.
Scientific American
called on biotech companies to end restrictions on outside
research in a 2009 editorial. “Food safety and environmental
protection depend on making plant products available to regular
scientific scrutiny,” the magazine’s editors wrote. “Agricultural
technology companies should therefore immediately remove the
restriction on research from their end-user agreements. Going
forward, the EPA should also require … that independent
researchers have unfettered access to all products currently on
the market.”When scientists have obtained agrochemical
companies’ research data, usually through freedom-of-
information requests, they have found entirely different
conclusions than the company did. Three French scientists
analyzed the raw data from three 2009 Monsanto studies on rats
and found that three genetically modified corn varieties caused
liver and kidney toxicity and other kinds of organ damage. The
European Food Safety Authority, at the request of the European
Commission, reviewed the French report and said that it “does
not raise any new safety concerns,” although other scientists
continue to insist the French report is correct. All three corn
varieties are now in the human food chain in the United States.
GM Milk: rBST
BGH (“bovine growth hormone”) is produced in cows’ pituitary
glands. “Recombinant bovine somatotropin,” or rBST, is a
genetically modified version of this hormone. Injecting the GM
hormone causes cows to produce about 10 percent more milk.
The FDA approved the GM hormone in late 1993, saying there
was “no significant difference” in milk from injected and
uninjected cows. Its ruling meant that dairies could not label

their milk as coming from uninjected cows, because doing so,
the FDA said, suggested that there is a difference.25
There is a difference. Injections of rBST in cows raise levels of
the naturally occurring IGF-1, (insulin-like growth factor 1), a
protein that stimulates cell growth. The IGF-1 in milk from
injected cows is easily absorbed in the small intestine. Dr.
Samuel Epstein, Professor Emeritus at the School of Public
Health, University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, has
warned for more than 20 years that high levels of IGF-1 raise
the risk of cancer, especially breast, colon and prostate cancer.
He has said that rBST milk is “super-charged with high levels
of abnormally potent IGF-1, up to 10 times the levels in natural
milk and over 10 times more potent.”Monsanto began selling
rBST in 1994. Later, in 2003, the FDA charged several dairies
with “mis-branding,” and Monsanto sued Oakhurst Dairy in
Maine for labeling its milk from cows
not
injected with GMO hormones!As many people reacted to rBST
by reaching for organic milk instead, American retailers began
to pledge not to sell rBST milk in response to consumer
demands. The synthetic hormone is illegal in Japan, Australia,
New Zealand and Canada, and the European Union banned it
permanently in 1999.In 2008, a group of rBST-using farmers
formed a group called American Farmers for the Advancement
and Conservation of Technology, or AFACT, with help from
Monsanto. AFACT tried to ban no-rBST labeling claims in
many states, but dropped those efforts in most—except Ohio,
where the ban effort ended in a lawsuit. An Ohio circuit court
found in 2010 that there
is
a compositional difference between rBST milk and milk from
untreated cows, and that the FDA’s position was “inherently
misleading.” The court found higher levels of a cancer-causing
compound, lower-quality milk because of higher fat and lower
protein, and higher white cell counts, which makes milk spoil
faster.Injecting cows in the same places over and over increases

the chance of infection, plus rBST-injected cows frequently
suffer from chronic mastitis, an infection of the udder. Mastitis
causes the cow’s udder to swell and makes it painful. Both of
these infections must be treated with antibiotics.
GMOs Feed the World?
30 Fans of GMOs assert that their use in crops and
livestock can help end hunger. They also claim that GMOs can
help stop climate change, reduce pesticide use and increase crop
yields.Are these claims true? We conclude no.The international
report
The GMO Emperor Has No Clothes
outlined evidence gleaned from many sources. The report is
available free at
goo. gl/52wuq
.GM crops do not produce more food or use fewer pesticides,
the report said. As resistant weeds and bugs develop, farmers
apply ever more herbicides and insecticides. “The biotech
industry is taking us into a more pesticide-dependent
agriculture, and we need to be going in the opposite direction,”
says Bill Freese of the Center for Food Safety.If GM crops
don’t increase yield, don’t reduce pesticide use and show no
significant promise for feeding the world, why do government
and industry promote them?35 If GMOs fail, shareholders
in Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta and other companies will see
their investments plummet. According to Yahoo! Finance, more
than 80 percent of Monsanto’s stock is held by institutional
holders such as Vanguard and funds such as Davis, Fidelity and
T. Rowe Price.If GMOs don’t benefit the farmers who pay more
to buy GM seed, and if they don’t benefit the customers who eat
them unknowingly, who gains from GMOs?Stockbrokers. And
you, if you have investments that own stock in Monsanto or
other biotech companies.

Seed Monopolies
Monsanto now controls so much of the world’s seed stock that
the U.S. Justice Department launched an “unprecedented series
of public meetings” into the company’s business practices as
part of a formal antitrust investigation in March 2010. “The
price of a bag of soybean seed, for example, has roughly
quadrupled since Monsanto began licensing genes,” the
Wall Street Journal
reported.The Seed Industry Structure chart (available at
https://www.msu.edu/~howardp/seedindustry.html
) demonstrates how tightly consolidated the seed industry has
become. That’s one reason why Monsanto’s name comes up
again and again in any conversation about GMOs: The company
is far and away the largest involved in GM patented seed.40
The GMO Emperor Has No Clothes
also includes an appendix detailing Monsanto’s long corporate
history of misleading research, cover-ups, bribes, and
convictions in lawsuits covering a range of issues, from Agent
Orange to toxic waste discharge to GM soybeans.
The Right to Know
The FDA and GMO supporters say that labeling GM foods
would be cumbersome and costly, ultimately raising food
prices.Labeling proponents point to the European Union,
Russia, Brazil, Japan, China, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea,
Australia and New Zealand, all of which require labels for GM
foods, and report costs are far lower than the industry and the
FDA claim.Survey after survey and poll after poll have shown
that consumers overwhelmingly favor labeling.In October 2011,
the Center for Food Safety filed a petition demanding the FDA
require labeling on all food produced using genetic engineering.
The center filed the petition on behalf of the Just Label It!

campaign, a coalition of more than 350 organizations and
individuals concerned about food safety and consumer rights.
The FDA’s governing rules require it to open a public docket
where citizens can comment on the petition. See more about the
Just Label It! Campaign in the box below.45 FDA
officials have openly criticized efforts to label GM crops and
food. In 2002, when Oregon voters considered Measure 27, a
mandatory GMO labeling law, FDA Deputy Commissioner
Lester Crawford said in a letter to the governor of Oregon that
mandatory labeling could “impermissibly interfere” with the
food industry’s ability to sell its products, and could violate
interstate commerce laws.The Oregon initiative was soundly
defeated, and money was the reason why. “Monsanto took the
financial lead against Measure 27, with contributions totaling
$1,480,000. Next was Dupont, with $634,000,” said Cameron
Woodworth in
Biotech Family Secrets
, a report for the Council for Responsible Genetics. Biotech
companies Syngenta, Dow Agro Sciences, BASF and Bayer
Crop Science, plus the Grocery Manufacturers of America (a
trade organization), PepsiCo, General Mills and Nestle USA
contributed $900,000 by the reporting date, Woodworth
wrote.Other high-ranking federal officials have lobbied against
labeling. “If you label something, there’s an implication there’s
something wrong with it,” said Jose Fernandez, the U.S. State
Department’s assistant secretary for economic, energy and
business affairs.The assertion that labeling somehow implies
inferior quality is transparently specious.Fruits and vegetables
labeled “organic” made up the highest growth in sales of all
organics in 2010, according to the Organic Trade Association,
up 11.8 percent from 2009 sales.50 If the facts in this
article anger you, see the steps in the box below to help you opt
out of GM foods.Have thoughts on genetically modified foods?
Post your comments on the online, expanded version of this
article.

What You Can Do About GMOs
■ If you think GM foods should be labeled, sign on to the Just
Label It! campaign. Send letters to the FDA and your
congressional representatives to urge them to require labeling of
GM foods and products. You’ll find sample language and a
petition at
www.justlabelit.org
.
■ If you grow your own food, buy your seed from companies
that have signed the GMO-free pledge. See the Safe Seed list,
maintained by the Council for Responsible Genetics, at
goo.gl/TOePN
.
■ Buy organic whenever possible, and look for foods labeled
“Non-GMO verified.” The Non-GMO Project is an independent
nonprofit that requires independent, third-party verification
before awarding its label. Find more at
www.nongmoproject.org
.
■ Help combat seed industry monopolies and build local food
security by supporting local growers who refuse to use GM
products, and work to pass food sovereignty laws in your
community. Learn more from food sovereignty expert Dr.
Vandana Shiva’s blog at
goo.gl/4aXUr
.
■ Finally, if you have investments, consider moving out of
funds that invest in biotech stock. If you are unable to do so,
write letters to your fund’s managers to object to this

investment strategy.
Wrong-Headed Victory
michael le page
Michael Le Page is the environment features editor at
New Scientist
magazine, where he covers issues ranging from climate change
to genetics. This opinion piece appeared in
New Scientist
on November 17, 2012
.
Imagine there are two plates of food in front of you. One is
labelled “natural”, the other “genetically modified”. Which
would you choose? I know what I’d do. Regardless of what the
logical side of me knows, I’d feel more comfortable eating
“natural” food.In an ideal world, this wouldn’t be a problem. If
people don’t want to eat GM food, they shouldn’t have to,
regardless of whether their reasons are rational or not. Food is
about so much more than just stuffing down nutrients, after all,
and how we feel about what we eat really does matter.Trouble
is, the world is far from ideal. Nearly a billion people go hungry
because they cannot grow or buy enough food. And there are
problems with the food we do eat. An estimated 2 billion people
suffer from a lack of iron, causing everything from tiredness to
premature death. Around 250 million preschool children are
short of vitamin A, leading to blindness in the worst cases.The
outlook is grimmer still. There will be ever more mouths to
feed, and ever more challenges facing farmers. Fuel and

fertilisers are becoming more costly, soils are eroding or
becoming saline, pests and diseases are evolving to outwit our
defences. To add to our woes, the climate is changing and the
weather becoming more extreme. In fact, farming is a massive
part of this problem—it contributes more to global warming
than all the world’s cars, trains, ships and planes put together.
Rising food prices not only cause suffering, but also threaten
political stability.5 So the world desperately needs better
crops. The good news is that they can be improved dramatically.
We know it’s possible to boost yields by improving the
efficiency of photosynthesis, for instance, because some plants
have already evolved this improvement. Similarly, there’s no
doubt we could create crops that need less water, grow in salt
water or make their own nitrogen fertiliser, for instance. As for
making grains and fruits richer in iron or vitamin A, it’s already
been done.So why aren’t people in poor countries already eating
healthier food, richer in iron and vitamin A? Partly they can’t
afford to pay for it, so commercial companies have little
incentive to develop such crops. Instead, such work has to be
funded by public money or philanthropists such as Bill Gates.A
big part of the problem, of course, is the vociferous objection to
GM foods. While the line between conventional breeding and
genetic engineering is increasingly blurred, it is generally only
practical to produce crops with complex new properties by
deliberately modifying their DNA, rather than inducing random
mutations and hoping a few will have the desired trait (as in
conventional breeding).The opposition to GM crops is making it
much harder to get funding to carry out the necessary research
and to get over all the regulatory hurdles. Earlier this year, for
instance, campaigners attacked the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation for funding the development of nitrogen-fixing
crops that could boost yields without boosting emissions of the
highly potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Simply not needed,
apparently. Greenpeace, meanwhile, tried to halt field trials of
vitaminA-rich “Golden Rice” in the Philippines, on the
ludicrous basis it would deter the consumption of

vegetables.The Monsantos of this world have the economic
muscle needed to get crops approved despite protests, but for
cash-strapped universities, it’s a different story. Their
development of the crops we so desperately need is being
impeded by anti-GM protesters.10 How can this
opposition be overcome? Not by rational argument, that’s for
sure. Even for those who understand that nature is the ultimate
mad scientist, and that plants are riddled with all kinds of
genetic modifications, from mistakes made during DNA
replication to insertions of viral DNA, it doesn’t make existing
GM crops any more appealing.Rather, we need to win people’s
hearts as well as their minds. And the way to do that is to make
GM foods appealing. Instead of crops designed mainly to boost
the profits of large corporations, we need a new generation of
GM crops that offers clear benefits to consumers, from looking
better to tasting better to being better for us. Scare stories about
cellphones causing cancer didn’t stop them taking off because
they are so useful. Similarly, scare stories about GM foods will
lose their power if GM products that help prevent cancer or
heart disease can be bought in supermarkets.The very last way
to win hearts is to trick people to eat GM crops by not telling
them what’s in their food. Californians may have voted down
the proposal for mandatory labelling of GM foods—Proposition
37—after food firms spent $45 million on TV ads telling them it
would raise food prices, hurt farmers and spark legal wrangles.
Few consumers will be any keener on eating GM food, though—
quite the contrary.Prop 37 was flawed, and many of the
arguments for it were nonsense. Its opponents argued that the
science says there are no ill effects of eating GM, so labelling,
which might deter GM consumption, is unnecessary. A triumph
for science over anti-science then? No. The argument against
Prop 37 really boiled down to something more disturbing: “If
we tell people what’s in their food, they will make the wrong
choice, so we shouldn’t give them one.”Why is the US of all
places protecting GM foods rather than letting them sink or
swim in a free market? Companies should instead persuade

people that their new products are better than the alternative.15
If all countries insisted on GM labelling, corporations would be
forced to convince consumers of the benefits. As it stands, in
California the companies who have helped engender such rabid
distrust of GM foods have been let off the hook. Prop 37 could
have been a catalyst for change. Instead the status quo
remains—and we’ll all be the losers in the end.
Harley, I’m Worried About Gene Transfer
john hambrock
John Hambrock draws the syndicated comic strip
The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, a character
who is a ten-year-old inventor obsessed with politics and the
ironies of life. This strip was published on July 2, 2013
.
Monsanto’s Reasons for Fighting GMO Labeling? It Loves You
joe mohr
Joe Mohr draws environmentally themed cartoons for
publications including
Yes! Magazine,
Greenpeace, the Center for Media and Democracy, PBS’s
Urban Conversion,
and other publications. He is also the creator of the comic strip
Hank D and the Bee.

This cartoon was published on October 24, 2013
.

Essay 3 InstructionsRead pages 407—417, in Writing Arguments

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