GM crops in the media

A popular restaurant chain Chipotle set off a media maelstrom in the USA with an announcement on April 2015 that they would cook with only non-GMO (genetically modified organism) ingredients (Food With Integrity, 2015). Chipotle said that its decision was based on the “questions about the safety of GMO,” claiming that biotech companies had not evaluated “long-term effects” of these products, and that “more independent studies are needed.” Chipotle also claimed that GMOs damage the environment, citing one questionable study that biotech crops had led to increased use of herbicide and pesticide on the farm, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

However, quickly recognizing that offering a ‘GMO-Free’ fare in US is not going to be an easy task, Chipotle followed up subsequently with a disclaimer of sorts: “[I]t is important to note that most animal feed in the US is genetically modified, which means that the meat and dairy served at Chipotle are likely to come from animals given at least some GMO feed,” and further, “Many of the beverages sold in our restaurants contain genetically modified ingredients, including those containing corn syrup, which is almost always made from GMO corn” (Food With Integrity, 2015, para. 15). So Chipotle's promise to serve GMO-free food for its customers came with many exceptions. And they did not mention cheese, which is now almost made using chymosin, an enzyme produced using genetically engineered yeast or bacteria. Chipotle made no mention whether their cheese would be GMO-Fee because it would unlikely be that way.

Moves by companies such as Chipotle or Panera Bread to offer food without GMO ingredients “is nothing more than kowtowing and pandering to overhyped fears” says Dr. Gilbert Ross, of the American Council on Science and Health. He adds, “They [companies] believe the public is afraid of biotechnology and GMO foods. Instead of standing up for the science, since every scientific body in the world says GMO ingredients contain foods that are perfectly safe and that their potential for helping agriculture is real, and saving a lot of people from malnutrition and starvation… we now have these people saying [genetically engineered] food is ‘Frankenfood,’ and they're scaring the public.” (Artz, 2015, para. 20).

Many media outlets were very critical of Chipotle's decision to abandon GMO ingredients in its menu, calling it anti-scientific and pandering to Luddite fears. Samples of such stories in the popular media commenting on Chipotle's GMO decision include: Gizmodo: “Chipotle's Anti-GMO Stance Is Some Anti-Science Pandering Bullshit” (Zhang, 2015); a Los Angeles Times Editorial with the title “Chipotle's junk science on GMOs”—“in misrepresenting the science surrounding a poorly understood innovation, Chipotle joins ranks of companies that deceive the public” (Sexton and Zilberman, 2015, para. 7); National Public Radio: “…the company's highly publicized move away from GMOs serves merely to distract consumers from ‘the real problem with Chipotle food, which is that it's just not healthy’” (Charles, 2015, para. 11); a Chicago Tribune Editorial: “What troubles us is that Chipotle has embraced the fearmongering of some food, environmental and health activists who have turned ‘GMO’ into a dirty word. By declaring its goal to eliminate GMO food from its kitchens, Chipotle may be pleasing its health-conscious guacamole fans, but it is missing an opportunity to educate them on the nuances of food science” (Editorial Board, 2015, para. 5); and a Daily Beast title: “We're Paranoid about GMO Foods Because of Pseudo-Science” (Crocker, 2015).

A Washington Post Editorial came up the hardest on Chipotle with the title “Corporate irresponsibility over GMOs” (Gerson, 2015) and continued, “But Chipotle, Whole Foods and those who follow their examples are doing real social harm. They are polluting public discourse on scientific matters. They are legitimizing an approach to science that elevates Internet medical diagnosis, social media technological consensus and discredited studies in obscure journals. They are contributing to a political atmosphere in which people pick their scientific views to fit their ideologies, predispositions and obsessions. And they are undermining public trust in legitimate scientific authority, which undermines the possibility of rational public policy on a range of issues” (Gerson, 2015, para. 8). Reason magazine published: “By Feeding Bogus GMO Fears, Chipotle Treats Customers Like Idiots; the food chain tries to profit from anti-biotech propaganda” (Bailey, 2015)

A popular social media blogger mem-somerville aggregated many such media sentiments against Chipotle's decision into a Storify page called “A Farewell to Scientific Literacy” with the words “Chipotle: So, how's that anti-GMO stance working out for you?” (mem-somerville, 2015).

At the end of January 2015, an anti-GMO and pro-organic food organization called US Right to Know (USRTK) based in Oakland, California issued legal requests to the 14 professors at several US land-grant universities asking for access to their email correspondence of scientists with agbiotech corporations and industry-associated organizations such as PR agencies. Using the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state laws, the request specifically targeted those scientists who were actively involved in efforts to educate the public on GM crops and food issues and “those targeted for making public statements against California Proposition 37” (Levinovitz, 2015, para. 13). USRTK claims it targeted “only researchers who have written articles posted on GMO Answers, a website backed by food and biotechnology firms,” and “these professors are closely coordinating with agrichemical corporations and their slick PR firms to shape the public dialogue in ways that foster private gain for corporations … or … act as the public face for industry PR” (Ruskin, 2015, para. 6).

The scientific community was clearly rattled by the demand that many saw this as “intrusion into private correspondence”, and “harassment” of public scientists who were simply doing their job of educating the public on seemingly complex issues. Prof. Kevin Folta of University of Florida, one of the targeted scientists, wrote “The threat of being under the microscope scares people to death, not because of what they have done, but because of what those running the microscope want to find, and what they will do with any information once obtained. Words out of context, a sentence misinterpreted, Climate Gate 101. They can't be trusted. These are malicious intents aimed squarely at scientists that dare to teach and communicate peer-reviewed science” (Folta, 2015a, para. 14). Folta also wrote in a separate blog that “Such intimidation stymies desires for an already largely silent body of qualified, trusted academic and government scientists to reach out to non-scientists about any ag technology.” (Folta, 2015b, para. 11).

A petition drawn by Cornell University-based Alliance for Science condemning the FOIA request as “a witch-hunt by an anti-science organization with the goal of chilling academic discourse” and “anti-science bullying” drew support from 1778 global scientists, who signed on to express their support for the targeted scientists (Stop the Next Climategate, 2015, para. 15). In a scathing op-ed in The Guardian, 3 noted US scientists (all who have been presidents of the American Association of Advancement of Science and one a Nobel laureate) called the request of private emails of scientists as an ‘organized attack’ on science: “If we allow ideologically-motivated campaigners to harass and threaten our leading thinkers and intellectual institutions, there will be less progress than we could otherwise achieve. Our civilization can do better than that. We want to be able to vision a healthy, sustainable and vibrant future. But we can't get there without science” (Fedoroff, 2015, para. 12).

In a remarkable discovery, scientists from the International Potato Center in Peru and Ghent University in Belgium found that sweet potato naturally harbors genes from the soil bacteria Agrobacterium (Kyndta et al., 2015). Every one of the 291 cultivated accessions, but not the wild relatives, of sweet potato contained one or more T-DNA genes prompting the authors to suggest that the bacterial genes may have helped in the domestication of this crop. There was considerable coverage of this research in the popular press because of the implication – GMOs do occur naturally in the nature, why fear those made in the lab? – as exemplified in the Washington Post story titled “Humans aren't the only ones to genetically modify crops. Nature does, too” (Kollipara, 2015).

In a surprise but prudent move, India recently has eased up on the field trials of GM crops. After the declaration of the moratorium on Bt brinjal by then environment minister Jairam Ramesh 5 y ago, there has been substantial demoralization among the agbiotech community in India. However, with the election of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister along with his choice of many pro-science cabinet members, there has been steady increase in the optimism among the Indian biotech community that GM crops may be given a go-ahead. According to a report in Nature 8 Indian states have now recently approved field trials of GM rice, cotton, maize, mustard, eggplant and chickpea (Kumar, 2015).

On the other hand, China is sending mixed signals on its GM crops policy. China was the first country to commercialize GMO crops with a virus-tolerant tobacco in early 1990s, and has invested $3 billion in agricultural biotechnology research so far especially in crop genomics (Talbot, 2014). President Xi Jinping has said that China must “boldly research and innovate, [and] dominate the high points of GMO techniques” (Roberts and Bjerga, 2015, para. 2). China, with a voracious increasing appetite for livestock-based food, is the largest importer of GMO soybean (for animal feed) in the world, worth $40 billion, accounting for nearly 60% of all global imports. In the past year, US produced nearly 4 billion bushels of soybeans in 2014 and exported 1.8 billion bushels, mostly to China (Newton and Kuethe, 2015). However, China is increasingly favoring growth of its domestic agbiotech industry while placing substantial hurdles on foreign companies to operate in the country by ‘going slow’ on the approval of new crop traits for imports. For instance, it took 5 y to approve a Syngenta's corn variety MIR162 and 7 y to approve the Bayer's LL55 Liberty Link soybean. China cites its public misgivings about GMO food for its ‘go-slow’ approach on new approvals (Patton, 2015). A study commissioned by the International Alliance of Soybean Growers showed that a 3-year postponement in global approval of new GMO soybean trait would cost farmers and consumers a total of nearly $19 billion, compared with typical approval timelines (Global soybean stakeholders, 2015).

On March 5, 2015, anti-GMO activists in Brazil destroyed research facilities of a biotech company that was developing fast-growing eucalyptus. Hundreds of female members of the so called “Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement” armed with sticks and knives raided the campus of FutureGene, destroying GMO eucalyptus variety that was designed to ‘produce 20 percent greater yields than non-modified plants and matures in 4 y as opposed to 6–7 y presently in non-GMO eucalyptus (Marty, 2015). Again, Cornell's Alliance for Science posted a petition condemning the attack (Stand up for science in the face of violence - condemn vandalism against forest biotech research in Brazil) that drew 1429 signatures of support from scientists worldwide (Science not violence, 2015). A YouTube video posted by the activist group shows the graphic violence of attack of the valuable research property, by the supposed landless peasants (Videosmst, 2015).

Although only a handful of African countries allow their farmers to grow GM crops, there has been a steady progress in research using biotechnology to improve crops in many African countries. Scientists in Kenya and Uganda are developing cassava resistant to 2 nasty virus diseases (Ongu, 2015). There has also been a GM banana in development in Uganda. Recently, the ruling party there gave its nod for the commercialization of GM crops and to import GM food by approving the National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill (Arseneault, 2015). On April 20, 2015, Nigeria also signed the National Biosafety Agency Bill into law by then President Goodluck Jonathan. Nigeria's National Biotechnology Development Agency expects that the Act would “create more employment, boost food production that will put a smile on the faces of farmers and elevate hunger if given good attention by government” (el-Kurebe, 2015, para. 3).

While the much hoped Golden Rice is still not commercialized yet anywhere, it got a major publicity boost when the US White House and US Patent and Trademark Office bestowed its “2015 Patents for Humanity award” on nutrition. According to the IRRI, this award recognizes the “vision of Ingo Potrykus, Peter Beyer, and Adrian Dubock for creating the enabling conditions for smallholder farmers to benefit from Golden Rice” (Ebron, 2015, para. 1).

In a highly watched corporate development of interest to GM crops and food, the agrochemical giant Syngenta spurned a $45 billion takeover offer from agbiotech giant Monsanto. According to Reuters, Syngenta felt that the offer undervalued the Swiss firm and did not fully take into account regulatory risks. If the takeover deal would have been successful, the merger would have created an industry behemoth with combined sales of more than $31 billion (Bart and Barbaglia, 2015).

TED talks are known for featuring highly acclaimed speakers with crisp delivery on wide ranging topics of interest, but were sparse on GM crop and food issues. This has changed now as TED has added some excellent speakers on the topic lately: “Pushing boundaries in agriculture” by Mr. Rob Saik (Saik, 2015), “How to feed 10 billion dinner guests” by Prof. Nina Federoff (Federoff, 2014) and “The case for engineering our food” by Prof. Pamela Ronald (Ronald, 2015).