My last column was about water. This one’s about food. It’s
about choice-- not USDA Choice, but Sonoma County’s choice.
Measure M, the GE-Free initiative, is up for voter approval
on November 8th. It’s a recommended read, eight pages of plain
English and pretty darn simple: for ten years, genetically modified *organisms*
(GMOs) can’t be grown or distributed in Sonoma
County. If someone does, *they* (not the taxpayers) pay for getting rid of it.
Let’s be clear on what M *doesn’t* do. The key word is
organism, defined by Measure M as “any living thing”. Contrary to the anti-M
campaign, it doesn’t apply to medicines or vaccines (or food) that was made by
gene splicing. A cancer medicine produced from once-living genetically
engineered (GE) cells is no more “living” than a bagel made from GMO wheat. Measure
M also specifically exempts GE research.
This distinction is critical. Medicine production and crop
research occur in laboratories that guard against accidental release. Defective
cars can be recalled, and toxic spills cleaned up, but GMO crops have a life of
their own; the whole earth becomes the laboratory. Their genes can reproduce,
spread, and infect other crops, with many disastrous consequences: *Patent
infringement*: If GE genes invade your crops, the GE owner may sue to take
ownership, as Monsanto has systematically and successfully done in Canada.
*Loss of diversity*: in Mexico, US taxpayer-subsidized GE corn is replacing
local strains, any of which might possess the gene to stop the spread of some
future super disease or insect, like the corn blight that ravaged the US crop
in 1970 (and read organicconsumers.org/gefood/SmallWonders.cfm.) *Super-weeds*: the herbicide resistance gene
in Monsanto’s Roundup-ready corn, for example, could enter and give its power
to a pest plant.
*Contamination*: Under USDA standards (7CFR205.670-671), GMO
crops cannot be sold as “organic”. Significant contamination can prevent selling
into the expanding global market for organic food, increasingly important for
Sonoma County farmers. *Health*: If GMO foods are free from allergenicity
and long-term toxicity, why are the GMO corporations bitterly fighting product
labeling?
Can we rely on the federal government to protect us from all
these problems? Not today. Monsanto has been spinning the revolving door
between industry and regulators for many years; the fox has firm footing in the
henhouse (see organicconsumers.org/monlink.html for details.) These same interests
have been gradually replacing public funding of agricultural research with
corporate funding; getting unbiased studies is difficult. So, just as the oil
companies lock on Washington’s energy policy is forcing localities to take the
leadership in saving energy and stopping global warming (as Sonoma County and
all nine cities have recently done), the chemical-biotech industry’s control of
GMO regulation is pushing responsibility out toward the grassroots. Democracy
in action.
Measure M doesn’t permanently ban GMO crops; it says let’s take
time to make sure they actually benefit family farmers, consumers, and the
world’s hungry. People who worry about foregoing potential benefits-- like more
nutritious, pest resistant plants-- should look at history. The post-war “green
revolution”, which combined new-strain monocultures with intensive ag chemicals and mechanization, boosted farm productivity. But
it also forced third world subsistence farmers into urban slums, and American heartland
farmers deeper into debt and dependency on Federal subsidy.
Now these same farms are facing the evolution of superpests and the skyrocketing cost of fossil fuel-based pesticides,
fertilizers and fuel. There’s no
guarantee that the “gene revolution”, with its dependency on monoculture, chemicals
and a handful of giant corporate seed owners, won’t suffer the same fate. And the
real, sustainable solution to world hunger remains what it was 30 years ago,
when Francis Lappe wrote Diet for A Small Planet:
organic farming, eating less factory-farmed meat, and democratization of food
distribution. Ending hunger is political and cultural, not technological.
Measure M is precautionary. It protects local agriculture by
stopping risky GMO technology *before* we are irreversibly committed. We don’t
want to be like Detroit, who got hooked on the high profits of gas guzzling
SUVs, and now suffers as the market shifts to hybrids. It sends a message to
Washington and the world: we want the future of food to be based on unbiased
science and long-term stewardship, not the profit interests of the giant GMO-agchem companies. That’s why I’m voting yes on M.