Copyright 1999 USA Today
February 21, 1999
Editorial: "Protectionism trumps science as gene-altered products are shut out"
E-mail Comments to: editor@usatoday.com

Has the world gone crazy?

In Europe, people and governments remain in a rage against hormonal U.S. beef.

In India, farmers are attacking test fields of insect-resistant cotton plants run by U.S. agri-giant Monsanto.

And at a United Nations conference on biosafety in Cartagena, Colombia, this weekend, developing nations and environmentalists tried to restrict trade in gene-altered products, threatening $50 billion in U.S. agricultural sales abroad.

Biotechnology is under attack, with little evidence that it has done anything wrong.

Indeed, it is doing just the opposite.

Biotechnology is increasing food yields, reducing the need for pesticides and herbicides by up to 40% on some crops, and it is making crops that are frost-, flood- and drought-resistant, among other advances.

U.S. agricultural experts expect that in the near future about 95% of U.S. agricultural exports will involve foods or other products modified in some way.

The only problem is that much of the rest of the world is growing resistant, with an assortment of critics playing on people's natural fear of the unfamiliar.

But many of the attacks on the products of modern biotechnology amount to either blatant protectionism or anti-science blindness.

In the case of the sale of hormone-fed U.S. beef to Europe, for example, two World Trade Organization panels have said that Europe's 10-year-old ban has no scientific basis.

Indeed, there are no means of detecting differences between European and American beef, other than U.S. beef tends to be tenderer because its cattle are slaughtered young.

The Clinton administration last week even offered to voluntarily label U.S. beef by origin, something trade agreements don't require, but Europe prefers to protect its farmers rather than give consumers choice.

By the same token, at Cartagena, developing countries and environmentalists are battering U.S. biotech firms for trying to "enslave" Third World farmers.

They want the firms to segregate gene-altered from nonaltered plants, a proposal that would add 20% to the price of some foods.

Some of their arguments are so tangled that they trip over themselves. For instance, countries have attacked biotech firms for creating new high-yield, disease-resistant plants, saying they could run wild like kudzu.

Yet they also attack those firms for developing plants that can't reproduce, thus ensuring they don't run wild. Such a practice would make Third World farmers "dependent" on U.S. agribusiness.

Maybe. There's certainly room for rules on particular trade practices. And everyone agrees that gene-altered crops need thorough testing for both environmental and health safety before they are sold internationally.

But with one in seven people so malnourished they can't work and with the world's population expected to grow 40% to 100% in 30 years, the world would be crazy to allow irrational fears to impede biotechnology from helping feed those people.

Let science decide what's safe to trade. The job can't be left to fearful farmers or protectionist governments.