Bon appetit

To Asia and much of Europe, add Brazil as registering its doubts about the safety of genetically modified foods. A San Paulo judge ruled recently that Monsanto must perform a one-year environmental impact study before selling its transgenic crop in Brazil. The spreading resistance to these agricultural products demand that political leaders stop marginalizing the concerns of environmentalists on this issue and begin taking action.

Genetically engineered food has had genetic material of a non-related species included to produce a certain desirable trait. Critics argue that the added genes may increase natural toxins or reduce nutrients in some foods. These modified foods may also cause allergic reactions from foods previously considered nonallergenic.

Taking action does not mean swinging a machete at test plots of GE food, as was done recently at the University of Maine. It does mean listening more closely to the people who buy these products and giving them more of a choice in what they buy.

That will require at least three changes:

Genetically engineered ingredients — including soybeans, soy oil, corn, potatoes, squash, canola oil, cottonseed oil, papaya, tomatoes, and dairy products — appear in a wide variety of foods. Letting consumers decide whether they want to eat them requires a lot more information than is currently available. Congress should instruct the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture to work together to establish new safety standards for all GE foods. No new foods should be allowed on the market until they meet these standards; foods already being grown should be given a timetable for compliance.

Until those standards exist, consumers ought to get a choice of whether to consume these foods. The only way to do that is to label the products that contain them. A labeling proposal failed in the Maine Legislature last year, but should be brought back next session. Legislative support should grow as it becomes obvious that this is a widespread concern that includes both growers and consumers.

Labeling means that GE foods must be kept separate from traditionally grown commodity crops, and that tracing foods from fields to market is essential. This is particularly important for sales to Europe and Japan, which have economic and cultural reasons for being suspicious of U.S. products, anyway. The mixing of GE and non-GE foods also ends up hurting American farmers using more traditional seeds.

Perhaps the most succinct response to this complex problem came recently from Gary Goldberg, chief executive officer of the American Corn Growers Association. “GMOs (genetically modified organisms) have become the albatross around the neck of farmers, he said, on issues of trade, labeling, testing, certification, segregation, market availability and agribusiness concentration. Until all these issues are answered, it is best for production agriculture to examine alternatives to GMOs.”

Whatever the final results of long-term testing on the health effects of GE foods, U.S. farmers have a problem now. Rather than try to these foods on nations that do not want them, a more flexible national policy that respected consumer demands would better serve everyone.