Why support LD 1219, a bill that requires the stringent regulation and labeling of genetically modified crops in Maine? Because only an “organic” label can guarantee us safe food, free of the foreign genetic material spliced into crops with viral vectors and antibiotic markers. The dangers of genetic engineering are not hypothetical: Contamination has already occurred through pollen transported by water and wind (including floods and tornadoes); by birds, rodents and insects; by spilled seed and unharvested seed (volunteers) sprouting the next year. Already residues of pharmaceutical drugs grown in corn have migrated to neighboring fields, demonstrating that containment cannot be assured.

Unfortunately, we cannot trust state extension agents to warn farmers of the hazards, and we cannot trust our agriculture department and the pesticide control board to regulate the biotech industry; they are following the dictates of multinational seed and chemical companies. So growers are encouraged to buy, for example, Monsanto’s bioengineered seeds with the promise that Roundup-Ready crops will require only a single application of glyphosate – a known carcinogen linked to an epidemic of lymphoma among farmers. In fact, farmers have found that two or three applications of two or more herbicides are necessary to kill all weeds.

To compound the problem, more weeds are developing resistance to Roundup, so more chemicals are needed to eradicate them. The farmer’s income, therefore, goes into the pockets of seed and chemical manufacturers. One authority, Charles Benbrook, has provided clear evidence that the Roundup-Ready system costs farmers about 50 percent more than the expense of other seed and weed management systems.

Benbrook has stated also that Maine could not achieve substantial financial gain from biotech agriculture. He made this point definitively at a forum in Bangor in November 2002. Promoted as an event to “educate” members of the Pesticide Control Board and the agriculture community about advances in biotechnology, the conference was dominated by representatives from USDA, EPA and the agrichemical industry, all of whom insisted that genetically engineered corn, potatoes, etc., are substantially equivalent to their unmanipulated counterparts. That so-called equivalence was shown to be false last summer, when l4l patients taking the bioengineered drug Eprex had severe immune reactions to a protein in the drug with the result that their bodies stopped making red blood cells. These patients paid a heavy price for the discovery that some people do not react to genetically engineered proteins as they would to natural proteins: They must now depend on blood transfusions to stay alive.

USDA refuses to divulge the location of fields where such biopharmed crops (mostly modified corn) are grown, but we know from the Union of Concerned Scientists that they exist in more than 30 states. In addition to the many industrial GMOs being produced in secret plots across the United States – substances such as plastics, detergents, adhesives and enzymes – some 400 biopharmed products (vaccines, blood clotters, blood thinners, growth hormones, contraceptives, etc.) are now in development in more than 300 open-air fields.

Last November, even as USDA and EPA officials were telling Maine’s pesticide control board not to worry about the safety of the commercial food supply in view of increased GMO production, the Prodigene scandal was unfolding: Half a million bushels of soybeans were harvested and were on their way to market in Nebraska before the accidental discovery that they had been contaminated with biopharmed corn containing a vaccine to prevent diarrhea in pigs. The same GM corn showed up in Iowa, resulting in the destruction of l55 acres of corn. USDA officials, who oversaw the two incidents, refused to provide locations or any specific details of what had happened.

Because of the secrecy under which corporations operate, we may well not find out about the specifics of biopharming in Maine until after the fact. For all we know, the insecticide avidin and-or drugs designed to target the AIDS and herpes viruses could be growing in corn here right now – shortening the lives of honey bees even as they pollinate plants grown for human consumption.

Without the protection afforded by strong legislation, we may not know until after the fact that the Maine potato industry is indentured to the owner of the patent for a new Frankenfood called a Protato – modified to contain a protein-producing gene from the amaranth plant – a crop destined, “altruistically,” for Third World markets. Maine farmers have already experienced the destabilizing effects of the shelving of Monsanto’s biopesticided New Leaf potato. Here we would do well to remember that the investment in Golden Rice, meant for export to India a few years ago, did not pay off, and preliminary comments show that Indians do not want a bioengineered Protato either.

How ironic that our state agriculture department should be so concerned about missing the biotech bandwagon that they dismiss the obvious health and safety issues – overlooking the refusal of insurance companies to write policies covering liability for harm caused by GMOs.

To call their marketing campaign “Get Real, Get Maine” is the ultimate irony. The real thing, guys, is not biomanipulated; it bears an “organic” label, and it is imperiled by the chemicalized and DNA-altered crops growing upwind and downwind of it.

I would like to see Maine’s agriculture committee stand up to the biotech industry and refuse to be manipulated. Let us not allow another Starlink or another ProdiGene incident to occur in Maine. Let us have the foresight to enact the reforms that are a prerequisite for protection of our food supply.

To market Maine crops as GMO-free will give us a competitive advantage. Organic production depends on this stringency of regulation, but all Maine farmers stand to benefit.

Now is the time, as the debate in Augusta commences, to call our legislators and deliver the message: We want GMO-free crops, not Frankenfoods, and Maine should lead the way in providing the real thing.

Jody Spear is an environmental activist who lives in Harborside.