Bush's evangelising about food chills
European hearts The
fight over GM crops exposes the weaknesses of globalisation, says Jeremy Rifkin
Monday
June 2, 2003 The Guardian In
case you thought that the Bush administration's rift with its European allies
ended with the Iraqi military campaign, think again. The White House has now set
its sights on something far more personal - the question of what kind of food
Europeans should put on their table. President Bush has charged that the EU's
ban on genetically modified food is discouraging developing countries from growing
GM crops for export and resulting in increased hunger and poverty in the world's
poorest nations. His remarks, made just days before the G8 meeting in Evian, have
further chilled US-European relations. Last month, the US government launched
a formal legal challenge at the World Trade Organisation to force the EU to lift
its "de facto moratorium" on the sale of GM seeds and food in Europe.
The EU has countered that there is no moratorium in place and points out that
in the past year it has approved two applications for imports of GM seeds. Regardless,
the new thrust by President Bush is likely to force another confrontation between
the two superpowers - one whose long-term impact could be even more serious than
the breach over Iraq. For
most Europeans, GM food is anathema. Although Europeans are worried about the
potentially harmful environmental and health consequences, they are equally concerned
about the cultural consequences. While Americans long ago accepted a corporate-driven
fast food culture, in Europe food and culture are deeply entwined. Every region
boasts its own culinary traditions and touts its local produce. In
a world of globalising forces, increasingly controlled by corporate behemoths
and bureaucratic regulatory regimes, the last vestige of cultural identity most
Europeans feel they have some control over is their choice of food. That is why
every public opinion poll conducted in Europe, including polls in the new candidate
EU countries, show overwhelming public disapproval of GM food. Global
food companies doing business in Europe, such as McDonald's, Burger King and Coca-Cola,
have responded to the public's aversion by promising to keep their products free
of genetically modified traits. By forcing the issue, the Bush administration
is stirring up a hornet's nest of public anger and resentment. The
White House has made a bad situation worse by suggesting that European opposition
to GM food is tantamount to imposing a death sentence on millions of starving
people in the third world. Denying poor farmers in developing countries a European
market for GM food, says the White House, gives them no choice but to grow non-GM
food and lose the commercial advantages that go hand-in-hand with GM food crops.
President Bush's remarks on the many benefits of GM food appear more like a public
relations release than a reasoned political argument. Hunger
in the third world is a complex phenomenon not likely to be reversed by the introduction
of GM crops. First, 80% of undernourished children in the developing world live
in countries with food surpluses. The hunger problem has more to do with the wayarable
land is utilised. Today,
21% of the food grown in the developing world is destined for animal consumption.
In many developing countries, more than a third of the grain is now being grown
for livestock. The animals, in turn, will be eaten by the world's wealthiest consumers
in the northern industrial countries. The result is that the world's richest consumers
eat a diet high in animal protein, while the poorest people on earth are left
with little land to grow food grain for their own families. And, even the land
that is available is often owned by global agribusiness interests, further aggravating
the plight of the rural poor. The introduction of GM food crops does nothing to
change this fundamental reality. Second,
President Bush talks about the cost savings of planting GM food crops. What he
conveniently ignores is that GM seeds are more expensive than conventional seeds
and, because they are patented, farmers cannot save the new seeds for planting
during the next growing season because those seeds belong to the biotech companies.
By exercising intellectual property control over the genetic traits of the world's
major food crops, companies such as Monsanto stand to make huge profits while
the world's poorest farmers become increasingly marginalised. Third,
the White House alludes to the new generation of crops with genes whose proteins
will produce vaccines, drugs and even industrial chemicals. The Bush administration
cites the example of "golden rice", a new genetically engineered rice
strain that contains an inserted gene that produces beta-carotene. Noting that
half a million poor children around the world suffer from vitamin A deficiency
and become blind, the US trade representative Robert Zoellick argues that to deny
them this valuable food source would be immoral. The biotech industry has been
singing the praises of the "miracle" rice for years, despite articles
in scientific journals that say it simply doesn't work. To convert beta-carotene
into vitamin A the body requires sufficient body protein and fat. Undernourished
children lack the body protein necessary for the conversion. What
is equally galling to Europeans is President Bush's moralising style. When the
president said that "European governments should join - not hinder - the
great cause of ending hunger in Africa", many European leaders were incensed.
EU countries spend a larger percentage of their gross national income on foreign
aid than the US. The US currently ranks 22nd in the percentage of its gross national
income devoted to foreign aid - the lowest of any industrial nation. Bush's
misguided plan to force Europeans to accept GM food is likely to backfire. Indeed,
it may well turn out to be the straw that breaks the camel's back for European-US
relations. The battle over GM food is uniting the European public and giving people
a new sense of their common European identity, while distancing them even further
from their old ally across the Atlantic. The
struggle over GM food may also further diminish the already weakened status of
the WTO. Even if the organisation eventually sides with the US and forces the
EU to introduce GM food, the victory is likely to be pyrrhic because any WTO order
to accept GM food is going to have no effect on European farmers, consumers and
the food industry. US
strong-arming cannot make Europeans eat GM food. A European GM food boycott will
only expose the underlying weakness of globalisation and the existing trade protocols
that accompany it. In the unfolding struggle between global commercial power and
local cultural resistance, the GM food fight might turn out to be the test case
that forces us to rethink the very basis of the globalisation process.
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