Protection Racket.

• Author: Kneen, Brewster
• Position: Biotechnology and food

"Safety" and "choice" are words often used in discussion of biotechnology, but both are traps to be avoided. Back in the middle ages--the middle of the last decade, that is, when rBGH was being promoted as the wonder drug for dairy cows--the drug's pushers, led by Monsanto, had planned on confining the debate to a matter of the technical "safety" of the drug for cows and humans. They knew that if they could define the discourse in this way, the debate could go on, and on, and on...while they went ahead with their marketing plans.

The rule change that industry wants, and which it is quietly getting, is a radical redefinition of "burden of proof." Instead of the manufacturer having to prove to the public authorities that their product is safe, it is rapidly becoming the rule that it is the responsibility of the regulator to prove that a product is harmful in order to deny approval or licensing. Harm, however, is much more difficult to actually prove, in the current ideology of "science," than no harm. For example, the manufacturers of rBGH and their scientists, such as Dale Bauman at Cornell, simply pointed to the absence of "catastrophic effects" on the health of cows as proof of the drug's safety. Similarly, there are any number of agricultural chemicals that cannot be clinically proven to be specifically harmful but for which anecdotal evidence indicates a level of probable harm that is quite unacceptable, as with endocrine disruptors.

Instead of requiring the proponent of a "novel food" to show that it is "substantially equivalent" to a traditional or already recognized food, the regulators, if the biotech industry gets its way, will have to prove that the "novel food" is "substantially different" and therefore will not be approved or will require labeling. For the manufacturer of genetically altered foods, the reversal of the burden of proof from having to prove safety to demonstrating the absence of harm also makes it possible to transfer liability from itself or its agents to the regulatory agency. If the regulatory agency does not find the genetically engineered (GE) food harmful or unsafe--which might mean the impossible task of identifying previously unidentified and unknown allergens or toxins--then a person affected by eating the food in question cannot hold the manufacturer liable. This will protect corporate profits, but not public health.

In the case of rBGH, Monsanto wanted us to believe that the only issues were safety and...