Do you know where your dinner comes from—really comes from? These days, buying your corn or kale at the farmers’ market is no guarantee against the creep of Big Agriculture. More and more seeds sold to farms in the United States come from huge companies like Monsanto, made famous by the 2008 Robert Kenner documentary, Food, Inc., for its dominant role in American agriculture. And at the core of the controversy surrounding Monsanto and other “Big Ag” companies is their role in the spread of genetically modified food products. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are strains of vegetables and grains that have been altered by genetic engineering, meaning that specific genes, and the traits they carry, are transferred from one organism to another. These transferred traits are intended to make for stronger, more resilient plants—for example, Monsanto has engineered seeds that are resistant to its own potent weed killer, Roundup.
Just how big is Big Ag? Big enough that 85 percent of the corn grown in this country is now genetically modified, as is 91 percent of soy. And it’s not only the corn on the cob you’re having with your summer picnic that may have come by way of a seed lab—it’s the corn- or soy-based derivatives found in a huge range of cooking staples and tabletop condiments. In fact, it’s estimated that 70 percent of processed foods in American supermarkets now contain genetically modified ingredients, which is alarming to environmentalists, who point out that no one knows the long-term health ramifications of consuming lab-created crops, because GMOs have only been on the market for less than 20 years. The truth is, no matter how “natural” you try to go with your diet, unless a food carries the USDA-approved 100 percent organic label, you are probably consuming GMOs without knowing it. Big Ag rules the United States—and rapidly, the world at large.
Since 1997, Monsanto has filed and won 144 lawsuits against organic growers it claims were illegally using their seeds. For their part, the farmers insist they do not want Monsanto seed anywhere near their organic crops (which cannot be sold at market as organic if seed analysis shows them to have been tainted with GMO seed). But because the vast majority of farms in America now use GMO seed, and because organic and conventional farms frequently sit side by side in agricultural regions, it is all too easy, farmers say, for winds to carry seed from one side of the proverbial fence to the other. Add to that the rain runoff that intermingles soils from neighboring properties, and it has become nearly impossible for small organic farms to fend off an “invasion” of GMO seed.
In a classic David and Goliath confrontation, the Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association (OSGATA), acting on behalf of 60 family farmers, seed companies, and organic agricultural organizations, is gearing up for the next round in an ongoing legal battle with Monsanto. As of March 28, OSGATA has filed an appeal in an effort to reinstate a federal class-action suit dismissed in February by Judge Naomi Buchwald of the U.S. District Court in New York City. The original action, filed in March 2011, in a nutshell sought to preemptively force Monsanto into an agreement not to sue organic farmers for patent infringement if Monsanto seed were to be found among their crops.
Good Fences
“There’s a saying that good fences make good neighbors,” says Jim Gerritsen, the president of OSGATA. Gerritsen has been farming organic potatoes in a small town in northern Maine, 6 miles south of the Canadian border, for more than three decades. “If I’m growing clover at my farm, and your farm next door has cattle, it’s your responsibility to build a strong enough fence to keep your cows from coming over and eating my clover. It is Monsanto’s responsibility to ensure their seed doesn’t contaminate the organic farms.”
As if the threat of losing their organic classification were not enough, organic farmers are faced with another headache: Monsanto doesn’t want people growing crops from its seeds unless they’ve paid to use them. Thus the 144 patent-infringement suits—and victories—in the past 15 years against growers whose crops reveal traces of the company’s seed. In the case of OSGATA v. Monsanto, organic farmers hoped to head off at the pass not only this legal threat but, most significantly, what they feel is the inevitable future of their industry: more and more crops becoming tainted with GMO seeds. The more farms that start using Monsanto seed (as has been the trend in the past two decades), the greater the odds of surrounding farm contamination, Gerritsen points out.
In her February decision, Judge Buchwald was not sympathetic. “[The] plaintiffs’ letter to defendants seems to have been nothing more than an attempt to create a controversy where none exists,” she ruled. “[The] plaintiffs’ argument is baseless and their tactics not to be tolerated.” Though OSGATA is taking its case to the U.S. Court of Appeals, the organization faces an uphill battle: It is hard to press charges for an offense not yet committed.
“We went to court seeking justice, and we’re still seeking justice,” maintains Gerritsen. For him, as with most Monsanto critics, the issues run far deeper than this one case. “Ethically and morally, what Monsanto is doing is wrong. For 10,000 years, our farming ancestors were the keepers of seeds and providers of food to sustain life on this planet. Suddenly, in the last 25 years, the power for seed development has been taken from the farmers and given to Monsanto. It’s thievery.”
Big, Bad Reputation
Asked to comment for this article, Monsanto spokesman Tom Helscher offered the official statement from David F. Snively, the company’s executive vice president, secretary, and general counsel: “This decision is a win for all farmers as it underscores that agricultural practices such as ag biotechnology, organic, and conventional systems do and will continue to effectively coexist in the agricultural marketplace. This ruling tore down a historic myth which is commonly perpetuated against our business by these plaintiffs and other parties through the Internet, noting that not only were such claims unsubstantiated but, more importantly, they were unjustified.”
Why, then, do consumers still have a nagging suspicion that there is something inherently wrong about Monsanto’s involvement in the farming industry? About a year ago, Forbes magazine characterized the GMO giant as being “so despised by environmentalists that Google’s first suggested search term for the company is ’Monsanto evil.’” (As we go to press, that search term is now a close third, pulling up some 2 million results.) Perhaps the public is concerned about the alarming rate at which GMO crops are taking over, thanks in large part to their cheap, resilient seed. Between the years 2001 and 2005, the planting of genetically engineered crops more than tripled worldwide. Contrary to what you might think, it’s not the Third World, food-starved countries that are leading the charge—75 percent of those GMO plantings were concentrated in industrialized nations, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
The big picture—the future of food diversity—is even more dramatic: While historically, farmers would save their seeds from one season to the next, ensuring that local varieties of any given crop would be preserved and perpetuated, growers can no longer keep up with the super-strains of GMO plants that are built to survive everything from pests to drought. One by one, small farms have abandoned their homegrown seed in favor of Monsanto’s, further shrinking the gene pool for healthy crops. In the past 100 years, the FAO estimates that 75 percent of crop diversity has been lost, which is troubling to farmers because diversity is what guarantees species survival in the face of a new pest or fungus that the GMO seeds have not been tested against.
What disturbs Gerritsen most is the snowball effect. “So far, six major industrial crops have been deregulated for genetic engineering,” he says, meaning Big Ag has the right to tinker with them in a lab and sell the modified seeds on the market. Corn, canola, soy, cotton, sugar beets, and alfalfa make up the big six. “But there are literally 70 other crops—the vegetables you eat at the dinner table every night—that have been submitted for deregulation,” he notes. “If that happens, contamination of organic seeds will skyrocket.”
The Case for the Consumer
As OSGATA regroups to appeal its case, there is a new fight emerging in California and several other states to require food manufacturers to label products that contain genetically engineered ingredients. Spearheaded by advocacy groups such as Just Label It, organizers accumulated 1.1 million citizen signatures in March 2012, and have secured the backing of influential members of Congress to take the fight to the Food and Drug Administration. Fifty-five House and Senate members, led by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR), issued a letter to the FDA in support of the labeling petition filed by the Center for Food Safety. “Consumers have a right to know what’s in the food they are eating,” says Jeffrey Smith, founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology, a national advocacy and outreach organization based in Fairfield, Iowa, dedicated to educating policy makers and the public about genetically modified foods. “Companies are afraid these labels will affect sales—which they may, since the majority of Americans say they would avoid GMOs if they knew they were there—but that doesn’t change the fact that people should be made aware of what’s in their food.”
What’s more, the U.S. lags behind other industrialized countries—including South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Brazil, China, Australia, New Zealand, and the entire European Union—when it comes to mandatory labeling policies for genetically engineered foods. So what’s the holdup? The debate within the FDA centers on semantics. In a 1992 policy statement, the FDA allowed genetically engineered foods to be marketed without labeling on the basis that they were not “materially” different from other foods, meaning, the agency said, that there were no significant changes in taste, smell, or other sensory experiences of GMO foods versus non-GMOs. Critics today say that’s like applying 19th-century science to the regulation of 21st-century food technologies, and blame the struggle to make labeling the law on resistance from the deputy commissioner for foods at the FDA, Michael Taylor, who also happens to be a former vice president of Monsanto.
At the same time, some consumers oppose the labeling. “Our concern with the proposed food labeling bill in California is that it will ban the sale of tens of thousands of perfectly safe grocery products in California unless they are specially repackaged and relabeled just for our state,” says Kathy Fairbanks, spokeswoman for Californians Against the Costly Food Labeling Proposition, a coalition of family farmers, grocers, small businesses, and food producers. “We believe it will increase food prices for families by hundreds of dollars each year and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in new enforcement and bureaucracy costs.”
That’s “nonsense,” says the Institute for Responsible Technology’s Smith, who points to European countries that have passed similar measures and were able to add labels at negligible cost to consumers. “The real truth is that companies would rather not deal with the hassle of repackaging their products,” he asserts, adding that companies are never going to institute genetically engineered labels voluntarily, so it’s up to consumers to demand more information about the foods they feed their family.
Silver Lining
Educated consumers, after all, have a choice. You can seek out certified organic labels—products certified by a USDA-approved accreditation organization to be free of pesticides and GMO seed—and choose farmers’ markets over supermarkets. And don’t forget to ask the farmer or seller about the farm’s growing methods—just because something is grown locally doesn’t mean it’s pesticide-free. You might also ask whether that corn or kale is heirloom, or heritage—two terms farmers frequently use to identify plants that have not been altered by biotechnology.
If the latest numbers are any indication, more and more Americans are making the switch from industrial to organic produce, and they’re willing to pay extra for it. In 2010, while the rest of the U.S. food industry grew at a measly 1 percent, organic food purchases were 7.7 percent higher than the previous year, with more than 11 percent growth in the fruits and vegetables sector, to the tune of $10.6 billion in sales, according to the Organic Trade Association. “The good news is that consumers are voting with their dollars for the organic choice,” notes Christine Bushway, executive director and CEO of the Organic Trade Association. “Even as the economic recovery crawls forward, the organic industry is thriving. The latest research shows that more than 75 percent of U.S. families eat organic food,” at least in part.
As for planting your own greens, don’t be so sure homegrown equals organic: Monsanto now owns both the Seminis and De Ruiter brands, whose seeds are sold directly to consumers for backyard gardens. (Big Beef tomatoes and Valentino green beans are both Seminis seeds.) The best way to guarantee the seeds you’re sowing are organic is to check them against the Organic Seed Alliance’s online list of organic suppliers.
Though Monsanto may never win the hearts of Americans who believe that food should come from nature, not a laboratory, the bottom line is that the company isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Many U.S. farms opt for Monsanto seed willingly, because it makes their jobs easier and their crops more plentiful. Which in turn, makes this produce cheaper for consumers to buy. But as OSGATA’s pending appeal indicates, organic farmers aren’t giving up the fight. “I’ve been an organic farmer for 36 years—for as long as I’ve been old enough to think for myself,” says OSGATA leader Gerritsen. “This is my life. They say a man’s home is his castle, and as organic farmers, we intend to protect our castles, no matter how long it takes.”
Julia Savacool is a freelance writer in New York City. She is the author of The World Has Curves and frequently reports on topics of health and wellness for publications including Self, Women’s Health, and USA Today. Her last piece for Gourmet Live was The Truth About Sugar and Artificial Sweeteners.