food revolutionaries

the new york times carried a sweet story about alice waters yesterday: " lunch with alice waters, food revolutionary." a worthwhile read, if only to drool over the descriptions of delicious local, fresh food cooked by a culinary genius. fascinating, isn't it, that someone who is on a crusade to get Americans to relearn how to enjoy food is considered a revolutionary.

South Korea-US free trade agreement (KORUS FTA): a high price for food security

The US-Korea free trade agreement finalized last week caught the US rice industry by surprise. Well, at least that’s what they say. “US-Korea FTA rice exclusion dismays industry” was the title of the press release issued by the USA Rice Federation. Given the significance of this exclusion of a major export commodity from the biggest trade deal in the last decade, it’s gotten little to no coverage. The US wants it that way.

Both the Korean and Malaysian FTA negotiations with the US have been bogged down over the last half year, and one of the key sticking points has been rice – that is, whether these countries would reduce trade barriers currently in place to US rice exports. There are at least several reasons why a country where rice is a staple crop and where a large amount of rice is still produced would cringe at the thought of rice market liberalization. You might not want to put your farmers out of business from cheap, subsidized exports of US rice. You might want to keep up the quality of rice in your domestic markets – many Asian palates find US rice not very tasty. You might want to maintain some control over rice markets to ensure food security for a population highly dependent on rice for food.

This is an argument made by campesinos, Zapatistas, and others in Mexico against the complete opening of their agricultural markets under NAFTA. There, the final barriers are to come down in 2008. Most campesino groups have called for maize and beans to be taken out of NAFTA – these crops are essential to the food security of the country, and viable domestic markets in these food crops are essential to the continued ability of campesinos to make a living producing them. The final NAFTA opening will finish off the slow demise of the Mexican peasant, sending them to the metropolises of Mexico and/or north of the border to work in the fields and the slaughterhouses of the United States.

So the exclusion of rice from the South Korea-US FTA is actually a big deal to those who pay attention to agricultural trade negotiations. It will certainly be paid attention to by the Malaysians, who travel to Washington next month to continue their negotiations with the US government.

Unfortunately, the exclusion of rice from the agreement cost a great deal. The US knows how to twist arms and they know how to pry open markets. To protect its rice farmers, Korea made heavy concessions to open its auto market, including eliminating the “non-tariff barrier” of requirements for the sale of ultra low emissions vehicles – lowering(!) their standards to that of California. To protect their rice industry, Korea eliminated tariffs on HALF of current US farm exports to Korea ($1.6 billion worth), including wheat, corn for feed, and soybeans for crushing, as well as expanded market access for US beef (once we can prove there’s no BSE in our beef) and pork. And according to the US Trade Representative’s fact sheet, “The KORUS FTA contains provisions on pharmaceutical market access that go far beyond what has ever been obtained in other US FTAs.” The US did good for its corporate class.

The final feather in the cap of the US negotiators was the agreement from South Korea to not require US GMOs to undergo safety evaluations in Korea. They’ll just take the US’s word for it that a GMO is safe. This agreement is in clear violation of international law on GMOs under the UN Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. According to newspaper accounts this is the price the Koreans had to pay for concessions from the US on opening their textile market. A high price indeed.

biofuels: what's not to love?

Everyone seems to be dissing corn-based biofuels these days. Fidel Castro, Business Week, and the US Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell. An odd cast of characters, eh?

What’s not to love about biofuels? That will take more than just a single blog post to unravel. For those who’ve been asleep during the recent media explosion of comment, hype, hyperbole, and hysteria, we might start by answering the question: what exactly is a biofuel?

Biofuels currently come in two basic types: bioethanol and biodiesel. Made using different types of plants as feedstocks, with different chemical reactions, these both serve to power things – burn them and they make heat that can be converted to useful energy. Biodiesel gets made out of oils – soy, canola, used McDonald’s fry oil, etc. Bioethanol gets made these days primarily from converting corn sugars to ethanol, or in Brazil (and Guatemala – see my 13 March blog entry), from sugar cane. In the future we might also get ethanol through conversion of the much tougher cellulose that makes up plants – called cellulosic ethanol – from Bush’s beloved switchgrass, wood chips, crop waste...

The bête noire of biofuels these days is bioethanol made from corn (or maize to most of the world). Last week Fidel Castro emerged from his sick bed with a long commentary on the folly of corn-based biofuels. http://www.counterpunch.org/castro03302007.html

But it doesn’t take an aging Cuban revolutionary to come to the conclusion that we should not feed corn to cars. Even the US Deputy Energy Secretary figured it out: if you turn corn into fuel, neither cows nor people will be able to eat it. “Corn is not the future of US ethanol: DOE.”

Look, there are a lot of cars on the planet. We could turn all our corn into ethanol to feed the cars and still not have enough fuel to power all of them. And then we’d have no corn at all to feed cows and people. And then the price of corn would go way up (it has already doubled in price over the past year with the current demand for corn-based ethanol, and at over $4 a bushel is higher than it has been in decades). The cost of raising chickens and pigs and cows is already rising precipitously, and before you know it, the powerful livestock lobby will be stampeding on Washington, not to mention low and middle-income consumers.

It's a no-brainer, or as Paul Hitch, president-elect of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says: "This ethanol binge is insane."

keep your genes to yourself please, says the rice industry

The LL601 rice contamination scandal has been a costly wake-up call for the US rice industry. If you need any further proof for that claim read the comments sent today to the US Department of Agriculture by the USA Rice Federation on Ventria’s proposed field trials of pharma rice. (see my previous comments on cannibal rice for more background.) http://www.usarice.com/industry/communication/Final_Ventria_Kansas_comments.pdf
The USA Rice Federation asks “in the strongest possible terms that the permit for Ventria’s pharmaceutical rice be denied.”

The rice industry has gotten the message. In their comments to USDA they write that:

If Ventria’s pharmaceutical rice were to escape into the commercial rice supply, the financial devastation to the U.S. rice industry would likely be absolute. There is no tolerance, either regulatory or in public perception, for a human gene-based pharmaceutical to end up in the world’s food supply.

One further piece of evidence of the serious economic impact the contamination has had on the industry is this table showing the top ten export markets for US rice and the trade restrictions placed by those countries on US rice imports. http://www.usarice.com/industry/communication/exportimpact.pdf

The fallout from the LL601/604/60? contamination scandal must be considered a serious set-back for the genetic engineering industry globally. While ISAAA in its yearly report touts the ongoing expansion of global acreage planted to GMOs, the fact is that the industry has been limited to a few crops that are not primarily grown for direct human consumption: soy, corn, cotton, canola. The bulk of genetically engineered corn (maize) goes to feed animals in industrialized countries.

Rice was to be the next genetically engineered (GE) crop to be introduced worldwide (after Monsanto’s wheat was roundly nixed by the wheat growers of North America). The industry was salivating over the almost certain introduction of genetically engineered rice in China, which would have opened the door to the rest of Asia. Chinese authorities dealt a hard blow to these hopes when they announced at the end of 2006 that commercialization of GE rice was another 2-3 years away, at least. Even the Chinese, with their huge internal market, were put off by the international repercussions of their own rice contamination scandal over the last two years.

further reading on cannibal rice

"Does Africa Need a Genetically Modified Solution to Diarrhea" is available at: http://www.eraction.org/publications/medicinerice.pdf

Union of Concerned Scientists Uncovers Lax USDA Oversight of Pharma Crops
New Evidence Points to Need for Ban on Pharma Food Crops
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/genetic_engineering/usda-ventria-oversight.html

cannibal rice?

Ventria Biosciences, formerly Applied Phytologics, is proposing to grow up to 3200 acres of genetically engineered rice in Kansas this year. The rice is engineered with human genes to produce two different human proteins: lactoferrin and lysozyme. The US Department of Agriculture is accepting comments on the application until the end of this week. It's the largest ever proposed field trial of a food crop engineered to produce drugs -- otherwise known as a pharma crop.

Below the Federal Register notice from the USDA, as well as a link to the Union of Concerned Scientists web alert about the whole thing.

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2007/pdf/E7-3484.pdf

http://ucsaction.org/campaign/3_07_07pharma_rice

Ventria claims that the proteins will be used in the developing world to treat children with diarrhea. On paper, a noble cause. They also have tried to obtain "Generally Recognized as Safe" or GRAS status for their proteins from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Apparently they were pondering putting the proteins into "medical food" products. The FDA denied their GRAS petition. This is a significant conclusion by an agency that has a reputation for cursory, shoddy reviews of company GMO test data. So the proteins aren't safe enough for the FDA, but the company is going to feed the products to kids in the developing world. Sounds fair to me. (I am leaving out for now the story of how they tested the drugs on young children in Peru before doing animal testing in the US.)

The history of the company is an interesting one. Unfortunate that it is so little chronicled in the usual techno-utopian reporting about the pharma rice. When Ventria first started scaling up their field trials and got noticed by the rice growing industry, they were driven out of California by the reaction of farmers who thought that the threat of contamination of California rice by human genes was too great. So Ventria moved to Missouri. Anheuser-Busch got wind that Ventria was going to produce cannibal rice in regions where they sourced rice for their world-famous brews and used their political muscle to get that idea nixed. Rice producer opinion probably contributed to their expulsion from Missouri: "We just want them to go away," said Bob Papanos of the US Rice Producers Assocation...

Then Ventria moved to North Carolina, where little rice is grown and so contamination was not too big of an issue. Unfortunately the fields they found were close to a USDA facility involved in breeding and maintenance of heritage rice varieties. Unfortunate for the scientists at the USDA facility actually. You see the USDA plays the role of promoter of genetic engineering. They are supposed to facilitate the development of the technology. So they shut down the rice breeding operations at the agricultural field station to make their decision to allow the field trial in North Carolina less overtly problematic. Really.

Also interesting is the evolution over time of what exactly these proteins would be used for. Initially, when Ventria was known as Applied Phytologics, the rice was going to be used in infant formula, or in other baby food products. The proteins would be added to make the products more like mother’s milk – lactoferrin and lysozyme are actually two antibacterial proteins found in breast milk, as well as human tears. That didn’t fly – probably either with the FDA or with consumers.

So then Ventria tried the "treating diarrhea in the third world" idea as the raison-d'etre for the engineered rice. But clearly investors know that there’s not much money to be made from people who earn less than $1 a day. So Ventria also floated the product idea of "medical foods" with the FDA and with the venture capitalists that have been keeping this company afloat for the last decade. Ventria proposed to market its proteins in performance (sports) drinks, granola bars, yoghurt, and similar products for consumers who actually have money to spend. FDA just popped that balloon when they denied GRAS status for the proteins. So at least in terms of the global public and media message, "saving kids in the developing world" is the one they are sticking with for now.

techno-utopian rice

Continuing on the rice theme for the moment...

Last Friday the Boston Globe carried a story about anti-hay fever GMO rice. "Anti-hay fever rice may win over Japanese doubts." Apparently researchers are engineering genes into rice that code for a few of cedar pollen's allergenic proteins. The idea is that people would eat the rice and sensitize their immune system to the proteins, moderating their immune response -- sort of the same reaction as the body would have to allergy shots. Apparently engineered mice that were fed the rice sneezed less often than non-engineered mice when cedar pollen was dumped on them. (I kid you not -- they really said that in the article -- scientists now evaluate the effectiveness of their inventions by counting how many times mice sneeze.)

Ok, there are lots of red flags that should go up about engineering rice that might be used as an allergy treatment, like what happens to people who aren't now allergic to cedar pollen but might have some reaction to eating pollen proteins everyday in their rice. By now it should be clear to everyone that genes don't stay put. Non-allergic people are going to end up eating the cedar pollen rice.

But more striking to me than the bonehead idea to put proteins that are known to cause allergic reactions into one of the world's most important food crops... was the overt propagandistic nature of the news reporting. This rice, if it works at all beyond the mouse cage, is a decade or more away from reality. The organization that was promoting the story is named ISAAA -- International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications. It's a non-profit organization that gets the bulk of its funding from the genetic engineering industry. They spend much of their time feeding "biotech will save the world" propaganda pieces to media outlets around the world.

This piece, more than most, reeked of gee-whiz techno-utopian gobbledygook. One wishes science and business reporters and editors would look at these stories just a little more critically. The rice industry is reeling from contamination event after contamination event, as genetic engineering firms can't keep track of their genes. The grocery industry is adamantly opposed to the use of food crops for production of human drugs, including cedar pollen rice, and reasonably so. Why waste newspaper space to carry yet another cheap propaganda piece developed by the industry to try to convince dubious consumers that someday, sometime in the future, they might see some benefit from eating genetically engineered foods?

Bayer can't control its genes

Late last Thursday, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the identity of the latest mystery gene found contaminating US rice stocks: LL604. The gene is yet another experimental, unapproved variety that somehow made its way into commercial rice varieties. The USDA had no option but to ban the planting this growing season of Clearfield 131, a popular rice variety sold by BASF. Bet the folks at BASF aren't very happy...

Rice farmers are even more angry at the economic losses caused by careless genetic engineers. The solidly conservative California Rice Commission took a reasonable conservative action last week -- they voted in favor of a ban on all field trials of genetically engineered rice in California. While the Commission has no regulatory power to prevent field trials, they are an advisory body to the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). It is unlikely that CDFA would approve field trials contrary to the wishes of the Rice Commission.

The USA Rice Federation, the industry-wide advocacy body, minced few words in its condemnation of both the USDA and the genetic engineering companies that can't keep track of their genes. From Al Montna, Chairman of the federation: "...we are increasingly frustrated with the apparent lack of ability on the part of private companies and federal regulators to control research and maintain accountability of the resulting products. The current approach to research, development and management in the biotechnology industry must be replaced with more conservative methodologies."

Surely the contamination scandal couldn't have had that serious of an impact on the industry, you might be thinking. Just check out the USA Rice Daily newsletter from 12 March at http://www.usarice.com/industry/communication/daily.html.

At least 47% of US rice exports have been affected, including exports to Iraq (!), which is requiring the testing and certification of GE-free status of US rice imports. Last week, when Mexico announced it was stopping US rice shipments at the border until GE-free certificates could be produced, rice futures prices dropped almost 50 cents.

At last count there have been close to 60 lawsuits filed against Bayer by US rice farmers.

until independence do us part?

Protests greet Bush... again.

Greenpeace activists met Bush yesterday in Mérida, Mexico to let him know what they thought of the contaminated US rice that is filling their supermarket shelves. They celebrated a mock wedding between Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderón, pelleting the pair with the tainted rice the Mexicans don't want to eat.

See the photo currently at www.greenpeace.org/usa

bush offers to help carry lettuce

Yesterday Bush appeared in Guatemala, wearing a jacket made from traditional Guatemalan textiles. His photo op was at an agricultural export facility, where cameras recorded the US president loading boxes of lettuce. Perhaps the destination of the lettuce would be the US.

Agricultural export crops such as lettuce pose significant threats to human health and the environment due to the heavy amount of pesticides and fertilizers used to create those perfect veggies. Still, in one of the poorest Central American countries, the agricultural export industry has helped to keep some peasants involved in agriculture in the beautiful Guatemalan highlands. But many more peasants are migrating to textile maquiladoras in the cities, fruit and vegetable processing plants, or they are migrating to the United States, through Mexico.

The Guatemalan president petitioned the US president to stop deporting illegal immigrants. Something like 10% of the Guatemalan population migrates to the US, most illegally. 80% of the population, half of which is indigenous, lives below the poverty line. Remittances to Guatemala from relatives in the US keep many Guatemalans alive, and help build houses, churches, schools. Meanwhile, Bush keeps building that wall and carrying out extensive raids against those immigrants who are really just trying to keep their families alive.

One of Bush’s messages to Guatemala was to grow more sugar cane to make ethanol so we can keep driving our cars. Funny thing is, the sugar cane industry in Guatemala collapsed a decade or so ago due to US protectionism and subsequent loss of the US market. It probably goes without saying that many of those displaced laborers migrated north to the US to look for work.

The US has just negotiated a free trade agreement with Central American countries, including Guatemala. I’d be surprised if the agreement contained much about sugar sector liberalization, as there is still significant protection of the US sugar industry. No matter, we’ll buy the ethanol made from sugar cane – once those defunct plantations can be brought on line again – at least for now.

bush in latin america

US President George Bush is on a whirlwind tour of Latin America this week and next, desperately trying to win back hearts and minds. It's a thinly disguised attempt to counter the growing influence of left-wing leaders in the region, prominent among them Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. But Chavez is not alone; his group of colleagues in the region seems to increase with every election and now includes Nestor Kirschner in Argentina, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the returned Sandinista Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Good luck George.

Bush has been greeted throughout his journey by expected protests, as well as the unexpected. Tomorrow Bush visits the ancient Kaqchiquel Mayan city of Iximche in Guatemala. The Mayans have planned a cleansing ceremony to purify the site after the US head of state departs.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," explained a representative of a Mayan NGO.

From Guatemala, Bush travels to Merida, Mexico, a country where US agricultural policies have had a particularly devasting effect on domestic agricultural production and prices. The opening of the country under NAFTA has led to massive imports of subsidized, dumped maize, beans, rice, you name it. Campesinos in Mexico are demanding that corn and beans are taken out of NAFTA, as the dumped commodities destroy their livelihoods. In a surprise announcement last week, the Minister of Agriculture told US Secretary of Agriculture Johanns that Mexico would be joining Canada in a WTO complaint against illegal US corn subsidies. Things must be pretty bad.

more contaminated rice...

Late last night, the US Department of Agriculture admitted they had found yet another unapproved genetically engineered contaminant in US rice.

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/content/2007/03/CL13update3-9-07.shtml.

The US rice industry is still reeling from the August 2006 announcement that Bayer's unapproved variety LLRICE601 was widely contaminating rice stocks and rice fields. European and Japanese buyers of US rice immediately sought other sources; prices for US rice dropped dramatically on world markets. Tens of lawsuits were filed by US rice farmers against Bayer CropScience for economic losses caused by the widespread contamination.

Now US rice producers are faced with another contamination scandal. The USDA has yet to reveal the identity of the contaminating gene. Regardless, it is not approved for cultivation and human consumption anywhere in the world, so the agency has no choice but to order sales of the contaminated variety banned and to order destruction of those rice fields that have already been planted.

All further evidence that the genetic engineering industry is incapable of keeping track of their genes and that the US regulatory system is incapable of preventing contamination and its serious economic consequences for US agriculture.