-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Here then is today's ZNet Commentary... ------------------------------------------ Biotech Untamed By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman When Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman wanted to address the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to rave about the biotech industry and its wonders, he called Gene Grabowski. Grabowski, a former Associated Press reporter and currently a spokesperson for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, sits on the Press Club's speakers committee. Grabowski was happy to oblige Glickman's request. After all, GMA and Glickman are bosom buddies on the issue of biotech foods -- they both agree that since biotech foods are no different from conventional foods, there is no need for labeling. Last week, Glickman addressed a National Press Club ballroom packed with biotech industry and agribusiness executives, with reporters bringing up the rear. And he didn't disappoint them. Glickman hyped the benefits of biotech foods, and downplayed the risks. The title of the speech reflects his affection for the industry: "How Will Scientists, Farmers, and Consumers Learn to Love Biotechnology, and What Happens If They Don't?" Some reporters misinterpreted Glickman's "five principles to guide the oversight of biotechnology in the 21st century" -- an arm's length regulatory process, consumer acceptance, fairness to farmers, corporate citizenship, and fair and open trade -- as meaning the government was serious about reining in an industry that has run roughshod over public health concerns. In fact, the speech could have been written -- was it? -- by the Biotechnology Industry Association (BIO) or its member companies such as Monsanto and Genentech. The day after Glickman's speech, a reporter asked BIO president Carl Feldbaum whether the speech represented a "big blow" to the biotech industry. "It was a good speech," Feldbaum said. "We are quite comfortable with his five principles. As you get into the details, I could not find much to quibble with. It is in no way a blow to the biotech industry. It was quite positive." After the speech was over -- and the pro-biotech audience loved it -- we joined a group of reporters to seek some clarifications from the Secretary. We asked Glickman why the USDA spent $100,000 to help develop the terminator seed technology -- if farmers plant these seeds, still in final development, the resulting crop would produce seed that is sterile, and farmers would be forced to buy new seed from the companies. At first, Glickman handed the question over to his aide, Keith Pitts. But we wanted Glickman to answer the question. "I certainly don't like the name of it -- it scares the hell out of me," Glickman said. Okay, so the name scares you. But what about the technology itself? Does that scare the hell out of you? "We need to study this," he said. But sir, do you think this technology should be allowed onto the market? Another Glickman associate yells that "he has answered the question." But Glickman realizes he hasn't answered the question. "In the future, we have to be very careful at USDA so that we don't finance the kind of arrangements that exclude family farmer choices," Glickman said. In his speech, Glickman made the point that genetically engineered foods are already in the food supply. For 1998 crops, 44 percent of U.S. soybeans and 36 percent of U.S. corn were produced from genetically modified seeds. Are you concerned Mr. Secretary that we are already eating genetically modified foods without knowing it, without it being labeled? "You may be, I don't know if you are or not," Glickman responded. "I eat everything. If anything is there, I eat it. I presume it is safe and good." "By and large, people have confidence in this country's system of food safety regulation," Glickman said. "The FDA is viewed as independent." But the FDA is being sued for allowing biotech foods on the market without adequate review. And the man who approved the foods at the FDA came to the FDA from a law firm where he represented Monsanto, and after his stint at the FDA, he went to work directly for Monsanto's Washington office, where he sits today. "All I can say is that the food system is safe," Glickman said. Glickman was dismissive of the Europeans for opposing biotech imports from the United States. "When you go over there [to Europe] the attitude is -- don't confuse me with the facts," Glickman said. In fact, European concerns about food safety are grounded in a moral and ethical belief system foreign to corporatists like Glickman. The Prince of Wales (Prince Charles) has raised the question -- "do we have the right to experiment with, and commercialize, the building blocks of life?" "I personally have no wish to eat anything produced by genetic modification, nor do I knowingly offer this sort of produce to my family or guests," Prince Charles has said. When asked about Prince Charles' critique, Glickman was flip. "I don't ask him to be Prince, and he doesn't ask me to be Secretary," Glickman said. Before boarding the elevator to leave the Press Club, USDA communications director Tom Amontree accused us of being "rude" and not "nice." In what sense were we rude? You are rude because you were being "very argumentative" and you were asking "leading questions," he says. Our view is that Glickman is being rude to the American people by kowtowing to a powerful and reckless industry that is playing genetic roulette with our future. He is recklessly running roughshod over the precautionary principle, which should underpin our regulation of technology. The precautionary principle says, in brief: If you have scientific uncertainty, and if you have the suspicion of harm, then act with caution. Glickman has thrown caution to the wind. Who will hold him accountable? Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org) Bonus I thought I would include Chomsky's most recent forum reply...for those of you who haven't yet begun monitoring and relating to the forum system, this may provide some incentive. A typical Chomsky contribution in the ChomskyChat Conference... Asked...On freedom of expression. What are the limits...Chomsky answered: I don't think there is a precise answer to such questions. Just general guidelines. Take your example: "neo-Nazi rock concerts which whip up audiences into a frenzy of race hatred, with the result that some go and beat up minorities after the concert?" The predictability of the result is an important factor, and that depends on the general circumstances: the answers would be quite different if the concert was taking place in Germany in the late 1930s or the US at the same time. Let me make it more personal. In the late '30s I grew up in a mostly German and Irish Catholic urban area that was permeated with anti-Semitism (we were the only Jewish family most of the time). Also pro-Nazi; parties after the conquest of Paris, and so on. That was pretty frightening -- as I can also recall. I grew up with a visceral fear of Catholics, and even when I was old enough to realize that it is nonsense, found it hard to suppress -- when I became involved with people like the Berrigans, for example, knowing that the reaction was crazy. I've always wondered what was going on in the Jesuit school where most of the neighborhood kids went. I know what they were like when they came out. Whatever it was, it surely wasn't pretty, and if it had been taking place in Nazi Germany, it could have had really lethal consequences. Where I grew up it just meant that a few Jewish kids had to be careful what streets they walked on, and wary about when they could play with other kids in the neighborhood. Not fun, but not enough to justify suppression of speech. Take a case of more immediate significance than the one you mention, but rather like it. As the US-NATO shifted to unconcealed targeting of civilians in Serbia, the doctrinal system had to shift gears. Before that it was the evil Slobo who was the demon; after that it had to be the demon Serbs as a collective. And so it was, e.g., with front-page "news" articles in the NY Times on "how to cleanse Serbia" -- no doubt a reasonable question in a country based on the principle of hideous ethnic cleansing, and conducting huge exercise of this kind up to the present (though for accuracy we should say that the US is ecumenical: cleansing doesn't have to target specific cultures, religions, etc.; anyone will do if they are in the way). There were, no doubt, serious consequences to race hatred and fanatic jingoism that was (consciously, surely) stirred up against the evil Serbs to justify direct attacks on the civilian society. Same in many other cases. Just a few days ago, one of the better correspondents of the Boston Globe had a "news" report on the front-page exulting over the fact that Canada has recognized its errors in departing from US orders on the need to torture Cubans, even though it continues "moaning" about the US embargo. Easy enough to go on. Do such shameful performances justify shutting down the press? They certainly have extremely harmful consequences, much worse than neo-Nazi rock concerts. Conditions on likely consequences enter into current law. The US reached a standard of protection of speech that is, perhaps, unique in the world, and I think personally is appropriate, in 1969 (prior to the '60s, contrary to common belief, there was only limited protection for freedom of speech). The Supreme Court ruled that speech should be protected up to incitement of criminal action. So if you and I go into a store, you hold a gun, and I say "shoot" (and you do it), that speech isn't protected. Where do we draw the line? That raises hard questions, but it seems to me that the burden of proof should be on those who choose to limit speech, and it should be considered a heavy burden. To grant the state the power to constrain speech is to go a long way towards totalitarianism. Note the complexities that arise as soon as we try to apply those standards. Should the state have the power to close down the media when they are inciting vicious race hatred in support of state violence? Plainly the wrong question. Similar issues arise in another case you mention, "violent depictions of sexual assault and subordination of women in pornography (done in a manner to encourage or condone such behavior)." Should there be legal redress? I think similar considerations arise. We have to balance various consequences -- one of them the fact that legal redress strengthens the power of the state to control what people say. The question you raise about "the need to curb other major concentrations of power in society (in this case, tyrannical corporations)" raises different issues. Do corporations have freedom of speech? Freedom from search and seizure? Not on traditional classical liberal or Enlightenment grounds. On these grounds they have no rights at all, as entities, though people associated in them individually have rights. Suppose these individuals get together and decide democratically to "speak" (say, place an ad) through the medium of their association. Then more complicated questions arise, including the question of the legitimacy of that association. I don't think there is any simple general principle that will decide such cases, in the real world; too many factors involved. As ordinarily in the case of (always complex) human affairs, we can try to articulate general guidelines, but in real world situations many factors have to be evaluated, and I think we mislead ourselves and others by seeking abstract principles that will automatically provide answers case by case. 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