The authors analyzed over 300 studies comparing organic and conventional crop yields, and in what shouldn’t be a shock found that conventional crops had higher yields. Additionally, the researchers proposed that at larger scales (such as the scale needed to reliably feed billions and billions of people) conventional yields outperformed organics to an even greater rate. This isn’t the first time researchers have found the policies of feel-good foodie activists lacking in practical utility.

Indeed, experts argue that the world can’t feed its ever-growing population on organics alone. Harvard professor Calestous Juma warned that organic activists’ campaigns against biotechnology are blind to rising food prices and political unrest in the developing world. And at home, squeezing out conventional production will raise food prices. Oh, and the claim that organics are healthier has been thoroughly debunked. (No wonder British organic movement leader Peter Melchett once said that “Science doesn’t tell us the answers.”)

There’s a reason why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the late Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, architect of the “Green Revolution” which significantly increased crop yields and fed billions, have endorsed biotechnology. (“USDA Organic” certification forbids biotechnology use.) The goal of ending world hunger (especially without turning vast tracts of forest into farms) depends on the efficiency that conventional production provides.

The latest target is Frito-Lay, which claims that its Sun Chips and Tostitos snacks are “all-natural.” They also apparently contain GM ingredients. The Frito-Lay suit isn’t the only one of its kind. A similar claim was filed in California last year. To the trial bar, it doesn’t matter that there’s no credible evidence that GM food is harmful, because they see a $5 million payday.

Interestingly, unlike the term “organic,” the word “natural” (with a few exceptions for meats governed by USDA labeling rules) is not formally defined under federal food labeling rules. (If Frito-Lay applied an “organic” or “GMO-free” label, it might be a different story.) If Frito-Lay is on solid regulatory compliance grounds, it wouldn’t be the first time that an activist food lawsuit came up empty. (Who’s betting that the media will notice if that happens?)

It’s worth noting as well that the principles behind genetic modification, including the manipulation of crop and livestock genetics for human benefit, are quite old. Gregor Mendel famously discovered the basic principles of hereditary genetics using pea plants back in the 1800s. Before that, farmers chose the best animals as breeding stock and planted the hardiest crops. The only aspect that changes with the scary-sounding science of GM crops is that selective breeding (human-assisted evolution) takes less time and more specific desirable traits can be promoted or inserted.

But don’t tell that to the trial lawyers or food activists. There’s money to be made, after all.

© 2004 Larry Wright

In carefully monitored field tests in 1990, organic farming yielded an average of 21,200 pounds of potatoes per acre (over three tested varieties) while conventional farming methods yielded 32,800 pounds per acre. In overall production costs, organic potatoes cost $1074 per acre to grow while conventionally grown potatoes averaged $928 per acre.

The disparity between organic and conventional potatoes is seen most vividly in the break-even prices that potato farmers would be required to ask for their produce. At market, farmers who raised organic Norland potatoes needed prices 228% higher than farmers selling conventional Norlands to break even. Organic Russets need to be priced 24% higher than conventional Russets while organic Superiors had to cost 90% more than conventional Superiors.

But why pay more? Official U.S. Department of Agriculture policy on organic produce states that it is no more nutritious, more healthful, or safer that conventional. And because organic is less productive per acre, its ‘ecological’ value is questionable. If more farmland is needed to grow less food, the net result is that the organic grower squanders finite natural resources to harvest foods with no measurable improvement in benefits. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control cautions that organic produce has a greater chance of E.coli infection.

It stands to reason the current push by activists to hype organic foods is really about increasing market share to cushion organic vendors’ diminished supply and higher prices. But as the Wisconsin field tests bear out, those making the “case” for organic are handling a hot potato!

This summer, Fenton stage-managed 20 separate press events targeting the Campbell Soup Company and Kellogg’s. More companies are targeted for attack before the end of the year to promote bad science and anti-technology rhetoric in a campaign against genetically improved food (for his many organic clients).

Among Fenton’s collaborators at his anti-biotech press conference in Washington was Peter Hoffman, incoming chair of Chefs Collaborative 2000.

Alar-mists at Fenton
Even though the accusations about Alar were groundless, Fenton’s campaign was a financial success.

“We designed [the Alar campaign] so that revenue would flow back to [Fenton client] the Natural Resources Defense Council from the public, and we sold this book about pesticides through a 900 number and the ‘Donohue Show.’ And to date there has been $700,000 in net revenue from it,” Fenton said.

“A modest investment repaid itself many-fold in tremendous media exposure and substantial, immediate revenue.” Fenton added that as a result of the Alar campaign, “Lines started forming in health food stores. The sales of organic produce soared. All of which we were very happy about.”

Organic and natural foods must be safer and more healthful, right? Not quite! Genetically modified foods are significantly safer than organic and natural foods. Over the last decade, consumers have eaten millions of pounds of genetically altered foods, and millions of tons of feed corn and soybean meal have been used to produce our meat and milk. So far, not even a skin rash has been linked to these new-tech foods. Not one.

In the same decade, thousands of consumers have been sickened because of the natural bacteria and toxins too often found in organic and natural foods. Many of the victims have suffered permanent damage to their livers, kidneys or eyesight. A few have even died.

Any health professional will tell you that bacteria have been the biggest food -borne risks to humans for centuries, and lately we’ve been attacked by a couple of new and deadlier food -borne bacteria, Salmonella typhimurium and E. Coli O157:H7.

O157 is a variant of the E. coli that has been killing our sick and elderly for thousands of years. But O157 kills even the strong. And many of its survivors suffer permanent damage to their internal organs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates O157 causes 25,000 U.S. hospitalizations per year and 250 deaths. The dangerous bug is found most often in undercooked hamburger _ but also turns up in bean sprouts, lettuce, apple juice and other foods.

The reservoir of O157 is cow manure. Too many organic farmers fertilize their food crops with cow manure. Composting the manure is an erratic process.

Mainstream farmers rarely fertilizer food crops with manure, preferring the cleaner, safer chemical nitrogen taken from the air. The air we breathe, incidentally, is 78 percent nitrogen.

What about the “natural” foods we all see advertised? Unfortunately, they too often avoid such consumer protections as pasteurization and anti-bacterial washes. The “natural” apple juice that killed a young girl in Colorado a few of years ago is a terrible case in point.

But, a consumer might ask, aren’t the bacterial risks of organic food offset by the higher nutritional value of organic food?

The answer, once more, is “no.” No peer-reviewed study has found a significant nutritional advantage in organic foods.

In fact, Katherine Di Matteo of the Organic Trade Association recently told John Stossel of ABC News _ on national TV: “Organic foods are as nutritious as any other foods. ” She said it twice. She also said: ” Food safety is not what organic food standards are all about.”

How can we be sure that the biotech foods themselves won’t introduce new risks? Biotech foods must be approved and then tested by the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In fact, most biotech foods vary only slightly from the foods we’ve been eating for decades. Laboratory analysis cannot distinguish a GMO Round-ready soybean from ordinary field-run soybeans.

Most of our cheese has been made with genetically modified rennin for a decade. Before the advent of biotech, we had to kill little calves to get this coagulating agent from their stomachs. Again, laboratories can’t detect any difference in the cheese.

Pest-resistant biotech corn fends off the corn borers which give access to the Aspergillus fungus _ so it has less of a potent cancer agent, aflatoxin.

Meanwhile, the power of genetic engineering to improve our foods appears awesome. Already, biotech has produced a rice engineered to contain Vitamin A. The new rice will prevent millions of kids in poor, rice-eating countries from dying or going blind each year due to severe Vitamin A deficiency.

Biotechnology can also be lifesaving for First World consumers. As an early triumph, we will be able to take the allergens out of foods such as peanuts _ where they can be deadly, especially to children.

For quality of life enhancement, a new DNA test will tell us which cows and bulls carry the genes for truly tender beef; and, biotechnology is still our best hope for a truly good-tasting off-season tomato.

But the environment will be the big winner. We should be able to dramatically increase our farm yields and that’s urgently important for a world that will need nearly three times as much food for a peak population of 9 billion affluent people _ and their pets _ in the 21st century.

If biotechnology is kept locked in a vault with activists holding the keys, we will probably face the reality of people plowing down the habitat of millions of wildlife species to get food for their children and pets.

— Dennis T. Avery is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute, a public policy think-tank in Indianapolis, but lives near Churchville, Va. Readers may write him at
Hudson Institute/Washington
1015 18th Street NW, Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20036
or via e-mail at: cgfi@rica.net

With session topics such as “Chefs as activists,” CIA students will hear one-sided lectures that rail against genetically improved foods, so-called “factory farming,” and a host of specific seafood harvests. The budding chefs will also get to hear politically provocative presentations from CC members Alice Waters, Rick Bayless and Peter Hoffman.

Chefs Collaborative’s organic agenda
The celebrity chefs of the organization Chefs Collaborative 2000 (CC) have vowed to “change the way people make their food choices.” This small group of elite, well known restaurateurs and cooks have attacked most food technology and instead embraced all forms of organic farming. Their communiqués (as they call them) stress “promoting organic farming methods is crucial for sustaining the planet.” CC organizes cooperatives to buy produce from local farmers “and then work[s] on bringing them into the organic fold.”

Bashing biotech is only the beginning
CC’s chefs are at the center of a much broader activist campaign pushed by organic food marketers who hope to dramatically increase their market share by instilling fear and uncertainty in consumers about all non-organic foods.

Incoming CC chair Peter Hoffman of the Savoy Restaurant in New York City reveals the depth these activists will go to attack all of modern agriculture. At a recent anti-biotech press conference, Hoffman opposed genetically enhanced “golden rice,” which TIME magazine said “could save a million kids a year.”

He then attacked the Nobel-prize honored “Green Revolution” of the 1960s that improved conventional agriculture around the world. “The ‘Green Revolution’ was a dismal failure. We don’t need it now. We didn’t need it then,” Hoffman said.

Teaching Chefs Organic Politics
The Chefs Collaborative’s influence doesn’t stop at the media’s microphone. CC is currently joining forces with the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the nation’s most well-known cooking school, to conduct two seminars that will showcase anti-biotech issues.

With session topics such as “Chefs as activists,” CIA students will hear one-sided lectures that rail against genetically improved foods, so-called “factory farming,” and a host of specific seafood harvests. The budding chefs will also get to hear politically provocative presentations from CC members Alice Waters, Rick Bayless, and Peter Hoffman.

It is the latest salvo in the contentious war over the environmental impact of agriculture biotech. But hidden from public view is a simmering environmental controversy: which farming technique is more dangerous to the Monarch butterfly and the environment- biotechnology or organic farming?

At first blush, the question seems out of place. What does organic farming have to do with genetically altered crops? The answer has rarely been discussed outside of scientific and agricultural circles, but it gets to the heart of the current debate over our food supply.

Although food critics rarely mentioned it, the same “villainous” B.t. pesticide that is used in biotech crops is the same pesticide used by organic farmers to protect their vegetables. America’s farms today harvest millions of acres of B.t. potatoes, corn and cotton. They contain the genes of the naturally occurring microbe, B.t. When plant breeders insert B.t. into these crops, it enables the plant to create its own defense against borers and caterpillars without spraying the plants. This protein is harmless to humans or to the plants but deadly to the pests. The caterpillars and borers die when they bite the leaves of a B.t. plant.

Reducing the need to spray B.t. pesticide on crops should be good news to environmentalists. But there is a catch. Organic farmers spray millions of acres of B.t. on their crops too. And they have been among the most determined critics of biotech crops. In 1997, 13 organic trade associations filed a landmark petition with Greenpeace calling for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban the right to grow B.t. crops in this country.

The organic industry’s fear is that since biotech crops do not require pesticide spraying the biotech produce could compete with organic foods. Many privately express the fear that biotech could commercially flatten their industry. Who can blame them? If conventional crops can be sold more affordably without the use of insecticides, organic farmers who already charge very high prices for their fruits and vegetables could be in trouble. Who has not almost fainted from sticker shock when looking at organic produce prices in a supermarket?

Regardless of motive, consumers want straight answers. Do biotech crops endanger the Monarch butterfly? About two months ago the EPA, not normally regarded as an apologist for the biotech industry, answered with a clear no. The agency rejected the organic industry’s petition in a stunning 107-page single-spaced document that concluded “the currently available evidence does not support the conclusion that registered (biotech plants) may cause unreasonable adverse effects on the environment.”

Addressing the specific issue of the Monarch butterfly and non-target insects the EPA said, “Published field testing results and field test data submitted to EPA show minimal to undetectable changes in the beneficial insect population.” EPA further concluded that biotech crops “reduce adverse effects on non-target organisms because the organisms most likely to receive a dose… are those feeding on the crop.” Non-target insects usually do not eat the crop leaves, and spraying B.t. is less discriminating, potentially killing beneficial organisms.” In fact, EPA believes that available scientific data and information indicates that cultivation of B.t. crops has a positive ecological effect, when compared to “most likely alternatives.” The “most likely alternatives” are conventional and organic farming using B.t. sprays.

In simulated tests cited by critics, larvae were force-fed B.t. at very high doses. EPA rejected the procedure, noting “in the field, insects are usually exposed to smaller amounts of toxin than the laboratory test dose because in the field there is a greater choice of diet.” The Iowa State study ignored the EPA critique and duplicated the same test. The researcher designed worst-case conditions bearing little resemblance to real world. The unrealistic conditions included relying on the highest potency strain that makes up only 2 percent of the total B.t. corn, and in a laboratory literally placing the larvae on the leaves to feed, giving it no alternative food source.

Unfortunately, the case against biotech food has nothing to do with safety, health or the environment, but with commercial interests. The sadness of it all is that the organic farmers aren’t willing to confront biotech foods head on. Instead, they wish to hide behind the facade of caring about the environment.

— Douglas T. Nelson is the senior vice president and general counsel of the American Crop Protection Association, a nonprofit trade organization representing major manufacturers, formulators and distributors of crop protection, pest control and biotechnology products.

About 60 percent of processed foods already contain some genetically improved component. But to feed a planet whose population will grow by 3 billion to 9 billion people by 2050 requires more scientific breakthroughs like that which produced “golden rice.” By splicing a gene containing beta-carotene (commonly found in carrots) into normal rice, researchers have produced a strain capable of preventing the Vitamin A deficiency that each year blinds millions of Third World children. Sadly, however, elitism and greed would stop the miracle of the Petri dish from ever reaching the rice bowl. Speaking out against biotech food at a Washington, D.C., news conference underwritten by organic food marketers, Peter Hoffman of the Savoy restaurant in New York, the incoming chairman of a group of celebrity chefs called the Chefs Collaborative, publicly opposed “golden rice.” Hoffman also attacked all of modern agriculture. “The Green Revolution was a dismal failure,” he said. “We don’t need it now. We didn’t need it then.”

A few months earlier, master chef Charlie Trotter of Chicago’s tony restaurant that bears his name led the “Chefs Collaborative” in demanding that the Food and Drug Administration slap a moratorium on any new genetically improved food while requiring products already on the shelf to bear a stigmatizing label. (A dangerous bunch, these seedless grapes.) Now if chefs Trotter and Hoffman insist on organically grown fruits and vegetables to create their pricey delectables — at Charlie Trotter’s, dinner for two is $220 without wine — that’s between them and their Yuppie clientele.

But why sabotage similar creativity by the genetic scientists who would feed ragged multitudes? And why lend an air of glamour to scaremongers who have no higher motivation than selling their product by defaming the competition?

Coke cannot really smear Pepsi as dangerous and Pizza Hut cannot convincingly brand Domino’s a safety hazard because Americans are experts on colas and pizzas. They understand the difference between rival (yet similar) products.

Organic, conventional and genetically improved foods are also very similar. Modern gene scientists simply produce improved traits in food more quickly and precisely than farmers who needed years of traditional cross-breeding to perfect their crops. Yet terms like “transgenic crops” mystify many Americans, allowing profit-driven organic merchants to exploit consumers’ fears about “Frankenfood.” For example, Whole Foods, one of America’s big-two natural-food retailers, enthusiastically backs Chefs Collaborative’s labeling crusade. And why not?

The firm, which promoted a study linking genetically improved potatoes to abnormalities in rats, realized net income growth of more than 70 percent in 1998. This was nearly triple Whole Foods’ sales growth, suggesting that manufactured anxiety over genetically improved food allowed the company to charge premium prices to spooked customers. (Soon after the release of the potato report, The Royal Society — Britain’s leading scientific body — labeled it “flawed in design and implementation” and declared “no conclusions can be drawn from it.”)

Sound cynical? Well, at last year’s U.S. Organic Food Conference, one speaker said, “The potential to develop the organic market would be limited if consumers are satisfied with food safety and the furor over genetic modification dies down.”

The plain truth, quoting FDA Commissioner Jane Henney, is that “biotech products have produced no evidence of food safety risks: not one rash, not one sore throat, not one headache.” That is not a claim that organic foods, which often eschew such fundamental safety steps as pasteurization, can match.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control suggest that Americans who eat organic foods increase eightfold their chance of contracting a strain of E. coli bacteria that causes 250 U.S. deaths every year. Often fertilized by animal manure, organic food also puts its consumers at greater risk for a virulent salmonella strain. Paradoxically, too, this natural food is hard on nature: On the same acreage, organic farms produce up to 40 percent less food than conventional farms, meaning they plow up that much more land. Widespread organic agriculture would also require nitrogen-rich green manure, entailing the conversion of more millions of wilderness acres to pasturage.

How then is the organic-foods industry able to put this new exciting agricultural technology under a cloud? Part of the answer is the tendency of many Americans to cling to romantic ideals. The organic crusade finds an audience in a movement that sees natural farming as one step on the road back to Eden. Chefs Collaborative’s founding organization, Oldways, for instance, speaks of looking back for dietary lessons that would help humanity weave “a seamless web of agriculture, behavior, history, tradition, culture, health, finance, politics . . . “ Or as Chefs Collaborative board member Judy Wicks puts it, “We like to say we use good food to lure innocent customers into social activism.”

Sometimes self-indulgent uto-pianism is harmless. Not here. As a wise man observed, “The boy throws the stone in jest; the frog dies in earnest.” The consequence of this ideological lark, exploited by old-fashioned greed, could be more than dead frogs.

— Rick Berman is the executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a
coalition of more than 30,000 restaurant and tavern operators working
together to preserve the right to offer guests a full menu of dining and
entertainment choices.