Biotech in Hot Oil

Review and Outlook
Copyright 2000 Wall Steet Journal
May 2, 2000

Apparently, some french fries are more equal than others. Last week McDonald's told its suppliers it didn't want any more genetically altered potatoes.

McDonald's isn't the first to flinch. Recently, Greenpeace went after Kellogg's, whose Frosted Flakes uses genetically engineered corn. At the company's headquarters in Michigan, activists dressed as "Franken Tony the Tiger" and warned the company to stop harming "America's kids." Gerber and Frito-Lay both caved under similar tactics earlier this year. These companies know from experience that those who don't bend to or coddle the environmentalist contingent make the A-List for protest targets. TV's semi-news reports then tilt the playing field impossibly.

Though it hardly needs saying, this attack on one of the country's most important industries has never been about science. We've been genetically altering plants through cross-breeding and trait selection since pre-industrial times. The process of gene splicing simply allows scientist to be more precise in isolating and combining desirable species traits.

In the case of McDonald's the crop in question is the New Leaf Potato. Created four years ago, the crop is internally equipped to repel a Colorado Beetle that likes to eat it. By including a gene borrowed from a micro-organism, the breed has effectively eliminated the need for the pesticide spritzings. Pesticides have long enraged environmentalists, but maybe that was never about the pesticide either.

The french fry was the first to go because it's the flagship item, but beef, hamburger buns and oil used by the company also employ bioengineered ingredients one way or another. Most items in your corner bodega do too. Fortunately, most people seem considerably less freaked out by biotech than the consumer advocates who claim to represent them. Even in Europe, where the hysteria is worst, a recent effort to label GM foods had almost no effect on sales.

On the day that the McDonald's news appeared, genetics was making headlines elsewhere -- the industry's first big human success in curing three "bubble" children, or kids suffering from a once fatal auto-immune disorder. Using genetic modification, researchers literally erased the problem in the afflicted kids.

That's a tangible benefit. While most people support the use of biotech for medicine, GM foods have been plagued by precisely the fact that grocery shoppers can't see the difference. Biotech crops yield enormous advantages to farmers, protecting the crops from pests and yielding extra bushels for each acre of production. But consumers don't realize that they benefit from those changes through lower prices, less pollution and more efficient land use.

Happily, the rate of innovation in the industry is already beginning to change that. In addition to the more than 20 engineered crops that have recently landed on grocery shelves, scientists are now working on faster-growing salmon, low-fat ham and even a pig designed not to pollute the environment.

Mergers like Monsanto and Pharmacia are driven by efforts to take advantage of all the new opportunities. While something like the McDonald's french-fry flipflop won't make much of a difference in the long run, the real damage of Greenpeace's strategy to create a furor over biotech is that it lends aid and comfort to the trial lawyers in their efforts to redirect the proceeds of science away from more R&D and into their own pockets. Today, we've found a way to eliminate pesticides; tomorrow, it may be chemotherapy. Lets hope the activists and lawyers aren't able to stop these benefits.