Environmental Chef Services
Consumer Perception is a Real Concern
Just over a month ago, the Department of Agriculture announced that it will allow American farmers to plant genetically engineered alfalfa, which is widely used as feed for dairy cows and horses.
Friday, Mar 02, 2012...
Consumer Perception is a Real Concern
Just over a month ago, the Department of Agriculture announced that it will allow American farmers to plant genetically engineered alfalfa, which is widely used as feed for dairy cows and horses.
Edited on
In the News
Mar 4, 2011
Story from NPR's Dan Charles on All Things Considered 3/1/11
Just
over a month ago, the Department of Agriculture announced that it will
allow American farmers to plant genetically engineered alfalfa, which is
widely used as feed for dairy cows and horses.
Organic food
producers opposed the USDA's decision — some more fiercely than others.
That split has provoked angry debates within the organics community,
with some activists accusing organic businesses of "surrendering" to the
biotech company Monsanto. And it has reopened some old arguments about
what's most important in the label "organic."
The cause of this
dispute is not easily visible, at first, in the rolling pastures of an
organic dairy operated by Horizon Organic near Kennedyville, in eastern
Maryland. During the summer, the farm's cows graze on hundreds of acres
of pasture.
But the grass doesn't grow in wintertime, so on this
February day, the cows are eating inside. Farm manager Dudley McHenry
explains that the animals eat a mixture of corn silage, clover, alfalfa,
corn, soybeans and a grass called triticale. And there's a tiny bit of
something in that feed — mainly in the corn — that's provoking the
current disagreements among people who all describe themselves as
defenders of organic farming.
"We just make sure we're meeting the
letter of the organic regulations to the T," says Tom Spohn
(foreground), director of dairy operations for Horizon Organic. Behind
him are farm manager Dudley McHenry and Sissy Everett.
Enlarge Dan Charles for NPR
"We
just make sure we're meeting the letter of the organic regulations to
the T," says Tom Spohn (foreground), director of dairy operations for
Horizon Organic. Behind him are farm manager Dudley McHenry and Sissy
Everett.
"We just make sure we're meeting the letter of the organic
regulations to the T," says Tom Spohn (foreground), director of dairy
operations for Horizon Organic. Behind him are farm manager Dudley
McHenry and Sissy Everett.
Dan Charles for NPR
"We just make
sure we're meeting the letter of the organic regulations to the T," says
Tom Spohn (foreground), director of dairy operations for Horizon
Organic. Behind him are farm manager Dudley McHenry and Sissy Everett.
Farming Organic Crops
The
provocation is GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, which is the
popular term for living organisms that contain genes that were inserted
in the laboratory. This includes, for instance, corn or soybean plants
that contain genes that make the plant poisonous to certain insects, or
allow it to survive doses of the weedkiller Roundup.
Organic
farmers aren't allowed to plant GMO seeds. But most conventional corn in
America is genetically modified, and among all grains, corn is perhaps
the most promiscuous cross-pollinator, so its genes often migrate into
organic fields via windblown pollen that lands on the tassels of organic
corn.
As a result, most organic corn in the U.S. typically
contains anywhere from half a percent to 2 percent GMOs, according to
companies that sell such corn to organic dairies or poultry farmers. It
has been that way since genetically engineered corn and soybeans became
popular, more than a decade ago.
But does that matter? Tom Spohn,
director of dairy operations for Horizon Organic, says it doesn't keep
the company from calling its milk organic.
"We just make sure we're meeting the letter of the organic regulations to the T," he says.
According
to those regulations, if an organic farmer plants non-GMO seed and uses
organic methods, the harvest is organic, even if a few stray genes blew
in.
But in the past few years, anti-biotech activists like
Ronnie Cummins, from the Organic Consumers Association, have been
calling on organic businesses to fight back more fiercely against GMO
contamination.
"If you're not willing to sue the person who
pollutes the organic crop and really undermines organic integrity, then
we're not going to stand up for you. You've got to do the right thing,"
he says.
The Threat Of Cross-Pollination
Cummins and other
anti-GMO groups have focused their attack on alfalfa, because it is the
GMO crop that the government approved most recently.
Alfalfa,
when it's grown for animal feed, is much less likely than corn to
cross-pollinate. It's usually harvested before it flowers, and even when
it does flower, those plants don't often produce seeds that sprout into
new plants. (Cross-pollination is much more of a problem for the small
minority of farmers who grow alfalfa for seed.) But activists say that
even a small amount of cross-pollination will be a disaster for organic
dairy farmers, and that claim is echoed by some organics executives.
"The
threat to the alfalfa supply is very real, and the concern of our dairy
producers is a huge one," says Christine Bushway, executive director of
the Organic Trade Association. Bushway even asserts that if pollen from
GMO alfalfa fertilizes alfalfa in organic hay fields, "you can't at
that point sell it as organic."
This is a dangerous claim for the
country's biggest organic trade association to make. Because if that
claim were true — if cross-pollination actually turned organic crops
into non-organic crops — there's wouldn't be much organic corn left in
the country.
'Consumer Perception Is A Real Concern'
Charles
Benbrook, chief scientist for the Organic Center, says there's a danger
that this anti-GMO campaign could undermine the trust that increasing
numbers of consumers have in organic food.
"It would be a shame
for the momentum behind the growth in the organic livestock industry to
be siphoned off or diverted because of one-tenth of 1 percent
contamination in a source of animal feed," he says.
In fact, he
says, if you insist on organic milk and eggs from animals that eat
absolutely no GMO genes, you'll have to get that food from Europe, "and
that's hardly a welcome solution for people who see in the organic food
industry the best hope for positive change and innovation in the U.S.
food system."
Some organics executives are worried that this infighting will lead to unrealistic demands by consumers.
"There's
reality and there's perception," says George Siemon, CEO of Organic
Valley, one of the country's biggest organic food companies. "And the
perception is, consumers are saying they don't want any pollution in
organic products. And whether that's realistic or not is another matter.
But for sure, consumer perception is a real concern." Siemon cited a
survey in which 77 percent of organics consumers said they would stop
buying organic food if it contained GMOs.
Pamela Ronald, a plant
biologist at the University of California, Davis, says those consumers
are losing track of what's most important. Ronald has a foot on each
side of the biotech wars — she works with genetically engineered plants
in the laboratory, and she's married to a longtime organic farmer. She
and her husband together wrote the book Tomorrow's Table: Organic
Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food.
"What really is
important is, can we reduce the use of insecticides? Can we foster soil
fertility? Can we feed the poor and malnourished?" she says. Those
should be the goals of organic farming, she says, and they should be the
goals of non-organic farming, too. According to Ronald, they're much
more significant than avoiding laboratory-spliced genes.
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