Right now you could be eating foods that contain altered genetic material and not even know it. How does that make you feel? You should be scared. Here are several reasons why:

Specialists on the British government's Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP) have reported concerns about genetically-altered plants containing a gene resistant to antibiotics. Such genes are widely used by biotech companies because they "allow scientists to move other genes around." An antibiotic resistant gene known as AAD is already being used in genetically-altered maize and cotton. The main problem is this: when the corn and cotton are processed, cells are broken open and disperse their genetic material into the environment, often through dust that people breathe. A similar process may occur in the human digestive tract. A significant portion of the human population carry bacteria that are "adept at taking up DNA from the environment and expressing it." One of these bacteria is meningitis, a deadly disease that attacks the brain and spinal cord. It's not difficult to see the consequences if an antibiotic resistant strain of meningitis or a related disease emerges.

In an article published in the April 22 edition of Nature, some proponents of genetically-modified plants propose caution and better controls in trials of such plants, including a "gene register" to track which genes are being introduced into plants for human and animal consumption. Their concern is that unexpected changes in these plants "could cause allergic or toxic reactions in humans. Or that viral vectors used to change the plant's genes may cause human disease."

Ben Mifflin, a former director of the Institute of Arable Crops in the U.K., says that under current monitoring standards "unanticipated health impact of such foods would need to be a 'monumental disaster' to be detectable." Another critic, Suzanne Wuerthle of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, says: "It took us 60 years to realize that DDT might have oestrogenic activities and affect humans, but we are now being asked to believe that everything is OK with (genetically modified) foods because we haven't seen any dead bodies yet."

Efforts by U.K. scientists to ban genetically-modified plants that contain antibiotic-resistant genes have been overruled by the European Commission, although they said that there was "room for improvement" in governmental policy on genetically-altered plants. Private industry, however, has taken the matter into its own hands. After a poll showing that four out of five customers don't want genetically-altered foods and won't buy them, Britain's largest supermarket chain, TESCO, decided to ban the sale of such foods in its store brand products. It joins four other supermarket chains who've banned such foods: Sainsbury's, Asda, Safeway, and Iceland. These companies have their work cut out for them; many components of pre-packaged foods already have ingredients from genetically-altered plants (especially soybeans) and have no labels to designate which ones do. So far, two food producers and packagers, Van den Bergh Foods and Birds Eye Wall's, have said they would avoid using genetically altered plant products whenever possible.

In the meantime, protesters against genetically-altered plants and food products have won a couple of conspicuous victories.

In Britain in late March, two women accused of destroying a genetically-altered corn crop at Hood Barton farm near Dartington, Devon, were set free after the prosecutor offered no evidence against them. The women were awarded court costs and the charges against them were dropped. The crop was being grown by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany on behalf of Advanta at a Ministry of Agriculture site.

On April 20, a High Court judge refused Monsanto's application for a permanent ban on British protesters who uprooted plants at a farm in Oxfordshire last year. The judge ruled against Monsanto, because he believed the protesters could defend their actions; he ordered a full hearing to decide the matter. Kathryn Tulip, one of the defenders, said: "Now the matter will have to go to a full trial and we will be able to call expert witnesses to show that what we did was justifiable in order to protect public health and the environment."

In mid-April the British government was forced to announce the dismissal of eleven members of the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment after critics from several NGOs showed that all eleven members of the panel had received funding from companies developing genetically-altered plants. According to U.K. Environment Minister Michael Meacher, every single application for genetically-altered seed trials in the U.K.--160 in all--had been approved by the committee.

While activists in the U.K. have been on top of this issue from the start, protests have occurred in other countries across Europe, in Brazil, and in India, where farmers' associations have uprooted and burned Monsanto's field trials of genetically-modified cotton.

Next week the issue will be coming home to Seattle, when biotech salespeople, executives, and scientists blow into town on May 15-20 for the Biotech '99 Convention to be held at the Convention Center in downtown Seattle. A group of local folks calling themselves the Concerned Citizens Action Network (CCAN) will be holding a Truth or Biotechnology Rally and March starting at noon on May 18th at 8th and Pike outside of the Convention Center. If you care about what you eat, you should be there to support them. (CCAN can be reached at 206-632-1656, waal@seanet.com, or www.aa.net/~paik/BioTech.)

Another important event next week is the Biodevastation 3 grassroots conference and teach-in, sponsored by the Edmonds Institute and the Washington Biotechnology Action Council. It's scheduled for May 19-20 at Plymouth Congregational Church at 6th & University in downtown Seattle. Speakers at the conference include: Brian Tokar (contributor to Z Magazine), Brewster and Cathleen Kneen (Co-Editors of The Ram's Horn, a very fine Canadian publication that critiques the agricultural industry), Phil Bereano (activist professor, expert in genetic discrimination), and Ronnie Cummins and Edward Hammond of the Indigenous Peoples Coalition Against Biopiracy (Hammond is also an investigator/discover of genetic terminator and traitor technologies). The event is free, but you should contact the Edmonds Institute to pre-register at beb@igc.org or 425-775-5383.

Sources: "Meningitis fear over GM food," BBC, 4/26/99; "Genetically modified crops worry some scientists," Reuters Health, 4/22/99; "Tesco bans GM food in own brands," Telegraph (U.K.), 4/28/99; "GM Food Raid Case Dropped," Press Association Limited, 3/29/99; "GM crops: Protest 'justifiable to protect health,'" BBC, 4/20/99; and "Genetically-Modified Food Committee Faces Revamp," Press Association Limited, 4/12/99.