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Thursday July 22, 1999
The GuardianConsumers mop up in milk war: An amazing
u-turn has repelled American hormone-treated milk
Slowly, very slowly, consumers are regaining control over the food chain.
The destruction of a farm-scale trial of genetically engineered rape by
protesters on Sunday could prove to be the final straw for the
biotechnology companies already wondering whether their products have a
future in this country.
Just 10 miles from the trial site, Britain's newest farmers' market,
offering local, organic produce, opened for the first time a fortnight ago,
and sold out within two hours.
But something else has happened, far more significant than either of these
events. Three weeks ago, the European Union routed an American attempt to
force us to accept one of the most unpleasant technologies food scientists
have ever devised. Its victory, a critically important blow for consumer
rights, was greeted with a deluge of absolutely no coverage at all.
Bovine somatotropin (BST) is a growth hormone, manufactured by Monsanto.
Injected into dairy cows, it raises their milk yields by 10 to 15 per cent.
According to European scientists, it also increases udder infections, foot
diseases and reproductive disorders in the cows which receive it, and
boosts the level of insulin growth factor 1 in their milk.
This chemical passes intact into the human bloodstream and is associated
with both breast and prostate cancers. Five years ago, the European Union
banned the use of the hormone here, and forbade imports of hormone-treated
milk from the United States. The US insisted that if the ban were not
lifted by the end of this year, it would ask the World Trade Organisation
(WTO) to force us to start drinking its poisoned milk.
The United States had every expectation of success. It has already used the
WTO to impose punitive sanctions on the European Union for refusing to
compel us to eat hormone-treated beef, and insisting that we should not
have to buy all our bananas from the company which funds the Democratic
Party.
America has found in our own scab state an indispensable ally: the British
government has consistently sought to undermine the European position on
beef hormones, in order to prove to Mr Clinton that it places the interests
of US corporations ahead of the health of its own citizens.
The milk dispute threatened to become far bigger than the beef and banana
wars. The United States has already demonstrated that it will go to
extraordinary lengths to ensure that Monsanto gets what it wants.
In 1989, a researcher employed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
commissioned tests to discover whether or not BST is safe. He was
immediately sacked for "slowing down the approval process", and the tests
were stopped.
When the FDA discovered that Monsanto's own tests were grossly inadequate,
it established a new safety category, approving BST as a "manageable risk".
Last year, the FDA admitted that it had allowed the sale of the hormone
without having seen any safety data. It had relied instead on a summary
provided by Monsanto.
Exposure of this kind of collusion has seldom prevented the United States
from forcibly exporting its revolting habits. The World Trade Organisation
has to decide whether a country or a group of countries is excluding a
product for genuine health and safety reasons, or doing so merely in order
to protect its own manufacturers.
It relies on the assessment of Codex Alimentarius, the United Nations food
standards agency. Codex is stuffed with corporate scientists and US
government officials. It has ruled in favour of American corporations even
when the evidence against their products is overwhelming.
But three weeks ago, Codex did something almost unprecedented. It made a
decision on the basis of science, rather than politics. Safety concerns
about BST, it ruled, could not be ignored. The United States was forced to
drop its suit.
The decision not to poison the 370m members of the European Union, though
ignored by every newspaper and broadcaster in Britain, could prove to be
one of the defining moments of the end of the 20th century. The credibility
of the coercive trade regime which has threatened the sovereignty of every
democratic state on earth has already been seriously challenged.
Last year, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, a crude attempt to
enable big business to overthrow national legislation, was defeated by
campaigners. This week, the World Trade Organisation failed to resolve the
furious internal dispute over its next director-general, and was forced to
appoint both leading candidates.
Europe's victory sets the tone for a new round of trade talks, opening in
Seattle in November. They promise to be so contentious that they could
break the World Trade Organisation apart. I hope so. The WTO, established
to protect weak nations from the strong, has been reduced to an oppressive
instrument of American foreign policy. |