Zoh: Welcome to The Zoh Show.
I'm Zoh Hieronimus.

Over the past 25 years I and millions of others worldwide have been involved in issues pertaining to creating a more just and sustainable society. As has often been stated, if you eat your part of the agriculture system. So, how many of us when we eat a meal eat a piece of fruit, eat a piece of cake, realize that thousands of people have contributed to creating that product and in many cases poisons to kill bugs and bacteria are part of that product as well? That is, of course, unless you purchase and eat organically grown foods and food products. A recent 20th century development which could render the earth impoverished, the foods poisoned, the insect community mutated, the animal life diseased and the human consumer sicker, is the focus of our discussion this hour.

From Monsanto's roundup and genetic sabotage of food crops, I believe, as do our guests this hour, that we are heading for disaster. A possible world controlled by a few major corporations who can if they choose starve you to death after having destroyed the natural seed bank on earth which genetically poisoned hybrid seed.

Dr. Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey, both well versed in plant science, genetics and ethics, took to the field to find out how corporate driven profits are destroying the food chain on earth. Their Common Courage 1998 release Against the Grain Biotechnology and a Corporate Takeover of Our Food, is a scientific and easy to understand examination of a sort of moral mutation, a form of moral famine seizing the halls of science and sabotaging the family farm, the rural villas and our backyard gardens. Learn this hour what the corporate mainstream media refuses to talk about, what the mainstream corporate multi-nationals and mainstream legislative bodies have been pursuing and how it might impact our world.

With that said let us welcome to The Zoh Show Dr. Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey. Welcome Marc and Britt.

Marc: Thank you.

Britt: Thank you.

Zoh: Thank you both.
Your book is an extraordinary examination and though a very difficult topic, a very user friendly book to read. Firstly, I loved the dedication to Frances Moore Lappe and to the late Judi Barry and Rachel Carson, three champions of right stewardship. Tell us who these three women are.

Marc: Well, Frances Moore Lappe, who I was married to back in the 60s and early 70s, was somebody who really pioneered the whole questioning of the moral implications of the way we feed or don't feed the planet. Her book, Diet for a Small Planet is going into its 30th year printing. Rachel Carson, was the one who in 1962 with Silent Spring catapulted the world into recognizing that toxic substances really were causing great depredation on ecosystems. And Judi Barry is our local hero here in Northern California. She died recently from breast cancer and was a champion of saving of Redwoods.

Zoh: Exactly. She was the one that was subject to a very unfortunate bombing.

Marc: That's correct.

Zoh: Now, if you don't mind I'd like to stay to the outline you use in your book because you cover the most territory. Why don't we start with, as you do, the argument for biotechnology, how has it been promoted and for what reasons?

Marc: Well, I'll just say something briefly about it and then I'm sure Britt will have a lot to amplify.

Basically, the biotechnology industry has been promoted on what we believe to be, a very false and misleading premise: that the objective of this science is to feed the world. The initial objective of this science is clearly to line the pockets of the major corporations who design these products to tolerate and accept over-sprays of the chemical herbicides that they themselves produce. It had nothing to do with feeding the world. The initial yields of these products were less than the conventional yields and we started our book with that initial skepticism.

Zoh: Britt, you have something you want to add to that?

Britt: Well, I completely agree with Marc. I think that basically one of the things that we took a long hard look at was why were they spending billions and billions of dollars to perpetuate a system of agriculture which used chemicals -- which we had begun to realize in the last 20-25 years are very damaging to ecosystems and human health.

Zoh: Well, and I think importantly so from the study of sustainable agriculture. This mythology that the yield is less if you go organic, and it costs more money, both are not true.

Marc: Certainly the highest yields on record for every cereal crop that I know of come from organic fields. And it is a cost effective way of doing agriculture as long as you are committed to sustainable methods.

Zoh: Exactly, and we'll talk about that. I've been one to encourage people to sort of cooperatively support organic farms by buying into them before they've even harvested. I know those kind of cooperatives exist in the West a little bit more than they still do here on the East. But, on genetic engineering - and if you're just joining us, Dr. Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey are our guests today.

Their book a Common Courage 1998 release called Against the Grain, Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food. One of the things you write about so beautifully is that genetic engineering has been portrayed as so vital to our food supply, like you know, gee, isn't this a wonderful great development. Firstly, what's wrong with this picture because I looked at the list of genetically engineered crops from soybean to corn. How, if you could explain to the average person, have these genetically manipulated crops already begun to show us the danger of what happens if we move in this direction?

Marc: The main danger is that you suddenly have fields that are over sprayed continuously with chemicals that suppress literally every single weed. That means Monarch Butterflies migrating through out the Mid-west and rely on a few trace milkweed plants, don't have them. You're causing ecosystem disruption on a gross scale and beneath the soil, we believe, you're also annihilating hoards of the key microbacteria and mycorhizzia fungal species that are needed to keep the soil healthy to allow plants to grow in the future. These are the two composite concerns that we had above ground and below ground.

But there is also the danger of relying of an increasing small number of genetic types for making our crops. That means you suddenly instead of having 38 different varieties of soybeans available in the southeast, in the first year there were nine transgenic varieties that substituted for these carefully honed, environmentally friendly naturally bred crops that were suited to the micro-climates of the individual farmers. The farmer today no longer has a choice of that panoply. Of varieties but instead is being increasingly led down the path of having to rely entirely on transgenic crops. The objective of Monsanto is to completely convert the soybean crop from it's present 50% transgenic or genetically engineered mix to 100% by the year 2000.

Zoh: And what we'll do when we return is actually talk about how this genetically engineered crop doesn't just affect the fields where it is planted but neighboring fields and the rest of the ecosystem including the human consumer. I'm Zoh Hieronimus. Our guests are Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey. Their book a Common Courage 1998 release Against the Grain. If you have questions or comments now is the time to join us at 410-922-6680.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Zoh: Welcome to the Zoh Show. I'm Zoh Hieronimus. Todays program is a program we have been doing in piece meal now for years on the Zoh show talking about the danger of what we have termed the terminator seed biotechnology and the corporate takeover of our food supply.

The book is entitled Against the Grain, it's a Common Courage 1998 release. It's authors are Dr. Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey.

Marc, by the way, holds a doctorate in experimental pathology from the University of Pennsylvania. He currently directs CETOS, Center for Ethics and Toxics in Northern California. His publications include Chemical Deception and Evolutionary Medicine. That was Sierra book club's '93 and '95 and co-author Britt Bailey holds a masters degree in environmental policy and is a research associate at CETOS and they both live in California.

And to the rest of you in the listening audience, questions and comments, it's a toll free call locally at 1-800-922-6680, from anywhere in the nation 888-999-1787 and locally 410-922-6680.

If you would, let me ask you all if you could give for my audience just sort of an overview of what genetic engineered food really is. You shared with us how the initiation of it though made to look like this is for your benefit was really this is for our corporate benefit, but explain to us how they do what they do and the inherent danger of this kind of technology.

Marc: The technology is based on the astonishing fact that the genes of any microorganism or unrelated species will actually work in a plant. A plant can read those genes out and make a new product that may never before have been found, in an evolutionary sense, in that plant species or crop before. So, the process is fairly simple on the outside looking in.

You actually can make microbullets out of gold or tungsten and line them with DNA from the species you're interested in, and through a process of what is called micro-biolistics, you can shoot these tiny projectiles into the cells of plantlets that are growing in tissue culture, and by testing tens of thousands of these little shoots, little plantlets, you can determine how many of them have actually gotten the gene inside them to work. You can do that by spraying the pesticide or herbicide that you're interested in on top of the tissue culture – any plant that dies doesn't have a functional gene.

From the outset I think scientists recognize that this was an incredibly crude technique. We don't know where the genes are integrated. We don't know how they work inside the cell. We don't know how many copies have been shot in and we don't know what disruption this may have caused for the rest of the cells' make up.

Belatedly, farmers have reported some very strange plants growing after this genetic engineering feat. There are cotton plants that have been reported to come in with distorted root systems because of faulty development after genetic engineering. There are other plants in the soy family that didn't grow as well after the second spray. Again, because they didn't behave in the predicted fashion after their genetic engineering.

So, what we think we see is really a mass experiment being foisted on the American farmer. They're being asked to do these multi-generation tests out in their thousands of acres when Monsanto and the other progenitors of these products only had to do a single 2-3 acre plot test over maybe a two year period before they were able to get full approval and deregulate this crop to go into mass production.

Zoh: Yeah, and I recently interviewed Sir George Martin in the United Kingdom, and he of course, and Paul McCartney and others are so very opposed to the point that, as you know, the United Kingdom is suing Monsanto and other corporations that have violated even the test case pattern that they were required to observe.

Marc: Good for them. It's about time to put the shoe on the other foot since we were subject to a threatened law suit from Monsanto against us.

Zoh: You were? What was that about?

Marc: When we first wrote this book, which as you can read, we point out that there are herbicides that we should be more concerned about than Monsanto's herbicide -- which is Roundup.

Zoh: Yeah.

Marc: Monsanto read three paragraphs about Roundup in a free give away article on the West coast here that was a pre-print part of the book. On the basis of that, they wrote our publisher and asked them to shut down the presses unless the entire book was revamped. And the publisher, whom we assured we could document all of our reported findings, simply folded his tent and said we can't publish the book. And that delayed publication, to perhaps Monsanto's benefit, for at least a year. Common Courage Press is the one who picked it up without any liability insurance. After reviewing our research they published the book.

Zoh: Common Courage does such a beautiful job. I've interviewed so many of their authors from Noam Chomsky to Peter Breggin to Norman Solomon, Ken Silverstein - I mean, altogether it's just a remarkable group of investigative reporters who are so well versed in the fields they write on. Give me the 800 number if you would for our audience to order the book from Common Courage.

Britt: They can order the book at 1-800-497-3207.

Zoh: All right. Folks, that's a direct order number if you'd like. Common Courage really does deserve our support because they have the courage to help the common person understand the issues that matter.

Let's take a look for a moment -- we'll come back to some of the transgenic work and biotechnology in general -- But I -- like you -- have spent 15 years of my life fighting the abuse and misuse of herbicides, pesticides, etc. You have made a deliberate study of them and certain ones like Roundup by Monsanto in particular. Why don't we talk about the devastation -- we already know based on research -- that's been caused by herbicides in general and how you've gone about evaluating their impact on the food chain and the consumer.

Britt: Well, we haven't actually done any research on Roundup per se, but one of the things that we find disturbing about Roundup formulation is that it contains 51% of inert ingredients. One of those inert ingredients is a polyethyloxylated tallow amine which is a surfactant that is used so that it doesn't clog the applicators when farmers are applying the chemicals. And it happens to be three times as toxic as the actual active ingredient which is called glyphosate in Roundup herbicide. There were a number of accidental and suicidal ingestion's of Roundup herbicides particularly in Southeast Asia and that was how the inert ingredient was first discovered.

Zoh: Well, and I think it's important for people who have never really looked at a label on their pesticide spray or insecticide or lawn care stuff, folks when it says 99% inert, that doesn't mean it's nontoxic, it means because of the way the companies have gotten congress to write the laws, they don't have to tell you what's in the product other than the 1%, the active ingredient, for that particular part of the population. That doesn't mean the other 99% is nontoxic as in this case. Often times the inert ingredient is more toxic than the 1 or 2% they're actually labeling.

Britt: That's exactly right.

Zoh: I mean that's extraordinary. When you go to court because your health has been damaged or your child has died or your dogs have died, they can't even tell you in a court of law what was in the product. They say that it's a trade secret status. I mean, this is unbelievable.

Britt: There's actually a group in Oregon called the National Coalition Against Pesticides and they're trying to sue the EPA to have the companies state on the labels the inert ingredients. Right now the common person has no way to know what those inert ingredients would be.

Zoh: Well, even the chemists, unless they happen to have manufactured the product.

Britt: Exactly.

Zoh: Now, explain though, in terms of some of the other products and why the USDA has not withdrawn some of these products from the marketplace - like what you just shared with us about Roundup, we know the injurious impact on health.

Marc: I think that the EPA has made belated attempts to effectively stop the registration of some of the products for which plants are bioengineered to resist.

One of those is a product called Buctril bromoxynil This is a product which is literally hundreds of times more toxic than glyphosate or Roundup and it's a product that has reproductive toxicity. It's a product that the EPA determined should not be marketed. They had restricted the registration after violent protests from the manufacturer Rhone- Poulenc.

The EPA recently rescinded it's concern. This is in large part because cotton farmers had already purchased the transgenic seeds that required this herbicide to be used. And as you can tell in our book, we go after this herbicide very forcefully. We think this is an example of an herbicide that should not be on the market. And we give the reasons why we think that's true.

Zoh: And why don't you share with our audience some of that. Not everybody will be able to get your book though I recommend it, Against the Grain by Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey. It's a Common Courage 1998 release. You can order it directly by calling 1-800-497-3207. So, what are some of the reasons you oppose it.

Marc: Our opinions, and they are that, are the results of our doing a systematic review of all the papers that were submitted to the EPA to permit initial registration of bromoxynil.

This is a compound with bromine in it that produces birth defects at very low doses in the test animals its been given to. It's a compound that concentrates in the cottonseed oil and is soluble in the fat, not just in the oil, but ultimately your fat. It's the kind of compound that builds. Over time you would become, if you were ingesting oil that was contaminated with this compound, your body burden might exceed those that have been expected on a simple daily ingestion basis, which assumed that all the product was gotten rid of or excreted at the end of the day, when it is not.

So, we had grave concerns about this product. We were upset to find that this was a product that we had decided to convert virtually the entire cotton yield to this year and next because one company got there first. It isn't that this is the safest herbicide or the herbicide of choice that toxicologists would say, oh, let's go ahead with this one. It's in fact the opposite. It's one of the most hazardous herbicides.

Zoh: And what company's is it?

Marc: This is Rhone Poulenc product. This is a European product with U.S. subsidiaries that sell this product in this country.

Zoh: Now, I'll tell you what, when we return I'd like to go through what transgenic products and food production means to the third world and why farmers are revolting in the third world even though they're easily attending often to what the corporate, sort of, land grant colleges, are underwritten by these large industry outlets are saying to them and what they're pledging them in terms of revenue support as well as damages if there is failure of crop yield.

I'm ZohHieronimus.

Our guests are Dr. Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey. Their book Against the Grain, Biotechnology and a Corporate Takeover of Your Food. If you have questions please join us when we return.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Zoh: Welcome to the Zoh Show. I'm Zoh Hieronimus.

Many of you know I've spent years in the trenches fighting the abuse and misuse of insecticides, pesticides, fighting food irradiation and fluoridation of our water, the vaccination of our children because it all comes from the same source which is a profit engineering rather than a life valuing principle. Our guests this hour have been examining biotechnology and the corporate takeover of our food supply, in part through pesticides and in part through biotechnology and transgenics.

If you could Marc and Britt, and/or, would you share with our audience a little broader world view about this transgenic product and food production particularly explaining how the third world nations and other subsistent farmers are really being dragged down the tube by, what I can only look at as multinational and corporately manipulated government policy.

Britt: I'll take a shot at that. Right now we've got 65 million acres world wide that are genetically engineered. 50 million of those belong to one company, Monsanto Company. There has been a large outcry, not only in Europe as most of us are aware of, but also in third world countries, such as India.

I think the main reason that you're finding such resistance in these countries is that these are patented plants for which farmers have to pay a premium. They also have to pay licensing and technology fees to even use the seed. For example, any farmer that plants a Roundup ready crop has to pay an $8.00 per acre fee directly back to the company that makes the seed.

For some of the other crops, such as the BT genetically engineered crops, they pay technology fees of up to $32.00 per acre. Now, these fees are outrageous prices for some of these farmers in other countries to pay, much less the premium that they're already paying for the seed.

Zoh: Well, if we could for a moment explain what we are concerned about. There has already been demonstration of these genetically manipulated seeds, particularly the ones that are treated with an antibiotic so that it no longer can produce itself after it's one growing season, is that it can kill off the natural seed bank in neighboring fields that farmers depend on for their - not only their livelihood, but just to stay alive.

Britt: That's exactly right. Certainly the equatorial stretch around the world contains about seven centers of biodiversity. The main concern in those areas is that the transgenic movement from the genetically engineered plants into weedy species will actually eliminate and extinguish a lot of the weedy species which are very important to us to overcome different blights we have in our domestication of agricultural crops.

Zoh: Exactly. And people think that anything we can do to get rid of the weed is the advantage -- not realizing that you're killing off a whole other part of the ecosystem that supports life on earth.

Marc: The so-called weeds, are often a progenitor crop from which we derive our valuable food crops and for which we repeatedly go back to in order to get genes for resistance to fungus and other blights.

Zoh: Let's take Jame's call from Florida and then I want to talk about what consumers can do.

The horrible acquisition of seed companies by these enormously large cartels. It's kind of like, now we fight oil wars, in the future we'll fight water wars, and after that we'll probably fight seed wars. James, welcome to the Zoh Show.

James: Thank you for taking the call, wonderful show as usual.

Zoh: Thank you.

James: I would like to ask your esteemed guests - I believe that there's another side to this that I don't know if they've investigated in the book, but there's a person - I think her first name is Geraldine, but Geraldine Bertalini who is the executive director for the United Nations World Food Authority, in addressing a certain she had quoted to me this quote, "food is power and we intend to use food to manipulate and change behavior." So, what I'm asking is there are some of us out here, I believe that some of the motives of the U.N. are sinister, not the greatest and they intend, I believe, to starve perhaps millions of people and to use food as power in the near future and I wonder if you could comment on that.

Zoh: Excellent question.

Marc: You should never underestimate the power of a food crop and who controls it. While we don't speak to the question of whether there's a particular risk of a particular country going under because of nefarious efforts on the part of anyone, we think it's a much more insidious problem. These corporations not only control the seed but insist in making trade agreements that, number one: no country may give their consent to being shipped genetically engineered seed. This was a decision that came out of the recent Conference where 135 countries said we want to just be able to say yes or no to seed from transgenic corporations. This was vetoed by the United States and its cronies. We were very concerned about that.

Zoh: Explain in simpler language - that simply means countries, because of the corporate pressure and through their lobbying and their buying out of administrations and politicians, could say that a nation doesn't have a right to keep their poison and take it home.

Marc: Exactly.

Britt: Exactly right.

Marc: Well put. And more to the point, Monsanto doubles up the penalty phase to this by saying that any farmer that buys their seed may not do research on the seed, may not resell the seed or give it away or provide it for their own family's use the next year if they want to replant the seed that they get from this years crop. And that point -- more than anything -- is what urks farmers throughout the world. This garnering of complete hegemony and control over a patented seed type is crazy.

It violates the norms by which agriculture has been practiced over the millennia. Farmers have always had the chance to make free choices about what to plant, when to plant, and when to replant seed that they themselves grow with the sweat of their brow.

Now, Monsanto has Pinkerton Guards going on crop fields and testing plants after a seed has been sold to a farmer; they have a hotline in the Mid-west where farmers can call in and report on their neighbors who they believe may be re-using seed from last years' crop. It's a terrible draconian system.

Zoh: Unbelievable.

Marc: One of the side bars to our book that I think the public really needs to read.

Zoh: Well, I do as well. Today day we were talking about the Health and Human Services and FBI trying to get seniors to become paid informants. We have the Federal Reserve trying to get the banks to become spies on it's customers. In California, as you know, kids are being paid a thousand dollars each if they turn in a student who smokes marijuana. I mean, this is Nazi -you know, extremism on a planetary wide scale.

James: Zoh, may I say something?

Zoh: Please, James.

James: My understanding too is that these huge multinational corporations and cartels etc. have bought up huge tracks of land and have basically - at least in America - pushed the independent farmer out.

Zoh: True.

James: Actually, my understanding is, that through satellites they can monitor already now who is doing what. And the idea is control.

Zoh: Yeah, well I think, James, you hit on the most nefarious of the reality which is the multinational corporation becoming the planetary government and they buy and underwrite. You know, I used to joke about, folks, Coca Cola having it's own armed military. Not if you read some of the treaty agreements, it's not that far fetched.

Now, coming back to what consumers can do and what active citizens can do who do believe in the sovereign right of the farmer to plant what they want, to do with their crop as they choose, and to make it as safe as possible. What are some of the things we have to start doing?

Britt: Well, I think one of the things that we should certainly push for in the United States is the need to get up to speed with what is occurring in other countries. Particularly the EU countries, European Union countries, and also Japan has come on line.

Zoh: I'll tell you what - I'm sorry, we have to take a quick commercial break. We'll come back, we'll give you all the tools of what we can do together to make our planet more just and sustainable right here on the Zoh Show.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Zoh: Welcome to the Zoh Show. I'm Zoh Hieronimus.

Our guests this hour have been Dr. Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey. Their book a Common Courage 1998 release entitled Against the Grain, Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food. It's a Common Courage release. You can call Common Courage directly at 1-800-497 3207.

Britt, before we got interrupted you were beginning to tell us - I said, well, what can consumers do who are concerned? And folks, I know you always say, you know, I bring you so many issues, and each is serious it's true, and not all of us can do anything about all of them -- but all us can pick one that we care about and get involved in it. For some of you who have been backyard farmers or gardeners, maybe this is the issue for you to work on and, if we all split up the task, I know we can make the earth a better place. All right, so what can those who are interested, and the average consumer do?

Britt: I think a really good tool to use at this point is the need for disclosure statements on genetically engineered foods because there hasn't been long term chronic toxicity testing of these products. I think that people should push for labeling. And I think that the consumer should, whether they want genetically engineered foods or not, be allowed to vote with their pocket books.

Currently in the United States there is no labeling of genetically modified food products, but as some people probably know, in the European Union there is labeling and Japan has also just passed regulations where they will require labeling of all genetically modified organisms.

Zoh: And in terms of our right to know, which for me is the ethical question, and knowing that you were both involved in the issue of the Center for Ethics and Toxins, let's talk about that for a moment. Whatever happened to informed consent in this country?

Marc: Well, the basic notion of informed consent is not only that people are informed, but they have a reasonable opportunity to make a free choice amongst alternatives. The alternatives exist out there. Right now it's organic food versus all manufactured food because there isn't any labeling to distinguish in that second category of produce which is and which is not genetically contaminated.

We also think that the major issue that's often missed in informed consent, something that goes back to the Nuremberg Code: you can't ask somebody for informed consent unless they're freely situated to give that consent. And in this country, and particularly in other countries that are being bound over to take genetically engineered food crops without disclosure that they are doing so, people are not in a free situation to say yes or no. And that's the major ethical issue that we think we identify in this field I expect a lot of people would be concerned about.

Zoh: Well, and I also think as we're watching these transnationals sort of take over, we're basically squeezing out competition. In our own country the small farm is being squeezed out by the multinational, then the organic farmer has a great deal more trouble competing and we see these humungous cartels, the oil cartels, becoming the seed cartels which means the oil wars we constantly fight now - because there is alternative technology - in the future we might fight seed wars, and famine, as I think we see in Korea and elsewhere, is a foreign policy and it is already being utilized.

So, let's talk about this whole notion of companies like Cargill and others sort of becoming these humongous transnationals affecting policy in all of the world's nations.

Marc: Our concern is that some of the most notorious chemical companies that have the worst track record of public disclosure and protection of public health; the ones who have given us Agent Orange, PCBs, Dioxins and other contaminants and toxic chemicals are at work here. These chemical companies, and they include DuPont, Monsanto, and others like Dow Chemical, are suddenly rediscovering the light, and switching over to become life science companies. They've split off subdivisions of multinational corporation size that will control the seed products of an entire nation.

We were astonished to see just this last week when Pioneer Hybrid Company - the largest producer of corn seed in the world - was suddenly gobbled up by DuPont Corporation. The reason we were concerned is that Pioneer was the only hold-out who said they don't want to get into the genetically engineered market because they don't want to restrict genetic diversity. We want to keep the ecosystem healthy. We're committed to the farmer and now, suddenly under pressure they're gone.

That's an astonishing problem, when chemical companies turn over this new leaf and become life science companies, one needs to be skeptical.

Zoh: And, are there organizations for those in my listening audience who say, look, I want to do something but I don't even know where to begin, are there some you can recommend they call?

Marc: Begin with us. We're on www.cetos.org. From us you can be linked to any of the organizations that are involved with the battle and the debate over the issues of the politics of transgenic crops. I think that would be one place to start. Britt, do you have another suggestion?

Zoh: And a phone number for those in our audience who may not have regular internet access.

Britt: Area code 707-884-1700. That's the main number into our office here.

Zoh: All right. Again, on the Internet, www.cetos.org or by phone 707-884-1700.

Britt: There are some other organizations which would be good for people to know about. There are certainly a lot of us out there that are working on this issue and those organizations are: The Union for Concerned Scientists; The Council for Responsible Genetics; and, The Rural Advancement Foundation International. There are a number of others I don't have time to mention.

Zoh: All right. And in terms of the local consumer, what would be the best thing for them to do when they go to their grocery store or they go out for dinner, you know, how can the consumer in just their daily activities start to make people more aware of the issue itself?

Britt: I think one of the things consumers need to realize, is that anytime they see vegetable oil listed as an ingredient on a food product, there is an 80% chance that that vegetable oil is soybean oil. Now, the soybeans in the United States, of which we produce about 60 million acres every year, 30 million of them last year were Roundup ready soybeans.

Marc: That's 30 million acres.

Britt: 30 million acres. So, keep in mind when you go to the store if you look at any products such as Nabisco products, Proctor Gamble, Ross Labs which makes infant formula, soy based infant formula, Pillsbury and Frito Lay, those are some of the companies that we have verified that are quote, not discriminating against genetically engineered soy or corn products. Which means that they are using them.

Zoh: And for the audience that has just tuned in, explain what the hazard is of these genetically engineered by-product of soybean, in this case oil?

Marc: Well, we would like to be the first to tell you, but nobody really knows. We were one of the few organizations that's conducted actual hands on research to look at what happens to the nutrient quality of plants like soybeans after they've been genetically engineered and sprayed with herbicides. And our work which is in publication at the moment, will show that there are some changes in the key components of soybeans that people often look for when they eat this as a product. That is the so called phytoestrogen or components in soy that help women to combat bone loss and help maintain a healthy heart/cardiovascular system.

The levels of the chemicals that we find in genetically engineered soybeans are diminished over what the consumer might previously have expected. There's no label to tell them that. That's a major concern of ours and if verified with further testing it's a big issue, because it means the FDA made a big snafu in the early 90s when it deregulated soybeans on the assurance from Monsanto that they were absolutely equivalent to conventional soybeans.

Zoh: Now, let me ask you with the few moments remaining, because I think it only fair, if somebody said all right, now Zoh, Marc and Britt, you just spent a whole hour telling us about some of the problems, but the big picture overall, your bottom line concern if this genetically transmuted or genetically manipulated food is not stopped, what is the worst case scenario from your point of view?

Marc: The worst case scenario is: (1) That we would have prematurely committed the entire industry to a crop that isn't any good. (2) That we would have not done adequate environmental testing to determine the spread of these genes. (3) That we wouldn't have done enough testing on nutrient qualities or the possible toxicity of residues that might be found in these plants because they've been so saturated with a single chemical that they've been sprayed with.

Those are the three things that I would say are the major concern.

Of course, another major concern is monopolies. The entire industry instead of being controlled by the small farmer and by consumer choice, is being dominated by corporate greed.

Zoh: Yeah, I think that summarizes it pretty well. And for me it's the loss of sovereignty and the ability to sustain life without somebody's permission. What about you Britt? You have anything you want to add to this worst case scenario concern?

Britt: I think what I continually see, as being in part of the environmental movement, is the long term subtle effects that occur from changes in the ecosystem. I'm just concerned that 50 years down the road we'll have a lot of genes and a lot of plants out there we can't recall that aren't necessarily providing the nutrient base we need.

Zoh: Yeah, and of course, the impact on the entire food chain system because once you get a mutated crop impacting a once healthy crop and then a once healthy insect becoming a mutated insect impervious to the pesticide in the crop, and then some other animal eats that insect and then you eat that animal, eventually get mutated humans. Because I believe, ultimately folks, what I've always said, what we do to the earth we do to ourselves.

Our guests - you've done a great job. I want to thank you.

What a commitment to humanity. Against the Grain by Dr. Marc Lappe and Britt Bailey. A Common Courage publication. You can order it yourself by calling 1-800-497-3207. Plant your liberty gardens folks and support your organic farmers and know I love you.

END OF INTERVIEW