MISREPRESENTING BIOTECH


Anti-biotechnology NGOs: Their significant distortions and omissions of facts are not limited to statements about the nature or risk of the technology itself. The activists also attempt in invidious ways to create a presumption of genuine controversy (where none exists) over the safety and usefulness of gene-splicing techniques.

For example, the Pew Initiative's 2003 report, "Public Sentiment About Genetically Modified Food," is a typically disingenuous pastiche of truisms, half-truths and sleight-of-hand. Their survey finds that "Americans' knowledge about [biotech] foods remains low," with 54 percent saying they have heard nothing or not much about them. Then, without enlightening the subjects or offering them any sort of proper context, the survey goes on to pose leading questions about safety and regulation. Not surprisingly, 89 percent agreed with the statement, "Companies should be required to submit safety data to the FDA for review, and no genetically modified food product should be allowed on the market until the FDA determines that it is safe."

This polling technique is rather like the example of Idaho junior high school student Nathan Zohner, who found that 86 percent of survey respondents thought the substance dihydrogen monoxide should be banned when told that prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage, exposure to its gaseous form causes severe burns, and it has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients. Only one in 50 of young Nathan's survey respondents correctly identified dihydrogen monoxide as water, or H2O. As any pollster (as well as common sense) will tell you, it's not hard to design survey questions to elicit a desired response, and Pew has incorporated that trick into their repertoire.

What the almost nine-in-ten respondents in Pew's survey undoubtedly do not recognize is that: 1) with the exception of wild berries, mushrooms and game, and fish and shellfish, virtually all the organisms—plants, animals, microorganisms—in our food supply have been modified by one genetic technique or another; 2) because the techniques of the new biotech are more precise and predictable than their predecessors, biotech foods are likely to be even more safe than other foods; 3) food producers are already legally responsible for assuring the safety of their products, and the FDA does not normally perform safety determinations, but primarily conducts surveillance of marketed foods and takes action if any are found to be adulterated or mislabeled, and; (4) unwarranted, excessive regulation, including unnecessary labeling requirements, discourages innovation, imposes costs that are passed along to the consumer and are a disproportionate burden on the poor. The Pew survey purposefully exploits consumers' (understandable) lack of familiarity with the nuances of both the new biotech and the way that food is currently regulated".

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