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How are we going to feed a growing world
population? This question has preoccupied the human race since 1798 when it was
raised in one of the most famous essays in science. Thomas Malthus looked at the
human condition and discovered that population growth is exponential while
growth in food production is linear. From this observation he drew a simple
conclusion – absent some outside intervention, the human population would
reach unsustainable levels and face widespread starvation.
Fortunately, some outside force has intervened to prevent this nightmarish future from becoming reality. We are it. The incredible ingenuity of humans has been applied to this problem with spectacular success.
In 1798 Malthus could not know that the seeds of our salvation would be planted in the garden of an Austrian monk a few decades later. With his experiments on peas, Gregor Mendel inaugurated the science of genetics. When the world finally recognized the implications of Mendel’s genius, genetics became the foundation of modern agriculture.
Building on Mendel’s work, scientists used plant breeding techniques to improve crop varieties and boost yields. In the United States, wheat yields doubled and corn yields tripled in the second half of the century.
But the most striking example of the potential of this new science comes from half a world away. In 1965, the Indian subcontinent was wracked by famine. Thanks to Norman Borlaug and his Green Revolution, by 1968 Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat and India became self-sufficient only a few years later.
The Malthusian threat has been kept at bay by the Mendelian legacy, but as you well know, the fight against hunger is not over. The human population is still growing, so crop production will also have to increase if we are to continue to outrace hunger. By 2025, the world population could reach 8.3 billion people. To meet the projected food demand for that population growth scenario, Dr. Borlaug has estimated that world grain production will have to increase by about 40 percent.
In the meantime, 800 million people suffer from malnourishment today. Their next meal will not come from science and technology. For too many, it will come from food aid if it comes at all.
The United States provides more than half of total global food assistance. We have one objective in providing food aid: sharing our abundance with those less fortunate in the world who suffer from hunger and malnourishment. The PVO community is a vital partner in our efforts – identifying needs, distributing food, and fighting every step of the way just to continue doing what you do.
Lately, our collective efforts to provide food assistance to those in need have been made more difficult by a campaign against biotechnology. Activist groups have been protesting the use of crops derived from biotechnology as food aid. Several developed countries have also spoken out against the presence of biotech crops in food aid.
This campaign has had a chilling impact. Last year the Government of Zambia, with 2.9 million people facing starvation, banned the importation and distribution of food aid containing products derived from biotechnology. As a result, U.S. corn shipments have been blocked and Zambia continues to face a severe shortfall in meeting its food needs. Zimbabwe, with 12.5 million people facing starvation, initially banned biotech corn but eventually decided to permit the distribution of milled corn. India has banned distribution of corn-soy blend that might contain biotech ingredients despite being presented with ample evidence that the product presents no food safety risks. In other countries, such as Uganda and Bolivia, food aid shipments have been temporarily halted because of concerns about the inclusion of biotech foods.
We can hope these disruptions are temporary and the opposition to biotech food aid subsides, but the signs are not good. Already some activist groups are demanding that the Iraq relief effort exclude biotech commodities.
Recipient countries have raised a number of concerns about the presence in food aid of products derived from biotechnology.
We have heard concerns that consumption of these products could be harmful to humans. Some countries are concerned that farmers will plant corn provided as food aid. Planting biotech corn is a problem for them either because they fear environmental problems or because they fear their exports to destinations such as Europe will be affected. Some do not have a specific concern, they simply want to exercise their right to approve biotech foods before they are imported or distributed. Others want biotech food aid labeled.
If the issue is not going to go away on its own, we need to address it. The disruptions are preventing us from getting food aid to needy people and are draining scarce resources from PVOs and government agencies.
Within the Administration we have had ongoing discussions on the subject of biotech food aid. We have also met with PVOs to listen to your concerns. In these discussions we have not found any easy answers, but we have developed a strategy for addressing the issue and trying to minimize the impact of concerns about biotechnology on the distribution of food aid.
1. We cannot provide non-biotech food aid.
The first point to make is that every shipment of U.S. food aid containing corn or soy products potentially contains products derived from biotechnology. That will not change. Biotech crops are not segregated from conventional crops in the United States. Once a new biotech variety passes through our approval system, it can be planted anywhere in the country without further restriction. Because over one third of our corn acreage and over two-thirds of our soybean acreage are planted to biotech varieties, it is virtually impossible to source U.S. corn or soybeans that are 100 percent non-biotech.
It is possible to source identity preserved shipments of corn and soybeans that are non-biotech within a certain threshold. However, identity preservation will not resolve the food aid problem. It is prohibitively expensive and it does not satisfy the zero tolerance standard that most countries have for health and safety requirements.
If recipients demand only non-biotech corn or soy products, the U.S. government cannot meet that demand. Because we cannot provide non-biotech corn or soy products, it follows that we cannot certify that a shipment is non-biotech.
2. Provide safe food
Second, while we cannot provide non-biotech food aid, we can and do provide safe food aid. Non-biotech food products are not safer than biotech foods. Every biotech crop currently produced in the United States has undergone a thorough safety evaluation. Our food aid donations are procured from the same commodity stocks that supply the U.S. food system. The food we donate is no different than the food consumed by 280 million Americans.
The safety of biotech food crops has been confirmed by every credible scientific investigation undertaken. The World Health Organization, the scientific academies of North America and Europe, the Third World Academy of Science, the OECD, the Vatican, and even the European Union have all declared that biotech foods are as safe as their conventional counterparts.
The 140 members of the Codex Alimentarius Commission have developed a consensus on the appropriate procedures for evaluating the food safety of biotech crops. The U.S. evaluation process is fully consistent with these guidelines.
Some countries have raised concerns about the presence of Starlink in U.S. corn products supplied as food aid. The levels of Starlink in the U.S. corn supply are so low that they are considered no more than trace levels. Nevertheless, the Farm Service Agency requires as a contract condition that all corn procured for food aid must test negative for the presence of Starlink.
We have informed the Government of India that we are prepared to certify that the corn used in every shipment of corn-soy blend to India has tested negative for the presence of Starlink. To date, our offer has had no impact on the Indian ban, suggesting that India’s concern is something other than a legitimate food safety one.
3. Information
Third, we can provide information about biotechnology and U.S. food aid. The confusion some countries are experiencing over biotechnology is understandable. Opponents of biotechnology have been deliberately spreading misinformation. The misinformation is particularly troubling when it comes from people acting under the color of their official position, like Mr. Jean Ziegler, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, who asserted that NGOs are a more credible source of information on the safety of biotech foods than the WHO.
The Administration has an aggressive public diplomacy and outreach program on biotechnology. We have already spent $55 million over the last two fiscal years on biotech initiatives in the developing world. The Farm Bill signed by the President last year authorized the appropriation of $6 million to USDA to help with these efforts, which we hope to see included in the fiscal year 2004 budget.
The food aid issue sprang up so quickly that we have not been able to fully adjust our programming to meet this new challenge. Nevertheless, last fall we hosted a group of biosafety experts from Zambia in a visit to the United States and earlier this year we sponsored a study tour to the United States and Brussels for a group of scientists and regulators from southern Africa. We intend to sponsor similar programs in the future and would welcome and encourage input from the PVO community as we organize them.
4. Capacity-building
Fourth, we have to help developing countries build their own capacity to undertake food and environmental safety evaluations for products derived from biotechnology. Over the next seven years, USAID will be managing a $105 million Collaborative Agriculture Biotechnology (CABio) program. USDA also intends to program some of the $6 million authorized in the Farm Bill for capacity building activities.
We recognize the sovereign right of every country to take measures to protect its citizens and its environment. However, these measures should be based on sound scientific principles and, as much as possible, should be consistent with international norms.
We also recognize that many developing countries, particularly those faced with a hunger crisis, do not have the capacity to conduct their own risk assessments for biotech crops and food products. We are not unsympathetic to the dilemma this creates for some countries, but the solution is not to ban biotech food aid. The food safety risks and environmental risks from food aid shipments are inconsequential, especially when compared to the scale of human suffering in countries that desperately need food aid to prevent starvation.
These measures should help to alleviate some of the concerns about biotech food aid. To the extent recipient countries have questions about the science, we believe those questions can be satisfactorily answered and we will strive to make the necessary information available. We will do what we can to minimize the impact of concerns about biotechnology on food aid working within our mandate of providing the most food aid possible with the finite resources available.
But if countries want to make a political issue out of biotech food aid, they will. We can’t stop them. They can continue to refuse to distribute biotech food aid, reject shipments, and demand labeling. They can continue to make our efforts more difficult, more costly, and less effective in providing desperately needed food to desperately hungry people.
But we will not back away from the technology. It is too important to our race against the Malthusian future. Science seldom works miracles overnight. Biotechnology has tremendous potential as a tool to help increase agricultural production and break the cycle of poverty and hunger that afflicts some of the world’s most disadvantaged areas. But it will take years if not decades of solid scientific work to develop the crops that the developing countries need to pull themselves out of poverty. If we back away from biotechnology now because of unfounded concerns about the safety of the food aid we are supplying, we are sacrificing the future of these countries.
We did not make food aid the battleground for biotechnology. The anti-biotech crowd did that. Our interest is in providing food to hungry people period. We will continue to provide food aid to the extent our resources, your efforts, and the cooperation of the recipient countries allows. If others want to stop us from providing food aid to hungry people, I think it is high time to start questioning their motives.
Whose interest is served when Greenpeace threatens to sue to stop the distribution of food aid in India? Whose interest is served when European NGOs encourage southern African countries not to accept food aid? They have already instilled fear in the minds of the European public out of some perverted sense of environmental propriety. Now they want to spread the fear to the rest of the world.
"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear," to quote Edmund Burke. The well-fed consumers of Europe can afford the luxury of irrational choices. The starving people of southern Africa cannot. Choices have consequences. To choose fear is to rob mankind of the most promising tool for agriculture we have seen. Even if it is the harder road, let’s choose science. Let’s choose hope.
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