Growing Concerns

This superseed -- the offspring of Monsanto's union with one of the oldest seed companies in the country, Delta and Pine Land of Mississippi -- would reduce the need for airplanes dusting costly pesticides on the cotton fields below, at least for the bollworm and the budworm. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a toxic bacterium long used topically by organic farmers, was now part of the plant's genetic makeup. Rain couldn't wash it off. Sun and wind wouldn't break it down. The unsuspecting caterpillars would never know what hit them. After a few innocent bites, a dose of hidden toxin would rend the pests' stomach walls like razor blades, killing the bugs within three days.

In early 1996, St. Louis-based Monsanto gathered together farmers at lunch meetings throughout the cotton belt and pressed the gospel of Bt cotton. Gary Conn, a fourth-generation cotton farmer who leases more than 1,000 acres in the Brazos River Valley, the most fertile farmland in the Lone Star state, wanted to believe in the new technology.

Conn had lost more than $100,000 on his regular cotton crop the previous year due to drought. Bt cotton would not only save him close to $20,000 by eliminating the need to spray for budworm and bollworm, it would also, according to Monsanto, jump yields by close to 20 percent. "I figured I could cut my costs $70 to $80 an acre, plus an increase in yields," Conn says. Conn had long depended on industry experts and company seed representatives for farming advice, and he didn't doubt Monsanto's claims, which were backed up by university scientists who had tested the Bt seed in the field. Conn and other Brazos River Valley growers planted entire fields with the new crop, more than 20,000 acres in all.

As soon as the seedlings broke ground, Conn knew there was a problem. The plants were coming up spotty, with disappointing gaps in the field. At a heated meeting in June, growers accused Monsanto and Delta Pine of pushing junk seed. The salesmen answered that the seed had an unusually thick outer shell and needed more than the normal amount of moisture to germinate. Not to worry, they said. This was still an excellent product.

Then, in early July, Conn's bug man brought more bad news. The Bt had worked fine on the budworm but was failing to hold back the bollworm. They would need to spray. A telegram arrived a few days later from Monsanto telling Conn and other cotton farmers what they already knew: Bug counts are high. Monitor your fields.

Five sprayings later, Conn harvested one of his worst cotton crops in memory, less than half his normal yield. He blames bad weather and the failure of the new seed to ward off a heavy bollworm infestation. "We all wanted to believe," Conn says. "We all thought that this technology might be the magic bullet. Well, it didn't work."

Monsanto Chairman and CEO Robert Shapiro makes a compelling case for genetic engineering. "How are you going to feed 10 to 12 billion people a decent diet when in fact there will not only be no more acreage available to produce that food, there may very well be less?" he asked the Society of Environmental Journalists in an October 1995 speech.

But Monsanto also views the fast-growing industry (20 percent annually by some estimates) as a way to stay a step ahead of increasing regulations on pesticides and maintain market dominance. Over the past two decades, Monsanto has positioned itself as the industry leader, spending at least $1.5 billion on genetic research in a bid to grab the lion's share of what could be an $8 billion-a-year market for DNA-enhanced farm products. In 1996 alone, Monsanto spent close to $600 million either buying or heavily investing in small genetic engineering firms. The company is so enamored with the new technology that it is considering dropping its flagship chemical division.

Monsanto's patented Bt cotton seed, along with its new soybean, was one of the first genetically engineered major commodity crops to be tried in commercial fields. Transgenic corn and potatoes were planted this past season; wheat is due next fall.

Monsanto and other biotech companies are working with public universities to develop biotech farm products in four basic areas: crops genetically engineered to produce their own insecticides, like Bt cotton; crops altered to resist disease; crops modified for better nutritional value; and crops engineered to withstand direct applications of popular weed killers.

Preventing pest resistance from occurring is the responsibility of the Environmental Protection Agency, which, along with the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is charged with regulating new crops. But critics say the EPA has regularly caved in to pressure from Monsanto and other seed companies and approved genetically engineered products without taking adequate measures to guard against pest resistance and other dangers.

Furthermore, the university scientists who initially test the seeds in the field are often faced with conflicts of interest. (Cuts in public funding for research and regulatory oversight have left the door open for industry -- specifically a handful of companies including Monsanto, Northrup King, American Cyanamid, Ciba -- Geigy, Rhone -- Poulenc, and Dow -- to lead the headlong rush into genetic engineering and control the entire lab-to-field-to-table process.) By giving money to a specific scientist at a specific university, a company can fund the field research it needs to determine the potential of a specific product. In many cases, the company then uses the scientist to attest to the virtues of the biotech product.

Farmers trying to decide whether to take the leap into biotech crops lean heavily on university researchers for scientific analysis of a product's pros and cons. But if that recommendation and governmental regulation have been influenced by industry dollars -- and university scientists working for companies lose sight of farmers' interests -- the process becomes tainted in a way that can harm agriculture and ultimately affect consumers.

Due to its well-publicized foray into biotechnology, Monsanto's stock rose 71 percent in 1996. The company claims that the Brazos River Valley crop and other Bt cotton failures scattered throughout the South are anomalies, brought on by unusually high bollworm counts. "The dynamics of a biological system like this are very complex," says Randy Deaton, the product development manager for cotton at Monsanto. "We can put some explanations on why some farmers had to spray, but to be quite honest, there's no hard data one way or the other." Thirteen of Conn's fellow cotton growers don't buy that excuse and have filed a class-action suit against Monsanto, Delta Pine, and other companies, alleging they rushed Bt cotton to market and used a slick promotional campaign to cover up its flaws. The plaintiffs also claim the companies have misrepresented the success of last summer's Bt cotton harvest in public statements. "I've met farmers in Louisiana, farmers in central Mississippi who won't be planting this stuff again," says Philip K. Maxwell, the plaintiffs' attorney. "I was in one field where the Bt cotton had grown 9 feet high, straight up like a bean stalk with no fruit. It was crazy-looking. Freak cotton."

Deaton denies that Monsanto misled farmers: "It would be very silly for us to do that. You might convince a farmer to buy Bt cotton once, but if it doesn't work in the field like you said, he's not going to come back next year. And we need return buyers."

But Texas A&M entomologist John Benedict, who helped Monsanto research Bt cotton, says he and other scientists told the company in advance that there were problems with Bt cotton. "They should have done a few more years of research before taking the product public," Benedict says. "There was a little too much hype and not enough caution."

Monsanto had come to Texas A&M in 1990 with several different cotton seeds the company wanted to test in the field, each seed inserted with a different DNA sequence. It was Benedict's job to determine which clone performed the best in a series of trials -- plant growth, fruit production, insect control.

Starting in 1991, Benedict reported his annual findings back to the company, speaking mostly of Bt cotton's great promise. But he says he also pointed out that Bt cotton wasn't providing an airtight defense against the bollworm. "We got pretty high levels of damage in the test plots," he says.

"I believed there were problems controlling bollworms with Bt cotton," says Benedict. "That information never got passed on to the farmers, at least not sufficiently."

In a Delta Pine-Monsanto brochure distributed to farmers, Bt cotton was touted as the nearest thing to fail-safe. Another promotional brochure contained a picture of the worms, with the caption: "You'll see these in your cotton and that's okay. Don't spray."

Benedict blames the system. "The universities are cheering us on, telling us to get closer to industry, encouraging us to consult with big business. The bottom line is to improve the corporate bottom line. It's the way we move up, get strokes.... We can't help but be influenced from time to time by our desire to see certain results happen in the lab."

Private industry contributes 10 percent of Texas A&M's whopping $41 million annual agricultural research budget, and Benedict says he knew Monsanto was contributing money to his research. "All of these companies have a piece of me," Benedict says. "I'm getting checks waved at me from Monsanto and American Cyanamid and Dow, and it's hard to balance the public interest with the private interest. It's a very difficult juggling act, and sometimes I don't know how to juggle it all."

Under a banner of global competitiveness, this new relationship between academia, business, and government encourages universities to waste no time converting their science into patent rights. Previously, such research had been considered public property. Any patents that emerged typically were held by government. Indeed, so ingrained was this public ethos that when Jonas Salk was asked who owned the patent to his polio vaccine, he responded incredulously, "The people, I would say. Could you patent the sun?"

Today, however, universities are quick to license patent rights to companies for profit-making. These same companies, meanwhile, award grants to university entomologists and geneticists to conduct research on future products.

Often, critics say, it doesn't take a great deal of money to entice a university department or scientist over to the corporate side, particularly in this time of state and federal funding cuts. "Universities are more than ever hunting for corporate money, and while that money may be a small percentage of the overall budget, it's often enough to influence the direction of public science,'' explains Kathleen Merrigan of the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, a nonprofit research and education organization based in Washington, D.C. "Corporate money can be the tail that wags the dog." For example:

In 1985, Cornell University agreed to do research on bovine growth hormone (BGH) for Monsanto. Tess Hooks, a sociologist at the University of Western Ontario whose graduate work at Cornell dealt with scientific ethics, reviewed the agreement between Cornell and Monsanto.

According to Hooks, the university would test BGH on dairy cows and report the findings to Monsanto, which would present its case to the FDA. The government agency would then decide if the hormone -- which increases a cow's milk production -- created any health risks to cows or milk consumers. But before Cornell received the $557,000 grant from Monsanto, Hooks says, it essentially had to agree to hand over control of its research to the biotech company.

Computers in the university's dairy barn sent the raw data directly to Monsanto in St. Louis. According to Hooks, the company, rather than the university's principal research scientist, controlled and interpreted the data. "I couldn't believe that a university would agree to such restrictions," says Hooks.

At North Carolina State University, a miniscandal erupted three years ago when several professors were found to be moonlighting as paid consultants to Rhone-Poulenc, Monsanto, and American Cyanamid -- at the same time the professors were evaluating the companies' biotech products for the university. One distinguished weed science professor, Harold Coble, appeared in a Rhone-Poulenc marketing brochure singing the virtues of the company's genetically engineered cotton plant and its companion herbicide, bromoxynil. "There isn't a downside to the BXN," he says in the brochure.

As a result of the controversy, the university instituted a policy requiring faculty to report on a yearly basis any potential conflicts of interest, such as consulting for a chemical company.

Other scientists who have done research for biotech companies dismiss these examples as anomalies. "Practically all of my money for research comes from industry, but I've never done anything to help a company promote its product," says Daniel Colvin, a University of Florida agronomist. "If you manipulate the truth, it takes only one season on the farm to find out that the product doesn't work like you said it would. After one bad season, your credibility with the farmer is shot."

But in some cases it is difficult to tell where public research ends and the company's marketing begins.

Take, for example, the August 25, 1996, letter from Ron H. Smith, an entomologist at Auburn University, that Monsanto faxed to Mother Jones in support of its Bt cotton. "Weeks from now," Smith wrote, "when the last bale of the 1996 cotton crop is harvested...producers finally will have time to pause and reflect on the revolution that has gripped their profession. The results, so far, have been astonishing.... The proof, as they say, is in the pudding -- or, in this case, the [farmer's] pocketbook."

Although the letter bore Smith's signature, an Auburn public relations official actually wrote it for him. When asked if he received any funding from Monsanto for his research, Smith replied, "No, not directly." However, Mother Jones found university records indicating that Monsanto gave $500,000 to Auburn University between 1991 and 1996; $26,000 was earmarked for projects listing Smith's name. When asked again, Smith confirmed the information, saying he had misunderstood the original question.

The EPA maintains it made a safe bet with Bt cotton but admits it is still an unknown. "It's out there for commercial use," says Elizabeth Milewski, a spokeswoman for the EPA. "But at this time, we don't know what the real story is." Milewski points out that further evaluation of the crop is entirely dependent on Monsanto's own reporting. According to Lynn Goldman, the EPA official in charge of approving genetically engineered crops, a possible danger of an insufficiently tested Bt cotton seed is that it won't produce a strong enough dose of the toxin to deliver a fatal blow to the worms. This could rapidly lead to increased resistance, ending the usefulness of Bt.

"Our scientists feel that you could possibly see insect resistance in three to five years unless some careful steps are taken to prevent it," says Goldman. In July, she requested that Monsanto submit further testing on the bollworms that survived on last summer's Bt cotton crop. As of press time, the results had not yet been reviewed.

The EPA has taken some steps to try to inhibit the development of pest resistance to Bt. For example, the agency required farmers to plant a small plot of non-Bt cotton within their Bt fields. In theory, such "refuges" ensure that some of the mating bugs do not feast on Bt cotton, thereby watering down the resistance potential of the bug population. Farmers are expected to comply because when they buy the seed, they grant Monsanto the right to inspect their farms.

But another EPA staffer candidly admits the refuge theory was untried -- and the EPA's evaluation of its success, like the bollworm report, is dependent on information supplied by Monsanto. "The problem is that, based on science and the theories, this is untested," says the staffer. "So what's our guarantee of enforceability? Do we wait until we're absolutely sure, or do we take our best professional judgment with all its bells and whistles and see what happens? Monsanto put [refuge requirements] in the contracts with the farmers, but the EPA can't regulate what the farmers do in the fields."

In fields across the country, genetically pumped-up crops -- from a virus-resistant yellow crookneck squash to transgenic wheat -- are being groomed for market. And hundreds more are in the pipeline, some implanted with the genes of animals -- such as new varieties of corn, soybeans, oats, rice, apples, broccoli, cucumbers, lettuce, melons, raspberries, strawberries, papayas, and plums. There's even transgenic seafood in the works, including genetically altered salmon, prawns, catfish, and abalone.

Even biotech supporters concede that there is no way to predict the health and environmental consequences of this transgenic stampede. "It's scary. We're so caught up in the pyrotechnics that we tend to forget that what we are doing here is altering the genetic codes of living things," says Sharad Phatak, a plant researcher at the University of Georgia.

"When you insert a foreign gene, you are changing the whole metabolic process," he adds. "You just don't change one thing. Each change is going to have an effect on other pathways. Will that one gene kick off a whole slew of changes? We don't know for sure."