Viewpoint: Anti-GMO activists, from Organic Consumers Association to Joe Mercola to Vandana Shiva, formed an alliance. Why this is good news for biotech and science supporters

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Alliances and networks are the new game plan among anti-GM activists. Recently, Organic Consumers Association [read GLP profile] head Ronnie Cummins announced that his organization was joining with Joe Mercola at Mercola.com [read GLP profile], Navdanya (run by Indian philosopher and technology rejectionist Vandana Shiva [read GLP profile]), Organic and Natural Health Association and Regeneration International (itself an amalgam of hundreds of activist groups).

It’s a stunning development. All of these groups are notorious not just for anti-GMO, pro-organic activism, but for their many false claims that genetically modified (or gene-edited) crops pose health dangers. Mercola is known for his ‘health advice’ website that serves as a vehicle to sell supplements and “natural” cures based on alternative medicine that are far outside the mainstream. Shiva is more recently known for her activism and role in the economic, agricultural and political disaster that unfolded this year in Sri Lanka, which under her guidance banned agro-chemical fertilizers and many key crop pesticides in a since-abandoned plan to go all organic.

screen shot at amAll of them have dabbled in fringe science, especially in recent years, including vaccine rejectionism — not just of COVID vaccines but childhood shots as well. The New York Times for one labeled Mercola “The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation” online.

So why this alliance? According to the OCA, it’s to “defend ourselves, farmers and consumers alike, from the increasing assault and collateral damage of ‘profit-at-any cost’ genetic engineering products and practices (foods and crops, ‘gain of function’ experiments, bioweapons, gene-therapy vaccines, geo-engineering, et al.) that are promoted by the global elite as ‘solutions’ to our problems.” Specifically, the targets are (in the words of the alliance):

  • “Fake meat and dairy” or “precision fermentation” and “plant-based protein,” which OCA says is “basically unregulated and unlabeled.”
  • Synthetic biology, “greenwashed and packaged as the solution to world hunger, rural poverty and the climate crisis.”
  • The “Great Reset,” of which synthetic biology is a part, is under attack as  a tool of anti-organic farming interests. The “great Resetters” include Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, World Economic Forum, “Silicon Valley,” Bayer, Syngenta (et al.)  and “transnational food giants.”
  • Creating an alternative narrative to counteract the pro-science misinformers who OCA says is trying to “eliminate the animal agriculture and animal husbandry practices carried out by a billion small farmers and pastoralists across the globe.”

Alliance throws its support behind meat production rather than plant-based alternatives

Plant-based meats, a widely-embraced and fast-growing part of the food sector, is a major target because of two reasons: 1) Some of the products, such as the soy-based Impossible Burger, utilize genetically engineered components (e.g., yeast-derived heme); and 2) Shifting to a more plant-based diet, which many nutritionists recommend and which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, would be disastrous. Who would benefit from this transition? According to Cummins, “megalomaniac Great Resetters, power drunk and flush with cash after COVID-19 … are ignoring the fact that the world’s 70 billion farm animals are essential to rural livelihoods, human nutrition, and the health of the soil (animal manure in compost and proper grazing).”

Cummins also blames what he calls “industrial agriculture” for “food related chronic diseases,” without stating what those are, let alone providing evidence in support of his broad brush claim. The World Health Organization does actually have a definition of chronic disease that are related to diet, as do other health associations. These include obesity, diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. Most of these are ascribed to a sedentary lifestyle matched with eating too much fat, including meat fats, and over-processed sugar-containing foods. How boycotting a soy-based burger would address these health issues is unclear.

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Cummins correctly notes that farm animals “properly raised and natured” are needed to regenerate carbon, nitrogen and water. However, the key point is how they are “properly raised and nurtured.” Proponents of genetically modified livestock (which is not the same thing as “fake meat”) look to alter traits to protect animal welfare, help decrease animal waste, reduce the acreage necessary to raise animals, or increase their meat yields (traditional stock raising methods do this, too).

The pro-meat alliance also does not address rising concerns about the amount of land that meat and dairy producing animals require. Land that does not have to be turned over to animal rearing can be preserved as wildland, or used for other crops — a key issue in sustainable agriculture that these activists ignore entirely.

What about climate change issues?

When it comes to threats from global warming, Cummins and his fellow travelers appear oblivious to the current science. He incorrectly claims “50% of greenhouse gas emissions come from industrial agriculture,” which to him means all non-organic farming. That’s factually incorrect. The actual percentage in the United States is 11% (globally, it is about 24%). In fact, no single source on the planet is responsible for more than 27% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Much of what Cummins says to justify this coalition is boilerplate pro-organic propaganda — and is, ironically, harmful to the growing but still fragile organic industry.  Like many organic advocates, Cummins promotes the belief that organic farms are necessarily small while conventional farms are mammoth (or “industrial”, using ideological terminology). But according to 2020 USDA data, most farms in the US are on the medium to small side. In the US, the average farm runs about 444 acres, while the average organic farm is three-quarters as large, about 333 acres.

Ronnie Cummins. Credit: Global Earth Repair Foundation

Ironically, one of the fastest-growing segments of the farm economy in the developed world is so-called “Big Industrial Organic Farms” — which is not a bad thing, as there are in some circumstances a range of advantages in terms of both production and sustainability to large-scale farming. Two big corporate organic growers in California — Earthbound Farms and Grimmway Farms — dominate the U.S. market for organic produce. Earthbound grows 80 percent of the organic lettuce sold in the U.S. Big Industrial Organic food chain proponents argue that the scale of a farm has little bearing on its adherence to organic principles — which is probably true for the most part. Cummins’ broadside against ‘industrial farming’ is not only factually incorrect, it is an attack on the heart of organic farming in developed countries.

So, what is the hyped “Great Reset” that Cummins et al. fear so much?

According to this new initiative, Bill Gates and his like-minded lemmings are doing a lot more harm than just promoting “industrial agriculture” and genetic engineering of seeds. According to the World Economic Forum, the “Great Reset” is an economic plan to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. But according to the new Cummins alliance, and echoing rightwing conspiracy postings popular on the Internet, a global elite is using the coronavirus pandemic to enforce radical social change, including forcing farmers to adopt genetically modified seeds.

That’s boilerplate conspiracy theory, where the technology-rejectionist far left joins with the conspiracy-minded far right. The Great Reset is actually far more benign and yet potentially of great benefit. As WEF outlines:

This initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of the leaders engaged across the Forum’s communities, the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.

According to WEF, some “reset” examples include Tanzania recycling plastic into face shields for healthcare workers, teachers in India trying to keep education going in the face of lockdowns, and switching to renewable energy. For agriculture, the “reset” does include shifting our diets slightly, away from meat-based food sources, citing the 15% of greenhouse gases that come from livestock globally, and problems from zoonotic diseases. It also looks for ways to eliminate plastics from the soil, and improving the performance and environmental record of aquaculture. None of these Great Reset initiatives are particularly controversial or radical — unless you are a right-wing or left-wing fringe conspiracist.

Who are the key players in this ideologically fringe but popular new alliance?

As for Regeneration International, it too is a new confederation of organic, agroecology and natural health advocates, formed in 2014, but growing significantly in recent years as the ‘regenerative agriculture’ movement has gone mainstream and global. Its steering committee members are the fringiest of the fringe,  including Cummins, Shiva, Hans Herren from Millennium Institute, Steven Rye of Mercola, and Audre Leu from Organics International (aka IFOAM). The group now includes 360 organizations in 70 countries.

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Will this alliance gambit work?

We are in tumultuous times in food and farming with many societal and economic shifts. The war in Ukraine, food price spikes and the resulting supply chain issues have put the organic movement back on its heels. Shiva’s failed Sir Lankan experiment — the now fallen government, suffused with organic fervor, banned many widely used (and effective and safe) crop chemicals almost overnight, crushing its farm economy and sparking a recession that could last for many years — has been sobering to agricultural policymakers. Thinking pragmatically about food production, “organic only” political movements in Europe, Africa and even the US are on the defensive.

Recent droughts and increased concerns about climate changes have also prompted many governments, even in anti-GMO Europe, to recalibrate the risks and rewards of classic genetic modification and new techniques such as CRISPR gene editing. In the European Union, scientists and even a few government officials have endorsed the safety and benefits of GM crops and food, although the EU Parliament and member government rules remain strictly anti-GM. Climate change concerns and sustainability trade-offs are expanding the conversation about what agricultural practices make the most sense in fast-changing world. African countries, including Kenya, which recently approved GM crops after a 10-year ban, and India, which just approved its first GM crops in 20 years, are among many countries now looking at further loosening regulations to permit growing and import of genetically modified crops.

Considering the impact of the recent economic upheavals, this conspiracy-soaked organization seems out-of-step with current economic and sustainability trends; it smacks of desperation not innovation. Why is happening now? It may be a defensive move to prevent further erosion in the organic-only movement. Although it’s not yet clear how the last few years of COVID and war have impacted the finances of anti-biotechnology, organic promoting campaigners, according to US Internal Revenue Service tax reports, many of these groups have shown steep declines in fundraising over the past few years. The Organic Consumers Association, for example, showed revenues of $2.8 million for fiscal 2020 (the most recent data available to the public), scare-mongering on food and agriculture may have hit a wall. OCA is down from more than $4 million as recently as 2016, when the anti-GMO movement was more influential). Regeneration International, showed revenues of just $197,800 in 2020 (and a negative income stream), down more than half, from $407,000 the previous year.

It’s not clear that all innovation rejectionists are in retreat. Mercola.com, which operates on the conspiracy fringes and doesn’t report on the IRS 990 (the standard tax disclosure form for non-profits), may even have leveraged the ‘disinformation economy’ to improve their finances But there is no doubt this is a time of ferment, and influential conspiracy-promoting groups are rejiggering to survive. That means we can expect and even louder attack on genetic innovation in agriculture in food in the coming months.

As in the case of the failed experiment in Sir Lanka, this coalition appears misguided and ill-timed. With food prices spiraling upward and climate change concerns growing, the goals of the alliance come across as radical, out of step with mainstream science, and potentially destabilizing.  Yet the views of the Organic Consumers Association, Shiva, Mercola and the like are increasingly mainstream among many organic proponents. This initiative is just the latest example of the extreme views of many organic supporters — not only out of step with mainstream science, particularly on climate change, but aligned with disinformation proponents. Journalists, the public and policymakers around the world are noticing.

Andrew Porterfield is a writer and editor and agriculture editor of the Genetic Literacy Project. He has worked with numerous academic institutions, companies and non-profits in the life sciences. BIO. Follow him on Twitter @AMPorterfield

This article first appeared on the GLP October 25, 2022.

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