AGBIOS :: HOME ::

While Monsanto stopped one biotech project, Europe approved another -- and that's the more important development.

There was big news in St. Louis in recent weeks and bigger news in New York, both items relating to the future of the world food supply.

But the biggest news of all was in Brussels, Belgium. We'll jet overseas on this "international food flight" in a minute, but first, let's make the domestic stops.

At Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis, the company decided to call off plans to sell genetically engineered wheat. Critics of biotech products hailed this as a big win, and in many ways, it was. But it was a battle, not the war - and if you're a Civil War buff, you'll know what it means to say this was Chancellorsville (which the South won), not Gettysburg (which the North won, before going on to win the war). Here's why.

Monsanto's decision was the free market at work; nothing more, nothing less. And the free market is an agent of change, which means Monsanto's decision can be reversed if market conditions change, as they seem likely to do.

Importantly, Monsanto did not abandon its plans because of any science-based worries about the product's impact on human health. No such worries had surfaced. Which isn't surprising, seeing as how not one health problem has arisen from the commercial use of any genetically modified plant, even though more than 300 million people in North America have been eating genetically modified canola, soybeans, corn and other products for years.

As a National Academy of Sciences committee concluded in 2001, "The committee is not aware of any evidence that the foods on the market are unsafe to eat as a result of genetic modification."

Instead, Monsanto based its decision on the fact that European and Japanese consumers are reluctant to eat genetically modified foods.

Which is where the news from New York came in.

All America knows of European countries' partiality toward the United Nations, in the wake of the run-up to the Iraq war. So it matters that one of biotech's strongest backers is none other than the United Nations itself.

Biotechology holds "great promise" for agriculture, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization reported Monday.

"It can provide farmers with disease-free planting materials and develop crops that resist pests and disease, reducing use of chemicals that harm the environment and human health."

In that, the U.N. organization echoed the findings of seven national academies of science from around the world, which, in 2000, spelled out the promise of biotech for feeding the world's poor. As a U.S. National Academies of Sciences summary put it, the "key to moving forward is responsible research, development and implementation of genetic modification technology for widespread agricultural use."

The weight of this evidence is starting to sink in. Which brings us to Brussels, where Wednesday, "the European Union lifted its 6-year-old ban on biotech products by approving imports of an insect-resistant strain of sweet corn for human consumption," The Associated Press reported.

Europeans, environmentalists and other current biotech foes embrace science's conclusions about climate change, extinction rates, acid rain and other technical topics. Sooner or later, they'll accept science's conclusions about biotechnology, too.

In fact, as the Brussels news showed, the dam has cracked, and the change is happening now.