GMO-debate injects emotion into food science

His story is typical of those who preach the dangers of eating genetically modified organisms: Four years ago, Jared Keen lived on fast food and a daily jumbo soda. Since moving to a "plant-based diet," he has shed 140 pounds and says his health and mood have improved greatly. He became an evangelist of vegetables.

And it was while researching healthy eating that Keen read about genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs, and their prevalence in the nation's food supply. He also read about political movements that ask for all GMO food to carry a label. This spring, he filed paperwork to get an initiative on the Arizona ballot. His deadline to collect 172,809 signatures is 5 p.m. Thursday. Late this week, he estimated he had about 80,000 signatures.

GMOs are crops altered by introducing some specific genetic trait in a laboratory. They have become popular with farmers, typically because some alterations allow the plants to better repel pests or tolerate weed-killers.

The most common GMO crops — corn, soy and cotton — end up as oils and sugars in processed foods.

But they're loathed, or at least questioned, by many people who believe a lab-based alteration to a plant makes it something less than natural and that government assurances of safety can't be trusted.

"I think it's one of the greatest health disasters inflicted on Americans by an American corporation, ever," said Keen, who lives in Tucson. The corporation he was referring to is Monsanto, a St. Louis-based company that is among those that created genetically modified crops.

That combination — of those who embrace the idea of "natural" and those who question the protection of public officials — is driving a movement to affix a label to foods containing GMOs, whether or not studies or science give reason to provide what will amount to a warning for consumers.

It's why, in March, Keen found himself collecting petition signatures at Prepper Fest.

His table was among those offering information on dehydrated food, water purification and gun safes in anticipation of a disaster or anarchy. The anti-GMO message, with its undertones of corporate greed and government corruption, found a welcome audience at this exhibit hall on the state fairgrounds in Phoenix.

"There's never been an issue where you have the nexus of government inaction, corporate inaction and a political system that's unstable," he told a man from Flagstaff in a camouflage cap who stopped by his table. "This is your chance to make a stand and be part of this."

His words were punctuated by the sound of electric stun guns being sold at the table opposite him.

The petition drive is a long shot, Keen acknowledges. Still, he believes the effort is worth it. "If this does not make it onto the ballot," he said, "we are (still) being effective at educating a massive amount of people."

Francine Romesburg, facilitator of the GrassRoots Tea Party Activists of Glendale, stopped by the booth to greet volunteers. GMO opponents spoke to her group a few months back.

"Think about it. It's an easy way for the government to kill off people," Romesburg said. "Our government is trying to kill us through foods, and we're just trying to find out about it and they're trying to keep it from us."

Success and vilification

One of the earliest genetically modified crops was planted and tested in 1990 at a farm in Maricopa, southwest of Phoenix, run by University of Arizona scientists.

It was cotton. And Peter Ellsworth, director of the UACooperative Extension's pest-management center, said the crop came along just in time to save one of the state's industries.

By the mid-1990s, the pink boll worm was ravaging cotton. Farmers were spraying their fields with insecticides about a dozen times each growing season, according to Ellsworth. That killed the boll worm, but also a host of other insects.

Those other insects typically fed on whiteflies, and with those gone, the tiny bug flourished. Swarms were seen throughout the city, spotting residents' windshields. Whiteflies also attacked cotton. In 1992, the pests caused an estimated $50 million damage to one of the state's key industries.

"It was a very gloomy time and we needed solutions very quickly," Ellsworth said.

In 1996, the government approved genetically modified cotton. The plant could produce its own Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring bacterium fatal to the boll worm.

Spraying was immediately cut in half, Ellsworth said. In the following years, it was cut in half again. The boll worm problem was solved. So was the whitefly problem. Pesticide use among Arizona cotton farmers dropped dramatically. Some fields, Ellswroth said, are not sprayed at all.

But, over time, another problem would emerge.

Neither the farmers nor the seed companies, like Monsanto, anticipated that consumers would react so strongly to the crops. That they would see genetic traits introduced in a lab as being dramatically different from traits introduced through conventional means in a field. As the crops became more prevalent, and the products used in more and more foods, some consumers said they didn't want them.

Ronnie Cummins, the national director of the Organic Consumers Union, said activists had science and studies on their side. But they also had the scary-sounding "genetically modified" name and a public wary of lab-created foods. "That's what we played on," he said. "(People) don't like the idea of synthetics."

Cummins coined the term "Frankenfoods" to describe the crops.

The anti-GMO movement first gained steam in Europe, Cummins said, particularly after the outbreak of mad-cow disease caused Britons to worry about what they were eating. Labeling laws are in effect throughout the European Union and parts of Latin America. In the United States, Cummins said, the anti-GMO movement has risen with the popularity of organic foods.

Cummins said GMOs are just the start. Eventually, he hopes the public rises up against factory farms and big agriculture as a whole. He said the movement has already been successful at vilifying Monsanto.

Carly Scaduto, a spokeswoman for Monsanto, agreed. "Unfortunately, we come with a reputation," she said. It means Monsanto has a hard time being believed when it says its seeds, and those of other biotech companies, are safe. "There are a small number of very loud people out there," she said. "They are very effective at how they communicate. A lot of that communication doesn't necessarily tell the whole story."

Ellsworth, the UA scientist, said that those against GMOs are as hardened in their decisions as those who deny climate change. Most often, he said, it is people who lean liberal who refuse to accept the scientific consensus on the safety of GMO.

"It tilts to the obsessive," Ellsworth said. "Be interested in your food, that's good. But there's no bogeymen when it comes to the production of food."

'Not all scientific'

Starting about a year ago, Bob McClendon began getting an unusual and persistent question when he sold vegetables grown on his organic farm in Peoria at farmers markets. Someone would pick up a tomato or eggplant and earnestly ask, "Is it a GMO?"

"It's crazy," he said. His organic vegetables could not be labeled as such if he used biotech seeds.

There is some corn and squash sold, but most all vegetables sold in grocery stores are not genetically modified.

McClendon said looking at what was available on the Internet about GMOs makes him understand why his customers are so spooked. There are studies tying the foods to cancer and pictures of GMO-fed rats that have grown tumors.

"Not all of it is correct," he said. "Not all of it is accurate. Some of it is not ... scientific at all."

McClendon said he could not find conclusive proof that GMOs are bad. But he still chooses to avoid them.

The bacteria produced by a GMO plant are the same that McClendon sprays as an organic pesticide on his crops. But he is not sure about the long-term effects of eating it.

Before McClendon was a farmer, he was a pharmacist, and he said he remembers many drugs being taken off the market after years of use showed their dangers outweighed the benefits.

The risk is low, he said, but it is a risk he'd rather not take, nor have his family take.

"You don't know what's going to happen to kids as adults, 30 or 40 years down the road," he said. "We don't know what we don't know."

Cutting GMOs from diet

On a recent Saturday, members of a Phoenix permaculture group met at Baker Nursery in east Phoenix to pick up their allotment of GMO-free chicken feed. Over the past two years, enough people have gone far enough down the healthy-eating path to not only raise backyard chickens for eggs, but also to want the purest chicken feed. Scott Brown of Gilbert unloaded a semitruck filled with bags of non-GMO and, for good measure, non-soy feed.

A spreadsheet clamped to a board showed dozens of names. Next to it, resting on a stump, was a petition to get the GMO-labeling initiative on the Arizona ballot.

Christina and Nicholas McLamb of Mesa were loading 50 pounds of non-GMO chicken scratch next to the baby seat in the back of their compact car. The couple said they started eating an all-organic diet after their son was born.

That included cutting out all genetically modified foods. "Do you really want to be eating a natural pesticide in your food that didn't exist there before?" asked Nicholas.

Eating well has meant cutting other items. "We don't have cable TV. We cloth-diaper. Our clothes come from Goodwill, secondhand," Christina said.

And social gatherings can get tricky. "We bring our own food or just don't eat," Christina said.

That extends to her family. "They think we're crazy. I've been told by my father that I'm extreme," she said, "until I send him studies."

Extensive testing done

A genetically modified cotton seed looks like a purple Tic Tac.

Randy Norton was behind the wheel of a tractor meticulously planting them at a plot on the UA extension farm in Maricopa. The Bayer company, maker of this Genuity-brand seed, wanted the university to conduct a test on how well it kept insects at bay.

Norton leads the university's Safford Agriculture Center. But he is also a second-generation farmer who remembers driving a tractor across the field to dig up weeds. And doing lots of spraying for pests.

"What we did when I was a kid was more harmful to the environment," he said.

Norton, who has a doctorate in soil fertility from UA, said biotech plants undergo extensive testing. Scientists look at the leaf and root tissue and pollen of GMO and non-GMO plants. "We look to see if there's any differences at all," he said. "There never is."

On the seed bag is a lengthy agreement. "It's like when you buy Office 365," Norton said. Opening the bag constitutes acceptance of the terms and conditions.

Chief among these terms is acknowledgment that the seed is licensed to Bayer and seeds from the crops grown cannot be saved and reused. Farmers must buy new seed from the biotech companies each growing season.

Norton said farmers believe it is worth the cost, considering the savings on pesticides and fuels.

While standing near the truck that held the seed bag, Norton spotted a stalk of barley growing wild out of the ground. "That plant is growing and producing seed, and it has probably had little to no water," he said.

To him, it would be worth finding out that barley plant's secret. "We could take those genes that conserve that water and tolerate drought stress," he said, "and move those genes into plants that we need to survive, and to produce food and fiber."

Army of volunteers

Christi Wheeler stood before the six people who showed up for the new-volunteer meeting at Right to Know Arizona, the group collecting signatures for the labeling initiative.

She asked if anyone had ever collected signatures before. No hands raised. "Neither had I," she said.

She gave a quick explanation of the initiative. If passed, it would apply to packages of food with genetically modified ingredients. Signs would be placed near meat from animals who ate genetically modified feed. Restaurants were off the hook.

If people ask what a GMO is, "I tell them it is to have the plant to either produce a toxin or be resistant to herbicides," she said, "and that ultimately could, down the line, create health concerns and environmental concerns, and that people should know."

She handed out petition packets to a newly enlisted and charged-up army of volunteers.

Sunny Ankrom, 61, said her family has grown weary of her talking about this issue, but she needs to evangelize about the "poisons" in the food. "Is science making the food or is God?" she said, as the meeting broke up. "He makes our food, and food is life."

Ankrom said she was not only against laboratory genetic engineering, but the genetic manipulation that results from conventional farm breeding. "Cross-pollination is messing with the genetics," she said. "God didn't put seedless watermelons on our planet."

Farmers' struggles

Roberto Gaxiola has spent the past 13 years studying one plantgene: Arabidopsis thaliana proton transporters. His research shows it helps crops resist drought and grow in salty soils, conditions that are becoming more common around the globe.

Gaxiola, an Arizona State University professor, has planted transgenic lettuce at the UA farm in Maricopa. He said it needs significantly less fertilizer than conventional lettuce, saving on the finite resource of phosphate.

He has received no money from any chemical companies, although he would like some. Because that would mean a food company would have faith that his science might actually sell.

Gaxiola knows there probably would be no market for his transgenic lettuce because one of the biggest buyers of lettuce, McDonald's, has already rejected transgenic potatoes.

The New Leaf potato, which was resistant to a pesky potato bug, was one of the first GMO crops introduced. Potato farmers loved it, but McDonald's became worried that consumers would be wary of french fries made from genetically modified potatoes.

Gaxiola's research involves making a plant more efficient, not having the lettuce create a pesticide, like in most GMO crops. But he said his research won't reach the market because of irrational fears about those crops.

"There's is no possibility of that Bt having any effect on you," he said of the bacterium thuringiensis. The toxin is only activated in the alkaline-based stomach of worms, not in humans' acid-based digestive systems. "It won't even work in our stomach," he said.

Gaxiola said he has seen farmers struggle with changing economic and climate conditions around the world, including in his home country of Mexico. "That is my motivation," he said, sitting in his office at ASU.

Gaxiola said concerns about genetic modification are rooted in a naive view of food production. Mutations have been forced on plants by farmers for thousands of years, he said. Otherwise, potatoes would be toxic. And corn kernels would be in a tough husk.

Gaxiola's work took him to being keynote speaker at the Biotechnological Congress in Spain this week. Still, he knows that outside of the biotech world, his work isn't quite as celebrated.

"I've had dates go wrong," he said. "People take it very personally."

Channeling outrage

The Phoenix-area staging of the global March Against Monsanto was held on a warm Saturday morning in May. The march would go down Mill Avenue. A rally took place outside the Tempe Farmers Market, a block away.

Maria Myers, a volunteer with GMO Free Arizona, had wings on her back and oversize yellow sunglasses, suggesting the look of a honeybee. Myers and others believe that pollen from GMO crops is killing bees.

Myers stumbled across the GMO issue through Facebook 18 months ago. She cleared her pantry of processed foods and switched to an organic diet, boosting her energy and pulling her out of a self-described malaise.

Since then, she has stood behind tables talking to strangers about the issue. She has given lectures, in English and Spanish, about the evils of GMOs.

After three hours of shouting "I love it!" at cars that honked support and screaming "Woo-hoo!" at anti-Monsanto signs she found clever, Myers was weak of voice. But her energy didn't wane.

"It's a lot of fulfillment, a lot of purpose," she said. Reading about GMOs drives her to rally more. "I channel all that outrage into being proactive." She was sweating under her large yellow sunglasses, but smiling. GMOs had truly modified her.

Reach the reporter at richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com.