The biotechnology industry continues to promote itself as the ultimate panacea for all the problems of industrial agriculture. A review of its real impacts reveals that it is not an antidote to modern agriculture but rather simply a continuation and exacerbation of today’s food production crisis. Biotechnology increases environmental degradation, causes new food safety risks, and threatens to increase world hunger. It is not the solution, but a major part of the problem.

The Myth:
Industrial food is safe, healthy, and nutritious.

The Truth:
Industrial agriculture contaminates our vegetables and fruits with pesticides, slips dangerous bacteria into our lettuce, and puts genetically engineered growth hormones into our milk. It is not surprising that cancer, food-borne illnesses, and obesity are at an all-time high.

The Myth:
Industrial food is cheap.

The Truth:
If you added the real cost of industrial food — its health, environmental, and social costs — to the current supermarket price, not even our wealthiest citizens could afford to buy it.

The Myth:
Industrial agriculture is efficient.

The Truth:
Small farms produce more agricultural output per unit area than large farms. Moreover, larger, less diverse farms require far more mechanical and chemical inputs. These ever increasing inputs are devastating to the environment and make these farms far less efficient than smaller, more sustainable farms.

The Myth:
Biotechnology will solve the problems of industrial agriculture.

The Truth:
New biotech crops will not solve industrial agriculture’s problems, but will compound them and consolidate control of the world’s food supply in the hands of a few large corporations. Biotechnology will destroy biodiversity and food security, and drive self-sufficient farmers off their land.

The Myth:
Industrial agriculture will feed the world.

The Truth:
World hunger is not created by lack of food but by poverty and landlessness, which deny people access to food. Industrial agriculture actually increases hunger by raising the cost of farming, by forcing tens of millions of farmers off the land, and by growing primarily high-profit export and luxury crops.

The Myth:
Industrial food offers more choices.

The Truth:
What the consumer actually gets in the supermarket is an illusion of choice. Food labeling does not tell us what pesticides are on our food or what products have been genetically engineered. Most importantly, the myth of choice masks the tragic loss of tens of thousands of crop varieties caused by industrial agriculture.

The Myth:
Industrial agriculture benefits the environment and wildlife.

The Truth:
Industrial agriculture is the largest single threat to the earth’s biodiversity. Fence-row-to-fence-row plowing, planting, and harvesting techniques decimate wildlife habitats, while massive chemical use poisons the soil and water, and kills off countless plant and animal communities.

Biotech companies have spent billions of dollars researching the effects of inserting fish genes into tomatoes, firefly genes into tobacco plants, human genes into farm animals, and creating thousands of other transgenic organisms. It has taken thousands of trials just to come up with herbicide-resistant crops that lead to lower yields and greater chemical use. To date, biotechnology has yet to bring to market a single product that actually benefits consumers. As companies pass on the enormous costs of their research, why should the public pay more for biotech foods that offer no advantages and only risks?

READ THE BOOK — “Corporate Lies: Busting the Myths of Industrial Agriculture” is an excerpt from Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture (Island Press, May 2002), a powerful collection of essays and photographs promoting sustainable food production. Books can be ordered through Island Press at 1-800-828-1302 or through your local bookstore.

JOIN THE CAMPAIGN — Fatal Harvest will be the central organizing tool for a national campaign to promote alternatives to the current industrial agricultural system. The Organic & Beyond campaign is a coalition of over a dozen environmental and agricultural advocacy organizations working to maintain strong organic standards and promote agriculture that is local, family operated, biologically diverse, humane, and socially just. The ultimate goal of this campaign is to replace the industrial agriculture model with a new vision of farming and the natural world.

For more information on the Organic & Beyond campaign, contact:
The Center for Food Safety
660 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, #302
Washington, DC 20003
1-800-600-6664
www.centerforfoodsafety.org
www.fatalharvest.org