Genetically Modified Food: Who's Afraid of Frankenfood?

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With billions of dollars at risk, the biotech industry has begun to fight back, forming corporate alliances and launching a major p.r. effort that includes lobbying, new research efforts to still public fears and TV, radio and newspaper ads. It is also beginning to listen more. "To brush off concern [about g.m. crops] as unfounded is to be arrogant and reckless," says DuPont ceo Charles Holliday Jr. And even though it gave FrankenTony the cold shoulder, Kellogg's is already phasing out genetically modified products in Europe--not, it insists, for safety reasons but just to please consumers.

So far, the regulators have approved dozens of genetically modified plants for human consumption. But if public pressure grows, it may be forced to go slower in the future. One possibility: the FDA could begin applying to g.m. foods the powers it already has to regulate food additives. As EDF's Goldburg explains, the proteins produced by new genes are in a sense additives as well--"and while food manufacturers intend food additives to be safe, every now and then they screw up." Even more likely, food producers will respond to the changing public mood by labeling their products as g.m.-free, a trend already evident in Europe.

There's a downside to such actions, however. By overreacting to fears fanned by well-fed consumers in the industrialized world, food producers might uproot an industry that could someday provide billions of people in the rest of the world with crops they desperately need.

--Reported by David Bjerklie/New York, Julie Grace/Chicago and Dick Thompson/London