Brave Humans

Most of you probably recognize the title and its meaning. For those of you aren’t well versed in 1970’s B-movies, the line comes from the Charlton Heston film “Soylent Green.” Set in 2022, the film presents a world overpopulated and under environmental stress. Fresh whole foods are in short supply, thus the general population primarily dines on government supplied soylent. Derived from soybean and lentil (hence its name), soylent comes in a variety of colors. Soylent green derives its coloring from plankton. The twist ending of the film has Heston discovering soylent green also contains a secret ingredient: protein derived from human corpses. The final scene of the film has Heston crying out to the world “Soylent Green is People!”

In fairness to the fictional Soylent Corporation, there is no evidence of any adverse effects arising from the consumption of human-derived protein. Granted, there have been no long-term studies of the health effects of large-scale cannibalism in an industrial society, but in its processed form human protein would look and smell much like any other animal protein. The only real downside is that if the public knew Soylent Green contained human flesh, they would reject the food. The public’s rejection would be based solely on an “ick factor,” not on any scientific evidence of adverse health effects. So the Soylent Corporation stays hush-hush on its special ingredient, and everyone is happy. The corporation profits, and the public gains a new source of much-needed protein.

It all sounds too crazy to be real.

And yet food companies have made just such an argument regarding various foods, and have won the approval of the FDA. Three recent examples include genetically modified foods, irradiated foods, and cloned foods.

Genetically modified foods are created by splicing genes from one plant or animal into another. Usually this is done to hybridize plants of the same species, but there are cases of introducing animal DNA into plants, such as introducing a fish gene which resists freezing into tomatoes so as to protect the tomato plants from frost. There are even cases of human-plant hybrids. The FDA has recently approved the commercial cultivation of rice which has been spliced with a human gene which produces a protein found in breast milk.

The first genetically altered food was the Flavr Savr tomato, introduced in 1994. Although no longer on the market, Flavr Savr was crucial to the success of genetically modified foods, as it was allowed to be marketed without special labeling. The FDA stated that special labeling was not needed because “they have the essential characteristics of non-modified tomatoes. Specifically, there was no evidence for health risks, and the nutritional content was unchanged.” In other words, since it looked, smelled and tasted like ordinary food, there was no reason to inform the public of its gene-spliced origins. Genetically modified foods are now widely used, particularly in grains such as soybean and corn. To this day, no labeling is required for gene-spliced foods.

Food irradiation is a process where food is exposed to ionizing radiation. This is sometimes done by exposing food to high doses of x-rays, but more often is done by exposing food to gamma rays produced by radioactive materials such as cobalt 60. Depending on the radiation levels, the process kills off anything from general bacteria such as e-coli to the hard-to-kill botulinum spores (from which Botox is derived). If the dosage is high enough, there are detectable chemical changes in irradiated foods. Thus the FDA has required that irradiated foods be labeled. But since “irradiation” makes people think the food is radioactive (which it is not), the FDA will soon allow irradiated foods to be labeled as “cold pasteurized,” which sounds so much nicer. They have even introduced a happy little logo for cold-pasteurized foods, which looks similar to the USDA Organic seal, as you can see:

Cloned foods are the latest advance to hit the market. These are foods derived through the process of harvesting the DNA from an adult animal, implanting it into the egg of another, and stimulating this egg to develop and mature. The advantage for corporations is that one can harvest DNA from exceptional cuts of meat to create more of the same. Of course given the huge “ick-factor” people generally have with cloning, labeling meat as being cloned would effectively kill your market. Fortunately for the corporations, the FDA has determined that (of the clones that survive to adulthood) there is no significant difference between cloned and non-cloned foods, hence there is no need to label foods as cloned. They look, smell and taste the same, so there is no need to tell the public.

To be fair, there is no clear evidence that genetic modification, irradiation or cloning poses serious health risks. Granted, gathering such evidence is nearly impossible once they reach the general food supply. My point is not that these advances are harmful, but that they are not clearly labeled.

These new foods are left unlabeled because many would reject them. Cloned meat may be perfectly safe, but few people would knowingly consume it. Essentially the FDA’s position is that they know what is good for us better than we do ourselves. The corporate need for these new technologies apparently overrides our need to know the origins of our food.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind if genetically modified and cloned foods were banned. Already there are cases of GM crops cross-pollinating with non-GM crops. I have less of a problem with irradiation, so long as it is clearly labeled.

How about you? What would you recommend to the FDA?

Credits: The Radura and USDA Organic logos are taken from wikipedia.