Dumping GMOs: Schoolchildren and Poor Bear Brunt

Dumping GMOs: Schoolchildren and Poor Bear Brunt

by Heather Williams

By voting with their wallets, consumers of organic products have created the fastest-growing sector of the food market.

Many acknowledge, however, that this growth may be limited.

A trip to an inner-city grocery store, a rural food market or a Wal-Mart (sometimes the only major retailer left in more isolated counties) quickly demonstrates that many still have access to nothing but highly-processed and/or chemical-heavy products.

Another phenomenon that may be just as serious a challenge to the reform of the food and fiber system in the U.S. is the large quantities of meat, dairy, grain, and vegetables that are purchased and distributed through the federal government.

The consumers of these items — schoolchildren, families on assistance, members of the armed forces, and recipients of food aid in developing countries — are some of the groups least able to fight the use of chemicals and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in their food supply.

Feeding Our Children

Few realize that the largest portion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's budget is spent not on the administration of farms and rural resources, but instead on food purchases and export promotion.

Some of the biggest food purchases are for the Child Nutrition Program, which includes school lunches for 27 million children each day.

This program also funds school breakfasts and snacks for after-school programs.

Through the Agricultural Marketing Service and the Farm Service Agency, schools are provided with fruits and vegetables, meat, juices, dairy products, flour and grain products.

In 1999, Congress allocated $5.46 billion for this popular program.

The problem for schoolchildren who participate in this program is that while the meals served do meet the dietary guidelines set by the USDA, many of the products are highly processed and contain ample amounts of GMOs.

A special concern for many parents is dairy products from cows treated with rBGH, or recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone.

Injected into cows to force them to produce more milk, this drug raises the level
of a potent chemical hormone, Insulin-Like Growth Factor (IGF-1) in dairy milk.

A number of studies have shown that humans with elevated levels of IGF-1 in their bodies are more likely to develop cancer.

Children may be at special risk because of dietary differences from adults that make dairy foods a larger portion of their caloric intake.

In addition to these dangers, the elevated number of infections in cattle injected with this drug has increased the use of antibiotics in dairy herds.

This poses a risk to general public health through the development of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

Though levels of the hormone in milk vary by state and by local purchaser, the maker of the rGBH, the Monsanto corporation, estimates that one third of all milk in the United States has been treated with this genetically-engineered hormone. Presumably, schools serve no less than the national average of rGBH-treated milk and dairy products.

In addition to school lunch programs, the USDA also makes purchases for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program and various state-administered food assistance programs.

Food Aid?

Food consumers in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are also recipients of food purchased by the USDA.

This year alone, government-to-government sales and donations under aid programs alone will distribute about 5.7 million metric tons of grain and dairy products.

These programs take bids from distributors for various country programs and do not screen out products containing GMOs.

In fact, in numerous cases where countries have attempted to ban the import of GMOs on the open market, the U.S. has taken the issue before the World Trade Organization.

What is doubly worrisome about U.S. commodity aid programs to developing countries is their increasing role in pressuring recipient countries to make
U.S.-style changes to their farm sectors.

The "Food for Progress" program, for example, provides commodities to needy countries "as a reward for having undertaken economic or agricultural reform," explains the USDA.

The 1996 Farm Bill stressed the need to link food assistance programs such as this one or PL-480 ("Food for Peace") to the strengthening of private agriculture in countries.

This is, of course, an important growth market for seed, processing, and chemical giants such as Pioneer Hi-Bred, Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, and ConAgra, and likely will result in the diffusion of chemical and GMO packages to yet more farmers around the globe.

Working families, rural residents, children, and consumers abroad deserve a better, safer food supply.

At present, these groups serve as a dumping ground for grain and dairy products that cannot be moved anymore in prime markets in Europe and Japan.

Then, to add insult to this injury, taxpayers foot the bill. This could change, however. The same government purchases that serve as an obstacle to food sector reform now could be converted through legislation to source of positive change.

If sufficient pressure were brought to bear on the nation's largest marketer of food to purchase quotas of organic commodities, billions of dollars in open bids would provide strong market incentives for producers to limit and even eliminate phase out the use of pesticides, herbicides, and genetically-engineered seeds and chemicals on U.S. farms.