Is the biotech dream crumbling?

This is not, I promise, just another attack on Monsanto. Readers of The Ecologist will already know more than they perhaps want to about the dubious activities of our gene-manipulating friends from Illinois - though continuing demand for The Monsanto Files (over 300,000 copies sold so far, in six languages, and no sign yet of demand slowing down) suggests there are many more out there hungry for the real story. No, this editorial simply raises a question which it might have seemed absurd to ask only a few months ago: is it possible that campaigners against biotechnology might actually win?

The six 'Genetix Snowball' defendants ouside the High Court, London. Rob Todd / ISF.

Consider the events of just the past few months. Despite staunch support from both British and American governments, biotechnology companies have come under sustained fire from environmentalists (radical and mainstream); from the media (virtually every national newspaper in the UK, for example, from both sides of the political fence, is now actively campaigning against GM crops); from independent politicians; from farmers; from doctors: and even from royalty (in Britain, the Prince of Wales has lashed out again at GM foods, embarrassing the government in the process.) Seed companies are dropping out of the GMO experiment for commercial reasons. Major supermarkets are dropping GMOs like hot potatoes. A caravan of Indian farmers is touring the industrialised world warning of the dangers of biotechnology.

In other words, the anti-GMO movement is no longer confined to 'activists' -it has become a significant popular movement in its own right, and one of the biggest, fastest-growing and most remarkable environmental campaigns of recent years.

But will it be successful? Is it really conceivable that the GMO bandwagon could be stopped in its tracks - even reversed? Again, a look at recent events suggests that a GMO-free world is perhaps not, after all, an impossible dream.

What may turn out in the coming months, to be the most significant development so far in the battle against biotechnology occurred in the High Court in London on 20th April. Six environmentalists from the GenetiX Snowball campaign, who are accused by Monsanto of deliberately uprooting their GM crops, successfully defended themselves against the corporation's attempts impose an injunction on them, which would have meant that any further action they undertook against the corporation would lead to a prison sentence. (There was a twist in the tale, too. Monsanto were also seeking an injunction against anybody who had been sent a copy of GenetiX Snowball's Handbook For Action, a list which included the staff of The Ecologist, not to mention Tony Blair, the Pope and Queen Elizabeth II ...)

Much to Monsanto's frustration, though, the judge at the two-day summary hearing ruled that GenetiX Snowball's defence was strong enough to warrant a full trial. The significance of this decision is potentially enormous. It means that Monsanto now face an expensive and exhaustive public trial, as they attempt to justify their case. In doing so, they will need to produce facts, figures and documents which they may have preferred to keep a secret. The trial, a date for which has not yet been set, could do the corporation as much damage as the fabled 'McLibel' case did to the reputation of Ronald McDonald and Co.

Meanwhile, still in the UK, one of the country's leading plant breeders last month dropped out of GMO trials, citing "vandalism" and dangerous "commercial risks" as their reason for doing so. CPB Twyford had been working on developing GM rape, and their pullout is a major blow for the biotech companies. There is also speculation that AstraZeneca (one of the world's 'big five' biotech companies, whose head office was recently invaded by activists dressed as mutant tomatoes) may be on the verge of selling off its biotech interests too.

Most remarkably of all, US newspapers reported in early June that the global GMO experiment may soon be challenged by the most unlikely enemy of all - market forces. Several newspapers noted the recent fall in Monsanto's share prices, and suggested that if current levels of consumer rejection of GMOs continues, food biotechnology may no longer be a realistic commercial proposition; a possibility which should make every activist's eyes light up with glee.

The UK, thanks partly to the recent BSE scare, is still proving Monsanto's hardest European nut to crack. Prime Minister Tony Blair, sounding more like a Monsanto's spokesperson with every passing day, is currently reeling from attacks on his government from all sides. English Nature, the government conservation body, has advised against allowing the commercial growing of GM crops. The government's chief scientist has called for a moratorium. The British Medical Association, which represents the country's doctors, is warning of health risks. All the country's major supermarkets are removing GMOs from their products.

The latest opinion poll in the UK, published at the end of May, shows that a stunning 96 per cent of the population continue to reject GM foods. Among them is the country's future King who, despite the government's attempts to shut him up, recently wrote a long article on the dangers of biotechnology. "Are we going to allow the industrialisation of life itself, redesigning the natural world for the sake of convenience?" he asked.

But the UK is by no means alone in its resistance. Across the world, this encouraging trend seems to be speeding up. In April, the seven largest grocery chains in six European countries publicly went 'GM free'. In the US, the third-largest corn processor has announced it will soon refuse to accept any GM corn that has not been approved by the European Union. In India, the Supreme Court has upheld a ban on the testing of GM crops, even as activists from "Operation Cremate Monsanto" tour Europe and America to warn of the dangers of GMOs. In Brazil, one State has declared itself a 'GMO-free zone'.

And the bad news - at least for the biotech companies - doesn't stop there. In the magazine Nature, published in late May, a study which suggested that genetically modified maize was killing off some of North America's most beautiful butterflies excited the press and disturbed the public. Pollen from the maize, which had been engineered to protect it against 'pests' also, perhaps unsurprisingly, killed off the larvae of the Monarch butterfly, which feeds on the plant.

More than 7 million acres of this maize were planted in the US last year. Any more studies of this sort, and the US public, still lagging behind its European counterparts in its awareness of the biotech debate, might begin to realise - despite the best efforts of Messrs. Clinton and Shapiro - that it is being used as an unknowing guinea pig in a corporate science experiment. Then, Monsanto will really be in trouble. Then, just maybe, we could see the biotechnology dream finally crumble around their ears.