China says no to GMO. If you were the biotech industry trying to infiltrate the largest economy in the world, what would you do? Let's take a look at why the strategies that worked in the United States have backfired in China. And then talk about what this means for the GMO labeling movement back home in the states.  It's not about safety. It's about national sovereignty.

Back in the 1980's when the first artificially mutated plant genomes were created, the marketing teams at the chemical companies put their "safety strategy" in place. Not surprisingly, this frame of reference harkened to their other troublesome products: lead, DDT, PCBs, tobacco and a whole slew of miracle materials that turned out to bear troublesome consequences. Each of these and hundreds more were allowed on the market without proper government oversight. They were kept on the market by the "lack of scientific certainty" about their safety. Liability for the damage done was dodged because the companies in question could claim they did not know — mainly because they intentionally never directly undertook safety research. Enter artificial genetic mutation.

The plan was simple, and actually not very imaginative. Do what American industrial interests have always done.  Infiltrate the regulatory system at the USDA, EPA, FDA and DOJ to ensure that these novel foods would be considered "substantially equivalent" to naturally developed varieties. Impede and impugn large scale safety studies as long as possible at least until the crops were planted far and wide. Attack critics personally and professionally. Deploy a massive media campaign online and in traditional media to evangelize the new technology. Demand government support for research and commandeer the infrastructure at the land grant universities at taxpayer expense. 

More importantly, US biotech minions would always, always, always bring the debate back to safety. Because the very best defense against the lack of proper science is to sum up the science that does exist and claim a consensus that no clear potential harm has been found. Claim that the resulting lack of scientific certainty proves, by that claim alone, that artificially mutated crops are unassailably, reliably safe. 

Regulation of agricultural and industrial processes and resulting products in the US can be fairly summed up as requiring an accounting of external costs. Include in the cost of the product the external damaged done to air, water, land, wildlife. Account for the detrimental public health effects like cancer, asthma, and chemical sensitivity. Charge upfront for the cost of shortened lives, lower intellectual capacity, higher medical costs. Remediate broken communities, underpaid and underutilized workers, disenfranchisement, hopelessness, depression and rage. Either directly through rules, warnings, fines and jail time, or indirectly through taxpayer funded cleanup, treatment and intervention, the external costs must eventually be accounted for. As we have seen time and again, our regulators fail to act strongly enough or early enough to do much good.

Regulation in China serves a fundamentally different purpose, so the biotech lobby's "substantial equivalence" doctrine falls on deaf ears. Chinese regulation exists to generate economic development regardless of the external costs. Framing the GMO debate as a safety issue fails to acknowledge this fundamental difference.  

The biotech strategy demands hegemony. Hegemony in politics is the total political and economic control over a geographic region. In agriculture, hegemony is the pervasive use and control over one type of production system to the extent that no other system can challenge it.

In the US, promoters of artificially mutated crops for food, fiber, feed and fuel have successfully converted over 90% of commodity crop land to "GMO" varieties. These proprietary crops require recurring and ever-increasing applications of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, nearly all of which are produced by the same chemical companies that own the crop genomes themselves.

All of these artificially mutated crops can permanently transfer their genes to natural plants, threatening the long term viability of competing systems. When gene transfer occurs, the chemical companies can sue the victim for damages and prevent further use of the contaminated seed stock. When the current set of herbicides fails, a new more powerful (and more profitable) set of herbicides replaces it. After years of constantly herbicide treatment, the soil can no longer support conventional agricultural systems.

That's total hegemony.  Well played.

Chinese leadership equates economic strength with political strength. Ever since its opening to Western economic exploitation hundreds of years ago, China has struggled to maintain both its economic and political independence. Imagine the discussion taking place among Chinese leaders about allowing Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer to hold total control over China's agricultural system. Imagine them weighing the promises of higher yields and lower labor demands against permanent dependence on non-renewable petrochemical resources. Imagine them dissecting and analyzing the pervasive biotech industry infiltration of the US regulatory, legal and research establishment. There are too many red flags and cautionary tales. No Chinese leader will ever be willing to prostate himself at biotech's feet and submit to Monsanto's permanent overrule.

A lesson for Americans.

China refused to acknowledge that product safety or the doctrine "substantial equivalence" is the only concept that matters in the debate over GMO. Clearly, the debate should take into account external costs, political and economic justice, competitive systems — all issues that should outweigh any imperative to book a short tem profit based on short term benefits of GMO ag systems. That Americans have lost individual and collective control over their food system seems forgotten in this debate. It's as if the doctrine of substantial equivalence logically leads to the doctrine of vertically integrated industrial corporate hegemony over food production. It does not. 

This line of thinking leads to the question: What is China up to?  Will it recreate its own version of artificial mutation technology to compete with the Monsantos of the world? Will it hold out for a state-private enterprise partnership with Monsanto on preferable terms? Is a cadre of state officials working a back room deal to profit from the eventual approval of GMO crops? Is the approval of GMO crops being treated as a sacrificial pawn in the Trans Pacific trade negotiations?

Or has China taken a look at the broken taxpayer supported US ag system, along with its broken bastard offspring overseas, and decided to find its own path?  

Even today, most of China's agricultural production is not fully industrialized. Many rural families still depend on smallholder production of vegetables, chickens and pigs to supplement their diet. Yet the promise of jobs and upward mobility in urban areas has stripped the countryside of a generation of young adults, leaving an older generation dependent on remittances from their children and support from the state.  Rural China has been likened to a vast old age home.

Like the US, China's central planning policy apparatus has encouraged the depopulation and dependency of its rural lands. The creation of ever-larger corporate farms, with fewer and fewer labor needs, reduces rural populations to the point that towns must close. This effect is made worse by the concentration of retail distribution in massive regional outlets, which eliminate the viability of local stores on nearby main streets. 

But unlike the US, whose collective time frame spans no more than a generation or two, China views history and politics in terms of millennia. Having industrialized only recently and just now beginning a roll-out of capitalist ideals, China may look at the vast empty American Heartland and see a cautionary tale.

When your country borders a large number of predatory and unstable neighbors, then perhaps leaving them defended only by combines and grain elevators is an unsettling idea. When your cities are overcrowded with desperate and underpaid workers, perhaps leaving them with no better opportunity back on the farm seems short-sighted and dangerous. 

One cost to China that will result from an agricultural system based on artificially mutated crops is this: rural areas will decline even more, the country will be evermore dependent on crude oil, and every Chinese metropolis will be forced to support greater millions of disgruntled underemployed workers.

If you were China, then, would you make a big bet on GMOs?  Would you accept the prevailing wisdom that safety and safety alone is the only difference between sustainable food production practices and corporate GMO monoculture?

Of course not.

So how do we get our government apparatus to do the same?