Not Exactly Corn:
corporate America puts new DNA in your dinner ¹ 

 Do any of the food products in your house contain:

 1. Artificial sweeteners? (yes__ no__)
 2. Artificial coloring? (yes__ no__)
 3. DNA whose genes have been genetically modified by scientists?
                                                      (yes__ no__)
----------------------------------------------------------------- 

IF someone actually confronted you with this hypothetical survey, you could answer the first two questions from memory or by looking in your kitchen, but you probably would be unable to answer question three. And you wouldn't be alone. 

All European Union countries - along with Japan, Australia, and New Zealand - will soon require special labels on all foods that contain genetically modified organisms (known also as "GMOs" or "transgenics"). Against this tide, America's Food and Drug Administration has refused requests by the Consumer Policy Institute and other citizens' organizations to require such labels on American foods (Hess 5). England too won't be requiring labels for GMO foods, but for an entirely different reason: all major food manufacturers in that country have already pledged to keep GMOs out of their foods entirely (Benady 5). Meanwhile Austria and Luxembourg have banned GMO foods from their countries altogether (Weinstein 18). 

But in America, there is no way to determine which foods in your larder contain GMOs. Why aren't you being informed, and why do Americans exhibit so much less concern over the GMOs they are consuming than their European and Asian counterparts? A recent American poll by the International Food Information Council in Washington, DC, reveals that 

almost half those surveyed thought their groceries were free of biotechnology, when in reality almost 60% of the country's processed food is affected. ("Food" 19) 

If all Americans are eating foods with engineered DNA and we are all still alive, why is the rest of the world so concerned? Why have critics dubbed GMOs "Frankenfoods," and what about them has stirred such a furor in the rest of the world? How does DNA figure into the controversy? 

DNA - "deoxyribonucleic acid" - is a naturally occurring molecule, some variation of which exists inside nearly every living cell on earth - and it's extraordinarily complex. The DNA inside each of your cells contains over three billion simple building blocks called base pairs strung together into a giant chain. Within this chain lie 50,000 to 100,000 information-rich segments called genes (Howard). 

The Institute of Quantitative Biology & Evolution at the University of Wisconsin relates how, in recent decades, scientists from prestigious research institutions around the world have been collaborating to create a map of the base pairs and genes in the DNA molecule of an average human cell (Genome). This work - collectively known as the human genome project - has already benefited medical research and is expected to do so much more in the future. Genes are the units of information that tell your body's cells how to manufacture and control the tissues and organ systems - maybe even the behaviors and patterns of thought - that make you what you are. The years of work that will ultimately result in the complete base pair map are just the simplest, first step in the development of new medical treatments; once scientists uncover the sequence of three billion base pairs, they must begin to understand what genes they comprise, and how these genes function. 

In contrast with the intense efforts focussed on the human genome, fewer scientists have attempted to map the genes of plants. Geneticists are systematically studying Arabidopsis thaliana, a small plant in the mustard family, because it has the smallest genome of any flowering plant, with a "mere" 100 million base pairs in its DNA (United). The work of determining the genome of this one plant is being funded by over $12 million in U.S. government research grants, and the government expects that figure to reach $375 million in the near future. According to researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, if all goes well for the three groups of U.S. universities and eighteen European and Japanese laboratories that are collaborating, the DNA of this one plant will, it is hoped, be mapped by the year 2004 (Cold). 

Major segments of the scientific community must labor in concert to study the DNA of even the simplest plant. The task is daunting, and even an elementary comprehension will be years in arriving. 

But the business community will never allow mere lack of knowledge to interfere with progress - not in America, anyway. Armed with a comparatively tiny amount of knowledge about the DNA of a world staple crop, such as the soybean, a savvy biotech company can modify it into a marketably distinctive product. In the 1980s a number of small biotech companies began doing exactly that. Most of these startups have disappeared, but those few whose products could command the premium prices demanded by Wall Street investors still exist. In most cases, even those survivors have been acquired by large multinational so-called "life sciences" corporations: re-purposed chemical and pharmaceutical companies like Monsanto, DuPont, and Novartis, along with the few other corporations who together dominate the biotech industry. Already they have modified the DNA of 4,500 plant varieties in this country, though most have not yet reached farmers (Mann 36-43). 

Remember the 60% of processed foods in your pantry whose DNA has been modified? The chances are good that industry leader Monsanto owns the patents on the science and the genetically modified seeds from which they were produced. To understand what it is you are eating (and what US farmers are planting on 60 million to 70 million acres of cropland this year) you first need to understand the world that drives Monsanto - the world in which large U.S. corporations operate. 

Consider the language that forms the perceptual framework under which Monsanto's world operates, as exemplified in an analysis by Sergey A. Vasnetsov, vice-president of New York-based BT Alex. Brown: 

Although there is general consensus that life science operations achieve a better rate of return, the real question is at what point are the new life science entrants judged against a higher standard. (Van Arnum FR3-FR4)

Monsanto says the global market for these is expected to grow from $500 million in 1996 to $6 billion in 2005 and $20 billion in 2010. (Stevens 68)

Monsanto Corporation, whose assets exceed ten billion dollars, is the world's largest developer and purveyor of genetically modified crops. According to John Roberts, first vice president with Merrill Lynch, it is "the only major company with current life science financials dominated by agricultural products, including biotechnology" (Van Arnum FR4). But though it may be large and dominant, a corporation like Monsanto must struggle ceaselessly to maintain the growth curve without which Wall Street investors would abandon it. 

Life in the fast lane is dizzying. The life sciences industry is "characterized by a dramatic reshaping of giants such as Du Pont & Co., Hoechst AG, Dow Chemical Co., and Monsanto Co." (Stevens). And 

[t]his year, according to Clive James, head of the nonprofit International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications, as many as 50 million hectares worldwide - an area bigger than Germany - are planted with genetically modified crops. 'It's one of the fastest adoptions of technology I've ever seen,' James says. (Mann 36)

Monsanto, like other biotech companies, is a leading-edge technology company, and as such it is subject to the extreme vicissitudes of public perception and the frequent meteoric impacts of externally changing technologies. 

Until recently a chemical company, Monsanto has now completely rid itself of its chemical interests, and in the last two years has reinvented itself, investing $8 billion in life-science firms. It and other industry giants such as Du Pont & Co., Hoechst AG, and Dow Chemical Company have reshaped themselves and positioned their companies in the center of the coalescing biotechnology, chemical, agribusiness, and pharmaceutical business sectors. Less than a year ago a new $20 billion life-sciences corporation, Aventis SA, was created not by a long process of growth, but almost at once through a complex series of mergers and acquisitions (Stevens 68). "Companies [in the life sciences] are being ripped apart and recreated through divestitures and myriad acquisitions" (Stevens 68). 

Researchers sponsored by universities and public interest foundations are modifying the genes of test plants to improve their nutritional quality and their ability to thrive in areas that are currently difficult to farm - research that may one day help feed the world's exploding population. But the people who decided to change the DNA in your salad dressing are not independent researchers patiently seeking the best new technologies for the benefit of humankind. They're not scientists at all, but highly skilled business managers who spend their days negotiating in corporate board rooms, trying to translate emerging trends into bottom-line advantages for their investors. 

Public interest organizations, medical associations, scientists, courts, and national governments may favor or oppose the widespread sale and distribution of genetically modified crops. But a corporate officer must invariably express unwavering support of his or her company's products and services. When she enters the corporate office, a chief executive or chief financial officer leaves her private concerns at the door. We cannot ignore this corporate backdrop when we hear Monsanto spokesperson Jay Byrne cheerfully proclaim that genetically engineered foods are 

the most tested, the most regulated products in the history of food. People have raised concerns over the environmental impact of these products, but we have a proven track record - validated with extensive study that has been peer reviewed and analyzed by independent researchers, government regulatory bodies, and international organizations - that confirms that these products are safe for the environment. (Stevens 68) 

It is difficult to choose between the terms "pioneer" and "hack" when referring to today's genetic engineers. Given the many years remaining before geneticists really understand much about the number and location of genes and their effects on cells and the plants and the environments surrounding them, neither term is arbitrary. Depending on the outcome, historians may or may not look back kindly on the global experiments we are carrying out today, but they will certainly refer to our methods as crude, primitive, and myopic. 

In a process known as biolistics, genetic engineers use gunpowder to blast tiny metal particles covered with modified pieces of DNA somewhere into plant cells. This modifies some unknown section of the cell's original DNA. By "blind luck" (Lappe 30) a few such treated cells will survive, and of these, a few will display the characteristics which corporate directors believe they can patent and market. 

Time-driven market pressures allow the corporate engineers to test their creations for only a few plant generations. If their own tests - and sometimes basic reviews by governmental agencies - reveal no obvious problems, the corporation is ready to produce and distribute seeds from the new plant. The FDA, shoehorned into approving new transgenics under existing "food additive" laws, operates under the assumption that many of the changes brought about by genetic engineering are too minor to require testing. Though they require taste-testing and occasional feeding tests on animals (but not on people, even if 40,000,000 acres may be planted tomorrow) for what they consider major genetic modifications, they set an apparently undefined threshold of modification beneath which testing should not be required, rationalizing that 

[m]any of the food crops currently being developed with gene splicing techniques do not contain substances that are significantly different from substances already in the diet, and thus would not require approval as a food additive. (FDA)

[f]or example, genetic engineering might be used to produce decaffeinated coffee beans by deleting or turning off genes associated with caffeine production. But caffeine helps protect coffee beans against fungi. Beans that are unable to produce caffeine might be coated with fungi, which can produce toxins. Fungal toxins, such as aflatoxin, are potent human toxins that can remain active through processes of food preparation. (Union, gen)

If more such health problems occur (or even have occurred), the FDA's decision not to require labeling of DNA-modified foods would make it extremely difficult for a health agency to link a particular person's allergic reaction or other disorder to the DNA-modified ingredient which might have been its cause. 

Genetic engineers place fully functioning antibiotic-resistant genes in the new plants that they develop, and these are still present in the marketed food. Such genes could render a consumer's antibiotic medicine ineffective. The Union of Concerned Scientist believes that, at a minimum, "as the number of genetically engineered products grows, the effects of antibiotic resistance should be analyzed cumulatively across the food supply" (Union, gen). They also foresee a finite possibility that some agent could transfer the resistance to human or animal pathogens, which could then no longer be combated by antibiotic treatment. 

It is true that people have been engineering the genes in their crop plants for well over ten thousand years. Indians of the Andes alone developed some 3,000 varieties of potatoes (Weatherford 63). The spokespeople for Monsanto and other GMO corporations claim to be their modern heirs. CEO Magazine cheerfully quotes Henry Miller of Stanford's Hoover Institution as saying that "New biotechnology is just an extension, or refinement, of the kinds of genetic manipulation that plant and animal breeders have done for centuries" (Murdock 22). 

But the critics of the GMOs in your salad, along with most scientists, sharply distinguish traditional breeding technologies from the biotechnology used by Monsanto and their friends. Like the Andeans and every agricultural society before and since, today's traditional plant developers create new crop plants when they selectively re-use seeds or cuttings from only the best of this year's crops, or when they place the pollen from one plant into the flower of another to produce a new plant with characteristics of both. 

These traditional methods carry some combination of the entire genomes of two closely related plants - millions of base pairs and tens of thousands of genes - into the new plant; and these genes retain almost the same organization that natural selection produced over millennia. By contrast, Monsanto's biolistic metal bullet forces three or four genes from one organism into some unknown region of the genome of another plant. 

Traditional breeding integrates the genomes of plants that are already nearly identical, essentially steering natural processes of selection and hybridization. Monsanto's bioengineers take genes from highly dissimilar, unrelated plants - even from non-plant organisms like animals and bacteria - and shuffle them into the target plant's DNA. It is fair to say that 

genetic engineering is not a minor extension of existing breeding technologies. It is a radically new technology for altering the traits of living organisms by adding genetic material that has been manipulated outside of cells . . . [and] routinely moves proteins into the food supply from organisms that have never been consumed as foods. (Union "biotech")

A few years ago, when Monsanto was still a chemical company, it created and patented an enormously successful weed-killing molecule which it markets as Roundup®, currently "the world's largest-selling crop protection product and, by far, the most recognized agricultural chemical name" (Moore, Mark 80). When a farmer sprays it on the leaves of plants near his crop rows, Roundup® kills them while having little toxic effect on the surrounding soil. In many cases this is a cost-effective way for a grower to remove weeds before his crops are above the soil.

With its lucrative patent on Roundup® expiring in the year 2000, Monsanto found a way to keep growers buying it. In 1992 they created their first genetically modified seeds. Crops grown from these seeds were immune to the herbicidal effects of Roundup®. For the first time, growers could spray Roundup® directly over their soy and cotton crop rows, killing the weeds but leaving the genetically protected crops intact. Growers realized considerable economic benefits since they no longer paid laborers to apply the spray by hand to selective weedy areas. As part of their contract to purchase Roundup Ready™ seeds, growers promise Monsanto to purchase Roundup® in preference to any competing product. Thus Monsanto has forestalled its competitors from re-marketing their molecule after its patent expires. 

At the same time, Monsanto has enabled growers to spray their herbicide not only on carefully limited areas, but broadly across their entire crop acreage. 

When they chose which new characteristic to engineer into crops, Monsanto's corporate officers made a savvy, competitive marketing choice. Rather than improving the nutritional characteristics of the soybean or its ability to grow in poor soil, they have engineered it to lock in the value of their existing product line. 

Monsanto achieved an historical first when it began requiring its seed customers to sign an unprecedented agreement. Growers agree never to re-use seeds produced from their own Roundup Ready™ crops. For the first time in human history, farmers cannot take seed from one year's crop and plant it the next year; they must buy next year's seeds from Monsanto. When Monsanto encountered difficulties enforcing this agreement on growers, it even inserted a "terminator" gene into its seeds which would sterilize any subsequent generation of seeds derived from them. When public interest organizations broadcast their concern that the terminator gene might work its way into the genomes of wild plants, rendering them sterile and thus unpredictably effecting the surrounding ecology, negative publicity (and the banning of transgenic seeds by many countries) forced Monsanto to remove the terminator seeds from its product line. 

Monsanto's corporate officers believe that someday their new products will provide the increased agricultural production needed to sustain the world's expanding population, especially in the so-called Third World. Yet India, a country constantly struggling to feed its people, has engendered one of the most visceral anti-Monsanto movements anywhere. Supporters of a broadly based "Cremate Monsanto" campaign in India have set fire to Monsanto's test fields (Kluger 44). Its many small farmers, sensitive to India's historic humiliation under foreign rule, are reluctant to give up ownership of their seeds to a multinational corporation (Mann 36). While some feel that transgenic crops will help feed the world, critics believe that the expensive engineered seeds will widen the gap between have and have-not countries. 

If Monsanto succeeds in transferring ownership of the world's seed stock from farmers into its own hands, can the world depend on the corporation to be a steady provider? Monsanto is under stress from several quarters. It's current court battles include suits over intellectual property (Fairley 14; Papanikolaw 3), a Justice Department probe (Westervelt 19), and a Brazilian federal court order blocking sales of Roundup Ready™ soybeans (Sissell 12). Facing fierce international opposition to its transgenic seeds along with falling corporate earnings and stock valuations (Schwartz 36) the future is anything but certain for Monsanto. According to Paul Leming, an analyst with ING Barings, "The odds of Monsanto existing in its present form a year from now are no more than 1 in 4" (Westervelt 9). Speculation by CNBC and others that Monsanto's CEO plans to sell the company cannot be substantiated, but analysts feel that Monsanto's market condition is ripe for such a move (CNBC). Analysts continually note that sale of Monsanto would realize tremendous profits for its shareholders, who are in fact the owners of the company and yearly appoint its directors. 

It is not only stewardship of our seed stock that concerns critics of transgenic crops, but stewardship of the ecosystem on which we depend. In addition to its herbicide tolerant line of transgenic corn and soybeans, Monsanto has developed crops that contain their own insecticide and therefore need not be sprayed with dangerous and costly pesticides. But these built-in insecticides, derived from bacteria genes, appear to cause adverse environmental effects of their own. 

For years, organic farmers have used a naturally occurring bacteria, Bacillus thuriengiensis ("Bt"), which is toxic to certain insect pests but harmless to humans. They dust it on some of their crops as part of their farm's pest management regime. Monsanto engineers extracted genes from the bacteria and placed them in transgenic cotton, corn, and potatoes, which now produce their own toxins to poison the insects.

Unfortunately, as all growers know, insect species evolve an immunity to any pesticide that is applied continuously, and growers must constantly seek new pesticides to which their local insect population has not yet adapted. While organic farmers are careful to use Bt bacteria on only a portion of their crops, and only at certain times, cotton whose engineered genome produces Bt toxin continuously poisons the insects on all crops, all the time. This virtually guarantees that the insects now controlled by Bt will soon develop resistance to it. Naturally occurring Bt bacteria will cease to be an effective tool for farmers wishing to grow their crops organically. Attempts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to devise a crop planting system to forestall the evolution of Bt-resistant insects around transgenic crops have not been successful (Moore 19). 

Though Monsanto claims that its Bt transgenics pose no environmental threats, Cornell University scientists recently discovered that monarch butterflies are damaged or killed when they eat pollen from Monsanto's Bt corn. Half of the monarch population in the U.S. migrates through the corn belt each year just when pollen is being released from Bt corn, and it may be at risk from now-widespread transgenic corn (Losey 214). The EPA approved Bt corn without requiring companies to test it on moths or butterflies, even though federally endangered butterflies and moths may be affected (Union ag). 

Monsanto claims that its transgenic seeds are sufficiently tested before it is allowed to ship them around the world, but "[f]or the most part, risk assessments are done by scientists and policymakers in the relevant agencies (USDA or EPA) with information provided by the companies seeking the approvals" (Union gen). 

It is not scientific criticism alone that sparked international protests and caused governments to ban transgenic crops within their borders. Something about genetic engineering arouses deep-seated anxieties in many people. It strikes at our philosophical notions of persistent identity. 

For two generations biologists have described DNA to us as the part of our biology that defines who we are. Law enforcement agencies are creating large databases of DNA information, since a suspect can be identified by means of this tiny molecule. Wildlife ecologists and entomologists identify species by their DNA more surely than by their visible characteristics. We are told that humans and chimpanzees share many characteristic body shapes and behaviors because only 2% of our DNA differs. Anthropologists trace the history of human descent by comparing the DNA of various groups. When someone is successful at some pursuit, we say that she "must have the gene for it." Biologists have recently uncovered a frozen mammoth and have pledged to grow a new one from its remaining DNA. People's belief in DNA as the defining element of life is not far from the biological truth. 

When geneticists mingle the DNA of a bacterium and a corn plant, people wonder what it is that science has created. Is it still corn? Once it has been spread over millions of acres, is there still "real" corn anywhere? Can the changes be confined to neat rows of crops, or will they spill out, changing the identity of familiar plants and animals, making them into something else, even something alien? Though humans have been developing corn for thousands of years, only the genetic engineers of multinational corporations can change so much of it so quickly, adding essential elements of identity that were never before part of corn or any other plant. 

Critics accuse Monsanto and similar companies of insensitivity to both scientific and philosophical resistance to its products. In reality the market forces in whose crucible Monsanto and other transgenic corporations were forged does not permit them to slow down. At the same time, scientific and human perspectives demand more time to absorb the impact of these new technologies. 

The U.S. government demands that the miraculous genetically engineered medicines which now offer new hope to sufferers of cancer and other diseases undergo many years of rigorous testing before the first few people are allowed to try them. Yet transgenic crops now cover our continent with little and demonstrably insufficient testing. Transgenics are consumed by millions of people without their knowledge, with no system in place to measure dietary effects. Though we have planted transgenics over tens of millions of acres, their individual and cumulative effects on surrounding ecosystems remain largely unexamined. As evidence of unforeseen damage begins to confirm people's philosophical unease, however, we risk alienating the world from all genetic research - medical as well as agricultural, public interest as well as corporate. 

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 

Meeting the world food crisis will require changes outside of agriculture like improving the incomes of the poor through microenterprises and shifting the diet of the rich away from excessive dependence on grain-fed livestock. (Union world)

• The FDA should require food packagers to list genetically modified ingredients on their labels. Though this is not a simple policy change, Europeans are developing a system for such labeling which the FDA can use as a model.
• Though Monsanto may not be able to slow down its production and marketing efforts, it can acknowledge the reality of people's concerns instead of ignoring them. This would open up some space for dialog and allow European nations to reconsider their increasing restrictions on the import of American transgenic crop seeds.
• We can avoid escalating the issue of European transgenic bans into an international trade issue. The Clinton administration and Congress should avoid trying to force transgenic products on other nations via trade pressures.
• Critics of transgenic crops should be careful in their reporting to highlight true research efforts by independent universities and public interest foundations - which may ultimately improve our ability to feed the world and mitigate ecological problems - so that we can distinguish their work from market-driven shotgun releases of poorly tested transgenic crops across large areas of the globe.

Footnote:
1 In this paper, a citation in parenthesis with no page number - for example "(Union)" - refers to the web page in the Works Cited beginning with that word. Individual pages within a site are distinguished by a second word - for example "(Union world)."

"Food for thought." Economist 19 June 1999: 19-21. 

"Forestry biotechnology venture to be formed." Wood Technology June 1999: 20. 

"Genetic engineering gains U.S. acceptance." Futurist Aug/Sep 1999: 7. 

"Genetics, God, and sacred DNA." Society May-June 1996: 22. 

"Special--genetically modified food: Food for thought." Economist 19 June 1999: 19-21.

"The Americas: Brazil's gene genie." Economist 31 Jul, 1999: 30. 

"Who's afraid?" Economist Newspaper Ltd. [London] 19 June 1999: 15-16. 

AGCare Archives 3 Nov. 1999 http://www.agcare.org/abiotech.htm

Benady, David "Food giants axe GMOs." Marketing Week [UK] 27 May 1999: 5.

Carey, John "Imperiled Monarchs Alter the Biotech Landscape." Business Week 7 June 1999: 36. 
CNBC: REUTERS Rtr 04:36 10-21-99 6 Nov. 1999 http://www.cnbc.com/stocks/fullstory.asp?Symbol=mtc&id=169271

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory http://nucleus.cshl.org/96AnReport/plant.html

Cook, R. James. "Toward a successful multinational crop plant genome initiative." Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 95 (1998): 1993-1995. 

David Mazur, Laura. "Globe's Goliaths still need to fear consumer." Marketing 1 April 1999:22. 

Dignam, Conor. "Business pushed by protesters in GM foods retreat." Marketing [UK] 17 June 1999: 21. 

Einhorn, Cheryl Strauss. "Bitter harvest." Barron's 6 Sep 1999: 13-14.

Einhorn, Cheryl Strauss. "Commodities corner: Value subtracted." Barron's 24 May 1999: MW12. 

Fairley, Peter. "Farmers sue seed firms." Chemical Week 22 Sep 1999: 13. 

FDA: U.S. Food and Drug Administration 30 Nov. 1999 <http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/bioqa.html> 

Genome Databases on the Web 31 Nov. 1999 http://www.stat.wisc.edu/biosci/genome.html

Hess, Glenn. "Consumer group urges modified food labeling." Chemical Market Reporter 30 Aug. 1999: 5, 11. 

Hileman, Bette. "EU, U.S. clash over environmental policies." Chemical & Engineering News 14 June 1999: 21-26. 

Hileman, Bette. "Prescription for a global biotechnology dialogue." Chemical & Engineering News 19 July 1999: 42. 

Hoisington, David, et al. "Plant genetic resources: What can they contribute toward increased crop productivity?" Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 96 (1999): 5937-5943. 

Howard Hughes Medical Institute http://www.hhmi.org/genetictrail/reading/read.htm

Jacoby, Mitch. "Botanists design plants with a taste for salt." Chemical & Engineering News 23 Aug. 1999: 9. 

Johnson, Jeff. " Environment and the bottom line." Chemical & Engineering News 21 June 1999: 25-26. 

Kluger, Jeffrey. "The Suicide Seeds: Terminator genes could mean big biotech bucks--but big trouble too, as a grass-roots protest breaks out on the Net.(biotechnology company Monsanto Corp. is designing new sterile seeds)." Time 1 Feb. 1999: 44. 

Lappe, Marc, and Britt Bailey. Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1998 

Losey, John E. "Transgenic pollen harms monarch larvae." Nature 20 May 1999: 214 

Mann, Charles C. "Biotech goes wild." Technology Review July-Aug. 1999: 36-43. 

Meadows, Donella H. "POOR MONSANTO. (Monsanto Co.'s plans for using transgenic products)" Whole Earth Summer, 1999: 104. 

Melcher, Richard A. "Fields of Genes." Business Week 12 April 1999: 62-74. 

Monbiot, Raymond. "GM foods prove real power lies with perception." Marketing [UK] 26 Aug 1999:12. 

Moore, Mark. "As ag chemical patents expire, market players adapt." Agri Marketing Apr 1999:80-81. 

Moore, Samuel K. "Study faults EPA's Bt cotton strategy." Chemical Week 11 Aug. 1999: 19. 

Moore, Samuel K. "Zeneca Ag invests in Maxygen for genetically modified crops." Chemical Week 18 Aug. 1999: 12.

Murdock, Deroy. "Seeds of hysteria." Chief Executive July-Aug. 1999: 22.

Papanikolaw, Jim. "Cargill, Monsanto accused of technology misuse." Chemical Market Reporter 15 Feb. 1999: 3,8. 

Pickering, Carol. "Agriculture." Forbes 31 May 1999: 52.

Rural Advancement Foundation International http://www.rafi.org

Schwartz, Nelson D. "Monsantophobia." Fortune 29 March,1999: 36-37. 

Scott, Alex. "Protesters fell AstraZeneca's low-lignin trees." Chemical Week 21 July 1999: 17. 

Shiva, Vandana. "Now Monsanto is after our water." Ecologist Aug.-Sept. 1999: 297. 

Sissell, Kara. "Gerber shuns transgenic foods." Chemical Week 11 Aug, 1999: 41. 

Sissell, Kara. "Japan proposes labeling rules." Chemical Week 18 Aug. 1999: 39. 

Stanford Human Genome Center http://www-shgc.stanford.edu/

Stevens, Tim. "Sowing the seeds of success." Industry Week 6 Sep. 1999: 68-74.

Thayer, Ann. "Jury says Monsanto unit infringed gene patent." Chemical & Engineering News 14 June 1999: 8. 

Union of Concerned Scientists 3 Nov. 1999 http://www.ucsusa.org/agriculture/gen.risks.html

Union of Concerned Scientists 3 Nov. 1999 http://www.ucsusa.org/agriculture/gen.whatis.html

Union of Concerned Scientists 3 Nov. 1999 http://www.ucsusa.org/agriculture/world.food.html

Union of Concerned Scientists 3 Nov. 1999 http://www.ucsusa.org/agriculture/biotech.whatis.html

Union of Concerned Scientists 3 Nov. 1999 http://www.ucsusa.org/ agriculture/ag.activists.html

United States Department of Agriculture http://www.nal.usda.gov/bic/bio21/agric.html#gene

Van Arnum, Patrica "Are the life sciences the way to grow?" Chemical Market Reporter 10 May 1999: FR3-FR4. 

Weatherford, Jack. Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988 

Weinstein, Steve. "Biotech: The third wave." Progressive Grocer April 1999: 18-26. 

Westervelt, Robert. "Department of Justice expands Monsanto-D&PL seed deal probe." Chemical Week 18 Aug. 1999: 19.

Westervelt, Robert. "Monsanto back on the block." Chemical Week 9 Aug /1 Sep 1999: 9. 

Willoughby, Jack. "Offerings in the offing: Hot tomato!" Barron's 21 June 1999: 40.