It is also the legacy of the sheer scientific difficulty of conducting the kinds of tests that might assure people that engineered crops and food are safe. And it is the legacy of broken promises by the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, both of which have said for the past five years that they intend to write rules to minimize the chances that gene-altered food will cause allergies or damage the environment. Genetically engineered food, which is endowed with bacterial, viral and other genes not native to human food, has been widely, if mostly unknowingly, consumed in the United States since 1996. As far as scientists can tell, no one has ever been harmed. In Europe, that crisis of confidence already runs deep.
Activists regularly vandalize newly planted plots of gene-altered crops.
Major grocery chains have refused to carry engineered food. And food processors have begun to hire DNA fingerprinting labs to verify that their products are free of foreign genes. The British Medical Association has warned that the technology may lead to the emergence of new allergies and speed the evolution of microbes resistant to antibiotics. In this country, gene-altered food is virtually unavoidable. Half of all U.S. soybeans are genetically modified as well, mostly to produce a chemical that makes the plants impervious to weed-killing sprays.