Europeans argue that the possible environmental and health consequences of biotech food, while not yet satisfactorily demonstrated, remain potentially devastating to European humans and European ecology. They've refused visas to a variety of U.S. food products, from soy beans to sides of beef. And it is not just the ever persnickety Prince Charles and his European ilk who have been turning up their noses at American food imports. A federal judge in Brazil has banned sales of Monsanto Corporation's Roundup Ready soybean seedsgene-altered to resist fungus and weeds and to tolerate Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. And, in a blow to U.S. marketing experts who have managed to prevent similar outbreaks of informed consumerism on these shores, Japan plans to require labels on all genetically modified food products.
T here are, of course, other forces behind the resistance to U.S. designer food.
Europeans fear the obliteration of centuries of gastronomically centered culture before an invasion of cheap U.S. prepackaged food. They worry about a global flattening of tastes and food selection that will homogenize palates and menus around the world. But genetically modified or chemically addicted food represents more than just an imagined threat to European identity. On another level, this food anxiety suggests the global public's distrust of a biotechnology industry that promises a bright future for all but seems ethically distant in its ambitions and diabolically unreal in its practices. But let's not rationalize away the foreigners' fear of our food too quickly.