Star Protests/ Biotech

I hope that my fellow BU students will not accept at face value the latest round of attacks on biotechnologies, as reported in Tuesday’s DFP. As has become usual this time of year, a collection of environmental extremist groups has come together and announced that “the public” demands various changes in the way everyone chooses to live their lives. Like last month’s protests outside Starbucks locations, this week’s protest at Star Market was a dubious attempt to sway a business into reducing the freedom of the American consumer. Let us first note that never has a legitimate, scientific study suggested that any genetically engineered food product brought to market has caused any illness or health concern. The leaflets and speakers that proclaim bioengineering a danger to one’s health are based solely on emotion and pseudoscience. In truth, there are many important benefits of bioengineering. Among them is an increase in the yield of crops and cows, which drives consumer prices down and can provide cheap, safe food for parts of the world where starvation is a problem. Another goal of today’s research is to genetically remove the allergens from foods that trigger allergic reactions, such as peanuts. This time last month, the same groups attacked the nation’s milk supply. We heard vague statements about Bovine Growth Hormone-“tainted” milk. We’ve been told that the milk we drink every day will give us cancer and kill our children because it contains bovine somatotropin [BST]. The activists claimed, as usual, that this hormone is unsafe and potentially carcinogenic, and that “the public demands” that Starbucks and Star Markets sell only so-called organic milk. The truth of the matter is that BST is perfectly safe and is found in all milk, even “organic” milk, because it is produced by the cows themselves! Yes, the organic milk that the activists would like us all to use contains the very same hormone that is supposedly so deadly. Now, please also note that Starbucks caved in to these ridiculous demands and began offering organic milk as an option in its stores last year. What happened? The company threw away thousands of gallons of unused, expired organic milk because nobody wanted it. Clearly, the public is happy with the safe, cheap milk we’ve been drinking all our lives. But this week’s activists are not. Despite the public’s complete rejection of their product thus far, this year the protestors demand that Starbucks stop serving anything but their significantly more expensive and wasteful organic milk. I certainly hope that Starbucks and Star Markets have the courage to reject this renewed attempt by a fringe group to force its views (and its product) on the public. Further, I find it rather suspect that the groups protesting outside these stores receive assistance from the organic food industry itself. It’s just another case of “follow the money.” If these extremists, backed by the makers of organic foods, can convince companies to stop selling cheap, safe genetically engineered foods, we will all be forced to spend significantly more money on their own products. The fundamental issue here is that these environmental extremists have appointed themselves as representatives of “the public,” and are attempting to reduce the amount of choice that you and I have in our daily lives. The truth is that they do not represent the public. As the Star Market spokesman indicates in Tuesday’s article, the public remains happy with today’s healthy, cheap food. Furthermore, if one chooses to consume organic foods, one can simply shop in the organic section of Star Market, or request organic milk at Starbucks. No problem. These activists, on the contrary, want to deprive us of any chance to consume normal, cheaper foods, and that is absurd. The public has long since decided, by means of its purchase power in our free market, that it is comfortable with the extensively-tested, FDA-approved foods sold at Star Market. Were that not the case, Star would be voluntarily selling nothing but organic foods. I urge everyone to do some open-minded research and come to your own conclusion on these issues. Please do not accept at face value the propaganda and scare-tactics from fringe groups, which is often reported as fact by this newspaper and others.

Mike Hubbell CAS ’03