In the overall scheme of things, the most significant event for Australian agriculture this week was probably not the newest drought aid installment or the drought-breaking rains in south western Queensland. It was probably the decision by hamburger giant McDonald to change the cooking oil it uses in Australian outlets away from standard Australian canola, to healthier new oil blends with much less trans fat.
One way of creating a low trans fat crop variety is through biotechnology. But our farmers have rejected GM food crops. Indeed while Greenpeace championed the bans on new GM food crops in Australia, the NSW Farmers Association supported the legislation in that state. In Victoria it was the milk processors who came to the support of that state govenment as it gave in to the luddites.
Australian farmers, once trail blazers when it came to innovation and new technologies, are now dealing themselves out of the future. Indeed they still arguing about GM canola, a crop grown in Canada for 10 years now, while farmers in the US look forward to the next generation of GM crop varieties that will not only give superior yields and better weed control but also improved nutrition.
Indeed, and quoting Roger Kalla:
“In USA the labelling of the trans fat content in foods is already mandated by law. The low trans fat oils used in North America are derived from Duponts NUTRIUM™ Low Lin Soybean Oil , Monsantos VISTIVE Soybean oil and Dow Agrosciences Natreon Canola oil. We will see where McDonald’s will be sourcing their low transfat oils from in the future.
The Australian canola crop this year is predicted to be barley enough for domestic use of vegetable oil and the fraction of the crop that is of a suitable quality like Monola , marketed by Nutrihealth, will probably not be enough to meet the new demand. Australian farmers seem to be doubly disadvantaged this year with a major drought affecting yields and not having access to the quality oil seed that large end users of canola oil such as McDonald’s increasingly requires.“
I will be talking about Robert Malthus and banning food crops in my next Counterpoint column. If you live in Australia you will be able to hear it by tunning into ABC Radio National at 4pm on Monday, repeated 9pm on Tuesdays.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The McDonalds decision to switch to an vegetable oil with superior quality marks a seachange in customer focussed marketing of food.
McDonalds are not in the one-size-fits all business that the Australian marketers of commodities ( AWB, ABB etc) have traditionally been catering for and the farmers been selling their crops to.
No McDs in Australia (interestingly not in US yet) have realised that they are competing in the health food market and they want to keep their market share and expand it.
So they want a ’boutique’ kind o vegetable oil for their frying pans with specific demands on quality that the Australian farmers and marketing organisations are ill set up to serve.
David Tribe and I forsaw this development in the paper we wrote for the meeting in 2005 of Global Ag Biotechnology experts in Ravello, Italy(www.economia.uniroma2.it/conferenze/icabr2005/papers/Tribe_Davi_Kalla_Roger.pdf).
But what we didn’t foresee was the ‘perfect storm’ of crumbling crops marketers, the effect of the drought on crop yields, and customer driven demand for healthier alternatives on fast food chains like McDonalds which has speeded up the rate of cultural change in Australian agriculture.
This is indeed very bad timing for the States via their GM crop moratoria to block sorely needed innovation in Australian agriculture.
I am sorry but I just can’t agree with most of your post, Jen (and I’m pro-GM). McDonalds’ move is a nice little step forward but that’s about it. The increased awareness of climate change is far, far more significant. All forms of agriculture are affected by climate change and biotechnology offers the best ways to overcome some of the difficulties. As a result GM drought-tolerant varieties may become more politically acceptable as without them, prices will rise. I’d be surprised if the average consumer thinks the health “dangers” of GM are outweighed by a switch away from trans-fat. Most will see it as just another food fad that’ll be reversed in a few years, even if it is perfectly scientifically valid.
Secondly, it’s not our farmers who have rejected GM crops, it’s city-based consumers. Farmers just grow what they can sell. When they can sell GM, they grow it happily. For example, GM cotton. To place a large portion of blame on farmers for a lack of GM uptake is just wrong. Our farmers are as innovative as they’ve ever been.
UH OH!! be VERY sure to have done your research thoroughly before making points with reference to Malthus!
I disagree with Nexus 6. The current GM crop moratoria are based on the perception that Australias export in commodities are threatened by the introduction of GM.
The decision by McD to go healthy has the potential to introduce a new customer segment (and a major one at that)to healthier products derived from second generation GM crops .
It gives fast food consumers ( that probably couldn’t care less about the ‘benefits’ of organic foods) a healthier chioce.
So we turn the negative spin surrounding GM around and GM suddenly becomes the healthy choice in the mind of at least the consumers of fast food.
And our politicians will hopefully get the signal loud and clear from the grassroots – GM is not a threat to our exports but rather part of the solution to the drought we are facing.
Jen
you get that email re Tommy Gold?
The current GM moratoria are based on votes, nothing more.
The perception of health, which has stuff all to do with whether something is actually healthy or not, is something that will elude GM for some time. It can’t compete with the feel-good factor of organic food, for example.
What will make a real difference is when consumers are hit in the hip pocket. When GM food can seriously undercut non-GM at the supermarket – that’s when things will change. And the way things are going that time is near.
Louis
Have received nothing. Could you please resend it to jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com .
I’m broadly supportive of GM, although I consider myself a greenie. However the CSIRO GM pea debacle has made me a more cautious supporter.
I support the introduction of further GM crops into Australia provided there are safeguards as stringent as those that currently that currently apply to pharmaceuticals and provided GM proponents can convince farmers that a particular GM crop will not harm their financial interests.
Also, the GM industry must be willing accept complete legal liability if anything untoward occurs, like health side-effects.
MacDonalds have shown how a free market works and what brilliant marketers they are, they respond to the public need as it evolves. Whilst not deviating from the western meat, bread & veg diet they can accomodate to all new dietary fads, whims and fashions. Without hectoring or moralising or imposing or compelling or legislating or requiring subsidies, tariffs or govt handouts they continue to provide the general public with an affordable, hygienic & nutritious food whilst increasing their market share, something no govt has been able to do.
How will the food nazis respond to this?
I cried when I read it Rog – that’s beautiful.
Actually, Rog, what you are praising is in fact an example of market failure. In the neoliberal fantasy world you ideally have many small producers, none of which have market power greater than any other, rather than oligopolistic producers like McDonalds.
This failed liberal fantasy world must also include makers of cars, TVs, frozen and tinned peas, pharmaceuticals, beer….problems not encountered in the Sudan, Myanmar, Calcutta and other thriving economies.
You have this particular market called food, and in it you have several groups of players including cook at home types, take out, restaurants, cafes, street vendors, fast food…in one sector, fast food, you have various businesses like KFC, Pizza Hut, Wendys, Burger King, Taco Bell, Starbucks and in that cut throat market mcdonalds have been successful and you call that evidence of market failure?
Problem with you Steve Munn is that you dont like others to be successful.
market failure can occur irrespective of the financial success of a given business
oh i cant wait for the manna from heaven god-send of Monsanto and Beyer, to help us feed the starving with their altruistic trademarked patented sterile GM crops! maybe they can give them away for free with all the extra money they are making suing the neighbouring farmers whose crops have been accidentally cross polinated.
and bring on the growth hormone for our cows too – i’m definitely not getting as much pus in my milk as the american consumers are – those lucky blighters…
So many GM myths in one small post, Julian.
Perhaps you could inform readers how almost an entire crop can be accidentally cross-pollinated by a neighbouring crop, with no selection pressure being applied.
Then, maybe explain why the benefits of a terminator gene would be outweighed by the costs to farmers for out-breeding crops like maize and canola. After all, seed from elite non-GM hybrid varieties is not saved and replanted each year, as much of the progeny are no longer elite after a few generations.
Just filing this here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2006/1782111.htm .
‘After all, seed from elite non-GM hybrid varieties is not saved and replanted each year, as much of the progeny are no longer elite after a few generations.’ – Nexus 6
Disingenuos Nexus 6, that’s a developed economy argument, rather than Julian’s valid comment regarding developing countries where the farmer may require the ability to replant seed regardless of whether it is elite because he doesn’t have the cash for this year’s elite seed, a choice he does not have with a terminator gene.
Even developed countries have a finite number of customers, relentless increases in production lead to reduced prices for producers, subsidies and/or surplus dumping onto other countries markets, just ask EEC, Canadian and American farmers.
‘Monsanto’s GM confidence trick
Is Monsanto’s pulling a GM confidence trick with its supposedly healthier low linolenic acid soya beans? It certainly looks like it!
According to an article in the current edition of New Scientist magazine “the first GM products claiming to have direct benefits for consumers have arrived… Monsanto says that the new soybeans will make processed foods and snacks healthier. When added to processed foods, oil from the beans doesn’t form trans-fatty acids, saturated fats…”
Sue Davies, chief policy adviser at the GM-sceptical Consumer Association, is quoted as saying, “It’s positive that they’re starting to look at consumer benefits.” And in an editorial New Scientist opines, “Finally, GM crop growers are offering sceptical consumers a real reason to buy – low fat foods… it is a major – and pleasant – surprise to find that the agribiotech company Monsanto has created a crop specifically to appeal to health-conscious westerners… the first commercial GM crop designed for well-heeled consumers.” The editorial asks, “Could it reverse anti-GM feelings in Europe?”
That’s doubtless what this “GM crop” is designed to do but it’s nothing short of a confidence trick. The low linolenic acid trait in the soybeans that Monsanto wants to market is actually… non-GM!!
As much was admitted in a recent REUTERS article about why Monsanto wouldn’t be pursuing GM wheat but would be pursuing low linolenic acid soya instead. That article clearly says, the “company [Monsanto] instead would plow its resources into a *conventionally bred* variety of soybeans that will produce a cooking oil with a lower level of cholesterol-producing trans fatty acids.” (emphasis added) The article goes on to quote Monsanto’s Executive Vice President Jerry Steiner, “We saw what’s going on with food and trans fats, and we saw that resource we are putting in wheat is not nearly as valuable as putting it into the food and oil side.”
‘So, if Monsanto has a valuable non-GM low linolenic acid soyabean how on earth is it being marketed as the first of the company’s GM crops with consumer benefits? The answer seems to be that Monsanto has deliberately turned it into a GM crop. The company has added a GM trait that has absolutely nothing to do with consumer benefits!
– Organic Consumers Association, 20th March 2005
‘It is important to note that the transgenic gene inserted into the canola plant to produce Roundup Ready and Liberty Link InVigor herbicide resistance is a protein. All protein is removed from canola oil during processing. Therefore, canola oil contains no GM material and is identical to canola oil from a non-GM canola plant.’
– Canola Council of Canada
:o)
Lamna nasus, Australia is a developed country last time I looked. Even in a developing country, if the costs of using GM outweigh the benefits, why shouldn’t the farmer have the choice to use GM. If he doesn’t want to, he’s free to use non-GM seed. It’s about choice.
Also, the terminator gene would prevent the low levels of GM contamination that occurs in neighbouring non-GM crops. Not sure why you would consider this a bad thing.
As for your last post, what’s your point? There’s no EPSPS protein, which has the roundup-resistance action, in the oil. How’s the oil different from non-GM?
‘what’s your point? …… How’s the oil different from non-GM?’ – Nexus 6
The ‘GM’ oil isn’t different, it isn’t even GM, that is the point. Its shonky science.