China Pushes Genetically Modified Food

A Chinese farmer harvests corns in rural Jiaozhou city, Shandong province, China, October 2013.

Caught between rising pressures to increase its food resources and popular skepticism over allowing more genetically modified food, China’s government is stepping up a public-relations campaign that could pave the way toward full approval for commercial production of these politically sensitive crops.

In recent months, the agriculture ministry and other state agencies have rolled out a series of statements and publicity events loudly backing the safety of GMO food, ranging from research on cucumbers to taste tests for rice. GMOs is a technical term referring to genetically modified organisms that have had their genetic blueprint artificially re-engineered; for example, corn altered to become bug-resistant.

In China’s central Wuhan city, capital of Hubei province, pro-GMO activists at top state school Huazhong Agriculture University held a weekend shindig offering cake and porridge made from genetically modified “golden rice” – modified to produce more beta-carotene, a form of Vitamin A – grown by the university, the official Xinhua news agency reported Monday. Similar “taste tests” have been staged in more than 20 cities since May, Xinhua said.

On Monday, the Ministry of Agriculture published a statement lauding research by a Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences scientist Huang Sanwen that mapped the genetic code of the lowly cucumber. The research, it noted, was published in Nature Genetics, an influential global journal for high-level genetic research.

Days earlier, the ministry had put out an extensive question-and-answer essay on its website, aimed at rebutting a series of recent anti-GMO screeds published in the media. The ministry took aim – not for the first time – at an essay published in the nationalist daily Global Times by Peng Guangqian, a People’s Liberation Army major general who warned that it would be strategic foolishness to allow the U.S. to threaten China’s food security by nurturing the Middle Kingdom’s dependence on American genetically modified corn exports. The ministry also identified other media articles, including in the daily China Business News, that it said “revived rumors claiming GMO food causes cancer and affects fertility and again raised panic among people over GMO techniques.”

Fronted by appointed heavyweight academics, the ministry stated that there hasn’t yet been any healthy safety issues irrefutably linked to GMO food. GMO foods “undergo rigorous pre-market safety assessment” and GMO yields were far higher than conventional crops, it said.

The last point is arguably of growing importance to China. The world’s most populous nation is facing, for the first time in 10 years, the possibility that its rice production may be falling. While China’s overall grain harvest this year is likely to remain robust, imports of key grains including corn – around 95% of which are genetically modified strains coming from the U.S. – have been surging since 2010.

“Using domestic and foreign resources, and coordinating between two markets, are an inevitable choice for China,” the ministry said. It added that the U.S. is not only the world’s largest producer of GMO corn, but also its largest consumer.

The public-relations offensive may be a signal that the government is readying itself to open the door to domestic commercial production of GMO crops, a local newspaper suggested in an article.

“The next step will be to increase scientific propaganda for our GMO biotechnology industry, to create an environment of good public opinion, and to accelerate GMO regulatory amendments,” the Beijing News report said Tuesday, citing an unnamed agriculture ministry official. The ministry didn’t reply to a call for comment.

China currently permits the commercial production of GMO tomatoes, cotton, papaya and bell pepper. It allows the import of GMO corn, soybean, canola and cotton for use in animal feed and other non-human consumption. In November 2009, the Ministry of Agriculture granted bio-safety certificates – which allow for domestic field trials – for two pest-resistant varieties of GMO rice and one variety of corn.

The sentiment in the media and China’s Twitter-like microblogging world tend to question the safety of GMO food in a country already awash in toxic-food scandals. For now, an ocean of critical public opinion still separates commercial production of these grains from approval by the agriculture ministry.

But Beijing’s publicity blitz may now no longer be just about a war of wonky words with military theorists and academics. It may be revving up to turn the tide of opinion among the masses. At the taste tests for “golden rice” at Wuhan on Saturday, according to the Xinhua report, volunteer organizers were seen sporting T-shirts with a catchy slogan that said, “Love Science, Support Genetic Modification.” WSJ

– Chuin-wei Yap