China battles GMO unease from fi eld to dinner table
Despite perceived risks among its citizens, Beijing is pushing use of genetically modifi ed crops to expand food supplies
BEIJING — The Chinese government is trying to convince Zhou Guangxiu that the corn in the congee she wants to feed her son is safe. That may not be easy.
Zhou, the owner of a recycling business in the northeast coastal city of Weihai, said one source of her concern was an anonymous article shared online by her friends that alleges genetically modified crops cause infertility in Asians, part of a U. S. ploy against China. She fears her 21- year- old son won’t have his own family if she feeds him the corn- meal porridge.
“I definitely won’t let my son eat it,” Zhou said. “It’s not just me. All our friends are worried. All the corn grown now is genetically modified.”
China, the world’s most- populous country and the biggest consumer of rice, soybeans and wheat, has begun a campaign to push genetically modified organisms as it seeks to expand food supplies. While no domestic grain crops are bioengineered, President Xi Jinping has endorsed the technology used to boost output everywhere from the Americas to Africa. China’s Ministry of Agriculture has said it would use media, seminars and street advertising to combat the perceived risks.
Livestock feed demand
Meat consumption has surged in China as the economy expanded almost six- fold over the past decade and incomes rose. That led to an increase in livestock herds and demand for feed. The nation is already the biggest soybean buyer and will become the top corn importer by about 2020, the U. S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Most of its overseas supplies are produced from seed genetically engineered to grow with certain traits, like killing pests or tolerating herbicides.
“There has been a lot of opposition against GMO in China not based on science, which, if left unchecked, can weaken government support for the development of biotechnology,” Li Qiang, chairman of Shanghai JC Intelligence Co., the country’s largest independent agriculture market researcher, said by telephone from Shanghai this week. “The agriculture ministry probably feels compelled to do some education.”
The state- led campaign to promote GMOs comes at a time when meat has become a popular choice at meals, requiring more corn, wheat and soybeans to feed livestock. China is the world’s largest pork consumer, ranks second in chicken demand, and trails only the U. S. and Brazil in beef, USDA data show.
China’s demand for corn and soybeans will continue to rise in line with economic growth, according to the USDA report in April. The economy, which has the world’s biggest meat industry, may expand 6.9 per cent in 2016, more than twice as fast as the U. S., according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
The country imported 63 million tonnes of soybeans last year valued at $ 38 billion, accounting for more than 60 per cent of global exports, customs data show. It also shipped in 3.35 million tonnes of corn, according to the data. Soybean purchases will climb to 98.45 million tonnes by about 2020, with corn reaching 16.2 million tonnes, according to a longterm projection made by the USDA in February.
Most of the soybeans and corn China imports are grown with engineered seeds, including those with built- in resistance to Monsanto Co.’ s Roundup herbicide, Zhang Xiaoping, chief representative of the U. S. Soybean Export Council, said last month.
U. S. is biggest supplier
China’s biggest supplier is the U. S., where GMO crops account for 93 per cent of all corn produced and 94 per cent of soybeans, USDA data show. While the U. S. is the largest user, Brazil and Argentina sowed a combined 64.7 million hectares of GMO corn, soybeans and cotton in 2013, with another 21.8 million hectares planted in India and Canada, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri- Biotech Applications.
“China doesn’t have a choice when the top suppliers all employ the technology,” Zhang said.
Corn in China trades at almost three times the U. S. price.
Concern that GMO crops are unsafe isn’t unique to China. Only 27 countries planted genetically modified crops in 2013, ISAAA data show, and at least 60 have labelling requirements, including Japan, Brazil and the entire European Union. Surveys in the EU show opposition by consumers, who worry about risks such as human resistance to antibiotics and the development of so- called superweeds that are impervious to herbicides.
China approved strains of genetically modified rice and corn in 2009, saying at the time that mass- production will be
I definitely won’t let my son eat it. It’s not just me. All our friends are worried. All the corn grown now is genetically modified. ZHOU GUANGXIU WEIHAI BUSINESS OWNER
allowed only after trial planting and public acceptance. Cotton is the only bioengineered crop widely grown.
Unlike the U. S., Brazil and Argentina, China doesn’t raise gene- altered food crops on a commercial scale, according to Huang Dafang, a researcher with Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and former member of the agriculture ministry’s biosafety committee. Instead, it only buys them, though the government has rejected some imports with unapproved traits, including an insect- repelling variety developed by Syngenta AG. Imports must be processed, mostly into animal feed and cooking oil, he said.
Even as the top leadership has approved the safety of domestically developed genetically modified corn and rice, they haven’t been cultivated outside labs, according to Huang. No one at China’s agriculture ministry replied to a request for comment sent by fax.
“The main reason for China’s slow adoption of biotech grain crops isn’t so much that the government is swayed by public opinions,” Shanghai JC Intelligence’s Li said. “It’s that China doesn’t have leading, marketable biotechnologies and is afraid of having the market controlled by foreign companies once commercialization is granted.”