Will biotech get mugged (again)?

Nine years ago the Maine Board of Pesticides Control turned thumbs down on several registration applications for insect-resistant corn containing the naturally occurring pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt. The reason: the applicants failed to demonstrate a need for the products as required by law. The hearings were contentious and messy with biotech opponents sounding off about technology run amok, corporate greed and all manner of things unrelated to the technology. Seed manufacturers were so disheartened by the process that a full nine years would pass before they could be persuaded to resubmit their applications. Meanwhile, the opponents of agricultural biotechnology claimed bragging rights when the action made Maine the only state in the nation to prohibit the planting of Bt corn.

Fast forward to 2007. In July, the BPC reversed itself and approved seven varieties of Bt field corn. Need for the products was documented by field trials and thoughtful testimony from farmers who claimed they would plant the corn. Scientific questions were addressed by a Technical Committee which submitted a 34 page report to the Board. Though testimony from opponents was as wild and wooly as ever (Rep. David Miramant claimed modern farming methods were the cause of all the cancer we see), against the backdrop of the Technical Committee’s report, the unsubstantiated claims of harm from Bt corn couldn’t gain any traction. The BPC voted unanimously (with one abstention) to approve the registrations.

Now the process seems poised to come unglued as the BPC tackles rule making for the use of the products. The draft rule is a hodgepodge of initiatives that lack not only a scientific underpinning, but make no sense. For example, the rule proposes that farmers who plant Bt corn be licensed as pesticide applicators, never mind that the same farmer could buy unlimited amounts of Bt itself and apply it without any license. The draft rule also defines the plant itself as a pesticide, not just the active ingredient. That’s like calling a bottle a pesticide because it happens to contain one. Some of the rule, training for farmers who plant Bt corn, for example, seems reasonable, but the jury is very much out on how the final rule will read.

The public hearing on the draft rule, held November 16, was a spectacle. BPC members politely listened to four hours of testimony, much of it redundant and most of it completely unrelated to the draft rule. The same familiar faces stood before the board and made the same wild and unsubstantiated claims about biotechnology. Someone even launched a gratuitous attack on the Board claiming they were on the take for having granted the registrations in the first place. Supporters of the registrations stayed focused and narrowly commented on the draft rules. It was as if the two opposing sides were from different planets.

How did we get here? How do we find ourselves deep in the middle of a very serious governmental process where an elected official states (unopposed) that our farmers are killing people. Or where a person levels a charge of corruption against public officials without a shred of evidence and is not held accountable.

WE GOT HERE BECAUSE WE LET IT HAPPEN. Reasonable, knowledgeable people have left the process. Scientists no longer testify at legislative hearings or rulemaking sessions because no one listens to them. And they are tired of taking abuse from unhinged critics in public meetings. An agronomist who has volunteered considerable time to help the BPC told the Board at the last meeting he would no longer donate his time because nobody was listening to him. Business people have also left the room. A plea to the Biotechnology Association of Maine to engage in the rulemaking process went unanswered.

It remains to be seen whether the rulemaking process will spin out of control or whether reason and science will prevail in the end. But which ever way it goes, Maine has lost. For a state that touts the “Creative Economy” and courts biotechnology as a “targeted economic sector” the public flogging of agricultural biotechnology throughout this process is an embarrassment.

(Originally posted 12/03/2007)