Rockefeller Foundation to encourage US gm debate
Raising the Anti: For Those Fighting Biotech Crops, Santa Came Early
By LUCETTE LAGNADO
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Elizabeth Wilcox, who runs a consortium of small family
philanthropies in Oakland, Calif., wasn't particularly
interested in the controversy surrounding bioengineered food
until she heard Nell Newman speak in October.
Ms. Newman, the daughter of actor Paul Newman and head of the
organic division of Newman's Own Inc., spoke to foundation
chiefs gathered near Monterey, Calif., to discuss funding
environmental causes. She shared her concerns about the
potential polluting effects of genetically modified seeds,
noting that she tries to ensure that Newman's Own tortilla chips
are free of bioengineered ingredients.
Inspired by Ms. Newman, Ms. Wilcox decided to recommend that
money from her foundation, Common Counsel, go to
antibiotechnology causes she had largely ignored.
'Really Scary'
"We are seeking to inform and counterweigh the momentum of the
market," Ms. Wilcox says. "We talk about creating the perfect
food, and the perfect body, and you don't want to cry eugenics,
but this issue is really scary."
Serious money is starting to flow to the antibiotech movement in
the U.S., even amid debate over whether the opposition is mostly
about a scientific threat, an aversion to big business or a
wariness of the unknown.
How a U.S. Gadfly and a Green Activist Started a Food Fight
(Nov. 30)
Biotech Crops Fade in Midwest (Nov. 19)
Food Labeling Prompts Confusion (Oct. 26)
Monsanto Stumbles Pitching Europe on Its Biotech Food (May 11)
Until recently, the fervor seemed to be confined to Europe,
where a wave of protests looks as if it could make an entire
continent free of genetically modified organisms. But as
demonstrations at the World Trade Organization forum in Seattle
and elsewhere showed, the issue -- particularly when coupled
with inchoate fears about biotechnology -- is capable of
arousing an emotional response in the U.S., too.
Some of the biggest companies at the center of the turmoil have
taken action recently that suggests defensive moves in the face
of this growing opposition, though the companies say their main
motivation was the way the slumping farm economy has hurt
pesticide sales. AstraZeneca PLC and Novartis AG earlier this
month announced plans to spin off and merge a chunk of their
agribusiness, while the board of Monsanto Co. has been debating
spinning off its agribusiness interests while holding on to the
lucrative pharmaceutical lines.
Monsanto says it welcomes the new funds flowing even to
potential critics. "I believe that long-term there is wonderful
room here for compromise and discussion," says a spokeswoman,
adding that "anytime there is a new technology ... people have
to work their way through ethical and moral issues."
New Type of Donor
The funds to attack bioengineered food, as well as biotechnology
in general, are still coming in fitfully and are modest compared
with the millions of dollars producers of genetically modified
seeds have pledged for their own public-relations offensive. But
what is striking is the number and nature of the donors that
have begun to take notice and dive in -- from Ms. Wilcox's small
Common Counsel fund to the mighty Rockefeller Foundation. Some
are explicitly backing the antibiotechnology movement; others,
such as the Rockefeller Foundation, are taking more measured
steps that, nonetheless, could spell trouble for the companies
behind genetically modified seed.
"A few years ago, few foundations could even spell
biotechnology," says Pat Mooney, an influential Canadian
antibiotech activist. "Now we find it has gone from small
organizations to midsize foundations that are not the radical
hippie types."
Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, says he
is earmarking $3 million for a broad new effort that will,
pending board approval, include: funding a mediation and
conflict-resolution firm to study how warring factions can be
brought together; funding consumer activists who want strict
labeling of products containing genetically modified
ingredients, which the biotech industry opposes; supporting
bioethicists to study the ethical implications of bioengineered
food (as well as other biotech issues such as cloning); and
sponsoring a global "dialogue" about genetically modified food
geared mainly toward giving the opposition a public forum.
A Hot Issue
"There is a buzz," says Amy Lyons, program executive at the
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, a San Francisco foundation with
a $368 million endowment. "It is one of these hot issues" in the
foundation world, she says. The fund awards the prestigious
Goldman Environmental Prize, which is aimed at grassroots
environmentalists.
One key behind-the-scenes player is Chris Desser, an
environmental lawyer, experienced activist and seasoned
fundraiser who works for the Funders Working Group on
Biotechnology, an alliance of several dozen foundations
concerned about the biotech issue.
In the past eight or nine months, Ms. Desser, who is based in
San Francisco, has brought together activists and mainstream
foundation chiefs on both coasts. Ms. Desser was active in the
Monterey gathering; among other things, she arranged for Ms.
Newman, her friend and Buddhist meditation partner, to speak.
This year she has also been in touch with Rockefeller Financial
Services, which handles money for individual Rockefeller family
members, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
"There is more money than there has ever been," Ms. Desser says.
To tap into it, "I am keeping the tent as wide as possible," she
adds. Her strategy is simple: She intends to piggyback on the
mainstream environmental movement.
In June, she invited several dozen big West Coast foundations to
a biotech briefing in San Francisco and invited as keynote
speaker Marc Lappe, a health-policy expert and former academic
who is the director of the Center for Ethics and Toxics, in
Gualala, Calif. The center is fiercely critical of genetically
modified food. Afterward, the Goldman Fund, which gives 40% of
its grants to environmental causes, awarded the center $120,000
over a two-year period to produce a white paper to outline
ethical concerns surrounding biotechnology and propose a set of
ethical guidelines.
"For us, it is a dramatic turning point," Dr. Lappe says. The
gift to the center was the Goldman Fund's first major biotech
grant, Ms. Lyons says, adding, "We wanted to support a group
that is helping to open up and stimulate the debate" about
genetically modified food.
Likewise, as a result of her change-of-heart in Monterey, Ms.
Wilcox of Common Counsel proposed channeling $5,000 to the
American Corn Growers Association, Tulsa, Okla. The grant is
pending approval from the board. Gary Goldberg, the
association's director, says the group has received a total of
$85,000 recently in response to a broad fund-raising push
centered on concerns about genetically modified seed corn. The
biggest chunk -- $50,000 -- came from the John Merck Fund, a
Boston philanthropy with a $200 million endowment that is a
major contributor to environmental causes in New England.
The Merck Fund's executive director, Ruth Hennig, says the
organization has given several hundred thousand dollars in
biotech-related grants for the first time. "There is a lot of
money out there trying to convince the public and
decision-makers" -- that genetically modified organisms --
"should without question be a part of the food supply, and all
we are saying is let the other side of the debate be heard," Ms.
Hennig says.
Mr. Goldberg says his group, which represents 14,000 farmers,
views itself as neutral on the biotech issue. But farmers, he
says, "have gotten only one message from the seed companies and
the chemical companies," namely, to stick to planting
bioengineered crops. They need to know that they "may consider
some alternatives," he says.
The Rockefeller Agenda
The philanthropic-advisory arm of Rockefeller Financial Services
has embraced the drive questioning genetically modified food,
according to Marcia Townley, an adviser with the firm who helps
individual Rockefellers decide where to channel their charitable
dollars. Indeed, Rockefeller Financial Services is a member of
the Funders Working Group that employs Ms. Desser; it was Ms.
Townley who opened the firm's offices to Ms. Desser, other
activists and numerous foundation heads in September.
"There are several Rockefeller family members who are concerned
about the issues of biotech in agriculture and plants and its
impact on the environment and health," Ms. Townley says. "This
is a new technology the world has little experience with."
Several months ago, Ms. Townley sent out a letter to several
dozen Rockefellers inviting them to pledge money to study the health and environmental implications of genetically modified
food. The result: a $200,000 pool of money earmarked to increase
awareness of the possible dangers of GM food, she says.
The first grant, $6,000, will cover the cost of a mass mailing
to environmental journalists of the summer 1999 issue of the
Wild Duck Review, a little-known West Coast publication, which
was devoted to allegations about the dangers of biotechnology.
The articles went far beyond genetically modified food, raising
questions about the patenting of genes and experiments in
cloning. One critical piece, "Unnatural Selection or Bad
Choice," was written by Ms. Desser. Additional grants will be
made after Jan. 1, Ms. Townley says.
As for the Rockefeller Foundation, which was created by the
family but isn't otherwise linked to Rockefeller Financial
Services, its president, Mr. Conway, is critical of both sides
of the issue. The antibiotech movement, he feels, doesn't
recognize the beneficial aspects of new seed technology, but the
biotech-food industry isn't looking out for the interests of
farmers in the developing world.
'Terminator Technology'
Indeed, Mr. Conway was influential in persuading Monsanto to
withdraw its so-called terminator technology, which would have
produced seeds that yield one-generation, sterile crops that
would prevent replanting and, he believes, would ill-serve poor
farmers by making them beholden to corporate interests for new
seeds with each planting.
"Well, we were naive," says Gary Toenniessen, a deputy director
at the Rockefeller Foundation, and the foundation failed to
realize the degree to which biotech companies were going to be
aggressive and gain control of the technology. Mr. Toenniessen
says the foundation now suspects the industry doesn't
necessarily share its goal of using biotechnology to ease world
hunger.
Mr. Conway adds that the foundation made another mistake,
failing to predict the extraordinary backlash that would arise
abroad. "We were also naive about the extent of the opposition
that would arise in Europe," Mr. Conway says. Between these two
forces lie the makings, the foundation has come to believe, of a
global disaster, threatening to wreck a technology the
foundation continues to believe is fundamental to resolving
problems of hunger and malnutrition.
Of the $3 million set aside by the Rockefeller Foundation,
nearly $200,000 is going to the Hastings Institute, a New York
ethics think tank, to study whether an antibiotech movement as
emotion-driven as Europe's could take hold in America. Recent
evidence suggests the answer is yes.
"Within the past month there were demonstrations in the WTO,
where one of the issues was ag-biotech," says Thomas Murray,
head of the Hastings Center. "The Food and Drug Administration
has been holding hearings around the country, and they are
getting demonstrators, and there are all kinds of efforts to
foment public concern in the U.S."
The tenor of the debate is crucial to the Rockefeller
Foundation, whose broader mission is to end world hunger. As
part of that mission, the organization has spent $100 million
funding biotech research, including efforts to develop
vitamin-enriched rice and to enhance crop yields, all aimed at
helping farmers and improving nutrition in poor countries. Now,
he says, unless the debate over genetically modified food is
intelligent and constructive on both sides, any hype or hysteria
could ultimately jeopardize constructive efforts to feed the
hungry.
'The Great Middle'
A further $150,000 of the foundation's money will support the
work of Carol Tucker Foreman, a distinguished fellow with the
Consumer Federation of America, in Washington, D.C. Ms. Foreman
wants the government to require labeling and strictly regulate
genetically modified foods -- a view the industry opposes. Ms.
Foreman, 62, concedes that she is controversial. "I represent
the great middle," she says, arguing that if genetically
modified food "can be developed in a way that civil society
benefits, we should do so, but first you have to demonstrate it
is safe."
Another option being weighed by the Rockefeller Foundation:
sponsoring a series of "town hall" meetings around the world to
foster a dialogue between activists and biotech-food supporters.
The foundation is keen to understand the ethical dilemmas, and
Mr. Conway believes there are many voices critical of or
intrigued by biotechnology that should be heard.
From Ms. Desser's perspective, the Rockefeller Foundation's
position on genetically modified food carries a bit more nuance
than the stance of some in the Funders Working Group. She
believes one key question is whether genetically modified food
should exist at all, whereas one focus of the Rockefeller
Foundation is how the biotech business should address
developing-world issues.
Ms. Newman, for her part, says she expects to give away a
sizable sum to the antibiotech cause. She expects to have a pot
of more than $400,000 in after-tax profits from Newman's Own to
give away this year, though she doesn't yet know precisely how
much will go where. "More money will be going to organizations
that are going to try to have a total moratorium on the spread
of GMOs into the food system," she declares, referring to
genetically modified organisms.
Ms. Newman says that because her organic-food business is at
stake, funding the activists has become "a save-my-a priority."
But she makes it clear that she would rather give away her money
"to relieve human suffering" than spend it on safeguarding the
tortilla chip.
Write to Lucette Lagnado at lucette.lagnado@wsj.com