For three days in June, the Bush administration, the State of
California and the City of Sacramento collectively spent millions of
dollars pitching genetically engineered foods and industrial
agricultural methods to some of the world's poorest nations at the
Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology,
June 23–25.

No agreements were negotiated, nor did this U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) event have an official purpose. Rather, it was an
opportunity for U.S. biotech and agribusiness corporations to pitch
their wares and for the Bush administration to apply pressure to
agriculture ministers just three months before the fifth World Trade
Organization (WTO) Ministerial in Cancún, Mexico. The Cancún
ministerial is poised to become the third failed WTO ministerial in a
row due in large part to disagreements over agricultural trade rules.

Success in Cancún is at least partially dependent upon the Bush
administration convincing the world that genetically engineered (GE)
products are not only safe but also necessary to solve global hunger.
If Sacramento is any guide, the Bush administration is poised to fail.

On Sunday, June 22, the day before the ministerial began, thousands of
protestors filled the streets of Sacramento in colorful and vocal
opposition to GE products, corporate control of the food supply, and
the industrialized agriculture model. They demanded real solutions to
hunger that address the distribution, cost and control of food and that
focus on small, locally owned, biologically diverse, and sustainable
farms.

The sentiment in Sacramento is consistent with polls in both the United
States and Europe that show that over 90 percent of the public want GE
foods to be labeled so they can choose to avoid them. In fact, the
Sacramento conference took place less than a month after the Bush
administration announced that it would launch a WTO challenge against
the European Union's (EU) five-year moratorium on GE products. The EU
invoked the moratorium under intense public concern about the health
and environmental risks of GE products.

Scientists, government regulators and consumer advocates around the
world argue that we simply do not know enough about the impact of GE
products on our environment and our health. It is a technology that is
being promoted without either adequate research or regulation for one
simple reason: it is yielding enormous profits for a handful of
powerful corporations. Dr. Suzanne Wuerthele, a U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency toxicologist, has said that "the bottom line in my
view is that we are confronted with the most powerful technology the
world has ever known, and it is being rapidly deployed with almost no
thought whatsoever to its consequences."

The Bush administration's argument that GE products will solve world
hunger by increasing food yields was also rejected in Sacramento. The
response was unfaltering and universal: the world has never grown as
much food per capita as it is growing today. The problem is not food
production, but distribution and cost. In fact, according to the United
Nations, increases in food production in the last thirty-five years
have outpaced the world's population growth by about 16 percent. As the
World Health Organization explains, "The problem is that food is
neither produced nor distributed equitably. All too frequently, the
poor in fertile developing countries stand by watching with empty
hands—and empty stomachs—while ample harvest and bumper crops are
exported for hard cash." It is the rules of institutions like the WTO
that force countries to produce food for export, rather than for hungry
families. This is why in 1997, 78 percent of all malnourished children
under five in the developing world lived in countries with food
surpluses (United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization).

The Sacramento ministerial was a success for the advocates of healthy,
sustainable, and accessible food. The EU ministers all boycotted the
conference, and even the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who
was scheduled to give an opening presentation, failed to attend. The
public came out by the thousands to protest, the agriculture ministers
sought alternative venues and materials, and the media did more
questioning than reporting of Bush administration positions. Even the
generally conservative Sacramento Bee editorial board argued that "the
Bush administration's Department of Agriculture is holding a meeting
about what the world's wealthiest country feels comfortable
discussing—namely, some technologies that can increase food production.
A conference focusing on the real obstacles to helping poor countries
would make the weather hotter inside the conference center than out."

The real test, however, will come at the WTO Ministerial in Cancún and
at the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations in Miami in
November. The Bush administration plans to use these ministerials to
create legally binding agreements that force governments to eliminate
barriers to GE products and implement the industrial agriculture model
while simultaneously allowing U.S. multinational agribusiness
corporations to maintain billions of dollars in government subsidies
and protections. We must ensure that these plans are not fulfilled. The
success of uniting developed and developing country critics of GE
products and industrial agriculture in Sacramento must continue. The
tide is turning; now it's time for a tsunami.

Antonia Juhasz is a project director at the International Forum on
Globalization in San Francisco. She is the author of Does Globalization
Help the Poor? as well as dozens of publications and articles on
globalization.