Monsanto drops its biotech potato. (Environmental Intelligence).

In the spring of 2UUI, Monsanto--one of the world's largest biotech companies--surprised farmers, environmentalists, and consumers by dropping its Newleaf potato from U.S. and Canadian markets after fast-food giant McDonald's cut orders of the genetically modified (GM) spuds.

The Newleaf potato, Monsanto's first genetically modified product, was introduced six years ago to help farmers fight against the Colorado potato beetle--the predominant insect pest of potatoes in the United States. The potato's genes were spliced with a bacterium known as Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis that produces a natural insecticide that repels and kills the beetles. However, environmentalists warn that because the plant continuously produces the Bt toxin from every cell, it will significantly increase insect exposure to the bacterium and subsequently speed the rate at which insects develop resistance to the insecticide.

Although Monsanto's potato never captured more than 5 percent of the potato-seed market, by 1999 U.S. farmers had planted about 50,000 acres of Newleaf, up from 10,000 acres in 1996. But in 2000, output fell about 80 percent after McDonald's and other big potato purchasers such as Burger King, McCain Foods, and Frito-Lay decided to stop selling products made from biotech potatoes. Of the more than 2.2 million tons of potatoes grown annually in the United States, 49 percent are made into French fries and 11 percent are sold as potato chips (the potato is the most commonly consumed vegetable in the United States).

Consumer advocates question the safety of genetically modified foods, saying that we know little about their effects in the human diet. Margaret Mellon, a lawyer and a molecular scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, warns that there is little evidence GM products are either safe or unsafe: "That research simply hasn't been done." And Dave Stark, a biologist and co-director of Naturemark, a Monsanto subsidiary, admitted that "there's still a lot we don't understand about gene expression." Scientists in Belgium recently discovered that Monsanto's widely planted biotech soybeans contain genetic material unintentionally inserted into the product when it was created.

After the dramatic drop in potato sales in 2000, Monsanto launched a more powerful biotech potato, equipped with both the Bt gene and another gene conferring high resistance to potato Leafroll virus. But the company was unable to restore interest in its biotech potatoes.

Company spokesman Loren Wassell said the decision to drop the potato was a strategic move to focus on key crops. "The reason that Monsanto has stopped selling GM potatoes to U.S. and Canadian farmers is that the old Monsanto merged with Pharmacia Corp and created a new Monsanto focused on key agriculture crops, like corn, cotton, oilseeds and wheat," said Wassell. "This decision was part of the strategy to improve the major crops."