he British tend to assume that something "American" is either odious, or new and improved. In the case of genetically modified foods, the public thinks the former, the Prime Minister thinks the latter. But how are
"Frankenfoods" seen in America itself~

In most cases, they aren't seen at all. Estimates vary as to how many cows in the US are regularly injected with the genetically engineered growth hormone "Posilac", or bovine somatotropin (BST). Monsanto couldn't tell me.
It might be 7 per cent, it might be 15, it might be 30. Anywhere from
700,000 to three million cows receive it, and their milk is not labelled, nor is the cheese or yoghurt that's made from it.

An estimated 45-50 million acres of GM crops (ofthe 69.5 million planted globally) now grow in the US. These, too, go unnoticed by the average citizen. They are grown on huge, isolated farms and then sold in bulk to distributors and processors from where they slip undeclared into all manner of products - as soy beans into sauces, as potatoes into chips at
McDonald's, as corn into tins of minestrone, as cotton into garments.

According to Monsanto, this is because GM crops are safe and desirable.
According to their detractors, they do so because of decades of political cosiness between government and agri-business.

Both sides agree, though, that Monsanto won the first round of the battle in
1993, when BST became, in Monsanto's words, "the first product of biotechnology approved for commercial sale". Ronnie Cummins, director of the
Campaign for Food Safety, a pressure group based in Minnesota and
Washington, DC, is still fighting its use. "It's crack for cows," he says.
"You can make some money if you're going to discard your cows after two or three years. The only reason Monsanto keeps it on the market is that it would be a disaster to admit that it was wrong."

Most of the