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Don't fall for hype over biotech; other news
(Wednesday, June 29, 2005 -- CropChoice news) -- 1. Don't fall for the hype over biotech 1. Don't Fall for the Hype Over Biotech Todd Leake EMERADO, N.D.: Pro-biotech activists such as Al Skogen get pretty frothed up
about the alleged wonders of biotechnology. But after 10 years, the real
questions are, "Where's the science?" And "Where's the economics?" Are the markets there for biotech wheat? Of course not. Otherwise, it
probably would be on the market now. Wheat customers both in the United States and
abroad categorically rejected the proposal of genetically modified wheat.
Monsanto responded to massive market rejection of its proposed Roundup Ready
hard red spring wheat in May 2004 by suspending field trials and withdrawing
permit applications. It was the only rational thing to do. Lucky for wheat farmers that Skogen wasn't in charge at Monsanto. Lucky for
Monsanto, too. He probably would have run both wheat farmers and Monsanto out
of business - and blaming the customers who didn't want the product wouldn't
have been much consolation. Speaking of consumers, their attitudes aren't changing very fast, despite
the propaganda efforts of Skogen and others. According to a report issued by
agricultural economist Dr. Robert Wisner of Iowa State University one year
after Monsanto pulled the plug, U.S. farmers still stand to lose one-half of
foreign markets and one-third of their wheat price if Roundup Ready wheat were to
be introduced. Also last week, Japan rejected shipments of U.S. corn contaminated with
Syngenta Corp.'s BT-10 corn, an unapproved variety suspected of health problems.
Many countries around the world have been buying only corn guaranteed free of
BT-10, cutting U.S. corn farmers out of those markets and decreasing family
farm income. So, are biotech products safe to eat? There's not much proof - because not
much research has been done, and what has been done has been kept secret. Only
last week, a British court ordered Monsanto to release a 1,139-page report
it kept secret, indicating that a genetically modified corn variety caused
disease in rats fed the corn. Hiding research of negative health impacts of
genetically modified crops does nothing but instill suspicion of the integrity of
the science and public heath regulatory process behind GM foods, and rightly
so. In spite of Skogen's claims, no federal agency conducts scientific research
to determine the safety of new biotech crops before they are introduced, and
that's the way the companies that market GM crops want it. Other independent
research also is rare. Two Norwegian researchers published a review in 2003
of the scanty research on biotech safety and concluded that "much more
scientific effort and investigation is necessary before we can be satisfied that
eating foods containing GM material in the long term is not likely to provoke
any form of health problems." But at least biotech crops cut down on pesticide, right? Not according to
independent researcher Charles Benbrook, whose October 2004 report found that
Roundup Ready crops have increased herbicide use on corn, soybeans and cotton
by 138 million pounds since 1996 - about nine times the 15.6 million-pound
decrease in insecticide applications due to Bt corn and cotton. Most of the hype surrounding GM foods is just that: hype. It is hype to
promote corporate products despite the concerns of food safety and the adverse
economic impact to farmers. It's well past time for the United States to catch
up on the safety and economic scrutiny of GM foods. Leake is an Emerado farmer and member of the Dakota Resources Council.
2. EU Bans on Biotech to Stay -Environment Ministers Vote No on Lifting 8 Bans BRUSSELS (Dow Jones), 6/24/05 -- European Union governments Friday rejected calls to lift national bans on biotech crops in a sign of increasing unease about genetically modified products in Europe, according to diplomats. This is the first time E.U. governments have made a decision on biotech products since 1998 when the E.U. imposed a moratorium on new biotech food and animal feed. That ban only ended in May 2004 after the European Commission allowed a genetically-modified strain of sweetcorn onto the market. Today's no vote is likely to antagonize the U.S. and other major world exporters of genetically-modified products, and boost the case that they have brought against Europe at the World Trade Organization. The WTO is due to issue a preliminary ruling in August. At a meeting in Luxembourg, E.U. environment ministers delivered a string of stinging defeats on the European Commission. They rejected eight proposals to lift national bans in Austria, France, Germany, Greece and Luxembourg on three varieties of biotech maize and two types of rapeseed. The bans are mainly related to the cultivation of the crops. The products affected are made by Monsanto Co. (MON) of the U.S., Germany's Bayer AG (BAY) and Swiss agrochemicals company Syngenta AG (SYT). "Today's vote is another failure of member states to play by the rules that they themselves established. The E.U's approval process for safe GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) is arguably the strictest in the world and these bans are not scientifically justifiable," says Simon Barber, Director of the Plant Biotechnology Unit at EuropaBio, the European Association for Bioindustries. Europeans remain highly skeptical about biotech foods, a legacy of green traditions and doubts about the safety of such food for diners and the environment. Environmental groups cheered the decision, saying that it marks an historic turning point in the debate on genetically modified food and crops. "The clear majorities against the Commission on crop bans show that it is time for the E.U. executive to listen to the 80% of the public who are opposed to GMOs," said Eric Gall, a campaigner for Greenpeace. Activist groups campaign against farming with biotech products, out of concern that pollen or seeds could spread to traditional crops. "Countries should retain the sovereign right to ban genetically modified crops if they question their safety," said Adrian Bebb, a campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe. The Commission reacted with dismay. It argues that the crops are safe because they have been approved by its scientists. Bayer's oilseed rape T25, Monsanto's MON810 maize and Syngenta's Bt176 maize were all approved before the E.U's six-year moratorium. "This is purely a political decision. They are no safety concerns," said Markus Payer, a spokesman for Syngenta. Bt176 is already grown in Spain. In response to the national bans, the European Food Safety Agency last year conducted a new study. In the report, EFSA concluded that: "There is no new scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human health and the environment" from these biotech products. However, food scares such as mad cow disease in beef and revelations about chicken and pork contaminated with poisonous dioxins have made many Europeans distrustful of the ability of national governments and E.U. regulators to provide adequate information and protection.
3. Health effects of GM foods need further study, WHO says Food Navigator USA, 24 June 2005 A call by the World Health Organisation for further safety assessments on
using genetically modified (GM) foods should give governments pause for thought
before giving their approval for their wider use of the technology. The sale of GM foods has put nations at loggerheads with each other. The EU
and Japan have enacted labelling and traceability requirements for GM food
products, while the US and Canada believe the
technology is safe and that such standards are not necessary. The US, Canada
and Argentina have filed cases with the World Trade Organisation against the
EU's requirements. The dispute leaves multinational food companies with having to deal with
different sets of regulations to contend with depending on the countries in
which they operate. In a report issued yesterday, the UN body finds that GM foods can increase
crop yield, food quality and the diversity of foods [that's pure speculation]
that can be grown in a given area but warns against rushing to introduce
novel types of genes into the food chain. "However, some of the genes used to manufacture GM foods have not been in
the food chain before and the introduction of new genes may cause changes in
the existing genetic make-up of the crop," the WHO stated in its assessment. "Therefore, the potential human health effects of new GM foods should always
be assessed before they are grown and marketed, and long-term
monitoring must be carried out to catch any possible adverse effects early." The organisation calls for a case-by-case risk assessment of each new GM
food on its effects on human health, on the food chain and on the environment
rather than a general endorsement by
governments on the use of the technology to create new types of crops or
animals. WHO notes that pre-market risk assessments have been performed on all GM
food products that are currently marketed [purely on the basis of the company's
"data", and such assessments are voluntary in the US]. To date, the
consumption of GM foods has not caused any known [how could they know without the most
acute toxicity?] negative health effects. Currently, evaluations of GM
primarily focus on the ecological and agricultural ramifications and on possible
health effects. The organisation recommends such evaluations should be widened to include
social, cultural and ethical considerations, to help prevent what WHO calls a
"genetic divide" between groups of countries which do and do not allow the
growth, cultivation and marketing of GM products. "Each country has different prevailing social and economic conditions, and
the people have different histories of what they eat and what food means in
their society," WHO stated. "All of these factors can affect how GM foods will
be regarded, and taking proper account of these concerns will affect the
long-term acceptance or rejection of GM foods and their possible health benefits
and potential risks." There are now 15 international legally-binding instruments and nonbinding
codes of practice addressing aspects of GM organisms. Many developed countries
have established specific pre-market
regulatory systems requiring the rigorous case-by-case risk assessment of GM
foods prior to their release. Many developing countries lack the capacity to
implement a similar system, WHO stated. In 2004 about 81m hectares of land was being used to grow GM crops by seven
million farmers in 18 countries, mainly the US, Argentina, Canada, Brazil,
China, Paraguay and South Africa. The first major GM food was introduced on the market in the mid-1990s and p
aved the way for the growing of strains of maize, soybeans, rapeseed and
cotton. GM varieties of papaya, potato, rice,
squash, sugar beet and tomato have been released in certain countries. WHO
estimates that at the end of 2004 GM crops covered about four per cent of the
total global arable land. Most of the GMOs commercialised so far in developing countries have been
acquired from developed countries and focus on a limited number of traits,
mainly herbicide tolerance and insect pest resistance, and crops such as cotton,
soybean and maize. Research is also underway on GM seafood and animals. Many food-processing aids, such as enzymes, produced through the use of GM
microorganisms have been on the market for over a decade and are used in a
wide variety of processed foods. No live GM
food microorganisms have been introduced onto the market yet, WHO stated. Current EU requires that all food be tracked and labelled if it contains 0.9
per cent or more traceable GM content, along with derivatives such as paste
and ketchup from a GM tomato. Products
derived from GM processing aids, such as GM enzymes or yeast, are not
affected. Inciting strong criticism from environmental groups, this year a panel of
scientists at the European Food Safety
Authority (EFSA) cleared a variety of genetic maize known as 1507 for
cultivation. Maize 1507 is made jointly by Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a
subsidiary of DuPont, and Mycogen seeds, a Dow
AgroSciences unit. Biotechnology, in its technical sense, refers to plant and animal farming
techniques that alter living organisms to make or modify food products. There
are many possible products from transgenic
plants, plant parts, and processed foodstuffs, including highly refined
substances such as vegetable oil containing little or no detectable
transgene-derived protein or DNA. Under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, governments will signal whether
or not they are willing to accept imports of agricultural commodities that
include GMOs by communicating their decision via an Internet-based -
http://bch.biodiv.org
- Biosafety Clearing House.
4. Bumper rice plant created by novel approach Anna Gosline A high-yielding rice plant which does not fall over in bad weather has been
created by a team of researchers. Their approach could help plant breeders
develop more productive cultivars of rice -- the crop that provides nearly a
quarter of the world's calories - without the need to use genetic modification
technology. Breeding short, sturdy and high yield cereal crops -- a hallmark of the
"Green Revolution" in the 1960s -- has often been credited with saving the world
from starvation. And in recent years, plant biologists have begun to unravel
the genetics behind these salvation cultivars, with hope to improve them
further - and faster. "Generally speaking, it takes over 10 years to produce a new variety by
conventional selective breeding. However, if we can use molecular markers linked
with the gene controlling the trait, we can dramatically reduce time and
laborious human work," says Makoto Matsuoka at Nagoya University, Japan, one of
the team. The genes uncovered to date have been those referred to as "dwarf" genes,
which are linked to growth hormone pathways. Stubbier plants are less likely to
topple over in bad weather and often devote their remaining energy into
grain production. Matsuoka's team, lead by Motoyuki Ashikari and Hitoshi Sakakibara, wanted to
look directly at the genes for increased yield. They used two varieties of
rice: Japan's favourite rice, called Koshihikari and a shorter, more
productive variant called Habataki. Seed growth hormone They began by investigating a stretch of the rice genome, called a
quantitative trait loci (QTL), which previous breeding experiments had shown to
control the number of grains produced on a rice branch. They found that the QTL
consisted of two genes, Gn1a and Gn1b. Cross referencing the sequences to the
published rice genome, revealed that Gn1a matched the gene for cytokinin
oxidase OsCKX2 â¤" an enzyme that breaks down the seed growth hormone cytokinin. The higher-yield Habataki cultivar seemed to have less of the enzyme which
breaks down cytokinin, likely leading to its 306 grains per branch, compared
with the Koshihikari's 164. But when they cloned the full Gn1 Habataki region
and inserted into the Koshihikari genome, its grain number jumped to 237 per
branch -- a 45% increase. And to strengthen the now top-heavy Koshihikari plant, they also inserted a
gene from a dwarf variety which reduced height and beefed up stalk strength.
This combination saw a smaller rise of 26% in grain number. However, the
plant's increased sturdiness makes it more practical as a crop. Harsh environments Plant breeders the world over are likely to immediately search for similar
genes in wheat or corn, says Peter Hedden, a plant geneticist at the
Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, UK. "I think that now in cereals, we are coming
to a limit using the Green Revolution genes. New approaches are need. And that's what this research really has." He cautions, however, that rice has a very simple genome and other species
such as wheat, which has six sets of chromosomes, may prove trickier. But the
efforts are well worth it, he says because searching for natural gene
variations means more productive plants can be bred without having to genetically
modify them. But while Matsuoka and his colleagues support the use of GM, the team plans
to next use wild varieties of rice, which often have much greater tolerance
to harsh environments, in order to cross- breed hardier rice. "The long-range
target is combining all these useful traits into one cultivar to produce the
ideal rice," he says. Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1113373) 5. GM maize has risks and side effects:
Greenpeace publishes company documents on rat-feeding trials FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BERLIN -- Greenpeace is today publishing confidential Monsanto corporation
documents on feeding trials conducted on rats using genetically manipulated
(GM)
maize. The animals displayed negative health effects after being fed
Monsanto's
Mon863 GM maize, which produces an insecticidal toxin. The higher
administrative court in Münster released the documents on Monday after
Greenpeace had successfully pressed to inspect them in accordance with the
EU
law on environmental information. The judgement sets a precedent for cases
in
which companies keep their documents on GM-plant risk assessment secret. The
EU environment council in Luxembourg will decide whether to authorise
imports of
this maize on Friday. Greenpeace and scientists are together calling for an
import
ban on Mon863; the German government should vote against it being
authorised. "The GM maize should not be allowed to be licensed as food or feedstuff in
EU
countries," said Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini of the French state
Commission du
Génie Biomoléculaire (CGB), which is responsible for risk assessments of GM
plants. "If a trial produces such striking results, it must at all events be
repeated."
The release of the documents means that scientists like Professor Séralini
are no
longer bound to maintain confidentiality. "The safety standards in EU
authorisation
procedures for genetically manipulated plants are in general inadequate,"
said
Professor Seralini, speaking at a Greenpeace press conference in Berlin. Professor Arpad Pusztai, who had already made a risk assessment of Mon863
for
the German government, also warns against allowing the maize to be licensed.
"It
cannot be presumed that the damage to the rats' inner organs and the
animals'
blood picture are based on chance. The documents also show that the set-up
for
the experiments was inadequate and evaluation of the data incorrect. Further
investigations are absolutely necessary." Mon863 produces a so-called Bt-toxin, to protect it against the corn
rootworm. This
toxin is not identical to the substance contained in GM plants already
licensed in
Europe and which makes them resistant to the corn borer. Mon863 furthermore
contains a controversial gene conferring resistance to antiobiotics, which
according
to EU release Directive 2001/18/EC should be avoided. It cannot be ruled out
that
the gene sequence will transfer to disease-causing agents and thus encourage
the
creation of new resistant pest organism. The ministers will also vote in Luxembourg on existing national bans on the
importing and cultivation of GM plants. Five EU countries including Germany
are
appealing to a national protection clause in the EU law. The Commission has
called on countries to lift the bans. To date only the UK and the
Netherlands are
supporting the EU Commission. "Few countries want to have their rights curtailed," says Greenpeace's
Christoph
Then. "Lifting national restrictions must be rejected just as the
authorisation of
Mon863 GM maize must be. The EU must prove that it believes in the
importance
of protecting consumers and the environment." NOTES TO EDITOR Please direct your enquiries to Christoph Then, mobile phone
no. +49 (0)171-878-0832, or Simone Miller, press officer, tel. + 49 (0)171
870
6647. You can obtain a paper with background information by calling +49
(0)40-
30618 386. Greenpeace is on the internet in Germany at http://www.greenpeace.de and
internationally at http://www.greenpeace.org
6. Insects develop resistance to engineered crops when single- and double-gene
altered plants are in proximity, Cornell researchers say Genetically modified crops containing two insecticidal proteins in a single
plant efficiently kill insects. But when crops engineered with just one of
those toxins grow nearby, insects may more rapidly develop resistance to all
the insect-killing plants, report Cornell University researchers. A soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), whose genes are
inserted into crop plants, such as maize and cotton, creates these toxins that are
deadly to insects but harmless to humans. Bt crops were first commercialized in 1996, and scientists, critics and
others have been concerned that widespread use of Bt crops would create
conditions for insects to evolve and develop resistance to the toxins. Until now, it has not been shown if neighboring plants producing a single Bt
toxic protein might play a role in insect resistance to transgenic crops
expressing two insecticidal proteins. "Our findings suggest that concurrent use of single- and dual-gene Bt plants
can put the dual-gene plants at risk if single-gene plants are deployed in
the same area simultaneously," said Anthony Shelton, professor of entomology
at Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and an author of the
study, which was posted online June 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences (PNAS) and is in the June 14 print edition of the journal.
"Single-gene plants really function as a steppingstone in resistance of two-gene
plants if the single gene plants contain one of the same Bt proteins as in the
two-gene plant." Cotton and maize are the only commercial crops engineered with Bt genes. In
2004 these crops were grown on more than 13 million hectares (about 32
million acres) domestically and 22.4 million hectares (more than 55 million acres)
worldwide. After eight years of extensive use, there have been no reports of
crop failure or insect resistance in the field to genetically modified Bt
crops, Shelton said. Still, several insects have developed resistance to Bt
toxins in the lab, and recently, cabbage loopers (a moth whose larvae feed on
plants in the cabbage family) have shown resistance to Bt sprays in commercial
greenhouses. So far, only diamondback moths, which were used in this study, have
developed resistance to Bt toxins in the field. The resistance resulted from farmers
and gardeners spraying Bt toxin on plants for insect control, a long-standing
practice. While Bt toxin sprayed on leaves quickly degrades in sunlight and
often does not reach the insect, genetically modified (GM) Bt plants express
the bacterium in the plant tissue, which makes Bt plants especially effective
against insects that bore into stems, such as the European corn borer, which
causes more than $1 billion in damage annually in the United States. In greenhouses at the New York State Agriculture Experiment Station in
Geneva, N.Y., the researchers used three types of GM broccoli plants: two types of
plants each expressed a different Bt toxin, and a third -- known as a
pyramided plant -- expressed both toxins. Elizabeth Earle and Jun Cao, co-authors
of the PNAS paper and members of the Department of Plant Breeding and
Genetics at Cornell created the plants. For their studies, the researchers employed strains of diamondback moth that
were resistant to each of the Bt proteins. The combination of Bt plants and
Bt-resistant insects allowed them to explore the concurrent use of single-
and dual-gene Bt plants in a way that could not be done with cotton or maize,
although their results are relevant to these widely grown plants. First, the researchers bred moth populations in which a low percent of the
moths were resistant to a single Bt toxin. The insects were then released into
caged growing areas with either single-gene plants, dual-gene plants or
mixed populations and allowed to reproduce for two years. The researchers found that after 26 generations of the insect living in the
greenhouse with single-gene and dual-gene plants housed together, all the
plants were eventually damaged by the insects, because over time, greater
numbers of insects developed resistance to the plants⤙ toxins. However, in the same
two-year time frame, all or almost all of the insects died when exposed to
pyramided plants alone. "It's easier for an insect to develop resistance to a single toxin," said
Shelton. "If an insect gets a jump on one toxin, then it becomes more rapidly
resistant to that same toxin in a dual-gene plant. And when one line of
defense starts to fail, it puts more pressure on the second toxin in a pyramided
plant to control the insect," Shelton added. While single-gene Bt plants are most prevalent, industry trends suggest that
pyramided plants may be favored in the future. In Australia, the use of
single-gene Bt cotton was discontinued two years after farmers began planting
dual-gene cotton in 2002. In the United States, companies introduced dual-gene
cotton in 2003, but single-gene varieties remain on the market. "Single-gene Bt plants have provided good economic and environmental
benefits, but from a resistance management standpoint they are inferior to dual-gene
plants. U.S. regulatory agencies should consider discontinuing the use of
those single-gene plants as soon as dual-gene plants become available," Shelton
said. "And industries should be encouraged to create more dual-gene plants." Along with effective insect control, pyramided plants have an added
advantage of requiring a smaller refuge -- a part of the field where non-Bt plants
are grown. Refuges create opportunities for Bt-resistant insects to mate with
other insects that do not have resistance. The offspring of such a mating will
be susceptible to the toxins. "Having a refuge is a good management strategy, but it is not suitable for
small farmers in China and India," said lead author Jian-Zhou Zhao, a senior
research associate in entomology at Cornell. "The two-gene strategy is more
suitable in developing countries like China where farmers have an average of
half a hectare (1.2 acres) of land, much less land than American farmers, and
not enough to spare for refuges." A U.S. Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Risk Assessment Program grant
supported the study. Weitere Informationen: http://www.cornell.edu
7. We Need GM Food Like a Hole in Our Kidneys by Kirsten Schwind and Hollace Poole-Kavana When the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) meets this year in
Philadelphia, Monsanto and its colleagues will not be gathering to talk
about how to save the world. The goal of this industry, like any other,
is to make a profit by convincing consumers that we need what they're
selling. Genetically modified (GM) food - plants and animals that have
been inserted with genes from other organisms - aren't meeting any real
human needs. Despite claims from the biotech industry, GM foods cannot
end world hunger, and new studies add to the evidence that they may pose
a serious threat to human health. A recent study conducted by Monsanto itself indicated abnormalities in
the kidneys and blood of rats fed MON863, a strain of Bt corn that many
Americans eat every day without our knowledge. Monsanto has resisted
calls from the European Food Safety Agency to release the full study to
the public, leading to a court order to do so from a German judge. Thank
goodness for some degree of concern from the Europeans, because
watchdogs in the United States are gnawing on the bones of
corporate-induced complacency. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
approves GM foods for public consumption simply by comparing the
nutritional content between GM and non-GM foods, and checking a database
of known allergens. According to the logic of the FDA, we are the lab
rats. What of the famed argument that GM crops are worth it because they will
resolve world hunger? GM crops fundamentally cannot end hunger because
hunger isn't caused by a lack of food. The world currently produces
enough food for everyone on earth to consume over 2,800 calories a day -
that's enough to make most people a bit pudgy. The problem is that food
doesn't go the hungriest people because they don't have the resources to
buy it or grow it. Pennsylvania is full of productive farms, yet one in
ten residents of the City of Brotherly Love know hunger all too well.
Hunger is caused by a lack of access to basic human rights, including
good education, health care, housing, and living wages - in the United
States and throughout the world. Hunger is also caused by racism and
inequality. These topics aren't on the agenda of this year's BIO
conference. If the world were to face a future shortage of food, GM technology would
not be much help. Planting small farms and gardens with a diverse array
of crops can grow several times more food per acre than the large,
mechanized farms for which GM seeds were developed. The main reason some
farmers plant GM crops is to try to lower their production costs. But GM
crops don't always accomplish this goal either. Recently the Indian
state of Andra Pradesh banned Monsanto from selling GM cotton seeds
after farmers realized they were more expensive to grow than the regular
varieties. GM seeds cause other headaches for farmers as well. For as long as
humans have grown food, farmers have developed better seeds through
natural cross-breeding, and exchanged seeds to share the best varieties. Seeds are a fundamental common good of human civilization. When biotech
companies convinced the US Patent Office to allow them to patent seeds,
single companies claimed ownership of entire cultural legacies, with
just one laboratorial tweak. As farmers buy GM seeds from Monsanto, they
must sign a contract recognizing the company's intellectual property
rights over the seed, and promise not to share or save any to use the
next year. However, plants breed naturally with no knowledge of who
signed a contract, and pollen from GM corn blows easily into neighboring
fields. Monsanto has mounted a campaign to sue farmers whose fields have
been unknowingly contaminated with genes from GM seeds, driving some
farmers into bankruptcy. The protesters greeting this year's BIO conference in Philadelphia are
driving home an important point - unless you fancy the idea of being a
lab rat, genetically modified food is a risky technology that we simply
don't need. Kirsten Schwind | |
