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5 reasons to keep Britain GM-free
(Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2003 -- CropChoice news) -- The Ecologist, August 2003:
The Ecologist spells out the five overriding reasons why the
commercialisation of GM crops should never be allowed in the UK.
1. GM WILL REMOVE CONSUMER CHOICE
The UK government's official adviser on GM, the Agriculture and
Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC), has said it would `be
difficult and in some places impossible to guarantee' that any British
food was GM-free if commercial growing of GM crops went ahead. In North
America, farmers can no longer be certain the seed they plant does not
contain GM genes.
GM CROPS CONTAMINATE
Cross pollination
GM genes are often `dominant' - ie, they are inherited at the expense of
non-GM genes when cross-pollination occurs between GM and conventional
species. With the first GM crops considered for commercialisation -
oilseed rape and sugar beet and maize - the `gene flow' (ability to
contaminate non-GM varieties) is `high' and `medium to high',
respectively.
To prevent cross-pollination, the official advice in the UK is that
there should be a separation distance of just 50 metres between GM
oilseed rape and non-GM varieties. But pollen can travel a lot further
than that. Bees, for example, regularly fly for up to 10 kilometres;
hence, oilseed rape pollen has been found in hives 4.5 kilometres from
the nearest GM crop field. Tree pollen grains have been recorded in the
essentially treeless Shetland Isles, which are 250 kilometres from the
nearest mainland. And the University of Adelaide has published research
into wind pollination distances that shows oilseed rape pollen can
travel for up to 3 kilometres.
SEED MIXING AND SPILLAGE
GM seed, or parts of GM root crops like sugar beet, may be shed and left
in a field where they may grow later.
Combine harvesters move from field to field, and leftover GM seed may be
spilt if equipment is not cleaned properly.
Lorries removing a harvested crop from a farm may spill seed near fields
where non-GM or organic crops are grown.
For crops with very small seeds like oilseed rape spillage can be high.
In May 2002 the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) echoed
the AEBC almost verbatim when it warned that if GM crops were widely
adopted, preventing contamination of organic food would be `very
difficult and connected to high costs, or virtually impossible'.
The biotech industry is fully aware of this. As Don Westfall, vice
president of US food industry consultancy Promar International, says:
`The hope of the [GM] industry is that over time the market is so
flooded [with GM] that there's nothing you can do about it. You just
surrender.'
Likewise, the Soil Association's investigation into the impact of GM in
the US concludes: `All non-GM farmers in North America are finding it
very hard or impossible to grow GM-free crops. Seeds have become almost
completely contaminated with GM organisms (GMOs), good non-GM varieties
have become hard to buy, and there is a high risk of crop
contamination.'
2. HEALTH RISKS HAVE NOT BEEN DISPROVED
Pro-GM voices claim that after six years there have been no adverse
health effects from eating GM foods in the US. But then, there has been
no effort by the US authorities to look for health impacts either.
GM APPROVAL SYSTEMS LAX
Safety data comes from the biotech firms themselves. Independent,
peer-reviewed research showing that GM food poses no danger to human
health is not required. One Monsanto director said: `[We] should not
have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling
as much of it as possible.'
`Substantial equivalence'
The common methodology for government food-safety requirements in North
America and Europe has traditionally been a comparison between a food
and a conventional counterpart. The assumption is that existing foods
have a long history of safe use. So, if a GM crop is found to be `the
same' as a non-GM counterpart, it can claim this history. This is called
`substantial equivalence'. But GM crops are not the same, because of the
random nature and uncertain consequences of modification. Biotech firms
acknowledge this when it suits them - stating, for example, that their
GM varieties are distinctive enough to warrant their own patents.
There have been no properly controlled clinical trials looking at the
effects of short- or long-term ingestion of GM foods by humans.
Moreover, as Dr Arpad Pusztai (who was sacked when he printed research
about the effects of GM potatoes on lab rats) warns: `There is
increasing research to show they may actually be very unsafe.'
THREE MAJOR CONCERNS
Allergic reactions
Genetic modification frequently uses proteins from organisms that have
never before been an integral part of the human food chain. Hence, GM
food may cause unforeseen allergic reactions - particularly among
children. Allergens could be transferred from foods to which people are
allergic to foods they think are safe. When a new food is introduced, it
takes five to six years before any allergies are recognised.
In 2000 GM `StarLink' maize was found in taco shells being sold for
human consumption in the US - even though the maize had only been
approved for animal feed. StarLink is modified to contain a toxin that
could be a human allergen; it is heat stable and does not break down in
gastric acid - characteristics shared by many allergens.
Antibiotic resistance
Genetic modification could also make disease-causing bacteria resistant
to antibiotics. This could lead to potentially uncontrollable epidemics.
Antibiotic-resistance genes are used as `markers' in GM crops to
identify which plant cells have successfully incorporated the desired
foreign genes during modification.
A 2002 study commissioned by the UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) showed
that antibiotic-resistance marker genes from GM foods can make their way
into human gut bacteria after just one meal. Two years
previously, the British Medical Association had warned: `The risk to
human health from antibiotic resistance developing in micro-organisms is
one of the major public health threats that will be faced in the 21st
century.'
Industrial and pharmaceutical crops
Since 1991 over 300 open-field trials of `pharma' crops have taken place
around the world. In California, for example, GM rice containing human
genes has been grown for drug production. Pharmaceutical wheat, corn and
barley are also being developed in the US, France and Canada.
Last year in Texas 500,000 bushels of soya destined for human
consumption were contaminated with genes from maize genetically modified
by the US firm Prodigene so as to create a vaccine for a stomach disease
afflicting pigs. A major concern is that GM firms are using commodity
food crops for pharm-aceutical production. If there were such thing as a
responsible path with `pharma' GM it would be to use non-food crops.
3. FARMERS WILL BE DESTROYED
Within a few years of the introduction of GM crops in North America the
following occurred:
Almost all of the US's $300m annual maize exports and Canada's $300m
annual rape exports to the EU disappeared;
The trade for Canadian honey was almost completely destroyed because of
GM contamination;
Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea - the biggest foreign
buyers of US maize, stopped importing North American maize;
Just like domestic consumers, food companies - including Heinz, Gerber
and Frito-Lay - started to reject the use of GMOs in their products.
Former White House agriculture expert Dr. Charles Benbrook calculates
that the lost export trade and fall in farm prices caused by GM
commercialisation led to an increase in annual government subsidies of
an estimated $3-5 billion.
In December 2000 the president of Canada's National Farmers Union, Cory
Ollikka, said: `Farmers are really starting to question the
profit-enhancing ability of products that seem to be shutting them out
of markets worldwide.'
Farm, which represents UK farmers, has said: `Farmers are being asked by
the agro-biotech companies to shoulder the economic and public-image
risks of their new technology, for which there appear to be few or no
compensating benefits. The claimed cost savings are either non-existent
or exaggerated. The long-term health and environmental impacts are still
uncertain. And consumers don't want to eat GM food. So why would farmers
sow something they can't sell?'
HIGHER COSTS, REDUCED PROFITS
The Soil Association's US investigations found that GM crops have
increased the cost of farming and reduced farmers' profits for the
following reasons:
1- GM varieties increase farmer seed costs by up to 40 per cent an acre;
GM soya and maize, which make up 83 per cent of the GM crops grown
worldwide, `deliver less income on average to farmers than non-GM
crops';
2- GM varieties require farmers to pay biotech firms a `technology fee';
3- The GM companies forbid farmers to save their seeds for replanting;
contrary to traditional practice, farmers have to buy new seed each
year; and
4- GM herbicide-tolerant crops increase farmers' use of expensive
herbicides, especially as new weed problems have emerged - rogue
herbicide-resistant oilseed rape plants being a widespread problem;
contrary to the claim that only one application would be needed, farmers
are applying herbicides several times.
Even a 2002 report by the US Department of Agriculture, a key ally of
the biotech industry, admitted that the economic benefits of cultivating
GM crops were `variable' and that farmers growing GM Bt corn were
actually `losing money.'
LOWER YIELDS
The University of Nebraska recorded yields for Monsanto's Roundup Ready
GM maize that were 6-11 per cent less than those for non-GM soya
varieties. A 1998 study of over 8,000 field trials found that Roundup
Ready soya seeds produced between 6.7 and 10 per cent fewer bushels of
soya than conventional varieties.
Trials by the UK's National Institute of Agricultural Botany showed
yields of GM oilseed rape and sugar beet that were 5-8 per cent less
than conventional varieties.
CORPORATE CONTROL GROWS
Adopting GM crops would place farmers and the food chain itself under
the control of a handful of multinational corporations such as Monsanto,
Syngenta, Bayer and DuPont. For US farmers this has meant:
1- Legally-binding agreements that force farmers to purchase expensive
new seeds from the biotech corporations each season;
2- Having to buy these corporations' herbicides (at a cost considerably
above that of a generic equivalent) for herbicide-tolerant crops;
3- Paying the biotech firms a technology fee based on the acreage of
land under GM;
4- The development of so-called `traitor technology' crops on which
particular chemicals will have to be applied if the crops' GM
characteristics (such as their time of flowering or disease resistance)
are to show;
5- The invention of `terminator technology' that stops GM plants
producing fertile seeds; thus farmers are physically prevented from
sowing saved seed and have to buy new seed from the biotech firms
instead; and
6- Biotech firms buying up seed companies. This creates monopolies and
limits farmers' choices still further. DuPont and Monsanto are now the
two largest seed companies in the world. As a result of their control of
the seed industry, farmers are reporting that the availability of good
non-GM seed varieties is rapidly disappearing.
PRISONERS TO GM
US farmers are obliged by their contracts to allow biotech company
inspectors onto their farms. As with all crops, leftover seed from GM
plants can germinate in fields since used to grow different crops; the
seeds produce so-called `volunteers'. If biotech company inspectors find
any such plants, they can claim - and have repeatedly done so - that the
farmers are growing unlicensed crops and infringing patent rights. For
example, David Chaney, who farms in Kentucky, had to pay Monsanto
$35,000; another Kentucky farmer agreed to pay the firm $25,000; and
three Iowa farmers are on record as having paid it $40,000 each. These
and other farmers have also had to sign gagging orders and agree to
allow Monsanto complete access to their land in subsequent years. Crops
have also been destroyed and seed confiscated. The biotech industry
currently has legal actions pending against 550 farmers in North
America.
ORGANIC FARMERS RUINED
Internationally, the organic movement has rejected GM because of its
potential for genetic contamination and its continued reliance on
artificial chemicals.
The Soil Association reports that in North America `many organic farmers
have been unable to sell their produce as organic due to contamination'.
Contamination has already:
1- meant the loss, at a potential cost of millions of dollars, of almost
the entire organic oilseed rape sector of Saskatchewan;
2- cost US organic maize growers $90m in annual income (the losses were
calculated by the Union of Concerned Scientists in an analysis for the
US Environmental Protection Agency); and
3- forced many organic farmers to give up trying to grow certain crops
altogether. Last month a survey by the Organic Farming Research
Foundation found that one in 12 US organic farmers had already suffered
direct costs or damage because of GM contamination.
4- If commercial planting of GM crops took place in Britain, the UK's
burgeoning organic sector - now worth £900m, and set to increase with
(supposed) government support - would perish. If, by some miracle,
contamination could be avoided the costs involved would inevitably lead
to organic farmers going bust. A study published by the JRC in May
predicted that efforts to protect conventional and organic crops from
contamination would add 41 per cent to the cost of producing non-GM
oilseed rape and up to 9 per cent to the cost of producing non-GM maize
and potatoes.
4. THE ENVIRONMENT WILL SUFFER
INCREASED USE OF HERBICIDES
The proponents of GM argue that the technology will lead to a reduction
in the use of chemical weedkillers. But for the majority of GM crops
grown so far, the evidence does not bear this out.
Four years worth of data from the US Department of Agriculture shows
herbicide use on Roundup Ready soya beans is increasing.
In 1998 total herbicide use on GM soya beans in six US states was 30 per
cent greater on average than on conventional varieties.
The Soil Association's US investigation found that `the use of GM crops
is resulting in a reversion to the use of older, more toxic compounds'
such as the herbicide paraquat.
WHY?
Genes modified to make crops herbicide-resistant can be transferred to
related weeds, which would then also become herbicide-resistant.
Crops can themselves act like weeds. Because GM crops are designed to
have a greater ability to survive, leftover seeds can germinate in later
years when a different crop is growing in the same field. The leftover
volunteer plants would then contaminate the new crop. In Canada, where
GM herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape has been grown since 1998, oilseed
rape weeds resistant to three different herbicides have been created.
These oilseed rape weeds are an example of `gene-stacking' - the
occurrence of several genetically-engineered traits in a single plant.
Gene-stacking was found in all 11 GM sites investigated in a Canadian
ministry of agriculture study. As professor Martin Entz of Winnipeg's
University of Manitoba observes, `GM oilseed rape is absolutely
impossible to control'.
Following a review of the Canadian experience, English Nature - the UK
government's advisory body on biodiversity - predicted:
`Herbicide-tolerant gene-stacked volunteers of oilseed rape would be
inevitable in practical agriculture in the UK.'
INCREASED USE OF PESTICIDES
There has also been an increase in pesticide use by farmers attempting
to cope with pest resistance created by GM Bt crops. Bt crops are
modified to produce the insecticidal toxin Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)
in all their tissues.
However, the World Bank says insects can adapt to Bt within `one or two
years'. And scientists at China's Nanjing Institute of Environmental
Sciences have concluded that if it was planted continuously Bt cotton
would probably lose all its resistance to bollworm - the pest it is
designed to control - within eight to 10 years.
Meanwhile, pests' adaptability to pest-resistant GM crops could force
farmers onto a `genetic treadmill' of ever more technical biotech fixes
(including new varieties of pest-resistant crops) and more frequent
spraying, and more toxic doses, of chemical pesticides. It could also
destroy the effectiveness of Bt as a natural insecticide in organic
agriculture.
Perversely, GM pest-resistant crops could make agriculture more
vulnerable to pests and disease; they could end up harming beneficial
soil micro-organisms and insects like ladybirds and lacewings that keep
certain pest populations in check.
The Delhi-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology
found in a study of four Indian states that `not only did Monsanto's Bt
cotton not protect plants from the American bollworm, but there was an
increase of 250-300 per cent in attacks by non-target pests like
jassids, aphids, white fly and thrips'. And researchers at Cornell
University in the US found that the pollen from Bt corn was poisonous to
the larvae of monarch butterflies.
As GM `pest-resistant' crops fail to deliver, Australian farmers have
been advised to spray additional insecticide on Monsanto's Bt cotton by
the Transgenic and Insect Management Strategy Committee of the
Australian Cotton Growers Research Association. Overall insecticide
applications on Bt maize have also increased in the US.
GENETIC POLLUTION
GM crops may also reduce the diversity of plant life by contaminating
their wild relatives and indigenous crop varieties in areas where the
crops evolved. Widespread GM contamination of conventional maize has
already been detected in Mexico. In Europe, contamination of wild
relatives of oilseed rape and sugar beet is considered inevitable if GM
commercialisation goes ahead. The same applies to wild relatives of rice
in Asia.
IMPLICATION
If wildlife is harmed `unexpectedly' (ie, without that harm having
officially been predicted), and an official risk assessment had not
previously decided that GM crops were safe, it is the state and society
that will have to pay for putting things right - if this is possible.
5 GM CROPS WILL NOT FEED THE POOR
The idea that GM will end global poverty is probably the biggest of all
the GM apologists' lies - the one used to accuse anti-GM campaigners in
rich countries of not caring about the Third World. The truth is that
the introduction of GM crops into the developing world will result in
decreased yields, crop failures and the impoverishment of literally
billions of small farmers.
DECREASED YIELDS
As already stated on page 36, there is no evidence that genetic
modification increases yields. But, just to make the point, consider the
following:
1- a US Department of Agriculture report published in May 2002 concluded
that net yields of herbicide-tolerant soya bean were no higher than
those of non-GM soya, and that yields of pest-resistant corn were
actually lower than those of non-GM corn;
2- in September 2001, the state court of Mississippi ruled that a
Monsanto subsidiary's `high-yielding' GM soya seeds were responsible for
reduced yields obtained by Mississippi farmer Newell Simrall; the farmer
was awarded damages of $165,742.
But then, no commercial GM crop has ever been specifically engineered to
have a higher yield.
CROP FAILURES
Crop failures (and, therefore, drastically reduced yields) have already
occurred with GM soya and cotton plants in the developing world. This is
largely due to the unpredictable behaviour of these crops. GM soya's
brittleness, for example, has made it incapable of surviving heat waves.
And in 2002 `massive failure' of Bt cotton was reported in the southern
states of India; consequently, in April the Indian government denied
Monsanto clearance for the cultivation of its Bt cotton in India's
northern states.
THE RUIN OF SMALL FARMERS
GM would force the two billion people who manage the developing world's
small family farms to stop their age-old practice of saving seeds. Each
year they will have to buy expensive seeds and chemicals instead. The
experience of North American farmers shows that GM seeds cost up to 40
per cent more than non-GM varieties.
TECHNOFIXES DON'T WORK
Inadequate yields are not the cause of hunger today. As Sergey
Vasnetsov, a biotech industry analyst with investment bank Lehman
Brothers, says: `Let's stop pretending we face food shortages. There is
hunger, but not food shortages.' In 1994, food production could have
supplied 6.4 billion people (more than the world's actual population)
with an adequate 2,350 calories per day. Yet more than 1 billion people
do not get enough to eat.
Furthermore, the type of GM crops being produced are almost exclusively
for the processed-food, textiles and animal-feed markets of the West.
Instead of being used to grow staple foods for local consumption,
millions of hectares of land in the developing world are being set aside
to grow GM corn, for example, to supply grain for pigs, chicken and
cattle. In May, ActionAid published a report called GM Crops: going
against the grain, which revealed that `only 1 per cent of GM research
is aimed at [developing] crops [to be] used by poor farmers in poor
countries'. And ActionAid calculates that those crops `stand only a one
in 250 chance of making it into farmers' fields'. As the UN Development
Programme points out, `technology is created in response to market
pressures - not the needs of poor people, who have little purchasing
power'.
SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVES
Sustainable agriculture projects have led to millet yields rising by up
to 154 per cent in India, millet and sorghum yields rising by 275 per
cent in Burkina Faso and maize yields increasing by 300 per cent in
Honduras. Combined with reforms aimed at achieving more equitable land
ownership, protection from subsidised food imports and the
re-orientation of production away from export crops to staple foods for
local consumption, sustainable farming could feed the world.
In 1998 a delegation representing every African country except South
Africa submitted a joint statement to a UN conference on genetic
research. The delegates had been inspired by a Monsanto campaign that
used images of starving African children to plug its technology. The
statement read: `We strongly object that the image of the poor and
hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational
corporations to push a technology that is neither safe,
environmentally-friendly nor economically beneficial to us. We do not
believe that such companies or gene technologies will help our farmers
to produce the food that is needed in the 21st century. On the contrary,
we think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the
sustainable agricultural systems that our farmers have developed for
millennia, and that it will undermine our capacity to feed ourselves.'
Sources: Briefing papers by Genewatch, Friends of the Earth, the Soil
Association, GM Free Wales, Farm
Source: http://www.theecologist.org/article.html?article=432
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