Genetically Engineered Foods Archives

Nitty-gritty on genetically modified foods. (Archive in frankenfoods.) LONG.

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Misty L. Trepke
http://www.searching-alternatives.com

Five Reasons to Avoid Genetically Modified Crops

http://www.mercola.com/blog

This is a topic I have frequently discussed. Now The Ecologist,
published in London, and the world's longest running environmental
magazine, vigorously opposes GM foods. It is read by people in over
150 countries.

The August issue has a lengthy article (posted below) titled "5
Reasons To Keep Britain GM-Free." Although it discusses genetically
engineered crops from Britain's perspective, the points it makes are
applicable to any country. The five reasons are:

GM Will Remove Consumer Choice

Health Risks Have Not Been Disproved

Farmers Will be Destroyed

The Environment Will Suffer

GM Crops Will Not Feed The Poor

One of the sub-topics under "Farmers Will be Destroyed" is "Organic
Farmers Ruined." Unfortunately, that is starting to happen now in
the United States as more and more organic crops become contaminated
with the genes from genetically engineered crops. Over time, the
new "USDA ORGANIC" label may come to represent an inferior organic
product compared to organic crops from those countries that are not
allowing genetically engineered crops to be grown.

The fastest way to dramatically reduce the acreage of genetically
engineered crops being grown in the United States is to pass
mandatory labeling legislation. Once genetically engineered foods
are required to be labeled, manufacturers will begin using non-
genetically engineered ingredients. And if food manufacturers stop
buying genetically engineered crops, farmers will stop growing
them. It is the basic law of supply and demand. Remove the demand,
and the supply will quickly go away.

The Economist August 2003

=========================================================
from: http://www.theecologist.org/article.html?article=432

5 reasons to keep Britain GM-free

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 (see box
below). 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 statedon 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

Re: Nitty-gritty on genetically modified foods. (Archive in frankenfoods.) LONG.