Losing the Right to Chose: Drifting Pollen May Settle GM Debate

[Guest guest]

I thought this was interesting...

Misty

http://www..com

 

Genetically Modified Outcome

Drifting Pollen May Settle Debate Over Transgenic Food

 

Karen Charman is an investigative journalist specializing in

agriculture, health and the environment.

 

Just as Americans are becoming aware that much of the food on

supermarket shelves is spliced with genes from foreign species,

debate about whether our food should be manipulated in this manner

is on its way to becoming a moot point.

 

The reason, as crudely put to me by a U.S. Department of Agriculture

staffer more than five years ago, is this: " plants have sex. "

 

Corn wantonly tosses its gene-laden pollen to the wind in search of

nearby mates. Soybeans and canola are somewhat more sexually

bashful -- they depend on insects to spread their pollen. All this

is nature's way of distributing genes and ensuring reproduction. We

humans are powerless to limit such a primal and eternal process.

 

Humankind has, however, learned to change the genetic makeup of

crops in ways that nature never would. Genetically modified ( " GM " or

" transgenic " ) strains of just four crops already account for nearly a

third of the farm acreage under cultivation in this country. A

multitude of other transgenic varieties not yet commercialized are

also being grown in field trials in the open environment.

 

The problem is that the natural process of plant sex is taking over,

spreading manipulated genes everywhere, beyond test plots, beyond the

fields of farmers who have chosen to plant them. If we decide for

whatever reason that GM crops are undesirable or discover that

certain, or perhaps all, transgenic foods are dangerous, we will be

stuck with them.

 

Consumers have a choice, right? If they don't like GM foods, they can

buy food that meets strict organic food standards, which do not

permit genetic engineering.

 

But Janet Jacobson, a North Dakota organic farmer and president of

the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society, says that after

just six years of commercial production of gene-spliced crops,

organic food's non-GM safe haven is rapidly disappearing.

 

" Organic producers can no longer produce organic corn. I don't know

any organic farmers that can grow canola, because there's so much GM

canola around, " she laments. " There are also organic farmers who

have had soybeans rejected because they were contaminated with

GMOs. "

 

Besides drifting pollen, some of the genetic contamination has

resulted from GM seeds getting mixed into the conventional seed

stocks that farmers use to plant their next year's crops.

 

Many biotech food opponents have suspected for some time that genetic

pollution is a deliberate strategy of the biotech industry and its

minions in state and federal government.

 

In January 2001, Don Westfall, a food industry consultant formerly

with Promar International, an American company that advises large

food corporations on industry trends and marketing strategies, told

the Toronto Star exactly that: " The hope of the industry is that

over time the market is so flooded that there's nothing you can do

about it. You just sort of surrender. "

 

Westfall's remarks were made in the context of an interview about

genetic contamination of the food supply in light of the StarLink

debacle. In the fall of 2000, StarLink, a transgenic variety of corn

that was not approved for human consumption, was discovered in Taco

Bell taco shells and eventually hundreds of other foods that contain

corn. More than 300 products were recalled from supermarket shelves,

export markets were lost, and hundreds of farmers got stuck with

their contaminated crop, leading to a quagmire of litigation that

will take years to settle and may well cost a billion dollars before

it's over.

 

In April 2002, Dale Adolphe, former head of the Canola Council of

Canada and current executive director of the Canadian Seed Growers

Association, told Canadian canola growers at their annual meeting

that despite growing public opposition and new regulations intended

to control GM crops, their increasing acreage may eventually end the

debate.

 

The Western Producer, a Canadian agricultural paper, quoted Adolphe:

" It's a hell of a thing to say that the way we win is don't give the

consumer a choice, but that might be it. "

 

If these views don't represent industry strategy, they might as well,

considering that new biotech varieties continue their silent march

out into the open environment with, in most cases, virtually no prior

environmental assessment or monitoring once they are released.

 

Why should we care?

 

Biotech promoters like to say that opponents and critics rely on raw,

scientifically unsubstantiated emotion to whip the public into a

frenzy of fear. (Actually, some of the most emotional outbursts I've

personally witnessed came from biotech supporters, whether it be

Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack railing against the use of the

precautionary principle, or the Hudson Institute's Dennis Avery

thundering to a largely pro-biotech crowd that GM food is on its way

out because the activists -- " organic frenzies " -- have won.)

 

However, a growing chorus of scientists is starting to question the

wisdom and safety of this technology.

 

Biotech supporters claim that GM food is no different than food

derived from conventional breeding techniques and that the

technology of genetic engineering simply enables scientists to

improve crops more quickly and with greater precision. Credible

scientists question both claims.

 

Biotechnologists have no control over where the genes they are

inserting end up in the modified species' genome, leading one

geneticist to dub the technology " genetic randomeering. " The

location is important, because where the gene ends up -- actually

it's a package of several genes, because several different genes are

needed to make the technology work -- will determine whether toxic

byproducts or allergens are created, or whether the nutritional

value of the modified food is altered. The placement of foreign

genes can also disrupt the normal functioning of the modified

organism.

 

David Schubert, a cell biologist at The Salk Institute for Biological

Studies in San Diego, says there is no way to predict these outcomes

in advance. He points to one particularly tragic incident to

illustrate what can go wrong with genetic engineering. In the late

1980s, Showa Denko, a Japanese chemical company, began producing the

amino acid L-tryptophan with genetically engineered bacteria.

Unfortunately the modified bacteria also produced a novel amino acid

that turned out to be highly toxic, killing 37 people, permanently

disabling 1,500 and making more than 5,000 sick.

 

Now GM plants that produce pharmaceutical and industrial compounds

are spicing up the mix. According to the USDA's Animal Plant Health

Inspection Service (APHIS), the government agency with chief

responsibility for regulating field trials of bioengineered crops, 30

sites totaling some 100 acres are now testing such crops in the open

environment. But it is impossible to find out where or what is being

tested, because the identity of the compounds is considered

" confidential business information. "

Leake, a conventional wheat farmer from the Red River Valley in

North Dakota who opposes GM crops, says corn and soybeans that

produce veterinary vaccines or contain antibiotics have already been

field tested. If they proceed to commercial production, he believes

contamination will be impossible to prevent.

 

" So your kids will be eating, say, gastroenteritis vaccine with their

cornflakes and cattle antibiotics in their bread, " he said. Leake

might have added that also applies to the rest of us.

 

Transgenic agriculture turns food into intellectual property, giving

profit-driven business corporations the ability to manipulate the

entire genetic heritage of civilization's cultivated crops to their

advantage. Do we really want to give any corporation such power over

us?

 

That's a question members of a democracy might like to debate while

there is still a chance to influence the outcome of such an

unprecedented experiment. But as long as the secret research trials

continue and biotech acreage expands, our ability to make a choice --

whether it is based on informed debate or not -- diminishes by the

day.

 

The Campaign

PO Box 55699

Seattle, WA 98155

Tel: 425-771-4049

Fax: 603-825-5841

E-mail: label

Web Site: http://www.thecampaign.org

 

Mission Statement: " To create a national grassroots consumer campaign

for the purpose of lobbying Congress and the President to pass

legislation that will require the labeling of genetically engineered

foods in the United States. "