Dr. Merc ola: 5 Reasons to Avoid GM Crops

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Misty L. Trepke

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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