Fwd: GM Crop Weed Killer Linked to Powerful Fungus

[Guest guest]

" luckypig "

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 21:43:04 -0400

GM Crop Weed Killer Linked to Powerful Fungus

 

Scientists are expressing alarm about the relationship between the application

of a common weed killer to food crops and the resultant proliferation of

potentially toxic fungal moulds in the harvest. Monsanto's popular product

Roundup, which contains a chemical called glyphosate is alleged to increase the

size of colonies of the fungus Fusarium, a genus of often very toxic moulds that

occurs naturally in soils and occasionally invades crops, but usually held in

check by other microbes. If true, these allegations not only call into question

the world's number one weed killer, but they also jeopardize the world's

acceptance of Monsanto's flagship line of genetically-engineered " Roundup Ready "

crops.

 

" Glyphosate-treated wheat appeared to have higher levels of Fusarium head blight

(a toxic fungal disease) than wheat fields where no glyphosate had been

applied. " said Scientist Myriam Fernandez of the Semiarid Prairie Agricultural

Research Centre in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in a recent interview. Fernandez

added " We have not finished analysing the four years of data yet or written up

the study. " While Fernandez's research recently made headlines throughout

Canada, it was not the first to discuss the relationship between

glyphosate-containing weed killer formulations and the enhancement of

potentially toxic fungi, but it was the first to report on the possibility of

potentially toxic crop damage caused by the link in wheat and barley, two of

Canada's most important crops.

 

According to Dr. Harvey Glick, head of Monsanto's Scientific Affairs, who

remains critical: " It appears to be that Dr. Fernandez did a field survey

looking at levels of Fusarium and then the factors that might be related. So,

from what I can gather, that was not a cause and effect. It's just that they saw

in the study area some fields that had higher levels of Fusarium, for whatever

reason, and then they looked at a list of factors that might be related and one

of them was there was Roundup used in those fields the previous year.

 

Maybe, but, over the last two decades, several scientists from New Zealand to

Africa have noticed and investigated the glyphosate-fusarium relationship

through small-scale experiments in the relative obscurity of their labs and

reporting the results of their work through the hidden world of academic

journals. The result of all of this work, is " just under 50 scientific papers, "

says Robert Kremer PhD., a soil scientist at the University of Missouri. This

body work shows an increase in Fusarium or other microbes after the application

of glyphosate.

 

Monsanto's Dr. Harvey Glick disagrees: " Roundup is almost 30 years old and

scientists have been looking at all aspects of its use for at least that long.

So there is a tremendous amount of information available. And that is why there

is such a high level of confidence that the use of Roundup, based on all of this

earlier work, does not have any negative impacts on soil microbes... And a lot

of it has been published. "

 

Dr. Kremer's ongoing research deals with the effect of glyphosate-fusarium

relationship on soybeans, not just regular soybeans, but " Roundup Ready "

soybeans also. Monsanto has been producing a series of genetically-engineered

" Roundup Ready " seed stock for various crops including, cotton, soybean, wheat

and corn to be used exclusively with their successful glyphosate weedkiller

Roundup. " Roundup Ready " crops are themselves unaffected by the Roundup

weedkiller, which will kill all any competing plants such as weeds in the same

area. Because they are genetically-engineered, they have not found easy

acceptance in many countries outside the US, and they are still banned in Canada

and Europe.

 

Dr. Kremer found that in his " Roundup Ready " soybean experiments that

" Glyphosate seems to stimulate Fusarium in the roots area of the plants, " to

such a degree that he considers the elevation of Fusarium levels to be

glyphosate's " secondary mode of action. " While he found enhanced Fusarium

colonies in the roots of his plants, which could potentially reduce the harvest,

he did not find it in the harvested soybeans themselves. Even so, he expressed

concern about what this accumulation of Fusarium in the soil could lead to.

 

Dr. Kremer also noted: " We didn't see enhancement of Fusarium when other

herbicides were used. " However, in the case of " Roundup Ready " crops, Roundup is

to be used exclusively or in combination with other chemicals as a weed killer.

To use other weed killers alone would be a violation of contract.

 

Thus, if Roundup increases Fusarium levels, then " Roundup Ready " crops that use

Roundup as a weed killer could become potential disasters, increasing Fusarium

levels in the soil to such critical levels it could produce an epidemic and move

from field to field throughout a wide area.

 

In a recent article titled " GM cotton blamed for disease, " the Farm Weekly, an

Australian publication, predicted that " up to 90 percent of Australia's cotton

belt could be inundated by the soil borne pathogen Fusarium wilt within the next

decade " due to Roundup Ready cotton.

 

Fusarium contamination of cereals, such as the Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) in

wheat and barley that Dr. Fernandez is studying in Saskatchewan has been

responsible for serious crop losses. About a fifth of the wheat crop in Europe

every year is lost to FHB and in Michigan during 2002 it was estimated that

30-40% of the crops were destroyed by the infestation. When the mould passes

into the food-chain undetected, Fusarium epidemics on cereals can have even

worse effects: a Fusarium epidemic of cereals was considered responsible for

thousands of deaths in Russia during the 1940s and more recently in 2001, it

caused a series of deadly birth defects among tortilla-eating Mexican-Americans

in Brownsville, Texas.

 

When cultured on Petri dishes, Fusarium can display various colours, often

ranging from orange to salmon-coloured, and it has a varying appearance on

different cereals and at different stages of its life cycle. On wheat and rye it

can appear as a chalky white colour; on barley it can appear as a black rust,

and on oats it can be black and reddish-orange coloured. Small amounts of

contamination of grains are invisible to the human eye, and chemical tests have

to be done to detect it. Since such tests are at the expense of the farmer,

minute amounts continually enter commercial food products. It is at the higher

levels that it can become a serious problem.

 

The Fusarium fungus can produce a range of toxins that are not destroyed in the

cooking process such as vomitoxin, which as its name suggests, usually produces

vomiting and not death, to the more lethal compounds which include fumonisin,

which can cause cancer and birth defects to the very lethal chemical warfare

agent fusariotoxin, more often referred to as T2 toxin.

 

During 2000, the US Congress planned to use the fungus Fusarium as a biological

control agent to kill coca crops in Colombia and another fungus to kill opium

poppies in Afghanistan, but these plans were dropped by then-president Clinton

who was concerned that the unilateral use of a biological agent would be

perceived by the rest of the world as biological warfare. The Andean nations,

including Colombia, where it was to be used in the drug war against coca

cultivation banned its use throughout the region. Sanho Tree, the director of

the Institute for Policy Studies Drug Policy Project commented about using a

chemical that produces a banned micro-organism: " The US has supplied tens of

thousands of gallons Roundup to the Colombian government for use in aerial

fumigation of coca crops. We have been using a fleet of crop dusters to dump

unprecedented amounts of high-potency glyphosate over hundreds of thousands of

acres in one of the most delicate and bio-diverse ecosystems in the world.

This futile effort has done little to reduce the availability of cocaine on our

streets, but now we are learning that a possible side-effect of this campaign

could be the unleashing of a Fusarium epidemic in Amazon basin. The drug war has

tried in vain to keep cocaine out of people's noses, but could result instead in

scorching the lungs of the earth. "

 

Because of the glyphosate-Fusarium link, Canada's National Farmers Union is

already opposing the introduction of genetically-engineered " Roundup Ready "

wheat, and this issue shows no signs of going away. Time will only tell if

Monsanto will be able to " fix " the problems of their " Roundup Ready " crops with

more genetic engineering- this time to control Fusarium--or will their top weed

killer and flagship line of " Roundup Ready " crops be rejected by today's

farmers?

 

Jeremy Bigwood is a freelance writer and investigator specializing in Latin

America. A shorter version of this story was published by IPS.

http://www.counterpunch.org/bigwood08232003.html