Approving GM Crops is Abusing Science

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Approving GM Crops is Abusing Science

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The Institute of Science in Society

Science Society Sustainability

http://www.i-sis.org.uk

 

General Enquiries sam

Website/Mailing List press-release

ISIS Director m.w.ho

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Approving GM Crops is Abusing Science

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Scientific evidence has gone decisively against GM crops. So why is

commercial growing allowed? Scientists from the Independent Science Panel

are calling for an enquiry. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports.

 

Prominent scientists representing more than a thousand colleagues around the

world voiced their deep concerns at the lack of social accountability of

publicly funded science, especially in genetically modified (GM) crops.

 

 

They spoke out at a Briefing to an audience of 120 at the Greater London

Assembly on Monday, 19 January 2003, organised jointly by Green Party member

of the Assembly Noel Lynch and the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS).

 

 

The scientists are particularly incensed at the persistent denial and

dismissal by the government's scientific advisors of the now extensive

scientific evidence on the hazards of GM crops to health and the

environment, in total disregard for the precautionary principle.

 

 

The scientists belong to the London-based Institute of Science in Society,

representing more than 670 scientists from 76 countries, and Scientists for

Global Responsibility, with a membership of 600. All are also members of the

Independent Science Panel (ISP) on GM, launched 10 May 2003 at a public

conference in London attended by the then environment minister Michael

Meacher and 200 other participants.

 

 

The 24 scientists on the ISP published their report, The Case for a GM-Free

Sustainable World on the ISP website www.indsp.org 15 June 2003, billed as

" a complete dossier of evidence on the problems and hazards of GM crops as

well as the proven successes of all forms of non-GM sustainable

agriculture " .

 

 

By July 3, the Report was downloaded 12 000 times in the United States

alone. It has since been published by ISIS and the Third World Network,

republished by a commercial publisher in the US, and widely translated.

Spanish, French and German translations have been done, and Indonesian and

Portuguese translations are on the way.

 

 

The evidence reviewed in this authoritative report, containing more than 200

references to primary and secondary sources, received ample corroboration

from new data released recently. The US Department of Agriculture confirmed

that GM crops increased herbicide and pesticide use by more than 50 million

pounds since 1996.

 

 

UK's Farm Scale Evaluations (FSEs), much criticised for being limited in

scope and biased in methodology, nevertheless confirmed that two of the

three GM crops harmed wildlife.

 

 

The third, GM maize tolerant to the herbicide glufosinate, appeared to do

better only because the conventional maize crop was sprayed with the deadly

herbicide atrazine that Europe banned a week before the FSEs Report was

released. This was exposed and universally condemned by public interest

organisations. A spokesperson of GM-Free Cymru - a group campaigning to ban

GM crops from Wales - called it a " cynical and dishonest " manipulation of

the scientific process.

 

 

Despite all that, the Advisory Committee on Release to the Environment gave

the green light to growing the GM maize in Britain.

" Scientific evidence has gone decisively against GM crops, " said Dr. Mae-Wan

Ho, Director of the Institute of Science in Society. " But that's only

scratching the surface. "

 

 

She revealed how twelve dairy cows died in a farm in Hesse, Germany, after

being fed GM maize. " That is by no means an isolated incident. " She said,

and reminded her audience of research by Arpad Pusztai and his

collaborators, by other scientists, plus a host of anecdotal evidence

showing that different GM feed also harmed other livestock and lab animals

(see " GM food safe? " series, Science in Society 21). " This suggests there

may be something seriously wrong with GM food and feed in general. "

 

 

It has to do with the overwhelming instability of GM varieties, she said.

Practically every GM variety analysed by French and Belgian scientists

recently, including the T25 GM maize that the UK government is authorising

for growing in Britain, turned out to be unstable, and in some cases,

non-uniform. " This would make them illegal under European legislation. " She

pointed out.

 

 

" We all want to benefit from what new technologies have to offer, but

history shows that, all too often, we have failed to heed well-founded

warnings and made very expensive mistakes, and GM could be one of these; "

says Professor Peter Saunders, bio-mathematician, King's College, London,

" Precaution is the key, and precaution is inseparable from good science. " He

also insisted it was up to companies to prove " beyond reasonable doubt " that

their products are safe, in analogy to a court of law. The current practice

is anti-precautionary, for the burden on proof is misplaced, as it is left

up to the public to prove something " harmful " before it could be withdrawn.

 

 

He demolished all the objections of critics, including the one that says the

precautionary principle would prevent any innovation in society. " On the

contrary, " he said, " It would not have prevented Sir Walter Raleigh from

introducing cigarettes to the world as there was no evidence suggesting

cigarettes were harmful; but it would surely have prevented tens of millions

of deaths had the precautionary principle been applied when evidence linking

smoking to lung cancer became available. "

 

 

Dr. Vyvyan Howard, medical toxi-pathologist, Liverpool University, showed

how so-called risk assessment is based on fictitious, simplistic models that

are a travesty of nature's complexity. That's what he called " fact-free "

risk assessment. " The £1.6 million given by the UK Government to Dr. Pusztai

was to develop hazard assessment techniques for novel foods. That tells us

the regulators recognized that the methods in use then were not adequate to

protect human health. Not much has changed, and it seems that line of

research is no longer seriously pursued. Consequently, the current risk

assessments are still totally inadequate. "

 

 

Dr. Arpad Pusztai, formerly of Rowett Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland,

concurred. " Science is able to provide the tools for conducting thorough

risk assessments on GM foods, yet this is not being done adequately. It

leads one to ask, 'Who is responsible for not ensuring that GM foods are

properly assessed, and why?' "

 

 

The risk assessment process is a sham, said Joe Cummins, Emeritus Professor

of Plant Genetics from University of Western Ontario, Canada. For example,

there are many toxins isolated from the soil bacterium Bacillus

thuringiensis -Bt toxins - incorporated into crops. Many are synthetic

versions of the natural toxins, and they are also processed differently in

plants, with different carbohydrate added to the protein. " But companies are

allowed to test the natural toxins instead of the toxins from the GM plants,

as they would be eaten by animals and human beings. " Said Joe Cummins.

 

 

Joe Cummins is also very critical of his own government: " The Canadian

government pumped millions of dollars into developing GM crops, especially

GM wheat, owned by the corporations. In return, the corporations agreed to

enhance the salaries of agricultural bureaucrats. The cosy relationship

between the corporations and government has resulted in lax regulation and

widespread pollution of non-GM crops. Worse still, scientists are

intimidated into silence; they are afraid to speak out, let alone do

experiments on the risks and hazards of GM. "

 

 

Many scientists deplore the pervasive commercial and political conflicts of

interests in both research and development and regulation of GM. Dr. Eva

Novotny, astrophysicist, formerly from Cambridge University, and

spokesperson for Scientists for Global Responsibility sums it up: " Vested

interests must not override science, economics and what the public want. "

 

Who are the winners and the losers in this GM debate? The environment,

farmers and consumers are all losers if GM crops are to be grown. Companies

may appear to be winners, but consumers have roundly rejected their

offerings, farmers who grew GM crops elsewhere have lost their markets. A

report released last April by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors signalled

that agricultural biotechnology is a high-risk industry not worth investing

in. The Economics Review commissioned by the UK Government last summer

confirmed that there is no market for GM crops. " GM companies might do best

to cut their losses and begin producing something their potential customers

will actually want. " Said Eva Novotny.

 

 

The scientists are keen to work in partnership with farmers in research and

development of sustainable agriculture. John Turner, organic farmer from

FARM, a group set up in 2002 to represent independent and family farmers in

the wake of the foot and mouth epidemic, confirms that farmers in his

organisation overwhelmingly reject the commercial growing of GM crops. He is

very enthusiastic about the possibility of forming a scientists-farmers

coalition. He says: " This will ensure that science can respond to the

present needs of agriculture, and anticipate future aspirations and needs of

farmers and consumers. "

 

 

" The problem with our government's scientific advisors is that they not only

refuse to look at evidence in their own field of molecular genetics, they

refuse to look at evidence from other fields, such as the documented

successes of non-GM sustainable agriculture. " Mae-Wan Ho pointed out.

 

 

She just returned from visiting Ethiopia, which has a Green as president.

The head of its Environment Protection Authority, Dr. Tewolde Egziabher, and

Sue Edwards, Director of the Institute of Sustainable Development, started a

small project in sustainable agriculture in the state of Tigray at the very

north of the country in 1996.

 

 

Mae-Wan Ho summarised the work with great enthusiasm: " The results were so

good that the project rapidly spread, and now 2 000 families are involved.

Over a range of agricultural land from wet to very dry, from rich soils to

very poor thin soils, farmers found that just by adopting pit composting,

the traditional way in Ethiopia, they were able to increase yields up to

4-fold, and do better than chemical fertilizers in the overwhelming majority

of farms. That is something Londoners can do in their garden while they keep

London and Britain GM-Free. "

 

 

The Briefing itself was webcast. To see this please go to ,

http://wms5.westminster-digital.co.uk/gla/meetings/winningthegmdebate_190104

..wmv

 

 

 

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