Franken Foods: GM rice hype deja vu

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GMW: GM rice hype deja vu

" GM WATCH " <info

 

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 12:34:21 +0100

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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The research reported below on GM rice in China suggests some very

significant benefits are accruing to farmers growing GM rice. It noth cut

costs for poor farmers and improved health, according to the just

published study.

 

GM proponents wishing to propel China into a GM future are making the

most of the study - and the researchers themselves seem to be taking a

lead in the hype. One of the resarchers, Jikun Huang, , who led the

study, is quoted enthusiastically predicting, " Agricultural biotechnology

may boost China's agriculture, improve the nation's food security, and

increase the income and improve the health of rice farmers. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/29/wrice29.xml & sShe\

et=/news/2005/04/29/ixworld.html

 

A BBC report quotes Jikun Huang as saying " he hoped it would help

persuade the Chinese government to license the commercial use of GM

rice. "

(GM rice praised in Chinese study)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4495775.stm

 

For some this wave of GM rice hype may produce a remarkable sense of

deja vu.

 

The American researchers Carl Pray and Scott Rozelle, who together with

Huang Jikun and another Chinese colleague, Hu Ruifa, have produced this

research, have previously done an exactly similar job on GM cotton in

China.

 

Their surveys conducted in five northern provinces in China on the

impact of Bt cotton pointed, in the words of Randy Hautea of the GM lobby

group ISAAA, to GM cotton having " positive and significant economic and

health benefits for poor, small farmers " . (Why genetically modified

cotton thrives in China)

http://www.gene.ch/genet/2002/Oct/msg00008.html

 

And in the case of Bt cotton too the researchers weren't at all shy

about suggesting that there were policy implications for the expansion of

GM cultivation in the light of their findngs.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/aredav/1025.html

 

But Bt cotton points up the danger of arriving at short-term solutions

to long-term problems, particularly when there are other low-cost

low-risk solutions to the problems that GM technologies seek to overcome.

http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/article2.htm

http://www.farmingsolutions.org/

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5172

 

In fact, there have already been reports of major problems in China

with GM cotton and even predictions that the technology could not only be

useless within a decade but, in the words of one Chinese reseacher,

" could cause a disaster " .

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3636

 

A report published in June 2002 seriously questioned the claims of

success made for Bt cotton in China. The report suggested that while the

widespread adoption of Bt cotton in China may have reduced pesticide

consumption, it had also resulted in the evolution of Bt toxin-resistant

bollworms which could make the technology " ineffective in controlling

pests after eight to ten years of continuous production " . The scientists

also pointed to secondary pests emerging that caused equivalent damage

to Bt cotton.

 

Inevitably, the research came under ferocious attack from the GM lobby,

even though it was based on the work of scientists at a research

institute funded by China's State Environmental Protection Agency. But

then

Liu Xiaofeng, a researcher in Henan, China's number two cotton producing

province, confirmed the research findings. Liu was cited as saying that

the cotton bollworm was indeed developing resistance and predicted it

would no longer be susceptible to Bt cotton within six to seven years.

He also confirmed that Bt cotton was not effective in controlling

secondary pests.

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3636

 

Prof. Dayuan XUE, of the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Science in

China has also expressed scepticism about the claims made for major

benefits for small-scale farmers. " Modern agri-biotechnology has produced

significant benefits for commercial companies, " he says, " but not for

small farmers in China. "

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=2765

 

Hans Herren, Director General, of the International Centre of Insect

Physiology and Ecology Nairobi, Kenya and winner of the 1995 World Food

Prize puts his finger on the problem: " farmers are likely to be weaned

from pesticides to be force fed biotech seeds, in other words, taken off

one treadmill and set on a new one! The trend towards a

quasi-monopolization of funding in agricultural development into a

narrow set of

technologies is dangerous and irresponsible. Also, too many hopes and

expectations are being entrusted in these technologies, to the

detriment of

more conventional and proven technologies and approaches that have been

very successful and which potential lies mostly unused in the

developing countries. It is only too obvious to concerned scientists,

farmers

and citizens alike that we are about to repeat, step by step, the

mistakes of the insecticide era, even before it is behind us. "

http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/feedtheworld.htm

 

The BBC report on the GM rice study also notes some more specific

concerns over how the study has been conducted. Sze Pang Cheung of

Greenpeace China is quoted as saying: " The Science paper states that

farmers

cultivated the GE rice without the assistance of technicians, and that

quite a number of the randomly selected participants grew both

[genetically engineered] and conventional varieties on their small

family farms. "

 

" In other countries, GE field trials are tightly regulated, monitored

and separated from conventional rice crops.

 

" The Chinese system of regulating GE field trials is failing. It looks

like GE rice has grown out of control under the very noses of the

scientists that were trusted to control it. "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4495775.stm

 

The New York Times recently reported that experimental GM rice which

has been through no approval process and whose health and environmental

effects remain entirely unknown was being sold for commerical purposes

by a university researching it, and going into China's food supply.

 

" Many sellers here said the supplies came from a local university that

specializes in biotech rice research. They said bags of rice could be

bought there... " All the anti-bug seeds have been sold out, " said a

woman operating the store at the Huazhong Agriculture University in Wuhan.

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5118

 

With the world becoming ever more aware of the problem of rogue GM

crops, and buyers and regulators already taking action over rogue GM

maize

out of the US, China will be committing economic suicide if it allows

itself to be manipulated further down the dangerous GM path.

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Farmers say GM rice cuts pesticide illness

Tim Radford, science editor

Friday April 29 2005

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1472840,00.html

 

Small farmers in China growing GM rice reported higher yields than for

conventional varieties, a lower use of pesticides, and less illness

related to the use of the pesticides, Chinese and US scientists report

today in Science journal.

 

In eight field trials in two consecutive years, the 69 farmers grew a

rice genetically engineered to be resistant to stem borer and leaf

roller, and also a rice fitted with an insect-resistance gene from a

cowpea

plant. They were not paid and made their own decisions about pesticide

use; the research was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

 

For comparison, the researchers also surveyed farmers who used

conventional varieties, or who grew both types. All applied the same

kinds of

pesticides, but on a per hectare basis the quantity and cost of those

applied to conventional rice was eight to 10 times higher.

 

Yields of one GM variety were 9% higher than normal; the harvest from

the other was about the same.

 

The researchers also asked the farmers' families if they had headaches,

nausea, skin irritation, or digestive upsets after spraying. None of

the farmers who completely converted to GM crops had pesticide health

problems in either 2002 or 2003.

Of those that grew both GM and conventional varieties, 7.7% reported

some illness in 2002, and 10.9% in 2003.

 

" This study provides China and other nations with objective,

research-based information about whether GM food crops can actually

improve

farmer welfare, " said Carl Pray of Rutgers University in New Jersey.

 

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

 

 

 

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