GMW: Pusztai - 'We can't ignore GM concerns'

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GMW: Pusztai - 'We can't ignore GM concerns'

" GM WATCH " <info

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:18:12 +0100

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.We can't ignore GM concerns - Pusztai

2.GM is safe and that's a fact - Little and Marantelli

(Chemistry & Industry pieces require a subscription)

 

COMMENT

 

These exchanges began with Dr Arpad Pusztai's guest editorial in

Chemistry & Industry, 'GM fears allayed with transparency' (20 June

2005 -

Issue No 12).

 

EXCERPT from 'GM fears allayed with transparency': " It is... not

unreasonable to suggest that it is not only the biotech companies that

should

carry out the risk or safety assessments of GM crops/foods, but it must

also be verified by independent scientists through an open and

transparent funding system. The basic rule must be that, because we

all eat GM

foods, we are all entitled to scrutinise the evidence relating to their

safety. Therefore, secrecy is against the public interest and

unjustified. Similarly, all ethical concerns raised by GM organisms

must be

settled inclusively by society. "

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5492

 

Bernard Marantelli and Julian Little responded critically to this ('GM

is safe and that's a fact' - item 2).

 

Marantelli works for the PR firm Lexington Communications. He has

helped Lexington with its work for the the UK biotechnology-industry

lobby

group, the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC), which Little heads.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=205

 

The ABC was founded in 2002 by Monsanto along with Bayer CropScience,

BASF, Dow Agrosciences, Dupont and Syngenta. Little is employed by Bayer

while Marantelli, prior to joining Lexington, worked on PR for

Monsanto.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=138

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1.We can't ignore GM concerns

Dr Arpad Pusztai

Chemistry & Industry

15 August 2005 - Issue No 16 - Page 15

http://www.chemind.org/CI/articles.jsp

 

Arpad Pusztai, a consultant at the Norwegian Institute of Gene Ecology

in Tromso, counters Little and Marantelli's claims of GM's safety and

calls for openness to end the controversy

 

'GM is safe and that's a fact,' say Julian Little and Bernard

Marantelli of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council. Categorical

statements of

safety such as this encapsulate why efforts to have meaningful

scientific dialogue between GM enthusiasts and sceptics have failed.

Nothing

can be said to be absolutely safe and safety for GM (or any other) food

cannot be guaranteed by anyone.

 

The concept of safety is defined in the negative and this is how

scientists approach the problem. Accordingly, the 1139 pages of the

Monsanto-commissioned rat-feeding study with MON 863 maize-based diets

has been

a commendable attempt to show the regulators that no negative health

impacts occur when this GM maize is fed to a mammalian species, and so

support the idea of its safety. If consumers or regulators took it for a

fact that this GM maize was safe, Monsanto would have never done this

study. It is quite a different business that in the opinion of many,

including this author, the results, rather than proving the innocuousness

of MON 863, revealed possible health problems in the rats that had

eaten this GM maize. Therefore, even if the partisan opinion of Little

and

Marantelli that 'the number of detrimental health impacts attributed to

GM crops has remained… zero' were to be true, the Monsanto study has

provided evidence that harm can occur with at least this one GM maize

crop.

 

By restricting access to the full 1139-page document, Monsanto raised

suspicions that they were trying to hide any potential health risks of

this GM maize from independent scrutiny even though they expected

European consumers to eat it. Even more worrying is that some of the 25

member states' regulatory committees only received a 19-page summary

instead

of the full document. They were not provided with descriptions of the

feeding experiments, other essential experimental details or the

evaluation methods. Without these, they could not fulfil their lawful

duties

to scrutinise the results.

 

Before I could provide the German authorities with a commissioned

scientific review of the feeding study, I had to sign a confidentiality

contract not to publicly release its contents. Monsanto took the German

authorities to court for disclosing the study to persons unauthorised by

them. Fortunately, the appeal court took the reasonable view that blood

parameters and kidney size etc of rats fed on MON 863 diet cannot be

regarded as confidential information and ordered the publication of the

document. It is therefore difficult to understand how the GM

biotechnology industry can claim to foster openness and inclusiveness.

 

Little and Marantelli's interpretation of the UK Government-initiated

investigation into the growing and commercialisation of GM crops, the

Science Review Panel's report, the results of the field trials and

Cabinet Office views also appear to be at odds with the facts. When it is

asserted that 'the genetically modified element (sic!) of GM crops has no

environmental impact, and that the herbicide regime… (is) beneficial to

wildlife…', this is not only the opposite to the conclusions of the UK

investigation, it makes it impossible to have any further discussion.

 

The biotech industry and their pressure groups must recognise that some

of the health and environmental concerns of society are genuine and

need to be debated. Rebuffing these attempts by loudly declaring that GM

is safe without transparently assessing the risks they represent and

ascribing legitimate concerns as NGO-inspired conspiracy is not helpful.

The sooner it is realised that openness, transparency and inclusiveness

are not only slogans but the best way to solve this GM controversy, the

better it will be for us all.

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GM is safe and that's a fact

Julian Little and Bernard Marantelli

Chemistry & Industry

04 July 2005 - Issue No 13 - Page 12

http://www.chemind.org/CI/articles.jsp?chemID=CH5522

 

It is time to stop the scare-mongering over GM crops after a decade of

their safe use and the billionth acre planted globally, argue Julian

Little and Bernard Marantelli of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council

 

The article 'GM fears allayed with transparency' casts a shadow over

the crop biotechnology industry by speaking of company secrecy, the

character assassination of those that question genetic modification (GM),

and a lack of safety evaluations. It even suggested that the production

of GM products is dangerous and surpasses our actual knowledge of the

process. The article suggested these practices continued unabated despite

calls for increased transparency and testing, particularly from the

Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2000.

 

But then it cited a 1139-page safety evaluation of an individual

Monsanto product given to the 25 member states of the European Union

(EU) as

information to support the application for that product to be approved

in the EU. Hardly the actions of a secretive industry. The reality of

the situation is that plant biotechnology and the products derived

thereof have had unprecedented scrutiny around the world since the first

products were commercialised ten years ago.

 

In 2000, the year of the OECD meeting the article refers to as

providing the momentum for scientific transparency, the EU was in its

second

year of what would become a six-year de facto moratorium on GM crops.

This moratorium, led by vocal NGOs, convinced those with political power

that the public were violently opposed to GM.

 

This was also the year that the Agricultural Biotechnology Council

(ABC) was set up. Our goal, in line with the OECD, was to provide

information and education about the use of GM technology in the UK and

around

the world, based on respect for public interest, opinions and concerns.

ABC is the UK umbrella group for the agricultural biotechnology industry

including Bayer CropScience, BASF, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto

and Syngenta.

 

Many things have changed since 2000, but most importantly the number of

detrimental health impacts attributed to GM crops or foods has remained

the same: zero.

 

Since 2000, the UK Government has undertaken a three-stranded public

consultation and debate in which ABC participated fully. The industry

also participated in the Government's Farm Scale Evaluation programme of

field trials. There has also been a three-year gene-flow study, not to

mention a raft of other studies by the Food Standards Agency looking

specifically at safety evaluation to complement the work covered by

companies internally. The ABC has participated in every aspect.

 

In 2003, the Government-appointed Science Review Panel left `no stone

unturned' in reviewing 688 peer-reviewed safety studies on GM crops. It

did not locate one detrimental human or animal health impact during the

course of this review. The number of publicly-accessible safety studies

that are available today (still without one detrimental health impact)

would almost certainly pass 1000. This is somewhat in contrast to the

implication in Pusztai's article that safety evaluation is lax and

studies few and far between.

 

Likewise, more than 250 field trials in the UK under the Government's

Farm Scale Evaluation programme have demonstrated that the genetically

modified element of GM crops has no environmental impact, and that the

herbicide regime used in conjunction with them is flexible enough to

ensure that they are grown in a manner better or equally beneficial to

wildlife as current conventional weed management practices.

 

And only this week a group of government scientists at the

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council reported on

gene flow

involving GM crops in the UK. They have given a clean bill of health and

suggested no significant issues exist with gene flow, which is a natural

manageable occurrence in agriculture.

 

Despite the rumour mill and comments about doom and gloom, the facts

appear to speak for themselves. In 2004, 8.25 million farmers grew GM

crops on 81 million hectares (200 million acres) in 17 countries. And for

the first time absolute growth in plantings was greater in developing

countries (7.2 million hectares) than in industrial countries (6.1

million hectares).

 

2005 saw the end of the first decade of commercial planting of GM crops

and the billionth individual acre being planted globally. The success

of GM crops has grown on the back of farmer and environmental benefits.

 

Not surprisingly, NGO focus has also changed in the last decade.

Between 1998 and 2000 food safety was the issue of NGO driven focus,

but as

year after year passed without incident, their campaigning migrated

towards concerns for the environment in an attempt to reinvigorate

opposition.

 

The vacillating concerns and scaremongering of NGOs are not, however,

just historical footnotes; they have serious repercussions. The failure

of some in the EU to embrace or even accept GM technology has been in

part responsible for many companies moving aspects of their R & D out of

the UK with the unfortunate consequence that many gifted science

researchers have followed. This will take decades to reverse, inhibits

the

vision of a technology-based country and severely restricts our

chances to

compete in the future global economy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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