UK gives provisional go ahead for commercial G.M. plantations

by Terry Wed Mar 10, 2004 00:44

In the Feb 2004 print issue of The Ecologist magazine, the editoral notes that at the end of last year, insurance representatives declared that tthey regarded GM crops too risky to cover.

'To insure GM, they told the campaigning group Farm, would be like insuring thalidomide, asbestos and even one company said terrorism'

The link provided gives some good links to interesting articles from The Ecologist magazine.

Note in the past year or so, the ecologist have made most of the magazine articles since then available online for free. Obviously the most recent issues are not put online immediately so as to provide some incentive to continue buying it.

by isis Wed Mar 10, 2004 04:30

http://www.i-sis.org/Pharmageddon.php

‘Pharmageddon’

Our fields are being turned into pharmaceutical and industrial factories that poison our food supply and entire life support system. Our governments have been warned and should be held liable for all damages along with the companies involved. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports.

The complete document with references, is available in the ISIS members site. Full details here

We have repeatedly warned against using food crops to produce gene drugs and industrial chemicals since 1998 [1-3]. The inevitable contamination of our food supply has now come to light. But the more insidious pollution of our soil, water and air has yet to be assessed [3]. Poisons can seep through the plant roots and dissolve in ground water. Pollen carrying the offending drugs and chemicals could be inhaled. Wild and domestic animals of all kinds are likely to feed on the crops.

On November 11, the US government ordered the biotech company, ProdiGene, to destroy 500,000 bushels of soybeans contaminated with GM maize, engineered to produce a drug not approved for human consumption [4]. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) refused to give details on the protein involved because it is deemed ‘confidentual business information’.

It could be one of the following [5]: the HIV glycoprotein gp120, a blood-clotting agent (aprotinin), a digestive enzyme (trypsin), an industrial adhesive (a fungal enzyme, laccase), vaccines for hepatitis B, vaccine for a pig disease, transmissible gastroenteritis.

USDA records show that ProdiGene has received 85 test permits for experimental open-air trials of pharm crops and chemical crops in at least 96 locations.

The ‘edible’ AIDS vaccine with the HIV glycoprotein gp120 gene [6] has been condemned as dangerous by a number of AIDS virologists [7-9] because the gp120 gene and gene product can undermine our immune system and generate new viruses and bacteria that cause diseases.

A day later, the US government disclosed that ProdiGene did the same thing in Iowa back in September. The USDA ordered 155 acres of nearby corn to be incinerated for fear of contamination [10,11].

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The true extent of the contamination remains unknown owing to the secrecy surrounding more than 300 field trials of such crops across the country since 1991. Still others sites are in Canada [3]. The chemicals these plants produce include vaccines, growth hormones, clotting agents, industrial enzymes, human antibodies, contraceptives, immune suppressive cytokines and abortion-inducing drugs.

The majority of engineered biopharmaceuticals are being incorporated into maize. ProdiGene, the company at the centre of the current scandal has the greatest number of pharm crops and projects that 10 percent of the US maize will be devoted to biopharm products by 2010.

Far from supporting even weak containment strategies such as buffer zones, ProdiGene has told its shareholders it is hoping to "gain regulatory approval to lessen or abandon these requirements altogether".

Trials in other countries have also come to light. According to a recent report by Genetically Engineered Food Alert, a US-based coalition of environmental and consumer advocacy groups, Puerto Rico is one of four main centres in the US for these tests. The other three are the states of Nebraska, Wisconsin and Hawaii.

Another report by the same group reveals that these plants are by no means the only experimental GM crops grown in Puerto Rico. This Caribbean island has been host to 2,296 USDA-approved GM open-air field tests as of January 2001, making Puerto Rico host to more GM food experiments per square mile than any US state, except Hawaii.

Puerto Rico is not a state. Its residents are US citizens but have no voice or vote in the US Congress or in the UN.

Puerto Rico Farmers Association president Ramon Gonzalez revealed that he plants GM crops in his farm in the town of Salinas. He said that genetically modified crops in Puerto Rico are commercial and include a herbicide-resistant soya made by Monsanto (Roundup-ready) and a variety of corn that produces its own bio-pesticide, or Bt corn.

According to Gonzalez, the harvested GM crops planted there are sold as seed to be planted elsewhere. "Puerto Rico is the preferred place to make seed because our weather permits us to have up to four harvests a year."

Local regulatory agencies seem to be unaware of the issue. A spokeswoman for the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board said that as Puerto Rico has no laws or regulations for GM crops, it has no mandate to intervene or investigate.

USDA spokesman Jim Rogers is reported to have said, "Nobody’s going to know all the possible risks", and "We mitigate these risks to what we feel is appropriate" [12].

On the contrary, we do know enough of the risks for such crops to be banned immediately. The USDA and other government regulators have been warned, and they should be held liable for all damages along with the companies involved.
Risks of Edible Transgenic Vaccines

Prof. Joe Cummins reviews recent developments in plant edible vaccines and points out some additional risks that have not been considered.

The complete document with references, is available in the ISIS members site. Full details here

Using transgenic plants to produce vaccine cheaply has been the main area of molecular farming. A large number of transgenic plant vaccines are being developed and field tested [1,2].

Early tests of a hepatitis B vaccine in potato were hampered by the low levels of antigen produced in the plant, and by the safety requirement that only individuals previously immunized with injected vaccine should be exposed to the plant vaccine [3]. The main safety concern is that the oral vaccine preparations will induce "immune tolerance", thereby making the individual susceptible to the hepatitis B virus.

Oral tolerance is a fundamental biological response to ingested antigens, so that it is possible to eat proteins that would produce an immune response if injected. These difficulties appear to have cooled the fervour of clinical investigators and pharmaceutical companies. Though earlier, a vaccine for pig gastroenteritis produced in transgenic corn was claimed to be effective and ready for commercial release by 2003 [4].

Most transgenic plants have been produced using fertile plants, with crop isolation to limit pollen escape. Researchers have employed chloroplast transgene insertions to boost production levels and to limit the escape of modified genes in pollen. But chloroplast transgene containment is known not to be completely effective [5,6].

The two main concerns over transgenic vaccines are the contamination of food crops through cross pollination and of the vaccine itself in plant debris spreading as dust and as pollutants in surface and groundwater. The vaccine antigen may affect browsing animals and humans living in the area drinking vaccine-polluted water or breathing vaccine-polluted dust. The problem of inducing oral tolerance has already been pointed out above.

There is another kind of immune tolerance that could be acquired during embryogenesis. Burnet and Medawar found that the immune system established the difference between ‘self’ and ‘non-self’ molecules in the developing embryo (reviewed in reference [7]). Exposing the embryo to vaccine will cause the newborn to be tolerant to the vaccine and thus to regard both the vaccine and the infecting pathogen as ‘self’. Individuals born in the vaccine-polluted area may well not be able to produce antibodies to the vaccine antigen, and thus to lack protection against infection by the pathogen.

A number of transgenic plant vaccines currently being developed will be discussed. Cholera toxin gene was introduced into the chloroplast genome of the tobacco, the construction was geared towards high levels of vaccine-antigen production The chloroplast construction allowed 410 times higher antigen production than nuclear gene inserts [8].

Edible cholera B vaccines were produced in transgenic tomato [9,10]. And an antigen gene from the malaria parasite in transgenic tobacco has been proposed as a malaria vaccine [11].

Mice fed transgenic alfalfa with a gene for an antigen to foot and mouse virus were found to produce antibodies against the foot and mouth virus [12]. That study bears careful scrutiny because alfalfa pollen is known to spread to adjacent crops, and pregnant cows and sheep fed on the vaccine crop may give birth to offspring tolerant to the virus.

Transgenic tobacco was modified to produce vaccines against hepatitis B virus and cytomegalovirus. Virus-like particles were produced and concentrated in the tobacco seeds. However, the modified seeds did not provoke an immune response to hepatitis B and cytomegalovirus in mouse. Instead, a strong response to tobacco seed proteins was observed [13]. This unexpected result ought to serve as warning of the unpredictable risks inherent to the transgenic process.

A transgenic potato was loaded with genes for cholera, E.coli antigens and rotavirus enterotoxin, and adult mice were found to produce antibodies to the toxins after feeding on the transgenic potatoes. Neonate mice passively immunized by suckling from mice fed transgenic potatoes had less diarrhea than neonates unexposed to the vaccine [14].

The alfalfa mosaic virus was used to produce rabies vaccine in spinach and tobacco [15]. The experiments progressed to having people eat spinach leaves (salad) containing the vaccine. Such vaccines with recombinant viral vectors should have been handled with very great care to prevent the viral vector from recombining and spreading to infect crops in the field. The rabies vaccination may be important for wild animals and humans, but problems associated with oral tolerance or exposure of children in the womb should be addressed before these vaccines are released to the environment, as the release could actually increase the spread of rabies.

Transgenic crop vaccines may be useful, but the risks to human health and the environment are real.

It is imperative that the cultivation and production of pharm crops should be limited to controlled production facilities such as greenhouses, or better yet, in plant tissue culture, that prevent environmental release of the biopharmaceuticals.

by thursday friday saturday sunday monday tuesday - (we take turns) Wed Mar 10, 2004 13:06

The copyrighting of genes and the present exploitation of scientific advances and theories through the global capitalist system is foolish, risky and involves unwarrented influence by those who really know very little about ecosystems.

by Anarcho Wed Mar 10, 2004 14:36

Gullible Morons or Getting Militant?
The [British] government is planning to go ahead with genetically modified crops. In spite of acknowledging considerable public resistance to GM, the cabinet seeks to impose it onto the British population. Perhaps they think GM means "Gullible Morons"?
Well, Blair did say he had no reverse gear (unless Bush says otherwise, of course). And who can deny that Tony was right when he said that he wanted to "listen"? If you are big business or tell him what he wants to hear then he is all ears. If you are merely the population whom he claims to represent then that is a different matter. Then "listening Tony" becomes "Tone deaf" and democracy is best served by, well, ignoring the majority. "The public was unlikely to be receptive," the minutes note. They also noted that a ban on GM crops would be "the easy way out." So following the wishes of the majority is undesirable for a so-called democratic government? While anarchists are not surprised at such nonsense, hopefully it will make supporters of the state question whether or not it exists to represent the people or not.

Yet the problem remains. The people do not want GM. Rest assured, there is an answer -- blind them with science. "Opposition might," it says, "eventually be worn down by solid, authoritative scientific argument." This is similar to the approach used to bolster the government's case for invading Iraq. And as weak for "scientific argument" does support GM, for obvious reasons

GM modification is new, with unknown consequences. Until we know more about it, it seems incredulous to give it the opportunity to do who knows what kind of damage. Given this, it is the government which is avoiding the scientific argument in favour of a "suck it and see" approach. While such short-termism may make perfect sense in the market, it makes little sense if you place human and environmental needs at the core of sensible decision making. If GM goes ahead, it will spread. Non-GM farming will become impossible as nature does not stop for human made property lines. As well as being unknown, the long term impact on nature of GM is, in all likelihood, non-reversible. But why worry about that when there are profits to be made?

The arguments most commonly raised in favour of GM are hardly scientific. A common assertion is that humans have been genetically modifying plants via crossbreeding for centuries. Very true, but irrelevant. When was the last time a farmer crossbred a flower with a lobster? It is nothing like evolution or selective breeding. It is the mixing of genes from different species.

So the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, was simply showing her ignorance when she said there was no scientific case for an outright ban on the cultivation of GM crops. She also indicated the second prone of the attack, stating that people did acknowledge there could be benefits from GM technology in the future for developing countries. She did not explain why growing GM crops in the UK will benefit people in developing countries, but the propaganda aim is clear.
That the government aims to place the debate in a context of helping people is a clear sign of a dodgy policy. The maxim seems to be if you cannot convince them by rational argument, make them feel guilty over the oppressed and exploited in other countries. Blair used this on Iraq when WMD line was convincing no one. As part of this approach, the government wants supportive MPs to speak out: "There was a merit in preparing the ground with key MPs, particularly those with an interest in science or food security in developing countries." How, exactly, does copyrighting seed help "food security" in any country? How will terminator genes ensure anything beyond dependency on big business? How will growing GM food in the UK help peasants in the developing world? Surely it will harm them, if GM is as productive as its supporters say it is? Would it not result in a dumping of cheap products onto these countries, driving peasant farmers from the land and into the labour market. The same would result if such farmers had to buy their seeds and related products from GM transnationals.

This is not to glorify the peasant lifestyle. Far from it. The use of technology to lighten their load would be a good development but only if that technology was under their full control. In other words, appropriate, human scale and human understandable technology which is not dependant on suppliers for its continuing use. After all, we have had the means to feed, clothe, and shelter the world for several decades for some time now. Instead, the world's governments prefer to built war machines and invest in "profitable" research for the benefit of corporations. The $200 billion plus wasted in occupying Iraq could have been used to help people build a better life.

Investment in appropriate and green technology would seem a better use of resources than GM. Blair's government argues that to ban GM would be "an irrational way for the government to proceed" in the light of its desire to back and encourage UK science . Yet encouraging UK science is not the aim of GM research, encouraging the profitability of UK transnational corporations is. Surely it is no coincidence that the government's decision comes as the WTO is considering a legal case brought by the US, Canada and Argentina, which maintain that the EU's effective ban on GM crops until they are proven safe is illegal and merely a smokescreen for a trade barrier?

Rest assured, pro-GM scientists will be recruited to further forward the government's (and the corporation's) message. But raising the profile of GM may backfire. Last year's national GM debate showed that the more people know about GM the more worried they became. That debate concluded that more than 80% of people were against GM crops and that just 2% would eat GM foods. So why grow it? Perhaps it could be argued that we should let the people (or the market) decide. But GM crops contaminate non-GM crops so allowing the former will result in no choice (the government admits that it does not know how to avoid this). This would mean the small minority who favour it would dictate to everyone else the nature of their food. As for letting "the market decide", this simply fails to acknowledge the inequalities of power within the capitalist economy. And it also assumes that the price of a product provides the consumer with all the information they need to make an informed decision, a blatant piece of nonsense. Simply put, if big business use its economic clout to subsidise the price of GM products then "the market" may result in a result which benefits the corporations, not the customer (never mind the planet).

For all their concern about the public being unaware of the facts, it is clear that it is the government that is swallowing the PR of the GM lobby. For Blair and co, it appears only pro-GMers have unbiased and relevant science. Thus they ignore the science of ecology, which stresses the unknown effects of contamination, the pushing of large volumes of GM corporation's expensive pesticides and herbicides, river and sea pollution and so forth. What of sustainable agriculture? What of biodiversity? Trying to fix the problem after the damage is done is the worse kind of science you could practice.

However, while there is "solid, authoritative scientific" reasons for opposing the commercial growing of GM crops it does not get to the heart of the matter. Opposition to GM is not only on scientific grounds. It includes the key issue of whether we want our food to be copyrighted products of corporations. That, when you get to the bottom of it, is what this is all about. GM will benefit no one apart from the corporations that already have the patents on nature. It will not help feed the world. It will just line the pockets of big business (and the coffers of the Labour Party).

GM is a technical fix for social problems. For all the claims that it's owners seek to end world hungry, the fact is that food production is not the issue. Food distribution is. Land reform is. Women's liberation is. Workers' control is. And these are rooted in inequalities of power, inequalities GM crops will increase due to the copyrighted nature of such products. At the heart of GM is the commodification of nature, the turning of our shared heritage into private property. It is seeking to enclose more of the commons, to privatised more of our common heritage.

Yet again "Progress" (with a capital P) is at work, providing a mask behind which power and property is seeking to extend its reach. This is to be expected. Technology in a hierarchical society will be used as a weapon in the class war. It is rarely neutral, being more often than not a means of maximising the profits and/or power of the bosses and their state. GM is part of this struggle of capital against labour, a means of enhancing corporate profitability directly and indirectly and weakening our ability to exist outside the corporate power nexus. It is doubtful a free society would experiment with such technology, seeking social solutions to social problems.
And that is what we must do now. We must place the people back into progress by refusing the irrational demands of capitalist progress. This does not mean we simplistically reject technology. This would be a different side of the same coin. Rather we should take a Luddite approach. The Luddites were not the "anti-technology" mob the ruling class and their history has portrayed them. A mass working class movement, the Luddites were not opposed to technology as such. They directed their angry at technology which harmed people. A perfectly sensible position.

We must spread the Luddite message. We must make GM stand for "Get Militant" and ensure that the biotech companies know that they and their modern enclosures are not welcome.

by David Thu Mar 11, 2004 11:27

ZNet Commentary
Gm Crops: If It Can’t Work, Fake It March 05, 2004
By Devinder Sharma

For years, they made us believe that genetically modified (GM) crops reduce
pesticide applications and thereby help in protecting the environment. For
years, they worked hard, manipulating scientific data, to justify the increasing
public investment in a risky technology. For several years now, they have
succeeded in diverting the public attention from the more pressing problems of
hunger and malnutrition for the sake of private profit.

The citadel of scientific fraud has now begun to crumble.

Amidst reports that the pesticides application in GM crops in the United States
has actually multiplied, comes the damming indictment of the faulty technology
from the crop fields in Africa. Trials to develop a virus-resistant sweet
potato, launched in Kenya in 2001 by the US special envoy, Dr Andrew Young, have
failed. The much-hyped GM technology, that was claimed to usher in a green
revolution in Africa, has finally turned out to be a scientific crap.

The virus-resistant sweet potato, donated by Monsanto to Kenya Agricultural
Research Institute (KARI), has been found to be susceptible to viral attacks.
This is the same sweet potato that a black African woman, in her colourful
traditional dress, has used in her non-stop global sermons on feeding the hungry
in Africa. Sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and
Monsanto, Dr Florence Wambugu of KARI, has gone around the world telling how the
transgenic potato could raise the crop yield from four to ten tonnes per
hectare.

The media loved her. The media, in fact, adores everyone who speaks in favour of
the GM crops. After all, the future of the world lies only in increasing the
corporate profits, which in turn benefits the media. So whether it was The New
York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, or the discredited Fox TV, they all
clamoured around her. The Forbes magazine even went to the extent of naming her
among the 15 people from all over the world who will ‘reinvent the future’.

Reports now indicate that the transgenic sweet potato yields less than the
traditional varieties. In other words, knowing that the transgenic sweet potato
wouldn’t work, Dr Florence Wambugu, had faked it.

Earlier, Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex (UK)
too had picked up holes in Dr Florence Wambugu’s claims. In a detailed report on
GM crops in Africa, he had said: "Accounts of the transgenic sweet potato have
used low figures on average yields in Kenya to paint a picture of stagnation. An
early article stated 6 tons per hectare - without mentioning the data source -
which was then reproduced in subsequent analyses. However, FAO statistics
indicate 9.7 tons, and official statistics report 10.4." In simple words, the
transgenic sweet potato that was being imposed as the answer to Africa’s food
security was no better.

His warning went unheard. Meanwhile, World Bank, USAID and Monsanto continue to
sponsor her research project running for over 12 years now, involving 19
researchers, 16 of them with PhDs, something unusual for Africa. If only the US
$ 6 million that has been incurred on her research project had been used for
fighting hunger, more than six million impoverished Africans could have been fed
adequately for as many as six years.

No one is however keen to remove hunger. Not only the World Bank, USAID or the
private companies, even agricultural scientists are looking forward to any and
every possibility to latch on to hunger and malnutrition.

The sweet potato debacle is the latest in the series of flops that have tumbled
out from the GM industry laboratories, and that too in the name of ameliorating
hunger and building food security. Ever since the days of the Flavr Savr tomato,
the magic bullets of technology have failed to enthuse the farmers and the
consumers alike. The ‘golden rice’, the protein-rich potato in India --
protrato, and now the fall of the transgenic sweet potato in Africa, are all
classic examples of the great exercise in public deception.

At the same time, the GM industry finds itself in a terrible fix over reports
that the cultivation of transgenic crops in the United States has actually led
to an increase in the application and use of pesticides. This negates the only
saving grace that the industry had so far used successfully used -- GM crops
reduce the use of pesticides thereby leading not only to sustainable farming
systems but also to a safe environment.

Drawing on the official records of the US Department of Agriculture, Charles
Benbrook of the Northwest Science and Environment Policy Centre at Idaho (USA),
concludes that the planting of 55 million acres of genetically engineered (GE)
corn, soybeans and cotton in the United States since 1996 has increased
pesticide use by about 50 million pounds.

Substantial increases in herbicide use on "herbicide tolerant" crops, especially
soybeans, was cited as the main reason that accounted for the increase in
pesticide use on GM crops compared to acres planted to conventional plant
varieties. ‘Herbicide tolerant’ plants are genetically modified to ensure that
those who grow these crops have no other option but to also the use the
herbicides of the same companies. For the agribusiness companies, ‘herbicide
tolerant’ crops are the sure means of profit security. That the American farmers
have complied with the profit motive of the companies is quite obvious.

Benbrook says that many farmers have had to spray incrementally more herbicides
on GM crops in order to keep up with shifts in weeds toward tougher-to-control
species, coupled with the emergence of genetic resistance in certain weed
populations. For the developing countries, the implications of this study are
enormous and of course serious. Agribusiness companies will exploit the small
farmers pushing them more into a debt trap and at the same time do more damage
to the environment and crop sustainability.

Whether it is chemical pesticides or the pest-resistant GM crops, the
effectiveness against the target pest lasts only for a couple of years. In case
of cotton, for instance, the agribusiness industry is exhorting farmers to adopt
Bt cotton, which has the inbuilt ability to produce a toxin that kills the pink
bollworms. In India, in the very first year of commercial planting,
Mahyco-Monsanto priced the seed four times than the existing price, thereby
earning its pound of flesh in the very first year. The Bt gene has been further
licensed to half a dozen companies from which a substantial royalty has also
been drawn.

The Bt cotton crop has, meanwhile, failed in the very first year of planting in
large parts of the country. While the farmers suffered, the company that sold
the seed has gone scot-free. By the time the farmers wake up to the damage done
by the Bt crop to the environment as well as the economy, the seed companies
will bring in the next generation transgenic. Agribusiness industry had done
exactly the same in the past five decades, bringing in more potent chemicals
each time the insect developed resistance to the pesticides. In the bargain, the
number of problem insects in cotton that the farmers are now confronted with has
multiplied to 70. In the 1960s, only seven crop pests worried the farmers. In
three decades, the problem pests have multiplied by ten times.

All over the world, Bt cotton is now losing its resistance to the pests as a
result of which the pesticides consumption is going up. In China, where over 7
million hectares are under Bt cotton cultivation, pesticides usage has once
again reverted back to almost what existed before its commercialization in 1999.
Scientists are therefore refraining from conducting studies on pesticides saving
four years later, knowing that such an analysis would be damming for the
industry.

by David Fri Mar 12, 2004 18:33

From The Ecologist Magazine
5 Reasons why GM is bad for us

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