Genetically Modified Food Home
Opinion 1 - from http://www.gmfoodnews.com/
Opinion 2 - Philip Stott
Opinion
3 - E. Ann Clark
Opinion 1 - http://www.gmfoodnews.com/
What's Wrong with Genetic Modification?
Crops which have been Genetically Modified to resist insects kill not just the "target insect" (such as the borer or weevil) but beneficial insects (such as the Monarch butterfly).
Crops which have been Genetically Modified to resist herbicides encourage the use of larger quantities of herbicide, with the effect that both weeds and beneficial plants are killed indiscriminately. These herbicides are harmful to both the environment and to humans.
Crops which have been Genetically Modified to contain their own insecticide, such as Bt, cause insects to become resistant to the insecticide.
Genetically Modified plants may crossbreed with wild species to produce "superweeds", which cannot be eliminated using standard herbicides.
Genetically Modified plants contaminate conventionally grown and organic plants and honey.
The use of Genetically Modified seed encourages dependence by the farmers on a single seed supplier and may involve the purchase of both the seed and herbicide from one supplier. The farmer is then at the mercy of the seed company who may vary prices of both seed and herbicide at will.
Toxic compounds such as glyphosphate (RoundUp) and Bromoxynil are used on Genetically Modified crops. The US Environmental Protection Agency has approved the use of Bromoxynil despite acknowledging "...serious concerns about developmental risks to infants and children."
The nature of genetic modification and long term effects are not well understood as these products have not been properly tested before being released into the environment. For example, in the USA, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the use of all currently approved Genetically Modified crops based on data supplied by the manufacturers.
Genetic material inserted into plants can transfer to animals and humans in the intestinal wall.
Biotechnology: The Benefits
(a) Benefits to the Consumer
The development of novel oils, starches, and proteins
for beverage, food,
meat, health, and industrial applications, including
raw materials for
biodegradable plastics and soybeans that will reduce
cholesterol levels by
up to 30%;
The enhancement of vitamins, minerals, and anti-cancer
substances (e.g.
corn, rice, soybeans and sunflowers);
The elimination of certain allergens and anti-nutritional
compounds from
foods;
The production of pharmaceutical products, including
edible vaccines and
anti-coagulant compounds (e.g. in bananas);
Improved taste (e.g. soy milk) and other product
characteristics (e.g. heat
stability in oilseed rape [canola] and peanuts);
Improved transport and shelf life of certain products
(e.g. controlled
ripening in melons, peas, peppers and tomatoes).
(b) Producer and Environmental Benefits
In-plant pest resistance and significant reduction
in use of chemical
pesticides (e.g. Mustard family, corn, potatoes
and tomatoes);
Increased resistance to viral, bacterial and fungal
diseases, with improved
safety for human consumption (e.g. cucumbers, grapes,
peppers and
soybeans);
Built-in herbicide tolerance (as with Roundup Ready
soybeans) and, in
some cases, the significant reduction of herbicidal
applications (e.g. corn,
soybeans and wheat);
Biological improvements, such as reduction in seed
losses through
shedding at harvest and male sterility in new crops
like lesquerella
(Lesquerella fendleri (Gray) Wats. of the Mustard
family), a domestic
alternative to castor oil and source of hydroxy
fatty acid oil for the
formulation of lubricants, plastics, cosmetics,
and many other industrial
uses;
Improved crop architecture and general agronomy (e.g.
no-tillage and likely
reduction of the use of anti-sprouting compounds
on stored potato tubers);
Increased tolerance to environmental stresses such
as heat, cold,
waterlogging, drought, and salinity;
Increase in the ability of plants to remove toxic
metals from soils (e.g on
mining waste);
Production of more biodegradable industrial products.
Opinion 3 - excerpted from Debunking the Myths of Genetic Engineering in Field Crops - E. Ann Clark
1. Feeding the World? Aw, shucks guys, how dumb do you think we are?
Fair enough, high-yield
agriculture, to which genetic engineering is just the latest contributor,
should be duly credited with
feeding - indeed overfeeding - the 17% of the world's population that
are fortunate enough to live in the
Developed Market Economy Countries (DMEC's) - US, Canada, Western Europe,
Japan, and NZ/OZ.
But what about the 83% who live in the Third World? How well is high-yield
agriculture serving them,
and is there any reason to think that ratcheting up to GE crops will
do any better?
How will genetic engineering improve this picture? It won't. Despite
decades of targeted and
effective internationally funded research, yield levels remain low
in Colombia, and arguably, in much of the same Third World which is currently
targeted by the life sciences for commercialization of GE
technology. Adverse growing conditions, greater risks of pest, pathogen,
and weed infestation, and in
particular, limited access to purchased inputs all challenge the logic
of extrapolating expectations of GE
performance from the DMECs to the Third World. For example, herbicide-tolerance
(Table 2), which
accounts for such a large share of commercial field crop GE, is an
irrelevancy to farmers who cannot
afford to buy the herbicides in the first place. The utility of the
remainder of currently available GE
products, relating largely to insect resistance (e.g. Bt-cotton, Bt-corn,
and Bt-potato) remains to be seen. It seems likely that the diversity
and dizzying rate of resistance development to biocides in the tropics
will quickly confound and nullify Bt-transgenes.
Indeed, it is at least arguable that GE will actually worsen the plight
of Third World
farmers.
1. Favor the Rich. Only comparatively wealthy producers, possibly serving
an export market, are likely
to have the resources to purchase the inputs necessary to employ GE
cultivars and hybrids. As such, GE will further concentrate land and power,
forcing the weak and powerless into the fragile jungles and
mountainsides, posing ever greater risks not just to their own economic
survival, but to biodiversity and environmental sustainability. As noted
by Mack (1998), Monsanto recently announced it would spend $550 million
in Brazil to build a factory to produce Roundup for use on Roundup Ready-soybeans.
But most rural Brazilians are subsistence farmers who do not grow soybeans.
"No help will trickle down from Monsanto's beans to the starving millions"
(Mack, 1998). The industry position on this conundrum is straightforward.
As noted by Pol Barnelis of Bayer, who chairs the German and European biotechnology
associations, we "cannot help the fact that there are rich and poor in
the world" (Mack, 1998). Valid point, but rather hard to reconcile with
the self-righteous "Let the Harvest Begin" campaign of the life science
companies themselves.
2. Tailor the Environment or Tailor the Crop? Genetic diversity within
a crop plays quite a different role in the DMEC's and in the Third World.
DMEC cropping strategies rely intrinsically on access to
exogenous resources (fertilizer, biocides, drainage, irrigation, and
artificial drying) to tailor the growing environment to support a few superior
cultivars that are grown throughout very large geographic regions.
This paradigm, where constraints to crop production are moderated or eliminated
by purchased inputs, textured the evolution of GE cultivars and reflects
the growing conditions within which they would be expected to perform.
Conversely, many traditional cultures do not have access to resources
to homogenize adverse growing
conditions, and rather, employ genetic diversity within a species a
means of coping with environmental
heterogeneity (e.g. north vs. south facing slopes; well-drained vs.
soggy land; patchiness of soil
pathogens; "hunger-breaker" crops vs. cash crops). For example, farmers
in a 6-village region of Peru
were found to grow 62 biologically distinct varieties of potatoes.
Each variety had a local name and was classified for specific attributes
within a systematic folk taxonomy known to the local people. As recently
as 1980, Don Duvick of Pioneer (1984; cited in Soule et al. (1990) reported
that 42, 43, and 38% of the hectarage sown to soybean, corn, and wheat
in the entire US was planted to just 6 cultivars of each crop!
Instead of homogenizing the environment to fit a few, carefully bred
super genotypes, traditional
agriculturalists tailor crop diversity to cope with environmental heterogeneity.
Thus, the presumption that the DMEC paradigm can be transferred intact
to the Third World carries with it a suite of unlikely, or at best, disenfranchising
assumptions. As noted by David Cooper, a specialist in plant genetic resources
of the U.N.FAO, "in these difficult environments, the environment is so
varied and so specific you need solutions that are tailored to those particular
areas. A one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to be the optimum approach...."
(Parsons, 1998).
3. Human Exposure to Biocides. Most GE crops are designed to be fully
dependent on biocides, as
Roundup or Liberty. Yet, many Third World farmers are not fully literate
and will be unable to
comprehend or to respond to risks and precautions, particularly if
presented in a foreign language.
Specific biocides may be toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, and/or teratogenic
(causing toxification, cancer, genetic mutations, or birth defects, respectively;
Garry et al., 1996), as well as exhibiting endocrine disruptor properties
(Colborn et al., 1996; Clark, 1997a).
5. Incompatibility with IPM. Bt crops directly compromise those IPM practices which rely on broadcast Bt and natural biocontrol agents (e.g. ladybugs to control aphids). The resistance that is already being generated in target organisms will directly nullify the utility of a valued component of IPM, as well as initiating potentially deleterious ramifications in the wider ecosystem.
2. Reduced Dependence on Biocides? All of the crops represented in the
first wave of large-scale
commercialized GE - corn, soybean, cotton, and potato - are heavily
dependent upon biocides to control weeds and/or pests. Not surprisingly,
the proprietors of the transgenes conferring resistance to specific herbicides
(e.g. Roundup) are also the proprietors of those same herbicides (Table
2).
The new genetic construct - an herbicide tolerant plant - actually increases
dependence on specific
proprietary herbicides, and also increases risk of residues from that
herbicide on the harvested crop. A
broadspectrum, nonselective herbicide like Roundup which might previously
have been applied once as a preplant to avoid harm to the emerging crop,
can now be applied a second or third time, after the crop is up. Indeed,
as dependence upon any single mode of weed control increases, weed populations
tolerant to that pressure will proliferate, making it a certainty that
more and more of that single mode - in this case, applying Roundup - will
be required to achieve the same level of weed control.
Thus, the proprietor sells more - not less - of their herbicide. This is, of course, the point of the exercise. And not just any herbicide - their herbicide.
A corollary is that proprietors applied for, and received, permission
to increase the tolerance level for
glyphosate residues of foodstuffs from 6 ppm (that set in 1987) to
20 ppm just as the first Roundup
Ready crops were commercialized in the 90's (Lappe and Bailey, 1998,
p.76). The increased tolerance
levels on GE crops are higher still in Australia, one of the 6 countries
that recently stalemated the ferventefforts of 130 other countries to regulate
movement of GE foods into their own countries. Thus, as a direct result
of GE technologies, human foodstuffs are entering the marketplace with
higher levels of allowable biocide residues, let alone seed of Bt crops
that are themselves defined by the EPA to be "plant pesticides".
Biocide dependence is further promoted by the entirely predictable phenomenon
of resistance in the target organisms (see Clark, 1998c). Any single control
agent, whether cultivation or a single biocide, will screen for and create
a population of resistant organisms (e.g. DDT and malarial mosquitos).
After just 2 years of commercial production of Bt crops, resistance is
already building to Bt, and has also been reported - after years of complete
denial by the proprietors of the product - for Roundup. The only
exception to this phenomenon is when genes for resistance are not present
in the target population, as is
the case for 2,4-D, a popular broadleaf herbicide known to have endocrine
disrupter activity (Benbrook, 1996; p.74).
Both Roundup and Bt are widely regarded as at the benign end of the
spectrum of toxicity or risk to
human health. It is therefore all the more regretable that these two
widely used products will soon (within 3-5 years for Bt) be rendered useless
by the wholesale use of this GE technology. And what then? What will producers
do when Bt or Roundup don't work? Another magic GE bullet, or a reversion
to other, much more toxic and problematic biocides?
3. Does GE actually increase yield, or even have the potential to increase yield?
US Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, reportedly stated in a 1996 talk to the World Food Summit in Rome, that "Biotechnology can give us a quantum leap forward in food security by improving disease and pest resistance, increasing tolerance to environmental stress, raising crop yields, and preserving plant and aimal diversity" If you listen to radio advertisements aired in Ontario just last week, increasing yield is one of the key selling features of GE crops. But are these claims scientifically defensible?
Although "increasing yield" is one of the most common benefits attributed
to GE, evidence to
substantiate this (or any of the other oft-repeated claims) is hard
to find. Lappe and Bailey (1998; p.82)
analyzed data from soybean yield trials reported by Ashlock (1996).
Yields from the 1995 and 1996 years were reviewed, with yield of Roundup
Ready (RR) soybean varieties contrasted with that of their nearest conventional
counterpart. In 30 of 38 comparisons, the conventional variety outyielded
the RR variety. Mean reduction in yield of the RR varieties was 4.3
bu/ac or almost 10%, a loss which was statistically significant.
A more recent review of 40 soybean varietal trials in the north central region of the US by Oplinger et al. (1999) found a mean 4% yield drag in RR soybeans. Even comparing the top 5 varieties from each, RR still yielded 5% less than conventional soybeans. Thus, there is a cost to the crop from expressing the genes for Roundup resistance, and it manifests itself in lower yields.
Brown (1998) cites evidence of a marked plateauing of yield in most
major world food crops. He
contends that the really major gains in wheat, rice, and corn yield
occurred between 1950 and 1990, due to improvements in harvest index, coupled
with intensification of resource use. Gains since 1990 have slowed markedly,
as the potential for additional gains is rapidly used up. It is difficult
to see how genetic engineering, particularly with the simply inherited
traits prominent in current GE crops, can
fundamentally lower the "wall" inhibiting further gains in yield.