Whilst the Russians learn to live without buckwheat and displaced people are poised for land-struggles in Central Africa, boffins crack the wheat genome, which promises to keep us trying the same industrial scale thing for ever. And how will we fuel this ever expanding industrial agriculture sector? Hmm, maybe.

BAA propose to compost food waste – who’d have thunk it?

This is Part II of a series. Read Part I here.

Don’t worry your little heads over the gene-spliced foods on your plates. Just trust companies like Monsanto when they tell you their genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are perfectly safe.

That’s the upshot of a new website created on behalf of the biotech industry by GMO advocates Bruce Chassy and David Tribe. While they attempt to discredit the scientific evidence in my book Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods,  instead they offer priceless examples of distortion, denial, and spin. Their site is yet another example of why we can’t trust GMOs, Monsanto, or the so-called scientists who support them.

In a series of rebuttals, I expose this charade and show why healthy eating starts with no GMOs. (To find out how to avoid GMOs, go to NonGMOShoppingGuide.com.)

In Part 1, I recounted the story of scientist-turned-whistleblower Dr. Arpad Pusztai. Here, I provide a point by point refutation of Chassy and Tribe’s unwarranted attack on Dr. Pusztai and their distortion of his findings.

Exposing the Spin on Spuds

1. Experts say no scientific conclusion can be made from the work.  Two separate expert panels reviewed this research and concluded that both the experimental design and conduct of the experiments were fatally flawed, and that no scientific conclusion should be drawn from the work. (Royal Society 1999; Fedoroff and Brown 2004)

Dr. Pusztai’s research design had already been used in over 50 peer-reviewed published studies conducted at the Rowett Institute, the most prestigious nutritional institute in the UK. Furthermore, the design was explicitly approved in advance by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)—the UK government’s main funding body for the biological sciences.

The validity of the work was also confirmed by an independent team of 23 top scientists from around the world who reviewed the research, as well as The Lancet, that published it.

But Chassy and Tribe instead reference their partners-in-spin from the Royal Society. As indicated in Part 1, at the Society there are plenty of scientists with close ties to the biotech industry who came in quite handy during the Pusztai affair. They staged a so-called peer-review—the first in the Society’s 350-year history—but it was more of a hatchet job. The reviewers didn’t even bother to look at all the research data. Dr. Pusztai told me he had offered to provide the complete findings and to meet with them to answer questions, but they refused.

The editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, denounced the Royal Society’s unprecedented condemnation of Dr. Pusztai as “a gesture of breathtaking impertinence to the Rowett Institute scientists who should be judged only on the full and final publication of their work.” He called it a “reckless decision” that abandoned “the principles of due process”.

The team that the Royal Society assembled to do the review was telling. They had publicly announced that anyone who had previously commented on the Pusztai situation would be excluded to avoid bias, but then went ahead and included four people who had previously co-signed a letter condemning Dr. Pusztai. In addition, several members had financial ties to biotech companies, and four were co-producers of the Royal Society’s controversial 1998 pro-GMO report that called for the rapid introduction of GM foods. The Royal Society also abandoned the normal protocols of choosing a review team with specific scientific qualifications to evaluate the study in question. Their members clearly did not have the relevant experience to review such a nutritional study.

It came as no surprise that the Royal Society’s partial review denounced the findings. Furthermore, it made sweeping claims that actually contradicted the study’s design and data.

The coordinator of the review, Rebecca Bowden, later headed the Royal Society’s science policy division, which, according to The Guardian, “is to mould scientific and public opinion with a pro-biotech line,” and to “counter opposing scientists and environmental groups.”

Chassy and Tribe also name Fedoroff and Brown as the second so-called expert panel. They weren’t a panel at all; they wrote a book, Mendel in the Kitchen, a devotional ode to biotech. According to a review in Nature, “It is the things they choose not to include, and the inclusion of some sweeping generalizations, that give the book its decidedly pro-genetic-engineering slant. . . . Although the authors state in their introductory chapter, ‘Which view will seem right to you depends on what you consider conventional, and on how you define the ways of nature,’ the rest of the book attempts to convince readers that only one view is right.”

In addition, a critique of an article by Fedoroff about the Pusztai affair illustrates how many of her statements and conclusions were not based on the research and were clearly false.

2. No differences were seen between the groups of animals. Experts who reviewed the data stated that there were no meaningful differences between control and experimental groups, that the same cellular differences could be seen in all groups—GMO-fed or not—and that too few animals were used to allow statistical significance to be achieved. (Royal Society 1999)

Again, Chassy and Tribe turn to their friends in the Royal Society for support, but as you can see in the photos, the cellular differences in the lining of the stomach and intestines were substantial. This potentially precancerous cell growth was seen in all the GMO-fed groups, but not the controls.

Chassy and Tribe chose not to cite Federoff on this point, probably because she correctly acknowledges, “The results showed that rats fed the transgenic potatoes had significantly lower organ weights. . . . Lymphocyte responsiveness was depressed in the animals fed the transgenic potatoes expressing GNA.”

As for statistical significance, only two statisticians have done an analysis with access to all the raw data: a member of Pusztai’s research team and a member of The Lancet review team. Both determined that the results were statistically significant.

3.The diets were protein-deficient

By this time, Dr. Pusztai had designed and published 270 studies. The diet parameters for this study were consistent with other animal tests and practices. There was sufficient protein for the animals to grow, and the vast majority of the protein in the rats’ diets came from the potatoes—which is the preferred way to expose potato-related problems.

More importantly, the rats fed the normal potatoes did not suffer from the maladies of those that ate the GMOs. Thus, the protein levels, which were consistent among all groups, were clearly not the cause.

By contrast, in safety studies funded by the biotech industry, they often use too much protein. According to a 2003 paper (PDF) in Nutrition and Health that analyzed all peer-reviewed feeding studies on GM foods, the percentage of protein used in Monsanto’s study on Roundup Ready soybeans was “artificially too high.” This “would almost certainly mask, or at least effectively reduce, any possible effect of the [GM soy].” They concluded, “It is therefore highly likely that all GM effects would have been diluted out.” This was the primary study that Monsanto used to claim its GM soybeans were safe for human consumption.

4. Different groups of rats received different diets.

Chassy and Tribe may be referring to false accusations by Sir Aaron Klug, who attacked The Lancet editor for his decision to publish Pusztai’s paper. Klug claimed that the design was fatally flawed because the rats received different protein content. It appears that Sir Aaron, as well as Chassy and Tribe, failed to actually read Pusztai’s published study, which states that all diets had the same protein and energy content. Furthermore, the animals were pair-fed, meaning they were given the same amount of food. In contrast, biotech industry studies usually allow animals to eat as much as they want—which can also mask effects.

Dr. Pusztai did vary the diets in ways that helped to isolate the cause of problems. In different experiments he fed raw, baked, and boiled potatoes. In all his experiments he used an additional control group: non-GMO potatoes (actually the parents of the GMOs) that were spiked with the GNA lectin. According to experts, Dr. Pusztai’s variations made it superior to the design of other GMO safety studies. The 2003 Nutrition and Health analysis hailed it as unique and “remarkable in that the experimental conditions were varied and several ways were found by which to demonstrate possible health effects of GM foods.”

5. Some rats were fed raw potatoes—raw potatoes are toxic to rats and might cause disturbances to gastrointestinal cells.

This feeble argument was also attempted in 1998 to distort the findings, but the studies design rules out this assertion. In trials where raw GM potatoes were fed to rats, the raw parent non-GMO potato was also fed to other groups of rats (either with our without added GNA lectin). Those fed the non-GMO raw potatoes did not suffer the fate of those fed the GMOs. If raw potatoes were at fault, all the rats would have been similarly damaged.

6. Three different varieties of potatoes were fed to the three different groups of rats (Royal Society 1999).

Here again, the details don’t support the accusation, but rather show how the advocates spin facts to confuse.

The study did use three different potatoes. There was a parent non-GMO potato, and two GM potato lines created from the parent. The two lines were produced at the same time, under the same conditions, using the same GNA lectin transgene. But because of the unique and unpredicted effects of the GMO transformation process mentioned in Part 1, the two GM potatoes were not identical. One had the same protein content as the parent, but its “twin” had less.

In the animal feeding studies, however, they always compared one non-GM potato (the parent) to just one of the GM “offspring.” And whenever they used the GM line that had less protein, they compensated by adding lactalbumin (a superior quality milk protein) so that the overall protein content was equal between all groups.

7. The Lancet published the paper by Ewen and Pusztai over the objections of reviewers.

The Lancet actually tripled their normal number of reviewers to six. Chassy and Tribe falsely claim that multiple reviewers objected; in fact it was only one–GMO advocate John Pickett. The other five wanted the paper to be published.

But Chassy and Tribe use the phrase, “objections of reviewers,” falsely implying that multiple reviewers sought to stop the publication. According to Claire Robinson of GM Watch,

“You may think that Tribe and Chassy are unaware of this, but you’d be wrong. David Tribe has published on his own blog the criticism of Pusztai’s work by Nina Fedoroff, contained in her book Mendel in the Kitchen, where she concedes that The Lancet’s ‘editor, Richard Horton, stood by the publication [of Pusztai's paper]. Five of 6 reviewers had favored publication and he believed that it was appropriate for the information to be available in the public domain.’”

8. When The Lancet published the work, editors there published a critical analysis in the same issue.

Indeed, the key point of that critical analysis is that more studies were needed to isolate the cause of the profound damage to the rats. Bravo. Of course more studies were needed. But Dr. Pusztai was turned down in his request for follow-up funds. In fact, no one has yet applied his advanced safety testing protocols to the GM foods already on the market to see if they cause the same damage in rats or humans.

Furthermore, the analysis in The Lancet states, “Particular attention must be given to the detection and characterization of unintended effects of genetic modification.” The authors specifically recommend the use of new technologies that can analyze holistic changes in gene expression, protein production, and metabolites. They insist that “Inferences about such [side] effects can no longer be based solely on chemical analysis of single macronutrients and micronutrients and known crop specific antinutrients or toxins.”

That was published 11 years ago. But biotech companies still refuse to employ these modern holistic detection techniques to see if there might be new allergens, toxins, carcinogens, or anti-nutrients in the GMOs that millions of people eat everyday.

Advanced Studies Confirm New Allergen and Dangers in GMOs

In 2007, independent scientists finally published a holistic protein analysis of one GM crop, Monsanto’s Mon 810 Bt corn, which had been fed to consumers for the previous 10 years. Sure enough, due to “the insertion of a single gene into a [corn] genome,” 43 proteins were significantly increased or decreased. “Moreover, transgenic plants reacted differentially to the same environmental conditions, . . .  supporting the hypothesis that they had a strongly rearranged genome after particle bombardment” by a gene gun. The authors acknowledged that gene gun insertion can cause “deletion and extensive scrambling of inserted and chromosomal DNA.”

One of the changed proteins in the GM corn was gamma zein, “a well-known allergenic protein.” That allergen was not found in the natural corn, however. The gene that produces gamma zein is normally shut off in corn. But somehow it was switched on in Monsanto’s variety. That means that some people who are not normally allergic to corn might react to GM corn (which, of course, is unlabeled in North America).

The authors of the study were far less worried about their discovery of this new allergen, compared to the fact that a number of proteins “exhibited truncated forms having molecular masses significantly lower than the native ones.” Such alterations, which they describe “as a major concern,” may transform harmless proteins into a dangerous ones. Furthermore, their presence in GM corn means that truly massive unexpected side effects have taken place in the plants’ biochemistry.

9. “Perhaps in some misguided sense of fairness or balance, some journals have published unsound papers that make claims about the safety of GM crops. . . . Peer-review is not always a guarantee that researchers’ conclusions are sound.”

On this point I totally agree. An excellent example is Monsanto’s 1996 feeding study in the Journal of Nutrition, which claimed that their Roundup Ready soybeans were substantially equivalent to natural soybeans.

In addition to showing that Monsanto used too much protein, mentioned above, the 2003 paper in Nutrition and Health (PDF said, the “level of the GM soy was too low and would probably ensure that any possible undesirable GM effects did not occur.” In one of the trials, for example, researchers substituted only one tenth of the natural protein with GM soy protein. In two others, they diluted their GM soy six- and twelve-fold.

According to Dr. Pusztai, who had published several studies in that same nutrition journal, the Monsanto paper was “not really up to the normal journal standards.” He told the authors of Trust Us, We’re Experts, “It was obvious that the study had been designed to avoid finding any problems. Everybody in our consortium knew this.”

More examples of how Monsanto rigged their study:

• Using older animals: Monsanto researchers tested the GM soy on mature animals, not young ones. “With a nutritional study on mature animals,” says Pusztai, “you would never see any difference in organ weights even if the food turned out to be anti-nutritional. The animals would have to be emaciated or poisoned to show anything.”
• Never weighing organs: But even if there were organ development problems, the study wouldn’t have picked it up. That’s because the researchers didn’t even weigh the organs, “they just looked at them, what they call ‘eyeballing,’” says Pusztai. “I must have done thousands of postmortems, so I know that even if there is a difference in organ weights of as much as 25 percent, you wouldn’t see it.”
• Omitting data: In fact, according to Nutrition and Health, “No data were given for most of the parameters.” The paper didn’t even describe the exact feed composition used in the trials—normally a journal requirement.
• Obscuring findings: When Monsanto analyzed the composition of GM versus non-GM soy, instead of comparing test plots grown side-by-side, Monsanto pooled data from many sites and climates. This makes it extremely difficult to achieve statistically significant differences, due to the high variability.
• Hiding incriminating evidence: Although the paper referred to one side-by-side test plot, for some reason the data from that study was not in the article. Years later, medical writer Barbara Keeler discovered the missing data from the journal archives and found out why it had been kept hidden. The omitted evidence not only demonstrated that Monsanto’s GM soy had significantly lower levels of protein, a fatty acid, and an essential amino acid, their toasted GM soy meal contained nearly twice the amount of a soy lectin, which can interfere with the body’s ability to assimilate nutrients. Furthermore, a known soy allergen called trypsin inhibitor was as much as 7 times higher in the toasted GM soy, compared to non-GMO soy! According to Keeler’s opinion piece published in the Los Angeles Times, the study had several red flags and “should have prompted researchers and the FDA to call for more testing.” But the FDA never got the data.

It’s no wonder why GMO expert Dr. Michael Hansen of the Consumers Union, the organization that publishes Consumer Reports, concluded that Dr. Pusztai’s potato research is “a much better-designed study than the industry-sponsored feeding studies I have seen in peer-reviewed literature that deal with Round-Up Ready soybeans or Bt corn.”

10. Even if his study were correct, it would only prove that those specific potatoes were unsafe, and not that all GM crops are unsafe.

Dr. Pusztai’s research showed that the unpredicted side effects from the process of genetic engineering were the likely cause of the damage to his rats. This has been the big sore spot for the biotech industry, which produces its GMOs using the same process.

Even on David Tribe’s own blog, Nina Federoff is quoted as saying:

“the very process through which the plants are put during the introduction of the transgene . . . can cause marked changes in both the structure and expression of genes.”

She is referring to the process of “tissue culture,” where a gene-spliced cell is cloned into a plant. Both the insertion of the gene and the subsequent cloning can cause significant, unpredictable changes. Of the two, the cloning creates more DNA mutations. That is probably why Federoff says, “The likeliest source of the variation he [Pusztai] detected . . .  was the culture procedure itself.”

The mutations are unique to each GM plant line, but even massive disruptions do not necessarily mean that a particular GMO is unsafe. It could even be healthier. It’s a genetic roulette. Therefore, Chassy and Tribe are technically correct: even though the GMO transformation process is unpredictable and inherently risky, not every GM crop is necessarily hazardous. As Federoff says, “new materials and new varieties derived using culturing techniques must be evaluated for both their growth and their food properties.”

The trouble is, the superficial studies conducted on GMOs miss most of the potential problems. The lax standards were originally the fault of the Food and Drug Administration. Their own scientists’ calls for in-depth, long-term safety studies, but they were overruled by the political appointee in charge—Monsanto’s former attorney and later their vice president. (Now the US Food Safety Czar.)

The editor of The Lancet wrote,

“It is astounding that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not changed their stance on genetically modified food adopted in 1992,” which states that they do not believe it is “necessary to conduct comprehensive scientific reviews of foods derived from bioengineered plants. . . .This stance is taken despite good reasons to believe that specific risks may exist. . . . Governments should never have allowed these products into the food chain without insisting on rigorous testing for effects on health. The companies should have paid greater attention to the possible risks to health.”

11. For the record, the potatoes in question were a research project; they were never submitted to regulators and they were never commercialized.

True, they never went to market. But if by using the term “research project,” Chassy and Tribe, like others before them, are implying that the potatoes were never intended to be introduced, that is false. The Rowett Institute and the company Cambridge Genetics were planning to commercialize the GNA potato and had contracts specifying how the royalties were to be divided. (The company was to reap the advantage of getting free safety studies.)

What’s quite telling is that if these same hazardous potatoes had been evaluated in the same superficial manner that biotech companies normally test their GMOs, the spuds would have easily landed on supermarket shelves. This was made apparent to Dr. Pusztai about two years into his research. He was asked to review several confidential industry studies that were used to get GM soy, corn and tomatoes approved in the UK. Reading those studies, he says, was one of the greatest shocks of his life. The studies were so superficial, so poorly done, he realized what he was doing and what industry was doing were diametrically opposed. “I was doing safety studies,” he said. “They were doing as little as possible to get their foods on the market as quickly as possible.”

A few weeks later, when he Dr. Pusztai confirmed that his GM potato caused considerable health problems in rats, he realized that his dangerous potatoes could have sailed through industry ’safety’ studies, which don’t assess the immune system, organ damage, gut lining, hormonal system, cancer development, reproduction, etc.

12. Scientists are expected to submit their findings to peer-review and publication in scientific journals.

Yes, and Dr. Pusztai’s study was published. But the safety research conducted by the biotech industry is almost never published. It is usually submitted in secret to regulatory authorities and neither peer-reviewed nor available for public inspection.

This double standard was pointed out by a Member of the UK Parliament, Dr. Williams, during testimony related to the Pusztai case.

“As I understand, all of the evidence taken by the advisory committee [that approves GM foods for human consumption] comes from the commercial companies, all of that is unpublished. This is not democratic, is it? . . .

“So we leave it completely to the advisory committee and its good members to take all of these decisions on our behalf, where all of the evidence comes, simply, in good faith, from the commercial companies? There is a hollow democratic deficit here, is there not? . . .”

“How is the general public out there to decide on the safety of GM foods when nothing is published on the safety of GM foods?”

Science in the Corporate Interest

Dr. Pusztai warns:

“We must not underestimate the financial and political clout of the GM biotechnology industry. Most of our politicians are committed to the successful introduction of GM foods. We must therefore use all means at our disposal to show people the shallowness of these claims by the industry and the lack of credible science behind them, and then trust to people’s good sense, just as in 1998, to see through the falseness of the claims for the safety of untested GM foods.”

The bastardization of science is not unique to GMOs. It’s pervasive. Consider these numbers. One third of the 500 UK scientists surveyed had been asked to change their research conclusions by their sponsoring customer. And these folks worked in government or recently privatized institutes. “A study of major research centers in the field of engineering,” according to The Atlantic, “found that 35 percent would allow corporate sponsors to delete information from papers prior to publication.” And a Tufts University study of 800 scientific papers showed that “more than a third of the authors had a significant [undisclosed] financial interest in their reports.”

We have seen how corporatized research of drugs has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and disease. But hazards in our food supply, especially those that persist in the environment generation after generation, may dwarf the other problems we’ve seen. Exposing the truth about GMOs is absolutely urgent. Again in Dr. Pusztai’s words:

“The problems with GM foods may be irreversible and the true effects may only be seen well in the future. The situation is like the tobacco industry. They knew about it but they suppressed that information. They created misleading evidence that showed that the problem wasn’t so serious. And all the time they knew how bad it was. Tobacco is bad enough. But genetic modification, if it is going to be problematic, if it is going to cause us real health problems, then tobacco will be nothing in comparison with this.”

Twelve years ago, a 150-second TV broadcast changed our world; everyone everywhere owes a debt of gratitude to the man whose life it turned upside down—in his effort to protect ours. On August 10, 1998, eminent scientist Dr. Arpad Pusztai (pronounced Poos-tie) dared to speak the truth.

He had been an enthusiastic supporter of genetic engineering, working on cutting edge safety research with genetically modified (GM) foods. But to his surprise, his experiments showed that GM foods were inherently dangerous. When he relayed his concerns during a short television interview in the UK, things got ugly. With support from the highest levels of government, biotech defenders quickly mobilized a coordinated attack campaign trying to distort and cover up the evidence.

It worked for a while, but when an order of Parliament lifted Dr. Pusztai’s gag order, the revelations touched off a media firestorm that ultimately kicked GM foods out of European supermarkets, and derailed the industry’s timetable to quickly replace virtually all food with genetically engineered alternatives.

I recount the dramatic story of Dr. Pusztai below. In Part 2, I respond point-by-point to the biotech industry’s denial and spin over the Pusztai affair, which is still being hyped in their new attack website.

Pusztai’s Hot Potatoes

By early 1996, genetically modified tomatoes had been sold in US supermarkets for more than a year, and GM soy, corn, and cottonseed were about to be widely planted. But not a single peer-reviewed study on the safety of GM foods had been published, and there was not even an agreed-upon protocol for answering the question,”Is this stuff safe?”

The UK government was about to change all that, and Hungarian born chemist Dr. Arpad Pusztai was their man to do it. He beat out 27 competing scientists for a £1.6 million grant to develop a safety testing protocol; it was supposed to eventually be required for all GM food approvals in Europe.

A Spud with Fire-Power

Pusztai’s team was working with the vegetable equivalent of a James Bond car—complete with built-in weaponry. A potato was outfitted with an assassin gene from the snowdrop plant; the gene produced “GNA lectin,” a protein that kills insects.

How did Dr. Pusztai feel about the fact that his prestigious Rowett Institute was preparing to release killer potatoes into supermarkets worldwide? Fine, actually. He knew that the GNA lectin was harmless—not to insects mind you, but to us mammals. Dr. Pusztai was the world’s leading expert on lectin proteins, and the GNA lectin was the one he knew most about. He had studied it for nearly seven years.

But when Dr. Pusztai fed the GM potato to rats using his new safety testing protocol, he got a shock. Nearly every system in the rats’ bodies was adversely affected—several in just 10 days. Their brains, livers, and testicles were smaller, while their pancreases and intestines were enlarged. The liver was partially atrophied. Organs related to the immune system, including the thymus and the spleen, showed significant changes. Their white blood cells responded to an immune challenge more slowly, indicating immune system damage.

In all cases, the GM potato created proliferative cell growth in the stomach and small and large intestines; the lining was significantly thicker than controls.  Although no tumors were detected, such growth can be precancerous.

Side Effects of Genetic Engineering Implicated

Dr. Pusztai and his team knew that the GNA lectin had not caused the damage. Other rats had been fed natural potatoes spiked with the same amount of GNA insecticide that the GM spud produced—and they did fine. The control group fed natural potatoes without added lectin were also in good shape. And in a previous experiment, Dr. Pusztai had fed rats an enormous quantity of the lectin, about 700 times the amount produced in the GM potato, again with no effect.

The damage to the rats, it appeared, came rather from the unintended side effects of the genetic engineering process. These effects (from gene insertion and cell cloning) may include massive collateral damage in a plant’s DNA, with hundreds or thousands of mutations. Important natural genes can be inadvertently turned off, permanently turned on, deleted, reversed, scrambled, moved, fragmented, or changed in their activity level.

Dr. Pusztai wanted to find out precisely what went wrong in his potatoes, so he asked the government to provide more funds to conduct follow-up studies. But Prime Minister Tony Blair, his ministers, and his entire political party, were all unapologetic biotech cheerleaders trying desperately to promote them to a skeptical public. Exposing problems with GMO technology wasn’t on the government’s agenda. Additional funds were not forthcoming.

Biotech Damage Control Kicks In

The UK television show “World in Action” asked Dr. Pusztai for an interview. With permission from his Institute’s director, he spoke generally about his concerns with GMOs based on the findings. He was careful not to reveal the details of his study, which was still unpublished.

His 150-second interview was aired on August 10, 1998. The European Press went wild and Dr. Pusztai was propelled to the status of hero at the Rowett Institute. The Institute’s director, Professor Phillip James, took over all the publicity efforts, described the research as a huge advance in science, and wrote in a press release,”a range of carefully controlled studies underlie the basis of Dr. Pusztai’s concerns.”

On the afternoon of August 11th, two phone calls were allegedly placed from the UK prime minister’s office, forwarded through the Institute’s receptionist, to Professor James. Dr. Pusztai’s hero status was revoked.

The next morning, the director suspended Dr. Pusztai after 35 years of service. He was silenced with threats of a lawsuit and his twenty member research team disbanded. The government never implemented their GMO safety testing protocol.

The Institute released numerous statements, some contradicting each other, others misrepresenting the research, but all designed to discredit Dr. Pusztai and the implications of his findings.

Seven months (and one heart attack) later, Dr. Pusztai’s gag order was lifted when the Parliament invited him to testify. As the true details of the study began to emerge, the media responded. About 750 articles on GMOs were pumped out within the month.

Biotech advocates swung into action. According to a leaked document obtained by The Independent on Sunday, three government ministers prepared “an astonishingly detailed strategy for spinning, and mobilizing support for” GM foods. “One of [the] ministers’ main concerns,” said the report, “was to rubbish research by Dr. Arpad Pusztai.”

The ministers’ campaign relied on the participation of certain scientists, including those in the Royal Society, who could voice uncompromising support for GMOs. According to the newspaper, many of these scientists, while promoted as”independent,” had received compensation directly or indirect from the biotech companies. The Independent admonished the government’s actions as “a cynical public relations exercise.”

But the spin campaign was too little, too late. By the end of April 1999, just 10 weeks after Dr. Pusztai’s gag order was lifted, the public’s distrust of GMOs reached a tipping point. Use of GM ingredients had become a marketing liability. Within a single week nearly every major food company committed to stop using GMOs in Europe.

Editor Threatened

With his data finally returned to him, Dr. Pusztai and a colleague submitted their paper to a renowned scientific journal, The Lancet. Its editor, Richard Horton, told The Guardian, “there was intense pressure on The Lancet from all quarters, including the Royal Society, to suppress publication.” The paper passed the peer review and was set to appear on October 15, 1999.

On October 13, Horton received a call from a senior member of the Royal Society. According to the Guardian, Horton,”said the phone call began in a ‘very aggressive manner.’ He said he was called ‘immoral’ and accused of publishing Dr. Pusztai’s paper which he ‘knew to be untrue.’ Towards the end of the call Dr. Horton said the caller told him that if he published the Pusztai paper it would ‘have implications for his personal position’ as editor.”

Although Horton declined to name the caller, the Guardian”identified him as Peter Lachmann, the former vice-president and biological secretary of the Royal Society and president of the Academy of Medical Sciences.” Lachmann had been one of the co-signers on the Royal Society’s open letter attacking Pusztai. He also had extensive financial ties to the biotech industry. In spite of his threats, The Lancet went forward with publication.

Courage, Integrity, and the Public’s Right to Know

In the years since this controversy, Dr. Pusztai has given more than 200 lectures around the world on GMOs. He has been commissioned by the German government, academic publications, and others to do comprehensive analyses of GMO safety studies. In 2005, he received the Whistleblower Award from the Federation of German Scientists (VDW). And in 2009, he and his wife, Dr. Susan Bardocz—also an expert on GMO safety and formerly of the Rowett Institute—were presented with the Stuttgart Peace Prize for their tireless advocacy for independent risk research, as well as their courage, scientific integrity, and their undaunted insistence on the public’s right to know the truth.

In 2008, on the tenth anniversary of his TV show, Dr. Pusztai reflected:

“On this anniversary I have to admit that, unfortunately, not much has changed since 1998. In one of the few sentences I said in my broadcast ten years ago, I asked for a credible GM testing protocol to be established that would be acceptable to the majority of scientists and to people in general. 10 years on we still haven’t got one. . .

“All of us asked for independent, transparent and inclusive research into the safety of GM plants, and particularly those used in foods. There is not much sign of this either. There are still ‘many opinions but very few data;’ less than three dozen peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published describing the results of work relating to GM safety that could actually be regarded as being of an academic standard; and the majority of even these is from industry-supported labs. . .”

Although pro-GM governments and the biotech industry continue ignore the mounting evidence of harm, there is now a movement among many medical doctors, scientists, and the public, to reject GM food, create a tipping point of consumer rejection against them in North America, and put GMOs back into the laboratory where they belong.

I describe Dr. Pusztai’s story in more detail in the first chapter of Seeds of Deception; his findings are also featured among the 65 documented health risks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in my book Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods.

New Website, Old Lies

Earlier this year, GMO advocates Bruce Chassy and David Tribe launched an attack site against Genetic Roulette. As part of their attempt to defend the safety of GMOs, they assail Dr. Pusztai’s work by reiterating the same faulty, self-contradicting arguments that were made during the smear campaign.

See Part 2 of this article, where their misleading arguments are exposed. This is the first in a series of point-by-point rebuttals to their website’s allegations.

Continue on to read Part 2…

I’m often accused of murdering millions. Why? Because I speak out against GM crops. And here I am, at it again…. Whenever the issue of genetically modified (GM) crops is raised, there are always two main reasons posited for their use: The first is that tinkering with the building blocks of life is essential if we’re to feed the world’s burgeoning population. It is inferred that we can somehow ‘improve’ plants, and make them more productive. Although this concept is vigorously promoted by biotech corporations, with all the advertising finesse their great wealth provides (and, astonishingly, a good amount of corporate agribusiness wealth comes right out of your pocket via tax-payer funded subsidies), their wishful thinking couldn’t be further from the truth.

The second justification for GM crops is that through their use we can decrease the amount of pesticides applied to our crops, some of which inevitably ends up in our water and on our plates (note that when we use the term ‘pesticides’, we’re referring to both insecticides and herbicides). This is an extremely naïve expectation – especially as it is the move towards large scale monocrop systems that has given rise to imbalances of weed and insect populations and created the market for these chemicals in the first place. In 2007 the Friends of the Earth produced a report that asked a good question: “Who Benefits from GM Crops? – an analysis of the global performance of gm crops (1996-2006)” (1.94mb PDF), and went on to provide a very thorough answer from case studies around the world. That report covered, primarily, the first of the two reasons mentioned above. Essentially, and the answer is not going to surprise many of our readers, the only beneficiaries of GM crops are the corporations supplying the seeds and the chemicals the seeds are ‘designed’ for. Indeed, they’re making record profits, while in some places the farmers that contract to purchase seeds (they must sign a contract to give up the traditional practice of saving seed for the next season) are experiencing complete disaster, which has translated, in India in particular, to a dramatic rise in farmer suicides – see here, and here. The 2008 edition of Who Benefits from GM Crops? – the rise in pesticide use (PDF) focuses mainly on the second aspect – that of the supposed decrease in pesticide usage. Although disingenuously marketed as such, none of the GM crops on the market are actually modified to benefit the poor and hungry – rather, they are modified for compatibility with the chemicals those companies also produce, and their usage has, predictably, increased, not decreased.

Despite more than a decade of hype and failed promises, the biotechnology industry has not introduced a single GM crop with increased yield, enhanced nutrition, drought-tolerance or salt-tolerance. Disease-tolerant GM crops are practically nonexistent. In fact, biotech companies have made a commercial success of GM crops with just two traits – herbicide tolerance and insect resistance –which offer no advantages to consumers or the environment. In fact, GM crops in the world today are best characterized by the overwhelming penetration of just one trait – herbicide tolerance – which is found in over 80% of all GM crops planted worldwide, and which as we explore further below is associated with increased use of chemical pesticides…. HT [herbicide tolerant] crops are ‘pesticide-promoting’ – that is they encourage the development of herbicide-resistant weeds, which in turn lead to yet more pesticide use. Pesticide-promoting HT crops have spawned an epidemic of herbicide-resistant weeds in the U.S., Argentina and Brazil, thereby encouraging still greater use of chemicals to control them. Pesticides have adverse health and environmental impacts that GM agriculture is exacerbating. It is no accident that agrichemical-biotech companies focus development efforts on pesticide-promoting, HT crops: they lead to increased sales of the chemicals these firms also sell…. The biotechnology industry asserts that reduced use of pesticides (i.e. herbicides, insecticides and fungicides) is one of the most valuable benefits of its technology, particularly in connection with GM soy (FoEI, 2007). Yet independent studies have demonstrated not only that these pesticide reduction claims are unfounded, but that GM crops have substantially increased pesticide use, particularly since 1999. – Full Report, p. 8

Monsanto’s credo is “doing well by doing good”. They are certainly doing well – indeed, they’ve created a multi billion dollar market where a market needn’t, and shouldn’t, be – but their claims of doing good are wholly unsubstantiated and dishonest. The record of more than a decade of GM crop use speaks for itself. As expressed in the documentary, The Corporation, if corporations were individuals, some of them would be locked up as psychopaths for their wholly anti-social character traits. We can’t let industries like this continue holding the reins of the world’s food supply. If they are allowed to persevere, they will ultimately flog this old horse, our ailing world, until it is dead.

Arguably the best way to hasten the demise of such agricultural practices is to demand labelling for all products that contain genetically modified organisms, and to allow GM-free products to be marketed as such.

When asked directly, the vast majority of Americans (94%) agree that GM ingredients should be labeled as such… – Public Perceptions of Genetically Modified Foods: A National Study of American Knowledge and Opinion (PDF)

Most people, when given a choice, will choose a GM-free product over one that contains them. Big Biotech knows this, which is why they’ve used their valuable political ties to lobby against labelling. If 94% of people would like to see GM labelling, one must ask at what point did democracy vacate the house? Big Biotech are using every recourse available to them to increase usage of their ‘patented products’, and every additional acre of GM crops brings added financial and environmental vulnerability for farmers and consumers. The war in Iraq is a case in point. Although industries like ExxonMobil are regarded as being the main benefactors of the ‘war on terror’, other corporations have ‘made a killing’ as well:

As part of sweeping “economic restructuring” implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations — which can include seeds the Iraqis themselves developed over hundreds of years. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay Monsanto, or starve. … A new report by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country’s food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations. “The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable”, said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report’s authors. — Vegsource (see also)

And where military might isn’t used to usher in a corporate ‘golden age’ of food domination, people’s poverty and misery is utilised instead. Poor nations, when faced with the need for food aid, are told they must accept it in the form of GM food, or get nothing:

Zambia has been told by the USA to use $50 million to buy America’s GM maize through the World Food Programme or face starvation. When The US tried to force GM food aid on India an unnamed USAID spokesman told the media “beggars can’t be choosers.” — SayNoToGMOs

While biotech’s glossy magazine adverts and happy television commercials may cause me to get berated for threatening the lives of millions with my anti-GMO stance, it appears I actually have the poor on my side:

Zambia’s response marks the death of the ‘feeding the world’ PR strategy. Referring to the maize, President Levy Mwanawasa said “if it is not fit then we would rather starve” – and the national paper added “If the US insists on imposing this genetically modified maize on our people, we will be justified in questioning their motive”. – SayNoToGMOs

Furthermore:

In 1998 Monsanto sent an appeal to all Africa’s Heads of State, entitled ‘Let The Harvest Begin’, which called upon them to endorse GM crops. Monsanto were following the advice of the world’s leading PR company to avoid the ‘killing fields’ of health and environmental issues in the GM debate, such as the absence of independent safety testing, and to shift the debate to focus on supposed benefits for the poor. Western ‘greens’ should be singled out for demonisation for preventing biotech corporations from ‘feeding the world’. Ministers in Western governments have been bombarded with propaganda calling upon them to ignore the ’selfish’ objections of their own citizens – consumers, health advocates, environmentalists and food retailers – because this technology was the only hope for the world’s poor. American TV audiences have seen hundreds of adverts depicting smiling well-fed Third World farmers joyfully growing GM crops. None of this propaganda is based on fact and, significantly, none of it originates from the nations that would supposedly benefit from this technology. Monsanto’s letter-writing exercise could well have been the most catastrophic PR stunt in history. In response the Food and Agriculture representative of every African nation (except South Africa) signed a joint statement called ‘Let Nature’s Harvest Continue’ that utterly condemns Monsanto’s policy. It stated: “[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 think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems that our farmers have developed for millenia, and that it will thus undermine our capacity to feed ourselves”. – SayNoToGMOs (emphasis added)

Although it’s easy to pull the wool over the eyes of many in the general public, as few farm any more, it has been consistently shown that bio-diverse, sustainable farming systems are more productive than monoculture systems. If we are to actually feed a burgeoning population, and also supply them with clean available water, then moving towards GM- and chemical-free farming should become one of our biggest priorities. After all, why should millions suffer for the benefit of a few corporate executives and their shareholders?

2007 “Who Benefits from GM Crops? An analysis of the global performance of gm crops (1996-2006)"	2008 “Who Benefits from GM Crops? The Rise in Pesticide Use”
2009 "Who Benefits from GM Crops? Feeding the biotech giants, not the world’s poor"	2010 "Who Benefits from GM Crops?"
Download PDFs here.

Major crops genetically modified for just two traits – herbicide tolerance and insect resistance – are ravaged by super weeds and secondary pests in the heartland of GMOs as farmers fight a losing battle with more of the same; a fundamental shift to organic farming practices may be the only salvation

by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

Please circulate widely, keeping all links unchanged, and submit to your government representatives demanding an end to GM crops and support for non-GM organic agriculture.

Two traits account for practically all the genetically modified (GM) crops grown in the world today: herbicide-tolerance (HT) due to glyphosate-insensitive form of the gene coding for the enzyme targeted by the herbicide, 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS), derived from soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens, and insect-resistance due to one or more toxin genes derived from the soil bacterium Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis). Commercial planting began around 1997 in the United States, the heartland of GM crops, and increased rapidly over the years. By now, GM crops have taken over 85-91 percent of the area planted with the three major crops, soybean, corn and cotton in the US [1]] (see Table 1), which occupy nearly 171 million acres.

The ecological time-bomb that came with the GM crops has been ticking away, and is about to explode.

HT crops encouraged the use of herbicides, resulting in herbicide-resistant weeds that demand yet more herbicides. But the increasing use of deadly herbicide and herbicide mixtures has failed to stall the advance of the palmer super weed in HT crops. At the same time, secondary pests such as the tarnished plant bug, against which Bt toxin is powerless, became the single most damaging insect for US cotton.

Monster plants that can’t be killed

It is the Day of the Triffids – not the genetically modified plants themselves as alluded to in John Wyndham’s novel – but “super weeds that can’t be killed” [2], created by the planting of genetically modified HT crops, as seen on ABC TV news.

The scene is set at harvest time in Arkansas October 2009. Grim-faced farmers and scientists speak from fields infested with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse on them. One farmer spent US$0.5 million in three months trying to clear the monster weeds in vain; they stop combine harvesters and break hand tools. Already, an estimated one million acres of soybean and cotton crops in Arkansas have become infested.

The palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed is the most dreaded weed. It can grow 7-8 feet tall, withstand withering heat and prolonged droughts, produce thousands of seeds and has a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it would take over a field in a year.

Meanwhile in North Carolina Perquimans County, farmer and extension worker Paul Smith has just found the offending weed in his field [3], and he too, will have to hire a migrant crew to remove the weed by hand.

The resistant weed is expected to move into neighbouring counties. It has already developed resistance to at least three other types of herbicides.

Herbicide-resistance in weeds is nothing new. Ten weed species in North Carolina and 189 weed species nationally have developed resistance to some herbicide.

A new herbicide is unlikely to come out, said Alan York, retired professor of agriculture from North Carolina State University and national weed expert.

Glyphosate-resistant weeds from widespread planting of HT crops

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the US and the world at large. It was patented and sold by Monsanto since the 1970s under the trade name and proprietary formulation, Roundup. Its popularity shot up with the introduction of HT crops. Data from the US Department of Agriculture indicate that the use of glyphosate on major crops went up by more than 15 fold between 1994 and 2005 [4]. The EPA estimated in 2000-2001 that 100 million pounds of glyphosate are used on lawns and farms every year [5], and over the last 13 years, it has been applied to more than a billion acres [6].

It did not take long for glyphosate-resistant weeds to appear, just as weeds resistant to every herbicide used in the past had appeared. The Weed Science Society of America reported nine weed species in the United States with confirmed resistance to glyphosate [6]; among them are strains of common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), common waterhemp (Amaranthus rudis), giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida), hairy fleabane (Conyza bonariensis), horseweed (Conyza canadensis), Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum), johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense), rigid ryegrass (Lolium rigidum), and palmer pigweed (Amaranthus palmeri).

Glyphosate-resistant palmer super weed

Glyphosate-resistant palmer pigweed first turned up in late 2004 in Macon County, Georgia, and has since spread to other parts of Georgia as well as to South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri [7]. An estimated 100 000 acres in Georgia are severely infested with pigweed and 29 counties have now confirmed pigweed resistance to glyhosate, according to weed specialist Stanley Culpepper at the University of Georgia. In 2007, 10 000 acres of glyphosate-resistant pigweed infested land were abandoned in Macon County.

Monsanto’s technical development manager Rick Cole was reported saying that the problems were “manageable”. He advised farmers to alternate crops and use different makes of herbicides. Monsanto sales representatives are encouraging farmers to mix glyphosate and older herbicides such as 2,4-D, banned in Sweden, Denmark and Norway on account of links to cancer and reproductive and neurological damages. It is a component of Agent Orange used in Vietnam in the 1960s.

Farmers in Georgia are reported to be going back to conventional non-GM crops.

Weed scientists at the University of Georgia estimate that an average of just two palmer amaranth plants in every 6 m length of cotton row can reduce yield by at least 23 percent [8]. A single weed plant can produce 450 000 seeds. Many fields in Arkansas, Tennessee, New Mexico, Mississippi and most recently, Alabama are also infested.

Paraquat is recommended for use in conservation tillage programmes, mixed with up to three other herbicides, each with a different mode of action. Scientists at the University of Tennessee have seen palmer weeds resistant not only to glyphosate but also to the sulfonylurea herbicide trifloxysulfuron-sodium.

Glyphosate resistance with the greatest of ease

Critics have been predicting glyphosate-resistant weeds before HT crops were introduced, simply through cross-pollination between HT crops and wild weedy relatives. But they had neglected the ‘fluid genome’ mechanisms that can alter genomes and genes in response to environmental stimuli, enabling most weed plants to become herbicide resistant independently of cross-pollination. I drew attention to these mechanisms in my book Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare, the Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business [9] first published in 1997/1998.

Researchers led by Todd Gaines at Colorado State University, Fort Collins in the United States investigated glyphosate-resistant palmer pigweed populations from Georgia. They found that the gene coding for the enzyme EPSPS responsible for metabolising glyphosate herbicide was amplified (multiplied) 5 to 160-fold in glyphosate-resistant plants compared with glyphosate-susceptible plants [10]. The level of gene expression was positively correlated with gene copy number. Fluorescent staining for the gene showed that the amplified gene copies were present on every chromosome.

Gene amplification is one of the most common physiological responses of cells and organisms to ‘selective’ agents in their environment, known at least since 1980s [9].

Glyphosate resistance has been confirmed in 16 weed species as of 2009 [10]. The mechanisms identified so far include reduced glyphosate uptake, and/or mutations in the EPSPS gene that make it less susceptible to inhibition by the herbicide. Glyphosate-resistant palmer pigweed is the first case of resistance based on gene amplification. It confirms the ease with which resistance to obnoxious agents can evolve [9], and the futility of this ‘chemical warfare’ against nature.

Tarnished plant bug the single most damaging pest for cotton

The tarnished plant bug infested 4.8 million acres of US cotton in 2008 [11] making it the single most damaging pest for cotton. Another insect, the fleahopper ranked 5th, and infested 2.3 million acres.

The Cotton Belt of the United States, extending from the San Joaquin Valley of California to Southeastern Virginia, has largely seen off the boll weevil and tobacco budworm since the introduction of Bt cotton, which now accounts for 65 percent of the area planted with cotton (Table 1 [1]). But, as in India and elsewhere [12, 13] (Farmer Suicides and Bt Cotton Nightmare Unfolding in India, Mealy Bug Plagues Bt Cotton in India and Pakistan, SiS 45), secondary pests are posing serious problems, especially the tarnished plant bug.

The tarnished plant bug (TPB), Lygus lineolaris, has been a cotton pest for as long as records were kept. Before 1995, it was controlled with insecticides targeting other insect pests such as tobacco budworm and boll weevil. According to researchers at the Mississippi State University Delta Research and Extension Center [14], since the widespread adoption of Bt-cotton and eradication of the boll weevil, less insecticide have been used; and as a result, the tarnished plant bug has become the primary insect pest of cotton.

Additional insect control costs are coming from increasing foliar sprays, higher technology fees and pest resistance, said Jeff Gore, research entomologist at the Delta Research and Extension Center, speaking at the 2010 Beltwide Cotton Conferences in New Orleans [15]

In 1995 planting an acre of cotton cost $12.75 to $24; in 2005, planting Bollgard, Roundup Ready cotton with a ‘Cadillac’ seed treatment would have cost about $52 an acre. Now in 2010, with Bollgard II and Roundup Ready Flex, farmers will be spending $85 or more an acre.

“In Mississippi, we have growers who are spending well over $100 for foliar insect control. You add that onto technology fees and seed treatments, you understand why our cotton acreage is decreasing.” Gore said.

To compound the problem, TPB has become resistant to several classes of insecticides, particularly in the Delta regions of the Mid-South states [14].

While TPB is a pest of cotton throughout the growing season, it is particularly damaging during the flowering period, when the pest reproduces copiously, so both adult and immature stages of TPB feed on cotton during the flowering period. Most feeding occurs

on reproductive structures. The pests insert their mouthparts into squares and small bolls. It is not uncommon for TPB to cause near-total crop loss in the absence of effective control in some areas of the Delta.

Mid-South growers consulted Gore about planting a non-Bt variety, especially with the higher costs of Bt technology [15]. “We have a few growers planting small acreages of non-Bt cotton, and they’re probably going to see benefits from that.

“But if we start shifting back to non-Bt cotton, I promise you, the tobacco budworm will come back, and we don’t want to be making foliar applications for resistant tobacco budworms, in addition to treating tarnished plant bugs. The amount of money we would have to spend in that situation would be astronomical.”

TPB has been the No. 1 pest in the Mid-South for the past four to five years, and is driving a lot of cotton growers out of the Mississippi Delta, no longer able to afford the cost of sprays.

Gore revealed that spider mites are also gaining a reputation as ‘budget busters’ in the South, along with aphids and stink bugs.

Like TPB, spider mites are becoming resistant to the insecticides used to control them. “Over the past 15 years, we’ve essentially doubled our application rates with Bidrin and tripled our application rates with acephate. So we’re not only spraying more often, we’re applying higher rates that cost more.” Gore said.

He pointed out that a side-effect of relying on neoniccotinoids for plant bug control is some resistance has developed in cotton aphids. “We’re starting to hear lots of complaints from consultants across the Mid-South.”

More of the same is futile

It is disappointing though predictable that the only official academic advice given to farmers is more of the same conventional practices that created the problems in the first place, spraying more and spraying mixtures of different kinds of pesticides, including those banned for being too toxic. Industry, meanwhile, is ready to sell varieties with more stacked GM traits; up to eight at double the seed price [16].

Disappointing too is the persistent effort by some governments and government scientists to promote the failed GM technology, which as I made clear, was already obsolete since the early 1980s [9]. A Sciencexpress paper (indicating quick publication, probably without peer review) entitled “Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people” [17] co-authored by UK chief scientist Prof. John Beddington among others, while somewhat dismissive of current GM crops, nevertheless holds out promises we’ve heard for more than 30 years. “The next decade will see the development of combinations of desirable traits and the introduction of new traits such as drought tolerance. By mid-century much more radical options involving highly polygenic traits may be feasible.” It went on to promise “cloned animals with engineered innate immunity to diseases” and more.

Glyphosate and Roundup, still advertised as ‘less toxic to us than table salt’ in a pamphlet from the Biotechnology Institute promoting HT crops as ‘Weed Warrior’ [18], is in fact highly toxic as new findings indicate [19, 20] (Death By Multiple Poisoning, Glyphosate and Roundup, SiS 42; Ban Glyphosate Herbicides Now, SiS 43). Thirteen years of GM crops in the USA has increased overall pesticide use by 318 million pounds [21] (GM Crops Increase Herbicide Use in the United States, SiS 45). The extra disease burden on the nation from that alone is considerable.

India has learned bitter Lessons from Bt Cotton [22] in a saga of worsening farm suicides and, in common with the USA, an ecological disaster in secondary and new cotton pests, resistant pests, new diseases, and above all, soils so depleted in nutrients and beneficial microorganisms that they would cease to support the growth of any crop in a decade. Their only salvation is a return to organic agriculture, which has already proven far more sustainable and profitable than Bt cotton [12]. This may apply also to the USA.

A fundamental shift in farming practices needed now

The organic market has been booming in the United States despite the economic downturn. According to a new report from the US Department of Agriculture, retail sales of organic food went up to $21.1 billion in 2008 from $3.6 billion in 1997 [23] (see Fig. 1). The market is so active that organic farms have struggled at times to produce sufficient supply to keep up with the rapid growth in consumer demand, leading to periodic shortages of organic products.

Figure 1 Growth in US organic market 1997 to 2008

Certified organic acres more than doubled from 1.3 million acres in 1997 to a little over 4 million acres in 2005 (0.5 percent of all agricultural land in the US). In the same period, the number of organic farms increased from 5 021 to 8 493, and the average size of certified organic farms went from 268 acres to 477 acres.

So why are US farmers failing to taking advantage of the rapidly expanding market? It is thought [23] that potential organic farmers may opt to continue with conventional production methods because of “social pressures from other farmers nearby who have negative views of organic farming”, or because of an inability to weather the effects of reduced yields and profits during the transition period. This is not surprising on account of the persistent negative propaganda carried out by GM proponents, including government regulatory agencies, against organic agriculture. (See for example the recent attempt by UK Food Standards Agency to prove organic food is no more nutritious than conventional food, which backfired [24] (UK Food Standards Agency Study Proves Organic Food Is Better, SiS 44). The usual claims are that organic agriculture yields less and require more energy than conventional agriculture, and organic produce no more nutritious or healthy, but less hygienic than conventional produce. These false claims are all thoroughly refuted in ISIS report Food Futures Now: *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil Fuel Free [25], with evidence from the published scientific literature, as well as other studies.

Most relevant for US farmers is a study by Kathleen Delate of Iowa State University and Cynthia A. Cambardella of the US Department of Agriculture assessing the performance of farms during the three-year transition it takes to switch from conventional to certified organic production [26]. The experiment lasting four years (three years transition and first year organic) showed that although yields dropped initially, they equalized in the third year, and by the fourth year, the organic yields were ahead of the conventional for both soybean and corn.

Our report [25] also documents the enormous potential for reducing greenhouse emissions – even to the extent of freeing us entirely from fossil fuels – through organic agriculture and localised food (and renewable energy) systems. It is a unique combination of the latest scientific analyses, case studies of farmer-led research, and especially farmers’ own experiences and innovations that often confound academic scientists wedded to outmoded and obsolete theories, of which GM technology is one glaring example.

At about the same time our report was released, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was also published. IAASTD was the result of three-year deliberation by 400 participating scientists and non-government representatives from 110 countries around the world [27]. It came to the conclusion that small scale organic agriculture is the way ahead for coping with hunger, social inequities and environmental disasters [28] (“GM-Free Organic Agriculture to Feed the World”, SiS 38).

A fundamental shift in farming practice is needed right now, before the agricultural meltdown is complete.

References:

1. Adoption ofngenetically engineered crops in the U.S.: Extent of adoption. USDA Economic Research Service, 1 July 2009, http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/biotechcrops/adoption.htm
2. Super weed can’t be killed, abc news, 6 October 2009, http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=8767877
3. “N.C. farmers battle herbicide-resistant weeds”. Jeff Hampton, The Virginian-Pilot. 19 July 2009, http://hamptonroads.com/2009/07/nc-farmers-battle-herbicideresistant-weeds
4. Who benefits from gm crops? The rise in pesticide use, executive summary, Friends of the Earth International, Amsterdam, January 2008.
5. 2000-2001 pesticide market estimates: usage, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.epa.gov/oppbead1/pestsales/01pestsales/usage2001_3.htm
6. Glyphosate-resistant weeds: can we close the barn door? Weed Science Society of America, 18 November 2009, http://www.wssa.net/WSSA/PressRoom/WSSA_GlyphosateResistance.pdf
7. “’Superweed’ explosion threatns Monsanto heartlands”, Clea Caulcutt, 19 April 2009, http://www.france24.com/en/20090418-superweed-explosion-threatens-monsanto-heartlands-genetically-modified-US-crops
8. “Paraquat fights glypohsate resistant palmer amaranth”, 30 September 2009,
   http://paraquat.com/english/news-and-features/archives/paraquat-fights-glyphosate-resistant-palmer-amaranth
9. Ho MW. Genetic Engineering Dream of Nightmare? The Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business, Third World Network, Gateway Books, MacMillan, Continuum, Penang, Malaysia, Bath, UK, Dublin, Ireland, New York, USA, 1998, 1999, 2007 (reprint with extended Introduction). http://www.i-sis.org.uk/genet.php
10. Gaines TA, Zhang W, Wan D et al. Gene amplification confers glyphosate resistance in Amaranthus palmeri. PNAS Early Edition 2009, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0906649107
11. ARS survey helps growers track two key cotton pests. PHYSORG.com, 1 December 2009, http://www.physorg.com/news178912351.html
12. Ho MW. Farmer suicides and Bt cotton nightmare unfolding in India. Science in Society 45 (in press)
13. Ho MW. Mealy bug plagues Bt cotton in India and Pakistan. Science in Society 45 (in press)
14. Catchot A, Musser F, Gore J, Cook D, Daves D, Lorenz G, Akin S, Studebaker G, Tindall K, Stewart S, Bagwell R, Leonard BR and Jackson R. Midsouth Multtistate Evaluation of Treatment Thresholds for Tarnished Plant Bug. 2009, Mississippi State University Extension Service, http://msucares.com/pubs/publications/images/p2561_pics/bug_1.jpg
15. “Insect control pushes cotton costs higher”, Elton Robinson, Farm Press, 15 January 2010, http://deltafarmpress.com/cotton/cotton-insect-control-0115/
16. Benbrook C. Critical issue report: the seed price premium. The Organic Center. 2009 December. http://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/Seeds_Final_11-30-09.pdf
17. Godfray HCJ, Beddington JR, Crute IR, Haddad L, Lawrence D, Muir JF, Pretty J, Robinson S, Thomas SM and Toulmin C. Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people. Sciencexpress, 28 January 2010/10.1126/science.1185383
18. Weed Warrior Hebicide-Tolerant Crops, accessed 29 January 2010, http://www.biotechinstitute.org/resources/YWarticles/10.1/10.1.3.pdf
19. Ho MW and Cherry B. Death by multiple poisoning, glyphosate and Roundup. Science in Society 42 , 14, 2009
20. Ho MW. Ban glyphosate herbicides now. Science in Society 43, 34, 2009
21. Cherry B. GM crops increase herbicide use in the United States. Science in Society 45 (in press)
22. Ho MW. Lessons from Bt cotton. ISIS letter to Hilary Benn, UK Secretary of State for the Environment, 4 January 2010, http://www.i-sis.org.uk/lessonsFromBtCotton.php
23. Marketing U.S. organic foods: recent trends from farms to consumers. Carolyn Dimitri and Lydia Oberholtzer, USDA Economic Research Service, September 2009, http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB58/
24. Ho MW.UK Food Standards Agency study proves organic food is better. Science in Society 44, 32-33, 2009.
25. Ho MW, Burcher S, Lim LC, et al. Food Futures Now, Organic, Sustainable, Fossil Fuel Free, ISIS and TWN, London, 2008. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/foodFutures.php
26. Delate K and Cambardella CA. Organic production: Agroecosystem performance during transition to certified organic grain production. Agronomy Journal 2004, 96, 1288-98.
27. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, IAASTD, 2008http://www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=Press_Materials&ItemID=11
28. Ho MW. “GM-free organic agriculture to feed the world”. Science in Society 38, 14-15, 2008.

Today I’m writing to address an ‘article’ from Paula Fitzgerald from Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited. A colleague recently forwarded me her attempted rebuff to my article “10 reasons to go organic beyond being trendy”. Ms. Fitzgerald’s response to my article was titled “Serious about sustainability or terrified of not being trendy” (PDF). Take a look. I can understand where the author is coming from, as it would appear her role is to protect the interests of the organisation and its founding members – CropLife Australia, Grains Research and Development Corporation and the National Farmers’ Federation, as well as the sugar industry which supports their activities and the red meat industry who it partners with.

Their disclaimer:

Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited gives no warranty and makes no representation that the information contained in this document is suitable for any purpose or is free from error. Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited accepts no responsibility for any person acting or relying upon the information contained in this document, and disclaims all liability. August 2010. – Agrifood Awareness (PDF)

It would be a shame if more farmers were given poor information that led them to “voting with their feet” and going GM when the real rewards for them and their family’s future could be in regenerative agriculture. My advice to the aforementioned partners, supporters and funders: find or form an organisation that produces credible information that is suitable for at least some purpose. My advice to farmers: stop and think before going GM. It’s so important that information about the way we grow food is as accurate as possible and not clouded by vested interests, as we’re playing with lives here.

The truth hurts

To my surprise the author has accused me of unscrupulously disregarding science, data and evidence. But as anyone with a PDC would know, permaculturalists start with the best evidence available to them and go from there.

Evidence

There is overwhelming evidence that conventional mono-cultural agriculture is a damaging process and that GMOs are one of the most frightening things we’ve ever unleashed on ourselves, and they are not a solution or even a short-term fix. There is so much evidence against GMOs that I couldn’t possibly list the lot but here are a few good reasons not to touch the stuff with a continent-long pole.

1) Economics and the Environment – We’re running out of topsoil.

Overgrazed, mismanaged, degraded land in Jordan
Photo © Craig Mackintosh

You’d be forgiven for thinking the picture above is of the subsoils of rural Australia. It’s actually what I saw while studying in Jordan, where the effects of long-term human settlement and destructive land management practices can be easily seen.

It’s a commonly held belief that nothing grows here without huge inputs of dwindling resources such as fuel, polytents, chemicals and fertilisers. In fact this is rapidly becoming a belief about degraded land across the globe. From that perspective you could easily make GM look attractive with the flawed argument that it’s a more sustainable solution. However when you look closer, it’s more of the same stuff that got us here in the first place. GM is a continuation of a system that disregards natural processes – favouring instead unsustainable practices that continue soil damage and only make the repair work harder in the long run.

How did we get to a point where nothing grows without help from artificial inputs? The story of soil will give you the full scoop, but basically soil is a habitat for the micro-biology that holds minerals and nutrients. The practice of regular ploughing kills that life which eventually leads to pest and fungi problems. Then by poisoning anything that tries to hold that soil together, any life that was left ends up eroding away along with chemical residues and the farmer’s income, heading out to sea where dead zones rivalling the impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are created.

All this and yet Geoff Lawton’s greening the desert project proves you can re-green the desert sustainably and restore fertile soil without reliance on anything toxic. Subsequent to this project, one of the local schools has taken up farming the Permaculture way with amazing results and national attention.

2) Yield

It would seem that GM crops aren’t even delivering what they promise causing "The largest wave of farmer suicides [in India] and an ecological nightmare… Dr. Mae-Wan Ho exposes the “fudged” data and false claims of ‘successes’ that have perpetrated the humanitarian disaster.”

But here is the gem in scientifically-controlled yield data and evidence – the longest-running scientifically controlled comparison of organic vs. conventional crop production systems shows yields of conventional corn only beat organic corn for the first four years. This was followed by a long 8 year phase of yield parity before organic won with a slightly higher yield for the following 12 seasons. The study also revealed that the organic corn was more resilient to extreme weather events including drought.

3) Health & Safety

Are GMOs safe for consumption? This well-referenced article reveals a growing number of doctors are prescribing GMO free diets because of links to “infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, [faulty] insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.”

The article also says:

When sheep grazed on Bt cotton plants after harvest, thousands died. Post mortems showed severe irritation and black patches in their intestines and livers. Investigators said preliminary evidence “strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin. . . . most probably Bt-toxin.” In a small feeding study, 100% of sheep fed Bt cotton died within 30 days, while those grazing on natural cotton plants in the adjoining field had no symptoms.

Unfortunately this stuff may only scratch the surface. With very few human trials, the apparent ban on real scientific discussion and questionable methods in studies, it may be years before we find out the full effects. In fact it would appear that even Monsanto are still working out the effects.

Worse still, Bayer has admitted it can’t control the spread of GMOs and when asked how a trial rice strain that hadn’t been through any kind of food safety test could make it to the dinner table in over 30 countries world-wide, they blamed God! Was that based on a scientific study of God’s interaction with rice? I wonder.

First discovered in January of that year, tests of neighbouring farmers lead to the discovery that this rice had already been unknowingly cultivated across several U.S. states, and worse, it was then found on dinner tables and on fields in more than thirty countries worldwide… This contamination caused an almost overnight collapse of the U.S. rice export market in 2006, bankrupting farmers. – Bayer Admits it is Unable to Control Spread of GMOs

So there’s just a glimpse of the evidence, data and science supporting the move to organic food and bio-diverse farming systems.

I won’t even begin on public health, deforestation, pollution, biodiversity, peak oil & climate change except to say that the people pushing GM products as a solution to our agricultural mess are the same people that have been involved in causing the mess. While GM crops offer little real benefit to the farmer, consumer and the environment, the companies that make them have billions of rea$on$ to push them.

4) Is GM organic?

No. That’s the truthful and indisputable answer. But then spin is a wonderful thing isn’t it? With carefully placed words and figures you can cloud the issue by implying ‘no’ means ‘yes’ even when it still means ‘no’.

Back to the Agrifoods article, the author states the Law Society Journal defines organics as “The use of renewable resources, conservation of energy, soil and water, recognition of livestock welfare needs, and environmental maintenance and enhancement”.

She then states that under that definition “one could claim that GM crops meet the organic definition.” But then rather than substantiating that claim, she jumps to the uptake of GM canola by Australian farmers saying that “says it all”. Maybe I’m missing the point or I looked at the above evidence wrongly but the only thing it indicates to me is that there are a lot of farmers out there that have been let down by the trappings of conventional farming methods and are desperate to keep their properties running. The bad news for them is GM is proving itself to be less than a short-term fix which will only cause pain and suffering for them and the rest of humanity down the track.

Farmers are now being backed into a corner with a barrage of marketing propaganda. Websites, articles and key-note speakers are telling them that the only way we can feed a burgeoning population, the only way we can eradicate poverty and the only way we can stay in business and turn a profit is by turning to a patented system that’s designed to use the same company’s pesticide combination. This is a system that is designed for profit, not the good of humanity.

What if we could actually feed ourselves using nature?

Despite all the clutter of questionable data and misleading science, let’s never forget nature provides all our needs. As Craig Mackintosh wrote:

People have been safely ‘engineering’ plants for millennia, without the need to bypass plants’ natural defenses and bombard their cells with genes from entirely unrelated species. GM crops have failed to deliver on their promises, and are an expensive distraction from the faster, localised natural plant breeding techniques that can quickly optimise plants for specific locales.

Whichever way you look at it, permaculture principles, organics, bio-dynamics and regenerative agriculture are solutions-based approaches to the economic, health and environmental challenges of modern food production. No Spin.

Finally a personal note to farmers: I don’t want chemically grown and/or genetically modified goods mixed in with my food and I will happily pay a premium for clean foods if you grow it, even under a voluntary organics standard. But it’s not just me. I’m only one of a rapidly growing number of people that vote with their dollar while continuing to apply pressure for a compulsory organics standard, better labelling and ultimately the banning of GMOs, and the re-localisation of food. Why not hop onboard early and reap the financial benefits?

5 sessions from July 13 – September 8, 2010

You will be trained by the Institute for Responsible Technology’s director, renowned author and filmmaker Jeffrey M. Smith, on how to speak about GMOs and how to organize effective activism to achieve the tipping point of consumer rejection, forcing genetically modified organisms out of our food supply. He will share his knowledge, tips, and expertise in 5 core sessions, each of 1hr and a half.

The five core sessions will cover the following topics:

1. Overview of the 5 main GMO counterarguments and how to structure a brief presentation
2. Health risks of GMOs; and how to weave in third party endorsements into a presentation to make it more persuasive
3. What arguments can destroy the credibility of GMO proponents
4. The large scope of the GMO problem (including agricultural and socio-economic threats and devastation); and action steps to recommend to the audience
5. How to organize a motivated group (create and mobilize an “activist circle”)

Participants will learn (1) the specifics of why genetically engineered foods are bad for health, the environment, and the global economy, (2) how to present the supporting evidence for these arguments, (3) how to motivate people to change their behavior and exercise their power as consumers, (4) how to give a full, medium and short lecture on the health dangers of genetically modified foods, and (5) get tools and tips to help you publicize your lectures and build a coalition.

In addition, participants will:

• Understand the main points and the key studies, quotes, statistics, and concepts to convey each.
• Get detailed answers about key topics, so you will have confidence in the material.
• Practice short sections of the lecture
• Receive a fully scripted PowerPoint, with sample audio and video lectures to study.
• Be able to customize the PowerPoint slides into varying lengths and topics.
• Turn a first time group of interested folks into an organized group with action steps, meeting times, and an electronic community—within 30 minutes.
• Receive a facilitators’ guide, with the specific “check-in rounds” and methods that transform the assembled into a focused and organized team. Turn newcomers into motivated activists. (Use these tools either after a lecture, or after the presentation of a film about GMOs.)
• Share tips, tools, and experiences

Each participant will receive a binder of printed material, with background articles, a sample script with printed slides, and a reading list, plus a downloadable electronic PowerPoint presentation.

At the conclusion of the series, participants will have the opportunity to:

• Join an online community of GMO speakers and activists
• Join future teleconferences and webinars
• Team up with others in your area
• Apply to join the GMO Speakers Bureau for referrals to organizations looking for speaker

Participants will need a webcam to fully participate.

Dates: July 13 & July 27 – August 10 & 24 – September 8

Time: 1:30 – 3:00 p.m. Eastern (10:30 a.m. – noon Pacific)

Cost: $80 for the 5 sessions, includes access to recorded lessons and materials for home study and assignments. We also offer the option to take the first session at $30, for people who want to try out if this is for them.

Sign up Now – limited to the first 25 participants for the series, plus up to five single session participants. Email charles@responsibletechnology.org to see if there is a space available if you are interested in just the single session.

They must stop US negotiators at an international (Codex) conference from May 3-7, from pushing an agenda that could make it difficult for anyone, anywhere in the world to label foods as genetically modified (GM) food—or even make non-GMO claims on their product’s label.

The US is taking the ridiculous and unscientific position that GMOs are not different from conventional foods, claiming labels that say GMO or non-GMO are misleading.

If they succeed at the meeting, the US may then file lawsuits through the World Trade Organization against any country that implements mandatory labeling of GMOs, or even allows non-GMO claims on packages.

This is a grave threat to the Non-GMO Tipping Point—We must push back now!

The growing evidence and concern about health dangers of GMOs is making waves. A renowned US Medical organization (American Academy of Environmental Medicine) called on doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets for all patients. Consumers are seeking non-GMO brands, and the fastest growing claim among store brands in 2009 was “GMO-Free” (Neilson Survey). The trade journal Supermarket News predicts GMO concerns will erupt this year, specifically because consumers are now given choices by the new Non-GMO Shopping Guide website, and the new, and the Non-GMO Project’s third-party verified standard for making non-GMO claims.

Most Americans (53%) say they would avoid GMOs if they were labeled. But even 5% would likely be enough to create a tipping point of consumer rejection, forcing all GM ingredients out of our food supply.

We can see the tipping point just over the horizon, but it is now threatened by the US position at Codex.

Tell our government leaders that you will not stand for this outrageous obstruction of our democracy and human rights. Demand that the US support the right for countries everywhere to label GMOs. And remind them that 9 out of 10 Americans want mandatory GMO labeling, and that President Obama actually made a campaign pledge to implement it—which are all waiting for.

“This study was just routine,” said Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov, in what could end up as the understatement of this century. Surov and his colleagues set out to discover if Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction. What he discovered may uproot a multi-billion dollar industry.

After feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups.

And if this isn’t shocking enough, some in the third generation even had hair growing inside their mouths—a phenomenon rarely seen, but apparently more prevalent among hamsters eating GM soy.

The study, jointly conducted by Surov’s Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National Association for Gene Security, is expected to be published in three months (July 2010)—so the technical details will have to wait. But Surov sketched out the basic set up for me in an email.

He used Campbell hamsters, with a fast reproduction rate, divided into 4 groups. All were fed a normal diet, but one was without any soy, another had non-GM soy, a third used GM soy, and a fourth contained higher amounts of GM soy. They used 5 pairs of hamsters per group, each of which produced 7-8 litters, totally 140 animals.

Surov told The Voice of Russia,

“Originally, everything went smoothly. However, we noticed quite a serious effect when we selected new pairs from their cubs and continued to feed them as before. These pairs’ growth rate was slower and reached their sexual maturity slowly.”

He selected new pairs from each group, which generated another 39 litters. There were 52 pups born to the control group and 78 to the non-GM soy group. In the GM soy group, however, only 40 pups were born. And of these, 25% died. This was a fivefold higher death rate than the 5% seen among the controls. Of the hamsters that ate high GM soy content, only a single female hamster gave birth. She had 16 pups; about 20% died.

Surov said “The low numbers in F2 [third generation] showed that many animals were sterile.”

The published paper will also include measurements of organ size for the third generation animals, including testes, spleen, uterus, etc. And if the team can raise sufficient funds, they will also analyze hormone levels in collected blood samples.

Hair Growing in the Mouth

Earlier this year, Surov co-authored a paper in Doklady Biological Sciences showing that in rare instances, hair grows inside recessed pouches in the mouths of hamsters.

“Some of these pouches contained single hairs; others, thick bundles of colorless or pigmented hairs reaching as high as the chewing surface of the teeth. Sometimes, the tooth row was surrounded with a regular brush of hair bundles on both sides. The hairs grew vertically and had sharp ends, often covered with lumps of a mucous.”

(The photos of these hair bundles are truly disgusting. Trust me, or look for yourself.)

At the conclusion of the study, the authors surmise that such an astounding defect may be due to the diet of hamsters raised in the laboratory. They write, “This pathology may be exacerbated by elements of the food that are absent in natural food, such as genetically modified (GM) ingredients (GM soybean or maize meal) or contaminants (pesticides, mycotoxins, heavy metals, etc.).” Indeed, the number of hairy mouthed hamsters was much higher among the third generation of GM soy fed animals than anywhere Surov had seen before.

Preliminary, but Ominous

Surov warns against jumping to early conclusions. He said, “It is quite possible that the GMO does not cause these effects by itself.” Surov wants to make the analysis of the feed components a priority, to discover just what is causing the effect and how.

In addition to the GMOs, it could be contaminants, he said, or higher herbicide residues, such as Roundup. There is in fact much higher levels of Roundup on these beans; they’re called “Roundup Ready.” Bacterial genes are forced into their DNA so that the plants can tolerate Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Therefore, GM soy always carries the double threat of higher herbicide content, couple with any side effects of genetic engineering.

Years of Reproductive Disorders from GMO-Feed

Surov’s hamsters are just the latest animals to suffer from reproductive disorders after consuming GMOs. In 2005, Irina Ermakova, also with the Russian National Academy of Sciences, reported that more than half the babies from mother rats fed GM soy died within three weeks. This was also five times higher than the 10% death rate of the non-GMO soy group. The babies in the GM group were also smaller (see photo) and could not reproduce.

In a telling coincidence, after Ermakova’s feeding trials, her laboratory started feeding all the rats in the facility a commercial rat chow using GM soy. Within two months, the infant mortality facility-wide reached 55%.

When Ermakova fed male rats GM soy, their testicles changed from the normal pink to dark blue! Italian scientists similarly found changes in mice testes (PDF), including damaged young sperm cells. Furthermore, the DNA of embryos from parent mice fed GM soy functioned differently.

An Austrian government study published in November 2008 showed that the more GM corn was fed to mice, the fewer the babies they had (PDF), and the smaller the babies were.

Central Iowa Farmer Jerry Rosman also had trouble with pigs and cows becoming sterile. Some of his pigs even had false pregnancies or gave birth to bags of water. After months of investigations and testing, he finally traced the problem to GM corn feed. Every time a newspaper, magazine, or TV show reported Jerry’s problems, he would receive calls from more farmers complaining of livestock sterility on their farm, linked to GM corn.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine accidentally discovered that rats raised on corncob bedding “neither breed nor exhibit reproductive behavior.” Tests on the corn material revealed two compounds that stopped the sexual cycle in females “at concentrations approximately two-hundredfold lower than classical phytoestrogens.” One compound also curtailed male sexual behavior and both substances contributed to the growth of breast and prostate cancer cell cultures. Researchers found that the amount of the substances varied with GM corn varieties. The crushed corncob used at Baylor was likely shipped from central Iowa, near the farm of Jerry Rosman and others complaining of sterile livestock.

In Haryana, India, a team of investigating veterinarians report that buffalo consuming GM cottonseed suffer from infertility, as well as frequent abortions, premature deliveries, and prolapsed uteruses. Many adult and young buffalo have also died mysteriously.

Denial, Attack and Canceled Follow-up

Scientists who discover adverse findings from GMOs are regularly attacked, ridiculed, denied funding, and even fired. When Ermakova reported the high infant mortality among GM soy fed offspring, for example, she appealed to the scientific community to repeat and verify her preliminary results. She also sought additional funds to analyze preserved organs. Instead, she was attacked and vilified. Samples were stolen from her lab, papers were burnt on her desk, and she said that her boss, under pressure from his boss, told her to stop doing any more GMO research. No one has yet repeated Ermakova’s simple, inexpensive studies.

In an attempt to offer her sympathy, one of her colleagues suggested that maybe the GM soy will solve the over population problem!

Surov reports that so far, he has not been under any pressure.

Opting Out of the Massive GMO Feeding Experiment

Without detailed tests, no one can pinpoint exactly what is causing the reproductive travesties in Russian hamsters and rats, Italian and Austrian mice, and livestock in India and America. And we can only speculate about the relationship between the introduction of genetically modified foods in 1996, and the corresponding upsurge in low birth weight babies, infertility, and other problems among the US population. But many scientists, physicians, and concerned citizens don’t think that the public should remain the lab animals for the biotech industry’s massive uncontrolled experiment.

Alexey Surov says, “We have no right to use GMOs until we understand the possible adverse effects, not only to ourselves but to future generations as well. We definitely need fully detailed studies to clarify this. Any type of contamination has to be tested before we consume it, and GMO is just one of them.”

A Silent Forest
Part I (remaining parts at bottom)

The video production embedded above addresses an alarming trend – that of the genetic modification of trees. Many might tend to ignore this trend, as we don’t, directly, eat trees, but as the geneticist David Suzuki explains, along with the documentary’s other contributors, the implications run a lot deeper than just that….

I highly recommend you watch and circulate this production.

With agriculture and environmental management we really only have two options: One is to observe, learn about and imitate natural systems – seeing how one element (a plant, an animal, an insect, etc.) interacts with another, and then assembling the various elements in such a way as to harness their relationships for increased productivity and health (permaculture); or, the second option is to ignore these relationships and look at and deal with these elements in isolation, and subsequently battle the symptoms that are the inevitable result of the ensuing discordance.

Complete genetic engineering of all species will be the inevitable result of persevering with the second option. Monocrop systems do not work. Nature’s laws do not allow for it. If we push on with this mindset, regardless, we embark on a bumpy road without end, or that ends in complete catastrophe. (If you think I’m overstating this, please read this post, where you’ll learn about a modified soil organism that could have wiped out our entire food supply).

As my Which Came First – Pests, or Pesticides? post explains, we’re getting into a treadmill of dependency that gets faster and faster until we just can’t keep up. It is, in fact, this treadmill that has lead Big Agri into genetic engineering in the first place. Rather than learn from their mistakes, and looking at root causes to the problems they, themselves, have created, they’re pushing on obstinately with their well financed treadmill, going where angels fear to tread, but where, by nature of the uncontrollability of these technologies (see also), we’re forced to follow as fellow passengers on this planet.

We cannot tailor nature to suit the contemporary capitalist dream of never-ending leisure. Her laws are immutable. She will not settle on a new equilibrium just to suit us. But, we can benefit from those laws, and create a more stable, peaceful, rewarding and healthy existence by coming to understand and work within them instead.

The revolving door of industry heads moving into or influencing government makes it essential that we also make our voice heard at the highest levels to provide greater oversight over these industries. We need to see people pushing for policy changes that incentivise small scale polycultures. We need to see compulsory labelling for all GMOs, and we need to see the precautionary principle applied to all decisions in regards to biotechnology. The current situation where biotech giants effectively write their own guidelines, and where supposed oversight administrators simply give approval for new strains based on the biotech industry’s own safety studies, is totally unacceptable.

When it comes to genetically engineering trees, we, I believe, are stepping onto holy ground.

Photographs copyright ©Craig Mackintosh

Some of you may recall my writing about my observations in Vietnam (see here, here and here for example). Well, one aspect I didn’t work into those posts is the deep respect with which most of the minority tribes of Vietnam, in contrast to the Kinh majority, hold forest trees. The older, larger trees in particular are held as sacred entities of the forest. Minority tribes there bring gifts and incense to literally worship the trees and pray for bountiful harvests. Now I’m not a tree worshipper, but I do see the inherent sacredness of trees – their role in the carbon cycle is critical, and the services they grant us, if we only give them the space to do so, are multiple and tremendously important. While I may not pray to a tree to grant me a bumper crop, I know enough about soil science, plant health, nutrient and water cycling, etc., to know that without the trees, I won’t have a crop. Period.

If we’re to survive as a race, we need to learn, somehow, to gain, or regain, a sacred regard for our trees. Having industry-financed geneticists experiment with their genetics is like letting a few delinquent teenagers loose on a nuclear submarine. It’s not only disrespectful, it’s positively dangerous.

Unlike a sheet of metal that can be machined with consistent results, organisms in natural systems are ever changing and adjusting. The term bio-engineering itself is a contradiction in terms – they are entirely juxtaposed. ‘Bio’ equates to ‘life’. ‘Engineering’ refers to design and manufacture – a blueprint of exactness. Biological forms (i.e. life-forms) can never be ‘engineered’ – i.e. predictably controlled or manipulated. Where, in mathematics (adding numbers or inanimate objects) 1 + 1 = 2, in biology (i.e. the combination of two life forms), 1 + 1 may equal 3, or a billion and three. This makes ‘bio-engineering’, in the best-case scenario, a futile exercise and an enormous misallocation of human and environmental resources, and, in the worse case scenario, an ecological catastrophe with no chance for a product recall.

We cannot alter nature to suit our lifestyles and her laws cannot be rewritten according the needs of big business. Rather, we must learn to adapt to nature’s laws. In doing so we will find resilience, health, happiness, and security.

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V