[GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] 10 reasons why GM won't feed the world

[mary rose]

After the attempts by chemical companies to force farmers to
grow GM crops worldwide, the revelations now being made
as to the truth of GM, are shocking.

mr

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Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] 10 reasons why GM won't feed the world




10 reasons why GM won't feed the world
Genetic modification can't deliver a safe, secure future food supply. Here's 
why...
Date:01/03/2008
Author:Mark Anslow
http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1185

1. Failure to deliver

Despite the hype, genetic modification consistently fails to live up to 
industry claims. Only two GM traits have ever made it to market: herbicide 
resistance and BT toxin expression (see below). Other promises of genetic 
modification have failed to materialise. The much vaunted GM 'golden rice' - 
hailed as a cure to vitamin A deficiency - has never made it out of the 
laboratory, partly because in order to meet recommended levels of vitamin A 
intake, consumers would need to eat 12 bowls of the rice every day.1 In 
2004, the Kenyan government admitted that Monsanto's GM sweet potatoes were 
no more resistant to feathery mottle virus than ordinary strains, and in 
fact produced lower yields.2 And in January 2008, news that scientists had 
modified a carrot to cure osteoporosis by providing calcium had to be 
weighed against the fact that you would need to eat 1.6 kilograms of these 
vegetables each day to meet your recommended calcium intake.3

2. Costing the Earth

GM crops are costing farmers and governments more money than they are 
making. In 2003, a report by the Soil Association estimated the cost to the 
US economy of GM crops at around $12 billion (£6 billion) since 1999, on 
account of inflated farm subsidies, loss of export orders and various seed 
recalls.4 A study in Iowa found that GM soyabeans required all the same 
costs as conventional farming but, because they produced lower yields (see 
below), the farmers ended up making no profit at all.5 In India, an 
independent study found that BT cotton crops were costing farmers 10 per 
cent more than non-BT variants and bringing in 40 per cent lower profits.6 
Between 2001 and 2005, more than 32,000 Indian farmers committed suicide, 
most as a result of mounting debts caused by inadequate crops.7

3. Contamination and gene escape

No matter how hard you try, you can never be sure that what you are eating 
is GM-free. In a recent article, the New Scientist admitted that 
contamination and cross-fertilisation between GM and non-GM crops 'has 
happened on many occasions already'.8 In late 2007, US company Scotts 
Miracle-Gro was fined $500,000 by the US Department of Agriculture when 
genetic material from a new golf-course grass Scotts had been testing was 
found in native grasses as far as 13 miles away from the test sites, 
apparently released when freshly cut grass was caught and blown by the 
wind.9 In 2006, an analysis of 40 Spanish conventional and organic farms 
found that eight were contaminated with GM corn varieties, including one 
farmer whose crop contained 12.6 per cent GM plants.

4. Reliance on pesticides

Far from reducing dependency on pesticides and fertilisers, GM crops 
frequently increase farmers' reliance on these products. Herbicide-resistant 
crops can be sprayed indiscriminately with weedkillers such as Monsanto's 
'Roundup' because they are engineered to withstand the effect of the 
chemical. This means that significantly higher levels of herbicide are found 
in the final food product, however, and often a second herbicide is used in 
the late stages of the crop to promote 'dessication' or drying, meaning 
these crops receive a double dose of harmful chemicals.10 BT maize, 
engineered to produce an insecticidal toxin, has never eliminated the use of 
pesticides,11 and because the BT gene cannot be 'switched off' the crops 
continue to produce the toxin right up until harvest, reaching the consumer 
at its highest possible concentrations.12

5. 'Frankenfoods'

Despite the best efforts of the biotech industry, consumers remain staunchly 
opposed to GM food. In 2007, the vast majority of 11,700 responses to the 
Government's consultation on whether contamination of organic food with 
traces of GM crops should be allowed were strongly negative.  The 
Government's own 'GM Nation' debate in 2003 discovered that half of its 
participants 'never want to see GM crops grown in the United Kingdom under 
any circumstances', and 96 per cent thought that society knew too little 
about the health impacts of genetic modification. In India, farmers' 
experience of BT cotton has been so disastrous that the Maharashtra 
government now advises that farmers grow soybeans instead. And in Australia, 
over 250 food companies lodged appeals with the state governments of New 
South Wales and Victoria over the lifting of bans against growing GM canola 
crops.13

6. Breeding resistance

Nature is smart, and there are already reports of species resistant to GM 
crops emerging. This is seen in the emergence of new 'superweeds' on farms 
in North America - plants that have evolved the ability to withstand the 
industry's chemicals. A report by then UK conservation body English Nature 
(now Natural England), in 2002, revealed that oilseed rape plants that had 
developed resistance to three or more herbicides were 'not uncommon' in 
Canada.14 The superweeds had been created through random crosses between 
neighbouring GM crops. In order to tackle these superweeds, Canadian farmers 
were forced to resort to even stronger, more toxic herbicides.15 Similarly, 
pests (notably the diamondback moth) have been quick to develop resistance 
to BT toxin, and in 2007 swarms of mealy bugs began attacking supposedly 
pest-resistant Indian cotton.

7. Creating problems for solutions

Many of the so-called 'problems' for which the biotechnology industry 
develops 'solutions' seem to be notions of PR rather than science. 
Herbicide-resistance was sold under the claim that because crops could be 
doused in chemicals, there would be much less need to weed mechanically or 
plough the soil, keeping more carbon and nitrates under the surface. But a 
new long-term study by the US Agricultural Research Service has shown that 
organic farming, even with ploughing, stores more carbon than the GM crops 
save.16 BT cotton was claimed to increase resistance to pests, but farmers 
in East Africa discovered that by planting a local weed amid their corn 
crop, they could lure pests to lay their eggs on the weed and not the 
crop.17

8. Health risks

The results of tests on animals exposed to GM crops give serious cause for 
concern over their safety. In 1998, Scottish scientists found damage to 
every single internal organ in rats fed blightresistant GM potatoes. In a 
2006 experiment, female rats fed on herbicide-resistant soybeans gave birth 
to severely stunted pups, of which half died within three weeks. The 
survivors were sterile. In the same year, Indian news agencies reported that 
thousands of sheep allowed to graze on BT cotton crop residues had died 
suddenly. Further cases of livestock deaths followed in 2007. There have 
also been reports of allergy-like symptoms among Indian labourers in BT 
cotton fields. In 2002, the only trial ever to involve human beings appeared 
to show that altered genetic material from GM soybeans not only survives in 
the human gut, but may even pass its genetic material to bacteria within the 
digestive system.18

9. Left hungry

GM crops have always come with promises of increased yields for farmers, but 
this has rarely been the case. A three-year study of 87 villages in India 
found that non-BT cotton consistently produced 30 per cent higher yields 
than the (more expensive) GM alternative.19 It is now widely accepted that 
GM soybeans produce consistently lower yields than conventional varieties. 
In 1992, Monsanto's own trials showed that the company's Roundup Ready 
soybeans yield 11.5 per cent less on harvest. Later Monsanto studies went on 
to reveal that some trials of GM canola crops in Australia actually produced 
yields 16 per cent below the non-GM national average.20

10. Wedded to fertilisers and fossil fuels

No genetically modified crop has yet eliminated the need for chemical 
fertilisers in order to achieve expected yields. Although the industry has 
made much of the possibility of splicing nitrogen-fixing genes into 
commercial food crops in order to boost yields, there has so far been little 
success. This means that GM crops are just as dependent on fossil fuels to 
make fertilisers as conventional agriculture. In addition to this, GM traits 
are often specifically designed to fit with large-scale industrial 
agriculture. Herbicide resistance is of no real benefit unless your farm is 
too vast to weed mechanically, and it presumes that the farmers already farm 
in a way that involves the chemical spraying of their crops. Similarly, BT 
toxin expression is designed to counteract the problem of pest control in 
vast monocultures, which encourage infestations. In a world that will soon 
have to change its view of farming - facing as it does the twin challenges 
of climate change and peak oil - GM crops will soon come to look like a 
relic of bygone practices.

Mark Anslow is the Ecologist's senior reporter

References

1 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8521

2 http://www.greens.org/s-r/35/35-03.html

3 Telegraph, 14th January 2008, http://tinyurl.com/38e2rp

4 Soil Association, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/33bfuh

5 http://ianrnews.unl.edu/static/0005161.shtml

6 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php

7 Indian Muslims, 20th November 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2u7wy7

8 New Scientist, 'Genes for Greens', 5th January 2007, Issue 2637, Vol 197

9 http://gmfoodwatch.tribe.net/thread/a1b77b8b-15f5-4f1d-86df-2bbca5aaec70

10 http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9927

11 http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/usdagmeconomics.htm

12 http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9927

13 http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/27/18463803.php

14 http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/publication/PDF/enrr443.pdf

15 Innovations Report, 20th June 2005, http://tinyurl.com/3axmln

16 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8658

17 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMcropsfailed.php

18 All references from 'GM Food Nightmare Unfolding in the Regulatory Sham', 
Mae-Wan Ho, Joe Cummins, Peter Saunders, ISIS report.

19 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php

20 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8558