The
case against GMOs is quickly becoming overwhelming and serious
pushback is also rapidly building up. It is becoming outright
hostile throughout Europe and Russia.
As
the alternatives are seriously superior to the failing GMO protocol
the transition itself will not be too painful unless you are
operating a huge industrial scale operation. Yes, huge amounts of
capital are surely at risk here.
The
reason this has happened is pretty clear cut. The science demands
long time lines to clarify safety and effectiveness. There is only
one clear way to do this and it is with a large long term field trial
as has been demonstrated by the thirty year trial operated by the
Rodale Institute in its comparison of best current organic
methodology to best available industrial methodology. Organic won.
The
bad news is that study was also the best field test of many of those
industrial protocols.
Instead,
industry has been rushing to market with fudged science and
conducting field trials as safe practice for all farmers.
I
should mention that blanket application of soluble fertilizers has
also proven to be a bad idea with time limits that will run out. Yet
better alternatives exist although in fairness, beyond my postings,
no one else understands this. So we carry on until a real boot
drops.
GRAIN
| 15 May 2013 |
Myths
and outright lies about the alleged benefits of genetically
engineered crops (GE crops or GMOs) persist only because the
multinationals that profit from them have put so much effort into
spreading them around.
They
want you to believe that GMOs will feed the world; that they are more
productive; that they will eliminate the use of agrichemicals; that
they can coexist with other crops, and that they are perfectly safe
for humans and the environment.
False
in every case, and in this article we’ll show how easy it is to
debunk these myths. All it takes is a dispassionate, objective look
at twenty years of commercial GE planting and the research that
supposedly backs it up. The conclusion is clear: GMOs are part of the
problem, not part of the solution.
An
article by GRAIN, published in Soberania
Alimentaria, numero 13.
MYTH:
GE crops will end world hunger.
FACT:
GE crops have nothing to do with ending world hunger, no matter how
much GE spokespeople like to expound on this topic. Three comments
give the lie to their claim:
- FAO data clearly show that the world produces plenty of food to feed everyone, year after year. Yet hunger is still with us. That’s because hunger is not primarily a question of productivity but of access to arable land and resources. Put bluntly: Hunger is caused by poverty and exclusion.
- Today’s commercial GE crops weren’t designed to fight hunger in the first place. They aren’t even mainly for human consumption. Practically the entire area planted to GE crops consists of soybeans, corn, canola, and cotton. The first three of these are used almost exclusively to make cattle feed, car fuel, and industrial oils for the United States and Europe, while cotton goes into clothing.
- More damning, there appears to be an iniquitous cause-and-effect relationship between GE crops and rural hunger. In countries like Brazil and Argentina, gigantic “green deserts” of corn and soybeans invade peasants’ land, depriving them – or outright robbing them – of their means of subsistence. The consequence is hunger, abject poverty, and agrotoxin poisoning for rural people. The truth is that GE crops are edging out food on millions of hectares of fertile farmland.
In
the year GMO seeds were first planted, 800 million people worldwide
were hungry. Today, with millions of hectares of GMOs in production,
1 billion are hungry. When exactly do these crops start “feeding
the world”?
MYTH:
GE crops are more productive
FACT:
Not true. Look at the data from the country with the longest
experience of GMOs: the United States. In
the most extensive and rigorous study, the Union
of Concerned Scientists analyzed
twenty years of GE crops and concluded that genetically engineered
herbicide-tolerant soybeans and corn are no more productive than
conventional plants and methods. Furthermore, 86% of the corn
productivity increases obtained in the past twenty years have been
due to conventional methods and practices. Other studies have found
GE productivity to be lower than conventional.
Crop
plants are complex living beings, not Lego blocks. Their productivity
is a function of multiple genetic and environmental factors, not some
elusive “productivity gene.” You can’t just flip a genetic
switch and turn on high productivity, nor would any responsible
genetic engineer make such a claim.
Even after all this time, GE methods are quite rudimentary.
Proponents of the technology count it a success if they manage to
transfer even two or three functional genes into one plant.
The
bottom line is that twenty years and untold millions of dollars of
research have resulted in a grand total of two marketable traits –
herbicide tolerance and Bt pest resistance
(see below). Neither has anything to do with productivity.
MYTH:
GE crops will eliminate agrichemicals
FACT:
It’s the reverse:
GE crops increase the use of harmful agrichemicals. Industry people
try to put this myth over by touting the “Bt gene” from the
Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria, which produces a toxin lethal to
some corn and cotton worms. The plants produce their own pesticide,
supposedly obviating the need to spray. But with such large areas
planted to Bt monocultures, the worms have quickly developed
resistance to Bt; worse, a host of formerly unknown secondary pests
now have to be controlled with more chemicals.
The
other innovation trumpeted by the “genetically modified
corporations” consists of plants that can withstand high doses of
herbicides. This allows vast monocultures to be sprayed from the air,
year after year on the same site. It’s a convenience for industrial
farmers that has abetted the spectacular expansion of soybeans in
recent years. Thirty years ago there were no soybeans in Argentina;
now they take up half the country’s arable land. Concurrently, the
amount of the herbicide glyphosate sprayed in Argentina has
skyrocketed from 8 million litres in 1995 to over 200 million litres
today – a twentyfold increase, all for use in GE soy production.
The
same thing is happening in the United States. Herbicide-tolerant GMOs
have opened the floodgates, and glyphosate and other herbicides are
pouring through onto farmers’ fields. In 2011, US
farmers using this type of GMO sprayed
24% more herbicides than their colleagues planting conventional
seeds.
Why? For reasons any evolutionary biologist could have predicted: the
weeds are evolving chemical resistance. In short, the GE “revolution”
is an environmental problem, not a solution.
MYTH:
Farmers can decide for themselves. After all, GMOs can peacefully
coexist with other crops.
It
sure doesn’t look that way. GE boosters may claim nobody’s
forcing farmers to use GMOs, but a pesky little fact of basic biology
implicates non-GE farmers against their will. It’s called
cross-pollination: Plants of the same species interbreed, and sooner
or later the genes artificially inserted in the GE crops cross into
the conventional crops.
In
Canada, the widespread growing of genetically engineered canola has
contaminated nearly all the conventional canola and in so doing wiped
out organic canola production. Similar contamination has been found
in corn crops around the world.
The
introduction
of GE seed is especially alarming when there is potential for
contamination of local varieties. Mexico is the centre of origin and
diversification of corn.
For years now, Mexican indigenous communities have been noticing odd
traits appearing in some of their varieties. Various studies confirm
that this is because of contamination by GE corn imported from the
United States. Now, the Mexican government is proposing to allow
multinationals to plant up to 2.4 million ha of GE corn in the
country. If this project goes ahead, it will not only be an attack on
the food sovereignty of the Mexican people: it will be a threat to
the biodiversity of one of the world’s most important staple food
crops.
In
the Spanish state of Aragón, farm and environmental organizations
have been complaining since 2005 that over 40% of organic grain has
traces of GE content and can no longer be sold as organic or
GMO-free.
What’s
really perverse about this fake “freedom to farm” argument is
that certain transnationals have been forcing farmers to pay for
seeds they never planted. In
the United States, Monsanto has taken hundreds of farmers to court
for supposedly infringing its intellectual-property rights.
Monsanto detectives roam the countryside like debt collectors,
looking for “their genes” in farmers’ fields. In many cases,
the genes got there because the farmers either purchased contaminated
seed or had their own crops contaminated by a neighbour’s field.
Whatever the case, it’s a lucrative strategy that has brought in
millions of extra dollars for the corporation. And it has the added
benefit of scaring farmers away from buying anything but Monsanto
seeds. Sounds a lot more like the “freedom” to do exactly what
the multinationals tell you to.
Genetic
engineering: a stalled science
GE
crops are in the hands of very few companies. Monsanto most
notoriously, along with Dupont, Syngenta, BASF, Bayer and Dow,
dominate GE research and patents, corner 60% of the world seed
market, and control 76% of the world agrichemical market.
Yet
all the profitable “science” owned by these companies comes down
to two and only two traits: herbicide-tolerance and Bt.
In
2012, 59% of the area planted to commercial GE crops consisted of
crops resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, a product originally
patented by Monsanto, while 26% consisted of insecticidal Bt crops
and 15% consisted of crops carrying both traits.
Two
traits. That’s all these multinationals have to show for twenty
years of research and mega-millions of dollars invested. Some
revolution! The real measure of what GE technology has produced is to
be found in damaged ecosystems, potential health harms, farmer
dependency – and big profits for the companies.
MYTH:
GE crops pose no threat to health and the environment.
At
the very least, the biosafety of transgenic crops is an open
question. Do we really want to entrust our health to an industrial
agriculture system in which GE purveyors control food security
offices and dictate their own standards? I don’t think so. Food
sovereignty requires that the people, not the companies, have control
over what we eat.
Nevertheless,
our plates are now filling up with food items from plants with
altered DNA and heavy pesticide loads, and we are told to simply shut
up and eat. Concerns have been heightened by a number of credible
reports on GMOs and their attendant herbicides:
- The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) stated in 2009 that genetically engineered foods “pose a serious health risk.” Citing various studies, it concluded that “there is more than a casual association between GE foods and adverse health effects” and that these foods “pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health.”
- The latest studies by Dr. Gilles-Éric Séralini looked at rats fed glyphosate-tolerant GE maize for two years. These rats showed greater and earlier mortality in addition to hormonal effects, mammary tumors in females, and liver and kidney disease.
- A recent study at the University of Leipzig (Germany) found high concentrations of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, in urine samples from city dwellers – from 5 to 20 times greater than the limit for drinking water.
- Professor Andrés Carrasco of the CONICET-UBA Molecular Embryology Lab at the University of Buenos Aires medical school (Argentina) has unveiled a study showing that glyphosate herbicides cause malformations in frog and chicken embryos at doses much lower than those used in agriculture. The malformations were of a type similar to those observed in human embryos exposed to these herbicides.
Finally,
there is the incontrovertible evidence that glyphosate can have a
direct impact on human beings, causing abortions, illnesses, and even
death in high enough doses, as explained by Sofía Gatica, the
Argentine winner of the latest Goldman prize.
Our
health is ours to defend, and so are our farms, and so is the health
of the food supply that will nourish the generations to come. Food
sovereignty now!
+
+ + +
FIND
OUT MORE
New
studies keep emerging on the negative impacts of GE foods and
crops. Click
this link for a list of 300 scientific articles presenting this
information.
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