Genotypical Risk
• Genetic contamination of surrounding fields from unsafe trials could pollute natural crops.
• Not certain if GM food safe for human consumption.
• EU, Japan banned US rice in 2006 on discovery of genetic contamination.
• Alleged contamination of rice fields in Jharkhand needs investigation.
Second-generation rice believed to be tainted
***
What was long feared may finally turn out to be true. Genetic contamination of natural crop strains because of unsafe field trials of GM crops has reportedly begun in Jharkhand, if Gene Campaign, a Delhi-based research group, is to be believed. It alleges that seed company Mahyco was careless in its field trials of GM rice in Saparong village, Ranchi district. This, Gene Campaign says, led to a second generation of illegal GM rice in and around the trial fields.
To back its claims, Gene Campaign cites a report by Gene Scan—a German laboratory—that confirms the presence of the Cry1Ac gene (isolated from a bacillus and introduced in Mahyco's GM rice to create resistance to borers) in the samples of rice grain and leaf that were sent to them for analysis by the group. These samples, it says, were sourced in September '08, after the trials were over from second-generation rice plants that had come up in and around the trial site. It is mandatory that test sites are isolated to avoid any contamination and trial crops burnt to avoid any GM regrowth. The group says Mahyco did not follow these rules.
Suman Sahai, convenor of Gene Campaign, says that "even the fact that GM rice could get out of their trial site is damning for Mahyco. Nor is it clear if the GM rice introduced by Mahyco is safe for human consumption. It isn't known how far it has spread but the contamination has surely begun." This violation, she adds, is all the more serious because India is the centre of origin of rice with immense genetic diversity.
A Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) official says that the committee had not been sent an official complaint of contamination yet to warrant investigation. Mahyco, on the other hand, insists the trial field was "burnt on August 15" and the required 200 metre isolation maintained. There is no evidence, it added, to back the claim that the samples were sourced from spots anywhere outside the trial location. However Gene Campaign says that the GM crops were not burnt and the stalks remained.
Critics of GM technology in the country have repeatedly questioned the strength of our regulatory mechanism. Supreme Court-appointed GEAC special invitee P.M. Bhargava feels that "for all practical purposes there is none at all". "First of all, only 10 per cent of the tests that ought to be done are done. And even those 10 per cent are done either by the company (seeking to promote the genetically engineered substance) or on samples provided by the company," he says.
If GM contamination is detected in India, it will impact the country's rice exports to Japan and the west, especially Japan and the EU, where governments are cautious on GM technology, given the widespread uneasiness their citizens have for GM crops and food. India, the second-largest rice producer in the world, exports more than four million tonnes of rice a year.
R.S. Seshadri, member of the All-India Rice Exporters Association and director of Tilda Ricelands, says the government needs to step in immediately to establish for sure if contamination has occurred. He says, "If yes, the law must be taken to its logical conclusion and the safeguards further tightened. If the government doesn't do it quickly enough, it will then need a clean-up operation like in the US, which had to spend millions of dollars after genetic contamination in rice was detected in 2006."
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
American Academy of Environmental Medicine position on GM foods
American Academy of Environmental Medicine position on Genetically Modified Foods
According to the World Health Organization, Genetically Modified Organisms(GMOs) are "organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in such a way that does not occur naturally."1 This technology is also referred to as "genetic engineering", "biotechnology" or "recombinant DNA technology" and consists of randomly inserting genetic fragments of DNA from one organism to another, usually from a different species. For example, an artificial combination of genes that includes a gene to produce the pesticide Cry1Ab protein (commonly known as Bt toxin), originally found in Bacillus thuringiensis, is inserted in to the DNA of corn randomly. Both the location of the transferred gene sequence in the corn DNA and the consequences of the insertion differ with each insertion. The plant cells that have taken up the inserted gene are then grown in a lab using tissue culture and/or nutrient medium that allows them to develop into plants that are used to grow GM food crops.2
Natural breeding processes have been safely utilized for the past several thousand years. In contrast, "GE crop technology abrogates natural reproductive processes, selection occurs at the single cell level, the procedure is highly mutagenic and routinely breeches genera barriers, and the technique has only been used commercially for 10 years."3
Despite these differences, safety assessment of GM foods has been based on the idea of "substantial equivalence" such that "if a new food is found to be substantially equivalent in composition and nutritional characteristics to an existing food, it can be regarded as safe as the conventional food."4 However, several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food consumption including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.
There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation as defined by Hill's Criteria in the areas of strength of association, consistency, specificity, biological gradient, and biological plausibility.5 The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.2,6,7,8,9,10,11
Specificity of the association of GM foods and specific disease processes is also supported. Multiple animal studies show significant immune dysregulation, including upregulation of cytokines associated with asthma, allergy, and inflammation. 6,11 Animal studies also show altered structure and function of the liver, including altered lipid and carbohydrate metabolism as well as cellular changes that could lead to accelerated aging and possibly lead to the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). 7,8,10 Changes in the kidney, pancreas and spleen have also been documented. 6,8,10 A recent 2008 study links GM corn with infertility, showing a significant decrease in offspring over time and significantly lower litter weight in mice fed GM corn.8 This study also found that over 400 genes were found to be expressed differently in the mice fed GM corn. These are genes known to control protein synthesis and modification, cell signaling, cholesterol synthesis, and insulin regulation. Studies also show intestinal damage in animals fed GM foods, including proliferative cell growth9 and disruption of the intestinal immune system.6
Regarding biological gradient, one study, done by Kroghsbo, et al., has shown that rats fed transgenic Bt rice trended to a dose related response for Bt specific IgA. 11
Also, because of the mounting data, it is biologically plausible for Genetically Modified Foods to cause adverse health effects in humans.
In spite of this risk, the biotechnology industry claims that GM foods can feed the world through production of higher crop yields. However, a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists reviewed 12 academic studies and indicates otherwise: "The several thousand field trials over the last 20 years for genes aimed at increasing operational or intrinsic yield (of crops) indicate a significant undertaking. Yet none of these field trials have resulted in increased yield in commercialized major food/feed crops, with the exception of Bt corn."12 However, it was further stated that this increase is largely due to traditional breeding improvements.
Therefore, because GM foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health and are without benefit, the AAEM believes that it is imperative to adopt the precautionary principle, which is one of the main regulatory tools of the European Union environmental and health policy and serves as a foundation for several international agreements.13 The most commonly used definition is from the 1992 Rio Declaration that states: "In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."13
Another often used definition originated from an environmental meeting in the United States in 1998 stating: "When an activity raises threats to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken, even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context, the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof (of the safety of the activity)."13
With the precautionary principle in mind, because GM foods have not been properly tested for human consumption, and because there is ample evidence of probable harm, the AAEM asks:
•Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.
•Physicians to consider the possible role of GM foods in the disease processes of the patients they treat and to document any changes in patient health when changing from GM food to non-GM food.
•Our members, the medical community, and the independent scientific community to gather case studies potentially related to GM food consumption and health effects, begin epidemiological research to investigate the role of GM foods on human health, and conduct safe methods of determining the effect of GM foods on human health.
•For a moratorium on GM food, implementation of immediate long term independent safety testing, and labeling of GM foods, which is necessary for the health and safety of consumers.
(This statement was reviewed and approved by the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine on May 8, 2009.)
Submitted by Amy Dean, D.O. and Jennifer Armstrong, M.D.
Bibliography: Genetically Modified Foods Position Paper AAEM
1.World Health Organization. (Internet).(2002). Foods derived from modern technology: 20 questions on genetically modified foods. Available from: http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en/index.html
2.Smith, JM. Genetic Roulette. Fairfield: Yes Books.2007. p.10
3.Freese W, Schubert D. Safety testing and regulation of genetically engineered foods. Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews. Nov 2004. 21.
4.Society of Toxicology. The safety of genetically modified foods produced through biotechnology. Toxicol. Sci. 2003; 71:2-8.
5.Hill, AB. The environment and disease: association or causation? Proceeding of the Royal Society of Medicine 1965; 58:295-300.
6.Finamore A, Roselli M, Britti S, et al. Intestinal and peripheral immune response to MON 810 maize ingestion in weaning and old mice. J Agric. Food Chem. 2008; 56(23):11533-11539.
7.Malatesta M, Boraldi F, Annovi G, et al. A long-term study on female mice fed on a genetically modified soybean:effects on liver ageing. Histochem Cell Biol. 2008; 130:967-977.
8.Velimirov A, Binter C, Zentek J. Biological effects of transgenic maize NK603xMON810 fed in long term reproduction studies in mice. Report-Federal Ministry of Health, Family and Youth. 2008.
9.Ewen S, Pustzai A. Effects of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine.Lancet. 354:1353-1354.
10.Kilic A, Aday M. A three generational study with genetically modified Bt corn in rats: biochemical and histopathological investigation. Food Chem. Toxicol. 2008; 46(3):1164-1170.
11.Kroghsbo S, Madsen C, Poulsen M, et al. Immunotoxicological studies of genetically modified rice expression PHA-E lectin or Bt toxin in Wistar rats. Toxicology. 2008; 245:24-34.
12.Gurain-Sherman,D. 2009. Failure to yield: evaluating the performance of genetically engineered crops. Cambridge (MA): Union of Concerned Scientists.
13.Lofstedt R. The precautionary principle: risk, regulation and politics. Merton College, Oxford. 2002.
According to the World Health Organization, Genetically Modified Organisms(GMOs) are "organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in such a way that does not occur naturally."1 This technology is also referred to as "genetic engineering", "biotechnology" or "recombinant DNA technology" and consists of randomly inserting genetic fragments of DNA from one organism to another, usually from a different species. For example, an artificial combination of genes that includes a gene to produce the pesticide Cry1Ab protein (commonly known as Bt toxin), originally found in Bacillus thuringiensis, is inserted in to the DNA of corn randomly. Both the location of the transferred gene sequence in the corn DNA and the consequences of the insertion differ with each insertion. The plant cells that have taken up the inserted gene are then grown in a lab using tissue culture and/or nutrient medium that allows them to develop into plants that are used to grow GM food crops.2
Natural breeding processes have been safely utilized for the past several thousand years. In contrast, "GE crop technology abrogates natural reproductive processes, selection occurs at the single cell level, the procedure is highly mutagenic and routinely breeches genera barriers, and the technique has only been used commercially for 10 years."3
Despite these differences, safety assessment of GM foods has been based on the idea of "substantial equivalence" such that "if a new food is found to be substantially equivalent in composition and nutritional characteristics to an existing food, it can be regarded as safe as the conventional food."4 However, several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food consumption including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.
There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation as defined by Hill's Criteria in the areas of strength of association, consistency, specificity, biological gradient, and biological plausibility.5 The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.2,6,7,8,9,10,11
Specificity of the association of GM foods and specific disease processes is also supported. Multiple animal studies show significant immune dysregulation, including upregulation of cytokines associated with asthma, allergy, and inflammation. 6,11 Animal studies also show altered structure and function of the liver, including altered lipid and carbohydrate metabolism as well as cellular changes that could lead to accelerated aging and possibly lead to the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). 7,8,10 Changes in the kidney, pancreas and spleen have also been documented. 6,8,10 A recent 2008 study links GM corn with infertility, showing a significant decrease in offspring over time and significantly lower litter weight in mice fed GM corn.8 This study also found that over 400 genes were found to be expressed differently in the mice fed GM corn. These are genes known to control protein synthesis and modification, cell signaling, cholesterol synthesis, and insulin regulation. Studies also show intestinal damage in animals fed GM foods, including proliferative cell growth9 and disruption of the intestinal immune system.6
Regarding biological gradient, one study, done by Kroghsbo, et al., has shown that rats fed transgenic Bt rice trended to a dose related response for Bt specific IgA. 11
Also, because of the mounting data, it is biologically plausible for Genetically Modified Foods to cause adverse health effects in humans.
In spite of this risk, the biotechnology industry claims that GM foods can feed the world through production of higher crop yields. However, a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists reviewed 12 academic studies and indicates otherwise: "The several thousand field trials over the last 20 years for genes aimed at increasing operational or intrinsic yield (of crops) indicate a significant undertaking. Yet none of these field trials have resulted in increased yield in commercialized major food/feed crops, with the exception of Bt corn."12 However, it was further stated that this increase is largely due to traditional breeding improvements.
Therefore, because GM foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health and are without benefit, the AAEM believes that it is imperative to adopt the precautionary principle, which is one of the main regulatory tools of the European Union environmental and health policy and serves as a foundation for several international agreements.13 The most commonly used definition is from the 1992 Rio Declaration that states: "In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."13
Another often used definition originated from an environmental meeting in the United States in 1998 stating: "When an activity raises threats to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken, even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context, the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof (of the safety of the activity)."13
With the precautionary principle in mind, because GM foods have not been properly tested for human consumption, and because there is ample evidence of probable harm, the AAEM asks:
•Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.
•Physicians to consider the possible role of GM foods in the disease processes of the patients they treat and to document any changes in patient health when changing from GM food to non-GM food.
•Our members, the medical community, and the independent scientific community to gather case studies potentially related to GM food consumption and health effects, begin epidemiological research to investigate the role of GM foods on human health, and conduct safe methods of determining the effect of GM foods on human health.
•For a moratorium on GM food, implementation of immediate long term independent safety testing, and labeling of GM foods, which is necessary for the health and safety of consumers.
(This statement was reviewed and approved by the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine on May 8, 2009.)
Submitted by Amy Dean, D.O. and Jennifer Armstrong, M.D.
Bibliography: Genetically Modified Foods Position Paper AAEM
1.World Health Organization. (Internet).(2002). Foods derived from modern technology: 20 questions on genetically modified foods. Available from: http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en/index.html
2.Smith, JM. Genetic Roulette. Fairfield: Yes Books.2007. p.10
3.Freese W, Schubert D. Safety testing and regulation of genetically engineered foods. Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews. Nov 2004. 21.
4.Society of Toxicology. The safety of genetically modified foods produced through biotechnology. Toxicol. Sci. 2003; 71:2-8.
5.Hill, AB. The environment and disease: association or causation? Proceeding of the Royal Society of Medicine 1965; 58:295-300.
6.Finamore A, Roselli M, Britti S, et al. Intestinal and peripheral immune response to MON 810 maize ingestion in weaning and old mice. J Agric. Food Chem. 2008; 56(23):11533-11539.
7.Malatesta M, Boraldi F, Annovi G, et al. A long-term study on female mice fed on a genetically modified soybean:effects on liver ageing. Histochem Cell Biol. 2008; 130:967-977.
8.Velimirov A, Binter C, Zentek J. Biological effects of transgenic maize NK603xMON810 fed in long term reproduction studies in mice. Report-Federal Ministry of Health, Family and Youth. 2008.
9.Ewen S, Pustzai A. Effects of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine.Lancet. 354:1353-1354.
10.Kilic A, Aday M. A three generational study with genetically modified Bt corn in rats: biochemical and histopathological investigation. Food Chem. Toxicol. 2008; 46(3):1164-1170.
11.Kroghsbo S, Madsen C, Poulsen M, et al. Immunotoxicological studies of genetically modified rice expression PHA-E lectin or Bt toxin in Wistar rats. Toxicology. 2008; 245:24-34.
12.Gurain-Sherman,D. 2009. Failure to yield: evaluating the performance of genetically engineered crops. Cambridge (MA): Union of Concerned Scientists.
13.Lofstedt R. The precautionary principle: risk, regulation and politics. Merton College, Oxford. 2002.
◦How Monsanto created the myth of GM feeding the world
Made by Monsanto: The corporate shaping of GM crops as a technology for the poor
AUTHOR: Dominic Glover
PUBLISHER: STEPS Working Paper 11, (2008)
ISBN: 978 1 85864 548 4
DOWNLOAD: http://www.steps-centre.org/PDFs/GM%20Crops%20web%20final_small.pdf
Extracts plus commentary from GMWatch:
Almost every day articles appear in the world's media claiming we must embrace GM foods if we're to feed the world, with the emphasis of late often on solving the food and climate crises via hardier, cheaper, more sustainable and more abundant GM crops.
But claims that GM crops are some sort of panacea are hardly new. A decade ago Monsanto ran an advertising campaign in Europe claiming: "Worrying about starving future generations won't feed them. Food biotechnology will."
Yet after two decades of GM research and 13 years of commercialization, what has the GM miracle actually delivered?
Hunger's still increasing and there are no commercialized GM crops that inherently increase yield, resist drought, or do anything else that might be thought critical to feeding the poor and hungry.
This is why Professor Robert Watson, the UK Government's Defra Chief Scientist, has stated, "The absence of GM crops is not the driver of hunger today." It's also why the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report, approved by over 400 scientists from around the world, and co-chaired by Prof Watson, pretty much sidelined GM crops.
http://www.bangmfood.org/feed-the-world/17-feeding-the-world/6-gm-no-solution-to-global-hunger
Even at the time of the Monsanto ads, though, the company knew perfectly well that the only GM crops it had developed were designed to meet the needs of large-scale commercial farmers, primarily in the industrialized world.
So how did this extravagant pro-poor rhetoric around GM crops actually arise?
That's the question that development specialist, Dominic Glover, has set out to answer. His new paper investigates the "simultaneous production of a technology widely recognised as having limited relevance to poverty alleviation alongside a narrative that strongly implied it was intended and designed to achieve that goal".
One key source of this storyline was Monsanto. Glover shows that the feed-the-world rhetoric emerged early on in Monsanto's development of its biotech sector.
He notes that during the 1960s and '70s, Monsanto senior executives recognised that they needed to radically transform a company increasingly threatened by the emergence of the environmental movement and by tougher environmental regulation:
"Monsanto had acquired a particularly unenviable reputation in this regard, as a major producer of both dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) - both persistent environmental pollutants posing serious risks to the environment and human health. Law suits and environmental clean-up costs began to cut into Monsanto's bottom line, but more seriously there was a real fear that a serious lapse could potentially bankrupt the company (Hertz et al. 2001)."
This fear was not misplaced because that's exactly what eventually happened. But by that point, Monsanto had managed to hive off the old core of the business into a new company called Solutia which took the hit, in place of the agricultural giant that Monsanto had by then become.
At the very time that senior executives were becoming convinced that Monsanto's long-term viability required it to take a new direction, Monsanto launched a new herbicide called Roundup (glyphosate) which rapidly became a runaway commercial success.
Within a few years of its launch in 1976, Roundup was being marketed in 115 countries:
"Sales grew by 20 per cent in 1981 and as the company increased production it was soon Monsanto's most profitable product (Monsanto 1981, 1983)... It soon became the single most important product of Monsanto's agriculture division, which contributed about 20 per cent of sales and around 45 per cent of operating income to the company's balance sheet each year during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, glyphosate remains the world’s biggest herbicide by volume of sales."
By 1990 with the help of Roundup, the agriculture division of Monsanto was significantly outperforming the chemicals division in terms of operating income, and the gap was increasing. But as Glover notes, while "such a blockbuster product uncorks a fountain of revenue", it:
"…also creates an uncomfortable dependency on the commercial fortunes of a single brand. Monsanto's management knew that the last of the patents protecting Roundup in the United States, its biggest market, would expire in the year 2000, opening the field to potential competitors. The company urgently needed a strategy to negotiate this hurdle and prolong the useful life of its 'cash cow'."
Biotechnology was increasingly seen not just as a valuable complement to Monsanto's chemical technology but as a way of enabling it to further expand into agriculture and secure its "cash cow". This lead eventually to the chemicals division being sold off altogether in September 1997:
"The spin-off indicated a major departure for Monsanto, since the chemicals division could be regarded as the historical core of the company, contributing almost US $3.7bn out of nearly US $9bn in annual sales in 1995 (Monsanto 1995). But the swelling importance of agriculture was clear."
However, as Glover also notes:
"Monsanto's transformation into a 'life science' company, with an agriculture strategy increasingly centred around biotechnology, was by no means smooth or seamless. Disagreements within the company, between the formerly unchallenged chemicals camp and the supporters of the emerging biotechnology, were a source of significant tension and conflict over a number of years (Charles 2001; Resetar et al. 1999; Sastry et al. 2002:286, n.3)."
Although the biotech advocates came to include most of the key senior executives in the company, they still needed a rhetorical posture that would galvanise support for their chosen strategic direction, both internally amongst the company's management and externally amongst the investors it needed to drive the strategy forward.
This is how "biotechnology came to be depicted, by many actors within the company as well as by the company as a whole to actors outside it, as a technology that had something to do with attaining agricultural sustainability and feeding the world."
This can be seen as early as Monsanto's 1981 annual report. This not only talks about using biotechnology as a valuable complement to Monsanto's chemical technology - "Biotechnology offers novel ways for Monsanto to manipulate molecules. And, manipulating molecules has been and continues to be the basis of Monsanto's chemical businesses " – but also talks about using biotechnology to insert valuable new traits into crops, and discusses using this technology to "feed a hungry world". Glover also notes that even at this early date, Monsanto was "committed to becoming a world leader in this field."
"Still, many people inside the company questioned the merits of the biotechnology research programme. Tangible results were slow to emerge, and those involved with the programme came under increasing pressure to justify their work. They often tried to do so by emphasising the long-term strategic potential of GM technology, even though the exact dimensions of this potential were uncertain. Robb Fraley, for instance, as head of the plant molecular biology research team, is said to have hyped the potential of GM crops as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Monsanto to dominate a whole new industry, invoking Microsoft and the market for personal computers and software as a powerful analogy (Charles 2001). But the nebulousness of such grandiose prospects did not have sufficient traction on its own.
"The more down-to-earth argument that really convinced most colleagues was that genetic engineering offered the best prospect of preserving the commercial life of Monsanto's most important product, Roundup. One former Monsanto researcher and manager told a revealing story which illustrates this point, showing at the same time how people within the company were telling one another stories designed to make strategic sense out of their activities in the context of an uncertain future. The Monsanto manager recounted how the company's former CEO, Dick Mahoney, once dropped into his laboratory during the 1980s. As the two men discussed the ongoing research taking place in the lab, Mahoney asked 'Why are we doing this?' Looking back, my informant recalled how he had cast around for plausible and convincing justifications for the company's continued investment in his work (and, of course, his own continued employment). His first line of argument related to the challenges Monsanto would face
once the patent expired on Roundup."
"…In the early 1980s, Monsanto scientists had noticed that certain bacteria inhabiting the waste outflows from the company's glyphosate manufacturing plants were impervious to the chemical. Ernie Jaworski and some of his colleagues reasoned that they could dramatically enhance Roundup's commercial value if they could introduce the genes responsible for this resistance to glyphosate into crop plants.
"Farmers would then be able to spray Roundup onto their fields even during the growing season, killing unwanted weeds without harming the crop. This would significantly expand the market for Roundup and, more importantly, help Monsanto to negotiate the expiry of its glyphosate patents, on which such a large slice of the company's income depended. With glyphosate-tolerant GM crops, Monsanto would be able to preserve its dominant share of the glyphosate market through a marketing strategy that would couple proprietary 'Roundup Ready' seeds, priced at a level high enough to recoup the company's substantial investment in R&D, with continued sales of Roundup, priced low enough to undercut potential competition from manufacturers of generic glyphosate (Charles 2001; McDonald 2001).
"Monsanto's heritage of agricultural chemicals thus had a profound impact on the first generation of products that emerged from its biotechnology research programme.
"…Monsanto's particular institutional features also helped to ensure that insect resistance would be the other type of GM crop appearing in the first generation. Apart from the fact that the introduction of the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) gene proved to be technically straightforward, with the prospect of delivering a significant commercial product using a single gene, the fact that Monsanto's strength lay primarily in herbicides rather than insecticides meant that GM insect-resistance technology opened up a new market segment without conflicting with or undermining any significant 'pesticide interest' within the company."
While Monsanto's biotech strategy "evolved around the company's existing customer base - that is to say, primarily large-scale, commercial farmers in the industrialised world - and crop–trait combinations that were both technically feasible and commercially viable", it was strategically useful to underplay this continuity with the company's history in the chemicals sector and existing markets, by energetically promoting the GM route as a radical break with its past - "a clean, green and environmentally friendly alternative to, rather than continuation of, the chemical-dependent paradigm in farming".
Glover notes that "a company does not win new customers and investors by claiming to be doing the same old things. In order to justify its heavy spending on R&D, Monsanto's managers needed to stress the remarkable, revolutionary possibilities opened up by genetic engineering, emphasising the decline of the old chemicals paradigm and sketching the potential advantages of founding a new industrial sector. "
Thus, "Although the company's technological strategy had been shaped by basic technical and commercial considerations, Monsanto's managers actually embarked on a concerted campaign to depict GM crops - and Monsanto as their chief provider - as an essential tool for addressing critically important future challenges in hunger, environmental sustainability and international development. It is important to note that these altruistic goals were not Monsanto's own. Instead, they served as vital human goals, challenges that humanity would necessarily have to address in order to survive. Monsanto's leaders' target was to ensure that their company, and its technologies, would be perceived as indispensable stepping stones on the path towards meeting those challenges. In this way, they aimed to convince both employees and investors that the company would be a vital player in future markets for agricultural technology, and so mobilise their support for the emerging corporate strategy. "
In PR terms this framing of GM crops as a technology for the poor proved a highly alluring one. It also helped Monsanto, once it became clear that European markets were largely closed to GM crops, to target developing-country markets which had been given an unexpected commercial importance for Monsanto. In addition, developing-country farmers became key symbolic stakeholders in debates about GM crops, and in assisting the branding of the technology.
But, as Glover notes, the gap remains between the storyline of GM crops as a pro-poor technology and the types of crops and traits that have actually been commercialized, ie the crops that Monsanto has marketed to developing-world farmers have been those that it developed for its existing customer base - large-scale commercial farmers primarily in the industrialised world.
Glover concludes that "although there was and remains a logical disconnection between the types of GM crops that have actually been commercialized by Monsanto, on one hand, and the company's rhetoric surrounding GM crops as a technology for the poor, on the other, the production of both the technology and the rhetoric can be seen to have been produced in tandem, driven and shaped by the mixture of commercial, institutional and technical considerations that were influencing the development of the company's strategy over many years."
This is how the hyping of GM crops as a solution to hunger and poverty was "Made by Monsanto".
AUTHOR: Dominic Glover
PUBLISHER: STEPS Working Paper 11, (2008)
ISBN: 978 1 85864 548 4
DOWNLOAD: http://www.steps-centre.org/PDFs/GM%20Crops%20web%20final_small.pdf
Extracts plus commentary from GMWatch:
Almost every day articles appear in the world's media claiming we must embrace GM foods if we're to feed the world, with the emphasis of late often on solving the food and climate crises via hardier, cheaper, more sustainable and more abundant GM crops.
But claims that GM crops are some sort of panacea are hardly new. A decade ago Monsanto ran an advertising campaign in Europe claiming: "Worrying about starving future generations won't feed them. Food biotechnology will."
Yet after two decades of GM research and 13 years of commercialization, what has the GM miracle actually delivered?
Hunger's still increasing and there are no commercialized GM crops that inherently increase yield, resist drought, or do anything else that might be thought critical to feeding the poor and hungry.
This is why Professor Robert Watson, the UK Government's Defra Chief Scientist, has stated, "The absence of GM crops is not the driver of hunger today." It's also why the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report, approved by over 400 scientists from around the world, and co-chaired by Prof Watson, pretty much sidelined GM crops.
http://www.bangmfood.org/feed-the-world/17-feeding-the-world/6-gm-no-solution-to-global-hunger
Even at the time of the Monsanto ads, though, the company knew perfectly well that the only GM crops it had developed were designed to meet the needs of large-scale commercial farmers, primarily in the industrialized world.
So how did this extravagant pro-poor rhetoric around GM crops actually arise?
That's the question that development specialist, Dominic Glover, has set out to answer. His new paper investigates the "simultaneous production of a technology widely recognised as having limited relevance to poverty alleviation alongside a narrative that strongly implied it was intended and designed to achieve that goal".
One key source of this storyline was Monsanto. Glover shows that the feed-the-world rhetoric emerged early on in Monsanto's development of its biotech sector.
He notes that during the 1960s and '70s, Monsanto senior executives recognised that they needed to radically transform a company increasingly threatened by the emergence of the environmental movement and by tougher environmental regulation:
"Monsanto had acquired a particularly unenviable reputation in this regard, as a major producer of both dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) - both persistent environmental pollutants posing serious risks to the environment and human health. Law suits and environmental clean-up costs began to cut into Monsanto's bottom line, but more seriously there was a real fear that a serious lapse could potentially bankrupt the company (Hertz et al. 2001)."
This fear was not misplaced because that's exactly what eventually happened. But by that point, Monsanto had managed to hive off the old core of the business into a new company called Solutia which took the hit, in place of the agricultural giant that Monsanto had by then become.
At the very time that senior executives were becoming convinced that Monsanto's long-term viability required it to take a new direction, Monsanto launched a new herbicide called Roundup (glyphosate) which rapidly became a runaway commercial success.
Within a few years of its launch in 1976, Roundup was being marketed in 115 countries:
"Sales grew by 20 per cent in 1981 and as the company increased production it was soon Monsanto's most profitable product (Monsanto 1981, 1983)... It soon became the single most important product of Monsanto's agriculture division, which contributed about 20 per cent of sales and around 45 per cent of operating income to the company's balance sheet each year during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, glyphosate remains the world’s biggest herbicide by volume of sales."
By 1990 with the help of Roundup, the agriculture division of Monsanto was significantly outperforming the chemicals division in terms of operating income, and the gap was increasing. But as Glover notes, while "such a blockbuster product uncorks a fountain of revenue", it:
"…also creates an uncomfortable dependency on the commercial fortunes of a single brand. Monsanto's management knew that the last of the patents protecting Roundup in the United States, its biggest market, would expire in the year 2000, opening the field to potential competitors. The company urgently needed a strategy to negotiate this hurdle and prolong the useful life of its 'cash cow'."
Biotechnology was increasingly seen not just as a valuable complement to Monsanto's chemical technology but as a way of enabling it to further expand into agriculture and secure its "cash cow". This lead eventually to the chemicals division being sold off altogether in September 1997:
"The spin-off indicated a major departure for Monsanto, since the chemicals division could be regarded as the historical core of the company, contributing almost US $3.7bn out of nearly US $9bn in annual sales in 1995 (Monsanto 1995). But the swelling importance of agriculture was clear."
However, as Glover also notes:
"Monsanto's transformation into a 'life science' company, with an agriculture strategy increasingly centred around biotechnology, was by no means smooth or seamless. Disagreements within the company, between the formerly unchallenged chemicals camp and the supporters of the emerging biotechnology, were a source of significant tension and conflict over a number of years (Charles 2001; Resetar et al. 1999; Sastry et al. 2002:286, n.3)."
Although the biotech advocates came to include most of the key senior executives in the company, they still needed a rhetorical posture that would galvanise support for their chosen strategic direction, both internally amongst the company's management and externally amongst the investors it needed to drive the strategy forward.
This is how "biotechnology came to be depicted, by many actors within the company as well as by the company as a whole to actors outside it, as a technology that had something to do with attaining agricultural sustainability and feeding the world."
This can be seen as early as Monsanto's 1981 annual report. This not only talks about using biotechnology as a valuable complement to Monsanto's chemical technology - "Biotechnology offers novel ways for Monsanto to manipulate molecules. And, manipulating molecules has been and continues to be the basis of Monsanto's chemical businesses " – but also talks about using biotechnology to insert valuable new traits into crops, and discusses using this technology to "feed a hungry world". Glover also notes that even at this early date, Monsanto was "committed to becoming a world leader in this field."
"Still, many people inside the company questioned the merits of the biotechnology research programme. Tangible results were slow to emerge, and those involved with the programme came under increasing pressure to justify their work. They often tried to do so by emphasising the long-term strategic potential of GM technology, even though the exact dimensions of this potential were uncertain. Robb Fraley, for instance, as head of the plant molecular biology research team, is said to have hyped the potential of GM crops as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Monsanto to dominate a whole new industry, invoking Microsoft and the market for personal computers and software as a powerful analogy (Charles 2001). But the nebulousness of such grandiose prospects did not have sufficient traction on its own.
"The more down-to-earth argument that really convinced most colleagues was that genetic engineering offered the best prospect of preserving the commercial life of Monsanto's most important product, Roundup. One former Monsanto researcher and manager told a revealing story which illustrates this point, showing at the same time how people within the company were telling one another stories designed to make strategic sense out of their activities in the context of an uncertain future. The Monsanto manager recounted how the company's former CEO, Dick Mahoney, once dropped into his laboratory during the 1980s. As the two men discussed the ongoing research taking place in the lab, Mahoney asked 'Why are we doing this?' Looking back, my informant recalled how he had cast around for plausible and convincing justifications for the company's continued investment in his work (and, of course, his own continued employment). His first line of argument related to the challenges Monsanto would face
once the patent expired on Roundup."
"…In the early 1980s, Monsanto scientists had noticed that certain bacteria inhabiting the waste outflows from the company's glyphosate manufacturing plants were impervious to the chemical. Ernie Jaworski and some of his colleagues reasoned that they could dramatically enhance Roundup's commercial value if they could introduce the genes responsible for this resistance to glyphosate into crop plants.
"Farmers would then be able to spray Roundup onto their fields even during the growing season, killing unwanted weeds without harming the crop. This would significantly expand the market for Roundup and, more importantly, help Monsanto to negotiate the expiry of its glyphosate patents, on which such a large slice of the company's income depended. With glyphosate-tolerant GM crops, Monsanto would be able to preserve its dominant share of the glyphosate market through a marketing strategy that would couple proprietary 'Roundup Ready' seeds, priced at a level high enough to recoup the company's substantial investment in R&D, with continued sales of Roundup, priced low enough to undercut potential competition from manufacturers of generic glyphosate (Charles 2001; McDonald 2001).
"Monsanto's heritage of agricultural chemicals thus had a profound impact on the first generation of products that emerged from its biotechnology research programme.
"…Monsanto's particular institutional features also helped to ensure that insect resistance would be the other type of GM crop appearing in the first generation. Apart from the fact that the introduction of the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) gene proved to be technically straightforward, with the prospect of delivering a significant commercial product using a single gene, the fact that Monsanto's strength lay primarily in herbicides rather than insecticides meant that GM insect-resistance technology opened up a new market segment without conflicting with or undermining any significant 'pesticide interest' within the company."
While Monsanto's biotech strategy "evolved around the company's existing customer base - that is to say, primarily large-scale, commercial farmers in the industrialised world - and crop–trait combinations that were both technically feasible and commercially viable", it was strategically useful to underplay this continuity with the company's history in the chemicals sector and existing markets, by energetically promoting the GM route as a radical break with its past - "a clean, green and environmentally friendly alternative to, rather than continuation of, the chemical-dependent paradigm in farming".
Glover notes that "a company does not win new customers and investors by claiming to be doing the same old things. In order to justify its heavy spending on R&D, Monsanto's managers needed to stress the remarkable, revolutionary possibilities opened up by genetic engineering, emphasising the decline of the old chemicals paradigm and sketching the potential advantages of founding a new industrial sector. "
Thus, "Although the company's technological strategy had been shaped by basic technical and commercial considerations, Monsanto's managers actually embarked on a concerted campaign to depict GM crops - and Monsanto as their chief provider - as an essential tool for addressing critically important future challenges in hunger, environmental sustainability and international development. It is important to note that these altruistic goals were not Monsanto's own. Instead, they served as vital human goals, challenges that humanity would necessarily have to address in order to survive. Monsanto's leaders' target was to ensure that their company, and its technologies, would be perceived as indispensable stepping stones on the path towards meeting those challenges. In this way, they aimed to convince both employees and investors that the company would be a vital player in future markets for agricultural technology, and so mobilise their support for the emerging corporate strategy. "
In PR terms this framing of GM crops as a technology for the poor proved a highly alluring one. It also helped Monsanto, once it became clear that European markets were largely closed to GM crops, to target developing-country markets which had been given an unexpected commercial importance for Monsanto. In addition, developing-country farmers became key symbolic stakeholders in debates about GM crops, and in assisting the branding of the technology.
But, as Glover notes, the gap remains between the storyline of GM crops as a pro-poor technology and the types of crops and traits that have actually been commercialized, ie the crops that Monsanto has marketed to developing-world farmers have been those that it developed for its existing customer base - large-scale commercial farmers primarily in the industrialised world.
Glover concludes that "although there was and remains a logical disconnection between the types of GM crops that have actually been commercialized by Monsanto, on one hand, and the company's rhetoric surrounding GM crops as a technology for the poor, on the other, the production of both the technology and the rhetoric can be seen to have been produced in tandem, driven and shaped by the mixture of commercial, institutional and technical considerations that were influencing the development of the company's strategy over many years."
This is how the hyping of GM crops as a solution to hunger and poverty was "Made by Monsanto".
Study criticises testing conducted by Brussels on GMOs being health hazards
Study criticises testing on GMOs
NOTE: Translated from French original by Claire Robinson for GMWatch. Access the study in the International Journal of Biological Sciences here: http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0438.htm
EXTRACT: [the study] brings to light "a significant underestimation of the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others. We demand the systematic publication of the results of these tests, which we could only obtain on a case by case basis by taking legal action."
Study criticises testing conducted by Brussels on GMOs
Agence France Presse, 8 July 2009
http://actu.orange.fr/articles/sciences/Une-etude-met-en-cause-les-tests-menes-par-Bruxelles-sur-les-OGM.html
AFP, Caen - A study conducted by eight international researchers calls into question the reliability of tests of the European Food Safety (EFSA) and the US FDA to assess the health risks of GMOs and pesticides, it was learned Wednesday.
The article, signed by French, Italian, New Zealand, British and American experts, is published by the website of the International Journal of Biological Science, according to a press release from the Research Committee of Independent Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN), chaired by former environment minister Corinne Lepage and based in Caen.
"Agricultural GM companies and evaluation committees systematically overlook the side effects of GMOs and pesticides. This is clearly illustrated by the EFSA and the US FDA, which evaluated the controversial GM maize varieties MON 863 and MON 810," said CRIIGEN.
It [the study] brings to light "a significant underestimation of the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others," said CRIIGEN.
"We demand the systematic publication of the results of these tests, which we could only obtain on a case by case basis by taking legal action," Gilles-Eric Seralini, one of eight authors of the article, who teaches at the University of Caen and chairs the scientific board of CRIIGEN, told Agence France Presse.
"The health crises may be more important than the international financial crisis because of the lack of transparency of the regulators," concludes CRIIGEN.
On Friday, France rejected the findings of the EFSA which judged that MON810 does not pose risks.
NOTE: Translated from French original by Claire Robinson for GMWatch. Access the study in the International Journal of Biological Sciences here: http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0438.htm
EXTRACT: [the study] brings to light "a significant underestimation of the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others. We demand the systematic publication of the results of these tests, which we could only obtain on a case by case basis by taking legal action."
Study criticises testing conducted by Brussels on GMOs
Agence France Presse, 8 July 2009
http://actu.orange.fr/articles/sciences/Une-etude-met-en-cause-les-tests-menes-par-Bruxelles-sur-les-OGM.html
AFP, Caen - A study conducted by eight international researchers calls into question the reliability of tests of the European Food Safety (EFSA) and the US FDA to assess the health risks of GMOs and pesticides, it was learned Wednesday.
The article, signed by French, Italian, New Zealand, British and American experts, is published by the website of the International Journal of Biological Science, according to a press release from the Research Committee of Independent Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN), chaired by former environment minister Corinne Lepage and based in Caen.
"Agricultural GM companies and evaluation committees systematically overlook the side effects of GMOs and pesticides. This is clearly illustrated by the EFSA and the US FDA, which evaluated the controversial GM maize varieties MON 863 and MON 810," said CRIIGEN.
It [the study] brings to light "a significant underestimation of the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others," said CRIIGEN.
"We demand the systematic publication of the results of these tests, which we could only obtain on a case by case basis by taking legal action," Gilles-Eric Seralini, one of eight authors of the article, who teaches at the University of Caen and chairs the scientific board of CRIIGEN, told Agence France Presse.
"The health crises may be more important than the international financial crisis because of the lack of transparency of the regulators," concludes CRIIGEN.
On Friday, France rejected the findings of the EFSA which judged that MON810 does not pose risks.
Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years
GM and pesticides report
NOTE: Below are extracts collected and summarized by GMWatch from the new report on the impacts of GM crops on pesticide use in the U.S. since their introduction some 13 years ago. The report draws on U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Its author is Dr Charles Benbrook. Benbrook worked in Washington, D.C. on agricultural policy, science and regulatory issues from 1979 through 1997, including 7 years as the Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences. He is now the Chief Scientist at the Organic Center.
Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years
November 2009
by Charles Benbrook
Extracts collected and summarized by GMWatch
On the report's purpose
This report explores the impact of the adoption of GM corn, soybean, and cotton on pesticide use in the United States, drawing principally on data from the US Department of Agriculture. The most striking finding is that GM crops have been responsible for an increase of 383 million pounds of herbicide use in the U.S. over the first 13 years of commercial use of GM crops (1996-2008).
This dramatic increase in the volume of herbicides applied swamps the decrease in insecticide use attributable to GM corn and cotton, making the overall chemical footprint of today's GM crops decidedly negative. The report identifies, and discusses in detail, the primary cause of the increase -- the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds.
The steep rise in the pounds of herbicides applied with respect to most GM crop acres is not news to farmers. Weed control is now widely acknowledged as a serious management problem within GM cropping systems. Farmers and weed scientists across the heartland and cotton belt are now struggling to devise affordable and eff ective strategies to deal with the resistant weeds emerging in the wake of herbicide-tolerant crops.
But skyrocketing herbicide use is news to the public at large, which still harbors the illusion, fed by misleading industry claims and advertising, that biotechnology crops are reducing pesticide use.
In addition to toxic pollution from pesticides, agriculture faces the twin challenges of climate change and burgeoning world populations. The biotechnology industry's current advertising campaigns promise to solve those problems, just as the industry once promised to reduce the chemical footprint of agriculture. Before we embrace GM crops as solution to these new challenges, we need a sober, data-driven appraisal of its track record on earlier pledges.
While the USDA continued to collect farm-level data on pesticide applications during most of the 13 years covered in this report, the Department has been essentially silent on the impacts of GM crops on pesticide use for almost a decade. This is why this report by Dr. Charles Benbrook was commissioned.
On the impacts of GM crops on pesticide use
GM crops have increased overall pesticide use by 318.4 million pounds over the first 13 years of commercial use, compared to the amount of pesticide likely to have been applied in the absence of HT (herbicide tolerant) and Bt seeds.
Bt corn and cotton have delivered consistent reductions in insecticide use totaling 64.2 million pounds over the 13 years. HT crops have increased herbicide use by a total of 382.6 million pounds over 13 years. HT soybeans increased herbicide use by 351 pounds (about 0.55 pound per acre), accounting for 92% of the total increase in herbicide use across the three HT crops.
Recently herbicide use on GM acres has veered sharply upward. Crop years 2007 and 2008 accounted for 46% of the increase in herbicide use over 13 years across the three HT crops (corn, soy and cotton). Herbicide use on HT crops rose a remarkable 31.4% from 2007 to 2008.
GM crops reduced overall pesticide use in the first three years of commercial introduction (1996-1998) by 1.2%, 2.3%, and 2.3% per year, but increased pesticide use by 20% in 2007 and by 27% in 2008.
Two major factors are driving the trend toward an increase in the pounds of herbicides used to control weeds on an acre planted to HT seeds, in comparison to conventional seeds:
*The emergence and rapid spread of weeds resistant to glyphosate, and
*Reductions in the application of herbicides applied on non-GM crop acres.
USDA NASS data show that since 1996, the glyphosate rate of application per crop year has tripled on cotton farms, doubled in the case of soybeans, and risen 39% on corn. The average annual increase in the pounds of glyphosate applied to cotton,
soybeans, and corn has been 18.2%, 9.8%, and 4.3%, respectively, since HT crops were introduced.
HT crops account for the lion’s share of total GM trait acreage - 72% over the first 13 years of commercial use and around three-quarters in most years. HT soybeans account for almost one-half of all GM trait acres. This is why HT soybeans are so important in terms of the overall impact of GM crops on the pounds of pesticides applied.
On the impact of Bt crops on pesticide use
The methodologies used by USDA to project pesticide use on conventional and GM-crop acres require a number of assumptions and projections, which may not be true.
1. One assumption is that Bt crop growers apply no chemical insecticides for the pests targeted by these traits, including cotton rootworm. But University of Illinois entomologists have documented spotty performance of Bt corn for Corn Root Worm control, especially under high population pressure, and reported that some growers have applied soil insecticides on Bt corn acres. So this assumption overstates the benefits of Bt technology regarding reducing insecticides.
2. Another assumption is that Bt corn planted for European Corn Borer and Southwestern Corn Borer can be credited with displacement of all the pounds of organophosphate or synthetic pyrethroid insecticides that would be applied to corn without the Bt trait. This assumption would overstate the benefits of the Bt technology regarding reducing insecticides, since a portion of most of these insecticides are applied by farmers for the control of other insects, including the Corn Root Worm.
3. A third assumption is that some portion of the acres planted to Bt corn displace insecticides. But before the commercial availability of Bt corn seed, some farmers were not treating their fields with insecticides. Historically, only around 35% of corn acres have been treated each year with an insecticide for control of the European Corn Borer, Southwestern Corn Borer, Corn Root Worm, and other insect pests. So this assumption overstates the benefits of Bt technology regarding reducing insecticides.
4. A fourth assumption is that the Bt toxins manufactured within the cells of Bt crops do not count as insecticides “applied” on Bt-crop acres. Opinions differ among experts on whether it is appropriate to count Bt toxins manufactured inside GM plants as equivalent to a Bt liquid insecticide sprayed on the outside of the plant.
One factor to bear in mind when considering this question is that liquid sprays expose pest populations to short-lived selection pressure, thereby reducing the risk of resistance. Bt liquid sprays are applied only when and as needed, consistent with the core principles of integrated pest management (IPM).
Bt plants, however, produce the toxin continuously during the growing season, not just when needed, and in nearly all plant tissues, not just where the toxins are needed to control attacking insects. In a year with low pest pressure, farmers can decide not to spray insecticides on a corn field, but they cannot stop Bt hybrids from manufacturing Bt toxins in nearly all plant cells.
On glyphosate-resistant weeds
Glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds were practically unknown before the introduction of RR crops in 1996. Today, nine or more GR weeds collectively infest millions of acres of U.S. cropland. Thousands of fields harbor two or more resistant weeds. The South is most heavily impacted, though resistant weeds are rapidly emerging in the Midwest, and as far north as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Farmers can respond to resistant weeds on acres planted to HT crops in five ways:
*Applying additional herbicide active ingredients,
*Increasing herbicide application rates,
*Making multiple applications of herbicides previously sprayed only once,
*Through greater reliance on tillage for weed control, and
*By manual weeding.
In the period covered by this report, the first three of the above five responses have been by far the most common, and each increases the pounds of herbicides applied on HT crop acres.
GR pigweed (Palmer amaranth) has spread dramatically across the South since the first resistant populations were confirmed in 2005, and already poses a major threat to U.S. cotton production. Some infestations are so severe that cotton farmers have been forced to abandon cropland, or resort to the preindustrial practice of “chopping cotton” (hoeing weeds by hand).
GR weeds are not only driving increases in the use of glyphosate, but also the increased use of more toxic herbicides, including paraquat and 2,4-D, one component of the Vietnam War defoliant, Agent Orange.
On how GR weed problems will impact health and the environment
Growing reliance on older, higher-risk herbicides for management of resistant weeds on HT crop acres is now inevitable in the foreseeable future and will markedly deepen the environmental and public health footprint of weed management on over 100 million acres of U.S. cropland. This footprint will both deepen and grow more diverse, encompassing heightened risk of birth defects and other reproductive problems, more severe impacts on aquatic ecosystems, and more frequent instances of herbicide-driven damage to nearby crops and plants.
On the road ahead for GM crops
Crop year 2009 will probably mark several tipping points for RR crops. The acres planted to HT soybeans fell 1% from the year before, and will likely fall by a few additional percentage points in 2010. Farmer demand for conventional soybeans is outstripping supply in several states, and universities and regional seed companies are working together to close the gap. Reasons given by farmers for turning away from the RR system include the cost and challenges inherent in dealing with GR weeds, the sharply increasing price of RR seeds, premium prices offered for non-GM soybeans, the poorer than expected and promised yield performance of RR 2 soybeans in 2009, and the ability of farmers to save and replant conventional seeds (a traditional practice made illegal with the purchase of HT/RR seeds).
In regions where farmers are combating resistant weeds, university experts are projecting increases of up to $80 per acre in costs associated with HT crops in 2010. This increase represents a remarkable 28% of soybean income per acre over operating costs.
The economic picture dramatically darkens for farmers combating resistant weeds under average soybean yields (36 bushels) and market prices ($6.50 per bushel). Such average conditions would generate about $234 in gross income per acre. The estimated $80 increase in 2010 costs per acre of HT soybeans would then account for one-third of gross income per acre, and total cash operating costs would exceed $200 per acre, leaving just $34 to cover land, labor, management, debt, and all other fixed costs. Such a scenario leaves little or no room for profit at the farm level.
Monsanto and Syngenta are now offering to pay farmers rebates on the order of $12 per acre to spray herbicides that work through a mode of action different from glyphosate. Monsanto’s program will even pay farmers to purchase herbicides sold by competitors, a sign of how seriously Monsanto now views the threat posed by resistance to its own product.
While corn, soybean, and cotton farmers view the spread of resistant weeds as a slow moving train wreck eroding their bottom line, the seed and pesticide industry sees new market opportunities and profit potential arising in the wake of resistant weeds. A large portion of industry R&D investments are going into the development of crops that will either withstand higher rates of glyphosate applications, or tolerate applications of additional herbicides, or both. In short, the industry’s response is more of the same.
One major biotech company has applied for and received a patent covering HT crops that can be directly sprayed with herbicide products falling within seven or more different chemical families.
NOTE: Below are extracts collected and summarized by GMWatch from the new report on the impacts of GM crops on pesticide use in the U.S. since their introduction some 13 years ago. The report draws on U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Its author is Dr Charles Benbrook. Benbrook worked in Washington, D.C. on agricultural policy, science and regulatory issues from 1979 through 1997, including 7 years as the Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences. He is now the Chief Scientist at the Organic Center.
Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years
November 2009
by Charles Benbrook
Extracts collected and summarized by GMWatch
On the report's purpose
This report explores the impact of the adoption of GM corn, soybean, and cotton on pesticide use in the United States, drawing principally on data from the US Department of Agriculture. The most striking finding is that GM crops have been responsible for an increase of 383 million pounds of herbicide use in the U.S. over the first 13 years of commercial use of GM crops (1996-2008).
This dramatic increase in the volume of herbicides applied swamps the decrease in insecticide use attributable to GM corn and cotton, making the overall chemical footprint of today's GM crops decidedly negative. The report identifies, and discusses in detail, the primary cause of the increase -- the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds.
The steep rise in the pounds of herbicides applied with respect to most GM crop acres is not news to farmers. Weed control is now widely acknowledged as a serious management problem within GM cropping systems. Farmers and weed scientists across the heartland and cotton belt are now struggling to devise affordable and eff ective strategies to deal with the resistant weeds emerging in the wake of herbicide-tolerant crops.
But skyrocketing herbicide use is news to the public at large, which still harbors the illusion, fed by misleading industry claims and advertising, that biotechnology crops are reducing pesticide use.
In addition to toxic pollution from pesticides, agriculture faces the twin challenges of climate change and burgeoning world populations. The biotechnology industry's current advertising campaigns promise to solve those problems, just as the industry once promised to reduce the chemical footprint of agriculture. Before we embrace GM crops as solution to these new challenges, we need a sober, data-driven appraisal of its track record on earlier pledges.
While the USDA continued to collect farm-level data on pesticide applications during most of the 13 years covered in this report, the Department has been essentially silent on the impacts of GM crops on pesticide use for almost a decade. This is why this report by Dr. Charles Benbrook was commissioned.
On the impacts of GM crops on pesticide use
GM crops have increased overall pesticide use by 318.4 million pounds over the first 13 years of commercial use, compared to the amount of pesticide likely to have been applied in the absence of HT (herbicide tolerant) and Bt seeds.
Bt corn and cotton have delivered consistent reductions in insecticide use totaling 64.2 million pounds over the 13 years. HT crops have increased herbicide use by a total of 382.6 million pounds over 13 years. HT soybeans increased herbicide use by 351 pounds (about 0.55 pound per acre), accounting for 92% of the total increase in herbicide use across the three HT crops.
Recently herbicide use on GM acres has veered sharply upward. Crop years 2007 and 2008 accounted for 46% of the increase in herbicide use over 13 years across the three HT crops (corn, soy and cotton). Herbicide use on HT crops rose a remarkable 31.4% from 2007 to 2008.
GM crops reduced overall pesticide use in the first three years of commercial introduction (1996-1998) by 1.2%, 2.3%, and 2.3% per year, but increased pesticide use by 20% in 2007 and by 27% in 2008.
Two major factors are driving the trend toward an increase in the pounds of herbicides used to control weeds on an acre planted to HT seeds, in comparison to conventional seeds:
*The emergence and rapid spread of weeds resistant to glyphosate, and
*Reductions in the application of herbicides applied on non-GM crop acres.
USDA NASS data show that since 1996, the glyphosate rate of application per crop year has tripled on cotton farms, doubled in the case of soybeans, and risen 39% on corn. The average annual increase in the pounds of glyphosate applied to cotton,
soybeans, and corn has been 18.2%, 9.8%, and 4.3%, respectively, since HT crops were introduced.
HT crops account for the lion’s share of total GM trait acreage - 72% over the first 13 years of commercial use and around three-quarters in most years. HT soybeans account for almost one-half of all GM trait acres. This is why HT soybeans are so important in terms of the overall impact of GM crops on the pounds of pesticides applied.
On the impact of Bt crops on pesticide use
The methodologies used by USDA to project pesticide use on conventional and GM-crop acres require a number of assumptions and projections, which may not be true.
1. One assumption is that Bt crop growers apply no chemical insecticides for the pests targeted by these traits, including cotton rootworm. But University of Illinois entomologists have documented spotty performance of Bt corn for Corn Root Worm control, especially under high population pressure, and reported that some growers have applied soil insecticides on Bt corn acres. So this assumption overstates the benefits of Bt technology regarding reducing insecticides.
2. Another assumption is that Bt corn planted for European Corn Borer and Southwestern Corn Borer can be credited with displacement of all the pounds of organophosphate or synthetic pyrethroid insecticides that would be applied to corn without the Bt trait. This assumption would overstate the benefits of the Bt technology regarding reducing insecticides, since a portion of most of these insecticides are applied by farmers for the control of other insects, including the Corn Root Worm.
3. A third assumption is that some portion of the acres planted to Bt corn displace insecticides. But before the commercial availability of Bt corn seed, some farmers were not treating their fields with insecticides. Historically, only around 35% of corn acres have been treated each year with an insecticide for control of the European Corn Borer, Southwestern Corn Borer, Corn Root Worm, and other insect pests. So this assumption overstates the benefits of Bt technology regarding reducing insecticides.
4. A fourth assumption is that the Bt toxins manufactured within the cells of Bt crops do not count as insecticides “applied” on Bt-crop acres. Opinions differ among experts on whether it is appropriate to count Bt toxins manufactured inside GM plants as equivalent to a Bt liquid insecticide sprayed on the outside of the plant.
One factor to bear in mind when considering this question is that liquid sprays expose pest populations to short-lived selection pressure, thereby reducing the risk of resistance. Bt liquid sprays are applied only when and as needed, consistent with the core principles of integrated pest management (IPM).
Bt plants, however, produce the toxin continuously during the growing season, not just when needed, and in nearly all plant tissues, not just where the toxins are needed to control attacking insects. In a year with low pest pressure, farmers can decide not to spray insecticides on a corn field, but they cannot stop Bt hybrids from manufacturing Bt toxins in nearly all plant cells.
On glyphosate-resistant weeds
Glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds were practically unknown before the introduction of RR crops in 1996. Today, nine or more GR weeds collectively infest millions of acres of U.S. cropland. Thousands of fields harbor two or more resistant weeds. The South is most heavily impacted, though resistant weeds are rapidly emerging in the Midwest, and as far north as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Farmers can respond to resistant weeds on acres planted to HT crops in five ways:
*Applying additional herbicide active ingredients,
*Increasing herbicide application rates,
*Making multiple applications of herbicides previously sprayed only once,
*Through greater reliance on tillage for weed control, and
*By manual weeding.
In the period covered by this report, the first three of the above five responses have been by far the most common, and each increases the pounds of herbicides applied on HT crop acres.
GR pigweed (Palmer amaranth) has spread dramatically across the South since the first resistant populations were confirmed in 2005, and already poses a major threat to U.S. cotton production. Some infestations are so severe that cotton farmers have been forced to abandon cropland, or resort to the preindustrial practice of “chopping cotton” (hoeing weeds by hand).
GR weeds are not only driving increases in the use of glyphosate, but also the increased use of more toxic herbicides, including paraquat and 2,4-D, one component of the Vietnam War defoliant, Agent Orange.
On how GR weed problems will impact health and the environment
Growing reliance on older, higher-risk herbicides for management of resistant weeds on HT crop acres is now inevitable in the foreseeable future and will markedly deepen the environmental and public health footprint of weed management on over 100 million acres of U.S. cropland. This footprint will both deepen and grow more diverse, encompassing heightened risk of birth defects and other reproductive problems, more severe impacts on aquatic ecosystems, and more frequent instances of herbicide-driven damage to nearby crops and plants.
On the road ahead for GM crops
Crop year 2009 will probably mark several tipping points for RR crops. The acres planted to HT soybeans fell 1% from the year before, and will likely fall by a few additional percentage points in 2010. Farmer demand for conventional soybeans is outstripping supply in several states, and universities and regional seed companies are working together to close the gap. Reasons given by farmers for turning away from the RR system include the cost and challenges inherent in dealing with GR weeds, the sharply increasing price of RR seeds, premium prices offered for non-GM soybeans, the poorer than expected and promised yield performance of RR 2 soybeans in 2009, and the ability of farmers to save and replant conventional seeds (a traditional practice made illegal with the purchase of HT/RR seeds).
In regions where farmers are combating resistant weeds, university experts are projecting increases of up to $80 per acre in costs associated with HT crops in 2010. This increase represents a remarkable 28% of soybean income per acre over operating costs.
The economic picture dramatically darkens for farmers combating resistant weeds under average soybean yields (36 bushels) and market prices ($6.50 per bushel). Such average conditions would generate about $234 in gross income per acre. The estimated $80 increase in 2010 costs per acre of HT soybeans would then account for one-third of gross income per acre, and total cash operating costs would exceed $200 per acre, leaving just $34 to cover land, labor, management, debt, and all other fixed costs. Such a scenario leaves little or no room for profit at the farm level.
Monsanto and Syngenta are now offering to pay farmers rebates on the order of $12 per acre to spray herbicides that work through a mode of action different from glyphosate. Monsanto’s program will even pay farmers to purchase herbicides sold by competitors, a sign of how seriously Monsanto now views the threat posed by resistance to its own product.
While corn, soybean, and cotton farmers view the spread of resistant weeds as a slow moving train wreck eroding their bottom line, the seed and pesticide industry sees new market opportunities and profit potential arising in the wake of resistant weeds. A large portion of industry R&D investments are going into the development of crops that will either withstand higher rates of glyphosate applications, or tolerate applications of additional herbicides, or both. In short, the industry’s response is more of the same.
One major biotech company has applied for and received a patent covering HT crops that can be directly sprayed with herbicide products falling within seven or more different chemical families.
10 reasons why we don’t need GM foods
With the cost of food recently skyrocketing – hitting not just shoppers but the poor and hungry in the developing world – genetically modified (GM) foods are once again being promoted as the way to feed the world. But this is little short of a confidence trick. Far from needing more GM foods, there are urgent reasons why we need to ban them altogether.
1. GM foods won’t solve the food crisis
A 2008 World Bank report concluded that increased biofuel production is the major cause of the increase in food prices.[1] GM giant Monsanto has been at the heart of the lobbying for biofuels (crops grown for fuel rather than food) — while profiting enormously from the resulting food crisis and using it as a PR opportunity to promote GM foods!
“The climate crisis was used to boost biofuels, helping to create the food crisis; and now the food crisis is being used to revive the fortunes of the GM industry.” — Daniel Howden, Africa correspondent of The Independent[2]
“The cynic in me thinks that they’re just using the current food crisis and the fuel crisis as a springboard to push GM crops back on to the public agenda. I understand why they’re doing it, but the danger is that if they’re making these claims about GM crops solving the problem of drought or feeding the world, that’s bullshit.” – Prof Denis Murphy, head of biotechnology at the University of Glamorgan in Wales[3]
2. GM crops do not increase yield potential
Despite the promises, GM has not increased the yield potential of any commercialised crops.[4] In fact, studies show that the most widely grown GM crop, GM soya, has suffered reduced yields.[5]
A report that analyzed nearly two decades worth of peer reviewed research on the yield of the primary GM food/feed crops, soybeans and corn (maize), reveals that despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase US crop yields. The author, former US EPA and US FDA biotech specialist Dr Gurian-Sherman, concludes that when it comes to yield, “Traditional breeding outperforms genetic engineering hands down.”[6]
“Let’s be clear. As of this year [2008], there are no commercialized GM crops that inherently increase yield. Similarly, there are no GM crops on the market that were engineered to resist drought, reduce fertilizer pollution or save soil. Not one.” – Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman[7]
3. GM crops increase pesticide use
US government data shows that in the US, GM crops have produced an overall increase, not decrease, in pesticide use compared to conventional crops.[8]
“The promise was that you could use less chemicals and produce a greater yield. But let me tell you none of this is true.” – Bill Christison, President of the US National Family Farm Coalition[9]
4. There are better ways to feed the world
A major UN/World Bank-sponsored report compiled by 400 scientists and endorsed by 58 countries concluded that GM crops have little to offer global agriculture and the challenges of poverty, hunger, and climate change, because better alternatives are available. In particular, the report championed “agroecological” farming as the sustainable way forward for developing countries.[10]
5. Other farm technologies are more successful
Integrated Pest Management and other innovative low-input or organic methods of controlling pests and boosting yields have proven highly effective, particularly in the developing world.[11] Other plant breeding technologies, such as Marker Assisted Selection (non-GM genetic mapping), are widely expected to boost global agricultural productivity more effectively and safely than GM.[12] [13]
“The quiet revolution is happening in gene mapping, helping us understand crops better. That is up and running and could have a far greater impact on agriculture [than GM].” – Prof John Snape, head of the department of crop genetics, John Innes Centre[14]
6. GM foods have not been shown to be safe to eat
Genetic modification is a crude and imprecise way of incorporating foreign genetic material (e.g. from viruses, bacteria) into crops, with unpredictable consequences. The resulting GM foods have undergone little rigorous and no long-term safety testing, but animal feeding tests have shown worrying health effects.[15] Only one study has been published on the direct effects on humans of eating a GM food.[16] It found unexpected effects on gut bacteria, but was never followed up.
It is claimed that Americans have eaten GM foods for years with no ill effects. But these foods are unlabeled in the US and no one has monitored the consequences. With other novel foods like trans fats, it has taken decades to realize that they have caused millions of premature deaths.[17]
“We are confronted with the most powerful technology the world has ever known, and it is being rapidly deployed with almost no thought whatsoever to its consequences.” — Dr Suzanne Wuerthele, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) toxicologist
7. Stealth GMOs in animal feed — without consumers’ consent
Meat, eggs and dairy products from animals raised on the millions of tons of GM feed imported into Europe do not have to be labelled. Some studies show that contrary to GM and food industry claims, animals raised on GM feed ARE different from those raised on non-GM feed.[18] Other studies show that if GM crops are fed to animals, GM material can appear in the resulting products[19] and that the animals’ health can be affected.[20] So eating “stealth GMOs” may affect the health of consumers.
8. GM crops are a long-term economic disaster for farmers
A 2009 report showed that GM seed prices in America have increased dramatically, compared to non-GM and organic seeds, cutting average farm incomes for US farmers growing GM crops. The report concluded, “At the present time there is a massive disconnect between the sometimes lofty rhetoric from those championing biotechnology as the proven path toward global food security and what is actually happening on farms in the US that have grown dependent on GM seeds and are now dealing with the consequences.”[21]
9. GM and non-GM cannot co-exist
GM contamination of conventional and organic food is increasing. An unapproved GM rice that was grown for only one year in field trials was found to have extensively contaminated the US rice supply and seed stocks.[22] In Canada, the organic oilseed rape industry has been destroyed by contamination from GM rape.[23] In Spain, a study found that GM maize “has caused a drastic reduction in organic cultivations of this grain and is making their coexistence practically impossible”.[24]
The time has come to choose between a GM-based, or a non-GM-based, world food supply.
“If some people are allowed to choose to grow, sell and consume GM foods, soon nobody will be able to choose food, or a biosphere, free of GM. It’s a one way choice, like the introduction of rabbits or cane toads to Australia; once it’s made, it can’t be reversed.” – Roger Levett, specialist in sustainable development[25]
10. We can’t trust GM companies
The big biotech firms pushing their GM foods have a terrible history of toxic contamination and public deception.[26] GM is attractive to them because it gives them patents that allow monopoly control over the world’s food supply. They have taken to harassing and intimidating farmers for the “crime” of saving patented seed or “stealing” patented genes — even if those genes got into the farmer’s fields through accidental contamination by wind or insects.[27]
“Farmers are being sued for having GMOs on their property that they did not buy, do not want, will not use and cannot sell.” – Tom Wiley, North Dakota farmer[28]
References
1. A Note on Rising Food Prices. Donald Mitchell, World Bank report, 2008. http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Environment/documents/2008/07/10/Biofuels.PDF
2. Hope for Africa lies in political reforms. Daniel Howden, The Independent, 8 September 2008, http://www.independent.co.uk:80/opinion/commentators/daniel-howden-hope-for-africa-lies-in-political-reforms-922487.html
3. GM: it’s safe, but it’s not a saviour. Rob Lyons, Spiked Online, 7 July 2008, http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5438/
4. The adoption of bioengineered crops. Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo and William D. McBride, US Department of Agriculture Report, May 2002, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer810/aer810.pdf
5. Glyphosate-resistant soyabean cultivar yields compared with sister lines. Elmore, R.W. et al., Agronomy Journal, Vol. 93, No. 2, 2001, pp. 408–412
6. Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops. Doug Gurian-Sherman, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2009, http://tiny.cc/eqZST
7. Genetic engineering — a crop of hyperbole. Doug Gurian-Sherman, The San Diego Union Tribune, 18 June 2008, http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080618/news_lz1e18gurian.html
8. Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years. Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., The Organic Center, November 2009, http://www.organic-center.org/science.pest.php?action=view&report_id=159
9. Family Farmers Warn of Dangers of Genetically Engineered Crops. Bill Christison, In Motion magazine, 29 July 1998, http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/genet1.html
10. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Global Summary for Decision Makers (IAASTD). Beintema, N. et al., 2008, http://www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=IAASTD%20Reports&ItemID=2713
11. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Global Summary for Decision Makers (IAASTD). Beintema, N. et al., 2008, http://www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=IAASTD%20Reports&ItemID=2713
12. Marker-assisted selection: an approach for precision plant breeding in the twenty-first century. Collard, B.C.Y. and D.J. Mackill, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, Vol. 363, 2008, pp. 557-572, 2008
13. Breeding for abiotic stresses for sustainable agriculture. Witcombe J.R. et al., Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 2008, Vol. 363, pp. 703-716
14. Gene mapping the friendly face of GM technology. Professor John Snape, Farmers Weekly, 1 March 2002, p. 54
15. Here is a small selection of such papers: Fine structural analysis of pancreatic acinar cell nuclei from mice fed on GM soybean. Malatesta, M. et al., Eur. J. Histochem., Vol. 47, 2003, pp. 385–388; Ultrastructural morphometrical and immunocytochemical analyses of hepatocyte nuclei from mice fed on genetically modified soybean. Malatesta, M. et al., Cell Struct Funct., Vol. 27, 2002, pp. 173-180; Ultrastructural analysis of testes from mice fed on genetically modified soybean. Vecchio L. et al., Eur. J. Histochem., Vol. 48, pp. 448-454, 2004; A long-term study on female mice fed on a genetically modified soybean: effects on liver ageing. Malatesta M. et al., Histochem Cell Biol., Vol. 130, 2008, pp. 967-977; Effects of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine. Ewen S.W. and A. Pusztai, The Lancet, Vol. 354, 1999, pp. 1353–1354; New Analysis of a Rat Feeding Study with a Genetically Modified Maize Reveals Signs of Hepatorenal Toxicity. Séralini, G.-E. et al., Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol., Vol. 52, 2007, pp. 596-602.
16. Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract. Netherwood T. et al., Nature Biotechnology, Vol. 22, 2004, pp. 204–209.
17. Trans Fats: The story behind the label. Paula Hartman Cohen, Harvard Public Health Review, 2006, http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/review/rvw_spring06/rvwspr06_transfats.html
18. Report on animals exposed to GM ingredients in animal feed. Professor Jack A. Heinemann, PhD. Prepared for the Commerce Commission of New Zealand, 24 July 2009, http://bit.ly/4HcJuJ
19. Detection of Transgenic and Endogenous Plant DNA in Digesta and Tissues of Sheep and Pigs Fed Roundup Ready Canola Meal. Sharma, R. et al., J. Agric. Food Chem., Vol. 54, No. 5, 2006, pp. 1699–1709; Assessing the transfer of genetically modified DNA from feed to animal tissues. Mazza, R. et al., Transgenic Res., Vol. 14, No. 5, 2005, pp. 775–784; Detection of genetically modified DNA sequences in milk from the Italian market. Agodi, A., et al., Int. J. Hyg. Environ. Health, Vol. 209, 2006, pp. 81–88
20. Report on animals exposed to GM ingredients in animal feed. Professor Jack A. Heinemann, PhD. Prepared for the Commerce Commission of New Zealand, 24 July 2009, http://bit.ly/4HcJuJ
21. The Magnitude and Impacts of the Biotech and Organic Seed Price Premium. Dr Charles Benbrook, The Organic Center, December 2009, http://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/Seeds_Final_11-30-09.pdf
22. Risky business: Economic and regulatory impacts from the unintended release of genetically engineered rice varieties into the rice merchandising system of the US. Blue, Dr E. Neal, report for Greenpeace, 2007, http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/risky-business.pdf
23. Seeds of doubt: North American farmers’ experience of GM crops. Soil Association, 2002, http://www.soilassociation.org/seedsofdoubt
24. Coexistence of plants and coexistence of farmers: Is an individual choice possible? Binimelis, R., Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Vol. 21, No. 2, April 2008
25. Choice: Less can be more. Roger Levett, Food Ethics magazine, Vol. 3, No. 3, Autumn 2008, p. 11, http://www.foodethicscouncil.org/node/384
26. See, for example, Marie-Monique Robin’s documentary film, Le Monde Selon Monsanto (The World According to Monsanto), ARTE, 2008; and the website of the NGO, Coalition Against Bayer-Dangers, www.cbgnetwork.org
27. GM company Monsanto has launched many such lawsuits against farmers. A famous example is the case of the Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser. Just one article on this case is “GM firm sues Canadian farmer”, BBC News Online, 6 June 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/779265.stm
28. Monsanto ”Seed Police” Scrutinize Farmers. Stephen Leahy, InterPress Service, 15 January 2004, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0115-04.htm
1. GM foods won’t solve the food crisis
A 2008 World Bank report concluded that increased biofuel production is the major cause of the increase in food prices.[1] GM giant Monsanto has been at the heart of the lobbying for biofuels (crops grown for fuel rather than food) — while profiting enormously from the resulting food crisis and using it as a PR opportunity to promote GM foods!
“The climate crisis was used to boost biofuels, helping to create the food crisis; and now the food crisis is being used to revive the fortunes of the GM industry.” — Daniel Howden, Africa correspondent of The Independent[2]
“The cynic in me thinks that they’re just using the current food crisis and the fuel crisis as a springboard to push GM crops back on to the public agenda. I understand why they’re doing it, but the danger is that if they’re making these claims about GM crops solving the problem of drought or feeding the world, that’s bullshit.” – Prof Denis Murphy, head of biotechnology at the University of Glamorgan in Wales[3]
2. GM crops do not increase yield potential
Despite the promises, GM has not increased the yield potential of any commercialised crops.[4] In fact, studies show that the most widely grown GM crop, GM soya, has suffered reduced yields.[5]
A report that analyzed nearly two decades worth of peer reviewed research on the yield of the primary GM food/feed crops, soybeans and corn (maize), reveals that despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase US crop yields. The author, former US EPA and US FDA biotech specialist Dr Gurian-Sherman, concludes that when it comes to yield, “Traditional breeding outperforms genetic engineering hands down.”[6]
“Let’s be clear. As of this year [2008], there are no commercialized GM crops that inherently increase yield. Similarly, there are no GM crops on the market that were engineered to resist drought, reduce fertilizer pollution or save soil. Not one.” – Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman[7]
3. GM crops increase pesticide use
US government data shows that in the US, GM crops have produced an overall increase, not decrease, in pesticide use compared to conventional crops.[8]
“The promise was that you could use less chemicals and produce a greater yield. But let me tell you none of this is true.” – Bill Christison, President of the US National Family Farm Coalition[9]
4. There are better ways to feed the world
A major UN/World Bank-sponsored report compiled by 400 scientists and endorsed by 58 countries concluded that GM crops have little to offer global agriculture and the challenges of poverty, hunger, and climate change, because better alternatives are available. In particular, the report championed “agroecological” farming as the sustainable way forward for developing countries.[10]
5. Other farm technologies are more successful
Integrated Pest Management and other innovative low-input or organic methods of controlling pests and boosting yields have proven highly effective, particularly in the developing world.[11] Other plant breeding technologies, such as Marker Assisted Selection (non-GM genetic mapping), are widely expected to boost global agricultural productivity more effectively and safely than GM.[12] [13]
“The quiet revolution is happening in gene mapping, helping us understand crops better. That is up and running and could have a far greater impact on agriculture [than GM].” – Prof John Snape, head of the department of crop genetics, John Innes Centre[14]
6. GM foods have not been shown to be safe to eat
Genetic modification is a crude and imprecise way of incorporating foreign genetic material (e.g. from viruses, bacteria) into crops, with unpredictable consequences. The resulting GM foods have undergone little rigorous and no long-term safety testing, but animal feeding tests have shown worrying health effects.[15] Only one study has been published on the direct effects on humans of eating a GM food.[16] It found unexpected effects on gut bacteria, but was never followed up.
It is claimed that Americans have eaten GM foods for years with no ill effects. But these foods are unlabeled in the US and no one has monitored the consequences. With other novel foods like trans fats, it has taken decades to realize that they have caused millions of premature deaths.[17]
“We are confronted with the most powerful technology the world has ever known, and it is being rapidly deployed with almost no thought whatsoever to its consequences.” — Dr Suzanne Wuerthele, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) toxicologist
7. Stealth GMOs in animal feed — without consumers’ consent
Meat, eggs and dairy products from animals raised on the millions of tons of GM feed imported into Europe do not have to be labelled. Some studies show that contrary to GM and food industry claims, animals raised on GM feed ARE different from those raised on non-GM feed.[18] Other studies show that if GM crops are fed to animals, GM material can appear in the resulting products[19] and that the animals’ health can be affected.[20] So eating “stealth GMOs” may affect the health of consumers.
8. GM crops are a long-term economic disaster for farmers
A 2009 report showed that GM seed prices in America have increased dramatically, compared to non-GM and organic seeds, cutting average farm incomes for US farmers growing GM crops. The report concluded, “At the present time there is a massive disconnect between the sometimes lofty rhetoric from those championing biotechnology as the proven path toward global food security and what is actually happening on farms in the US that have grown dependent on GM seeds and are now dealing with the consequences.”[21]
9. GM and non-GM cannot co-exist
GM contamination of conventional and organic food is increasing. An unapproved GM rice that was grown for only one year in field trials was found to have extensively contaminated the US rice supply and seed stocks.[22] In Canada, the organic oilseed rape industry has been destroyed by contamination from GM rape.[23] In Spain, a study found that GM maize “has caused a drastic reduction in organic cultivations of this grain and is making their coexistence practically impossible”.[24]
The time has come to choose between a GM-based, or a non-GM-based, world food supply.
“If some people are allowed to choose to grow, sell and consume GM foods, soon nobody will be able to choose food, or a biosphere, free of GM. It’s a one way choice, like the introduction of rabbits or cane toads to Australia; once it’s made, it can’t be reversed.” – Roger Levett, specialist in sustainable development[25]
10. We can’t trust GM companies
The big biotech firms pushing their GM foods have a terrible history of toxic contamination and public deception.[26] GM is attractive to them because it gives them patents that allow monopoly control over the world’s food supply. They have taken to harassing and intimidating farmers for the “crime” of saving patented seed or “stealing” patented genes — even if those genes got into the farmer’s fields through accidental contamination by wind or insects.[27]
“Farmers are being sued for having GMOs on their property that they did not buy, do not want, will not use and cannot sell.” – Tom Wiley, North Dakota farmer[28]
References
1. A Note on Rising Food Prices. Donald Mitchell, World Bank report, 2008. http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Environment/documents/2008/07/10/Biofuels.PDF
2. Hope for Africa lies in political reforms. Daniel Howden, The Independent, 8 September 2008, http://www.independent.co.uk:80/opinion/commentators/daniel-howden-hope-for-africa-lies-in-political-reforms-922487.html
3. GM: it’s safe, but it’s not a saviour. Rob Lyons, Spiked Online, 7 July 2008, http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5438/
4. The adoption of bioengineered crops. Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo and William D. McBride, US Department of Agriculture Report, May 2002, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer810/aer810.pdf
5. Glyphosate-resistant soyabean cultivar yields compared with sister lines. Elmore, R.W. et al., Agronomy Journal, Vol. 93, No. 2, 2001, pp. 408–412
6. Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops. Doug Gurian-Sherman, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2009, http://tiny.cc/eqZST
7. Genetic engineering — a crop of hyperbole. Doug Gurian-Sherman, The San Diego Union Tribune, 18 June 2008, http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080618/news_lz1e18gurian.html
8. Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years. Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., The Organic Center, November 2009, http://www.organic-center.org/science.pest.php?action=view&report_id=159
9. Family Farmers Warn of Dangers of Genetically Engineered Crops. Bill Christison, In Motion magazine, 29 July 1998, http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/genet1.html
10. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Global Summary for Decision Makers (IAASTD). Beintema, N. et al., 2008, http://www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=IAASTD%20Reports&ItemID=2713
11. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development: Global Summary for Decision Makers (IAASTD). Beintema, N. et al., 2008, http://www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=IAASTD%20Reports&ItemID=2713
12. Marker-assisted selection: an approach for precision plant breeding in the twenty-first century. Collard, B.C.Y. and D.J. Mackill, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, Vol. 363, 2008, pp. 557-572, 2008
13. Breeding for abiotic stresses for sustainable agriculture. Witcombe J.R. et al., Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 2008, Vol. 363, pp. 703-716
14. Gene mapping the friendly face of GM technology. Professor John Snape, Farmers Weekly, 1 March 2002, p. 54
15. Here is a small selection of such papers: Fine structural analysis of pancreatic acinar cell nuclei from mice fed on GM soybean. Malatesta, M. et al., Eur. J. Histochem., Vol. 47, 2003, pp. 385–388; Ultrastructural morphometrical and immunocytochemical analyses of hepatocyte nuclei from mice fed on genetically modified soybean. Malatesta, M. et al., Cell Struct Funct., Vol. 27, 2002, pp. 173-180; Ultrastructural analysis of testes from mice fed on genetically modified soybean. Vecchio L. et al., Eur. J. Histochem., Vol. 48, pp. 448-454, 2004; A long-term study on female mice fed on a genetically modified soybean: effects on liver ageing. Malatesta M. et al., Histochem Cell Biol., Vol. 130, 2008, pp. 967-977; Effects of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine. Ewen S.W. and A. Pusztai, The Lancet, Vol. 354, 1999, pp. 1353–1354; New Analysis of a Rat Feeding Study with a Genetically Modified Maize Reveals Signs of Hepatorenal Toxicity. Séralini, G.-E. et al., Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol., Vol. 52, 2007, pp. 596-602.
16. Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract. Netherwood T. et al., Nature Biotechnology, Vol. 22, 2004, pp. 204–209.
17. Trans Fats: The story behind the label. Paula Hartman Cohen, Harvard Public Health Review, 2006, http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/review/rvw_spring06/rvwspr06_transfats.html
18. Report on animals exposed to GM ingredients in animal feed. Professor Jack A. Heinemann, PhD. Prepared for the Commerce Commission of New Zealand, 24 July 2009, http://bit.ly/4HcJuJ
19. Detection of Transgenic and Endogenous Plant DNA in Digesta and Tissues of Sheep and Pigs Fed Roundup Ready Canola Meal. Sharma, R. et al., J. Agric. Food Chem., Vol. 54, No. 5, 2006, pp. 1699–1709; Assessing the transfer of genetically modified DNA from feed to animal tissues. Mazza, R. et al., Transgenic Res., Vol. 14, No. 5, 2005, pp. 775–784; Detection of genetically modified DNA sequences in milk from the Italian market. Agodi, A., et al., Int. J. Hyg. Environ. Health, Vol. 209, 2006, pp. 81–88
20. Report on animals exposed to GM ingredients in animal feed. Professor Jack A. Heinemann, PhD. Prepared for the Commerce Commission of New Zealand, 24 July 2009, http://bit.ly/4HcJuJ
21. The Magnitude and Impacts of the Biotech and Organic Seed Price Premium. Dr Charles Benbrook, The Organic Center, December 2009, http://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/Seeds_Final_11-30-09.pdf
22. Risky business: Economic and regulatory impacts from the unintended release of genetically engineered rice varieties into the rice merchandising system of the US. Blue, Dr E. Neal, report for Greenpeace, 2007, http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/risky-business.pdf
23. Seeds of doubt: North American farmers’ experience of GM crops. Soil Association, 2002, http://www.soilassociation.org/seedsofdoubt
24. Coexistence of plants and coexistence of farmers: Is an individual choice possible? Binimelis, R., Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Vol. 21, No. 2, April 2008
25. Choice: Less can be more. Roger Levett, Food Ethics magazine, Vol. 3, No. 3, Autumn 2008, p. 11, http://www.foodethicscouncil.org/node/384
26. See, for example, Marie-Monique Robin’s documentary film, Le Monde Selon Monsanto (The World According to Monsanto), ARTE, 2008; and the website of the NGO, Coalition Against Bayer-Dangers, www.cbgnetwork.org
27. GM company Monsanto has launched many such lawsuits against farmers. A famous example is the case of the Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser. Just one article on this case is “GM firm sues Canadian farmer”, BBC News Online, 6 June 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/779265.stm
28. Monsanto ”Seed Police” Scrutinize Farmers. Stephen Leahy, InterPress Service, 15 January 2004, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0115-04.htm
Why is Pawar so pro-GM?
EXTRACT: [India's Minister for Agriculture] Pawar has personally been involved in promoting Bt cotton in Maharashtra, according to VJAS. VJAS spokesman, Kishor Tiwari, also says that one of the brands of Bt seeds on sale - "Ajit Bt" - is actually owned by Pawar's nephew, Ajit Pawar.
Pawar - unleashing the corporations, ignoring their victims
GM Watch
Nobody should be more aware than India's Minister for Agriculture of the devastating nature of the country's current agrarian crisis. Sharad Pawar was formerly chief minister of the state at the very epicentre of the escalating farmer suicides wracking rural India, and Maharashtra still provides Pawar with his power base.
The critical role played by Bt cotton in the plague of suicides affecting India's debt-burdened farmers, has been identified by a whole series of observers. Here, for instance, is the New York Times in its report on the death of a Bt cotton farmer in Maharashtra:
"[Monsanto] has more than doubled its sales of Bt cotton ...but the expansion has been contentious... The modified seeds can cost nearly twice as much [many reports say 3 times as much] as ordinary ones, and they have nudged many farmers toward taking on ever larger loans, often from moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7037
And here's the Times of India:
"Most suicide cases relate to those farming families which have run up huge debts because of the high cost in using the expensive genetically-modified cotton seeds, which have to be bought every year. "
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7087
And here's the Rural Affairs editor of The Hindu, P Sainath, spelling it out still more bluntly:
"Firstly, Bt Cotton technologies are themselves suspect in a number of ways. However, promoting them in a dry and un-irrigated area like Vidarbha [the main cotton-belt of Maharashtra] was murderous. It was stupid, it was killing. The Bt Cotton packet was costing Rs 1800 to 1850 for a packet of 450 grams. On each packet of Rs 1850, Monsanto was making a royalty of Rs 1250."
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main19.asp?filename=Ne090906The_relief_CS.asp
Pawar, you might think, with his intimate knowledge of Maharashtra, would have the strongest possible reason for recognising the danger of glibly promoting GM crops as the solution to India's problems. But you'd be wrong, as the following press release from India's Ministry of Agriculture, reporting Pawar's comments at a biotech conference, makes clear (see item 2 at http://bit.ly/aq0NnP ).
Pawar, it seems, is all to keen to promote GM research as the way to meet India's agricultural needs. He boasts about India's "ambitious programme on agricultural biotechnology to ensure food security", and emphasises that while only GM cotton has so far been commercialised, there's a long list of other GM crops in India's development pipeline. Pawar also places a particular emphasis on the "decreasing availability of water for agricultural purposes", and underlines "the need for developing transgenic crops tolerant to increased drought conditions." (item 2 at http://bit.ly/aq0NnP )
But, as P Sainath has pointed out, India's agrarian crisis is not the product of water shortage but of failed policies from agriculture ministers, like Sharad Pawar, in a state of denial about the real problems afflicting India's farmers. It's thought that more than 18,000 of those farmers may end up killing themselves this year, the most ever recorded, but prior to the Prime Minister's visit to Maharashtra, Pawar tried to make light of the crisis, dismissing the spiralling suicides as nothing that wasn't "normal".
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main19.asp?filename=Ne090906The_relief_CS.asp
The PM's visit is condemned as mere PR, by Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), a local pressure group for hard pressed farmers, which says over 900 farmers have committed suicide in Maharashtra's main cotton-belt of Vidarbha in just the last 15 months. Over 300 of those deaths have actually ocurred since the Prime Minister's summer visit and his announcement of an aid package. 124 farmers took their lives in September alone, more than in any of the preceding months. And VJAS has consistently reported that the majority have been Bt cotton farmers burdened by debt.
Worse still, Pawar has personally been involved in promoting Bt cotton in Maharashtra, according to VJAS. VJAS spokesman, Kishor Tiwari, also says that one of the brands of Bt seeds on sale - "Ajit Bt" - is actually owned by Pawar's nephew, Ajit Pawar. Pawar's political associates in the State government have also had a big hand in pushing Bt cotton.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6545
With that background, it's perhaps unsurprising that India's Agriculture Minister has never once visited any of the distressed families. But Pawar is perfectly happy to get up at a biotech conference and advertise his plans to give Indian farmers more of the same.
Indeed, Pawar told the conference that, "If used in a responsible manner, [GM crops] can help reduce poverty and improve the livelihoods of the rural poor." (item 3 at http://bit.ly/aq0NnP ) That, of course, was exactly the promise held out by Monsanto and its political associates to desperate cotton farmers in places like Vidarbha.
But the main conference organisers will have been delighted with Pawar's message. The International Life Sciences Institute-India claims to be part of "a global network of scientists devoted to enhancing the scientific basis for public health decision-making," but ILSI is actually an international food lobbying outfit founded by the likes of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft (owned by tobacco giant Philip Morris) and Procter & Gamble. ILSI was originally led by the vice-president of Coca-Cola and the funding of its regional groups, like ILSI-India, comes primarily from industry. Both Monsanto and Syngenta are on ILSI's governing board of trustees.
http://www.ilsi.org/NR/rdonlyres/CF3BD294-3E6F-4ED2-B320-220FA9EB39F1/0/ILSI2006BoardofTrustees.doc
But that won't have made them uneasy bedfellows for Sharad Pawar. The Indian Government has signed up to an Indo-US pact with George Bush to promote biotechnology in Indian agriculture - an initiative overseen by a board including the agribusiness giant ADM, Wal-Mart and Monsanto.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6383
P Sainath describes multinationals like Monsanto as having played a "devastating" role in India's current farm crisis. But it's policy makers like Sharad Pawar who've promoted their interests and given them free rein.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main19.asp?filename=Ne090906The_relief_CS.asp
Pawar - unleashing the corporations, ignoring their victims
GM Watch
Nobody should be more aware than India's Minister for Agriculture of the devastating nature of the country's current agrarian crisis. Sharad Pawar was formerly chief minister of the state at the very epicentre of the escalating farmer suicides wracking rural India, and Maharashtra still provides Pawar with his power base.
The critical role played by Bt cotton in the plague of suicides affecting India's debt-burdened farmers, has been identified by a whole series of observers. Here, for instance, is the New York Times in its report on the death of a Bt cotton farmer in Maharashtra:
"[Monsanto] has more than doubled its sales of Bt cotton ...but the expansion has been contentious... The modified seeds can cost nearly twice as much [many reports say 3 times as much] as ordinary ones, and they have nudged many farmers toward taking on ever larger loans, often from moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7037
And here's the Times of India:
"Most suicide cases relate to those farming families which have run up huge debts because of the high cost in using the expensive genetically-modified cotton seeds, which have to be bought every year. "
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7087
And here's the Rural Affairs editor of The Hindu, P Sainath, spelling it out still more bluntly:
"Firstly, Bt Cotton technologies are themselves suspect in a number of ways. However, promoting them in a dry and un-irrigated area like Vidarbha [the main cotton-belt of Maharashtra] was murderous. It was stupid, it was killing. The Bt Cotton packet was costing Rs 1800 to 1850 for a packet of 450 grams. On each packet of Rs 1850, Monsanto was making a royalty of Rs 1250."
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main19.asp?filename=Ne090906The_relief_CS.asp
Pawar, you might think, with his intimate knowledge of Maharashtra, would have the strongest possible reason for recognising the danger of glibly promoting GM crops as the solution to India's problems. But you'd be wrong, as the following press release from India's Ministry of Agriculture, reporting Pawar's comments at a biotech conference, makes clear (see item 2 at http://bit.ly/aq0NnP ).
Pawar, it seems, is all to keen to promote GM research as the way to meet India's agricultural needs. He boasts about India's "ambitious programme on agricultural biotechnology to ensure food security", and emphasises that while only GM cotton has so far been commercialised, there's a long list of other GM crops in India's development pipeline. Pawar also places a particular emphasis on the "decreasing availability of water for agricultural purposes", and underlines "the need for developing transgenic crops tolerant to increased drought conditions." (item 2 at http://bit.ly/aq0NnP )
But, as P Sainath has pointed out, India's agrarian crisis is not the product of water shortage but of failed policies from agriculture ministers, like Sharad Pawar, in a state of denial about the real problems afflicting India's farmers. It's thought that more than 18,000 of those farmers may end up killing themselves this year, the most ever recorded, but prior to the Prime Minister's visit to Maharashtra, Pawar tried to make light of the crisis, dismissing the spiralling suicides as nothing that wasn't "normal".
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main19.asp?filename=Ne090906The_relief_CS.asp
The PM's visit is condemned as mere PR, by Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), a local pressure group for hard pressed farmers, which says over 900 farmers have committed suicide in Maharashtra's main cotton-belt of Vidarbha in just the last 15 months. Over 300 of those deaths have actually ocurred since the Prime Minister's summer visit and his announcement of an aid package. 124 farmers took their lives in September alone, more than in any of the preceding months. And VJAS has consistently reported that the majority have been Bt cotton farmers burdened by debt.
Worse still, Pawar has personally been involved in promoting Bt cotton in Maharashtra, according to VJAS. VJAS spokesman, Kishor Tiwari, also says that one of the brands of Bt seeds on sale - "Ajit Bt" - is actually owned by Pawar's nephew, Ajit Pawar. Pawar's political associates in the State government have also had a big hand in pushing Bt cotton.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6545
With that background, it's perhaps unsurprising that India's Agriculture Minister has never once visited any of the distressed families. But Pawar is perfectly happy to get up at a biotech conference and advertise his plans to give Indian farmers more of the same.
Indeed, Pawar told the conference that, "If used in a responsible manner, [GM crops] can help reduce poverty and improve the livelihoods of the rural poor." (item 3 at http://bit.ly/aq0NnP ) That, of course, was exactly the promise held out by Monsanto and its political associates to desperate cotton farmers in places like Vidarbha.
But the main conference organisers will have been delighted with Pawar's message. The International Life Sciences Institute-India claims to be part of "a global network of scientists devoted to enhancing the scientific basis for public health decision-making," but ILSI is actually an international food lobbying outfit founded by the likes of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft (owned by tobacco giant Philip Morris) and Procter & Gamble. ILSI was originally led by the vice-president of Coca-Cola and the funding of its regional groups, like ILSI-India, comes primarily from industry. Both Monsanto and Syngenta are on ILSI's governing board of trustees.
http://www.ilsi.org/NR/rdonlyres/CF3BD294-3E6F-4ED2-B320-220FA9EB39F1/0/ILSI2006BoardofTrustees.doc
But that won't have made them uneasy bedfellows for Sharad Pawar. The Indian Government has signed up to an Indo-US pact with George Bush to promote biotechnology in Indian agriculture - an initiative overseen by a board including the agribusiness giant ADM, Wal-Mart and Monsanto.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6383
P Sainath describes multinationals like Monsanto as having played a "devastating" role in India's current farm crisis. But it's policy makers like Sharad Pawar who've promoted their interests and given them free rein.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main19.asp?filename=Ne090906The_relief_CS.asp
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