Biodiversity is one potential victim of genetically modified plants and animals. For example, if genetically engineered fish escape from their ocean pens (a frequent occurrence with ocean-raised farmed fish), their larger size and unnatural characteristics designed to give them survival advantages (like more rapid growth and more efficient breeding success, for example) may well lead to the extinction of the natural varieties of their species in the open ocean.
Pollen from genetically engineered plants can corrupt native species (and other, unrelated species as well) leading to permanent corruption of the plant kingdom. That would mean the irretrievable loss of evolved, as opposed to engineered, species and the development of new super weeds, for example.
But there are other potential extinctions on the horizon lurking in the shadow of genetic engineering: public research and education. Note, what is threatened is not publicly FUNDED research and education, but research and education for the public good, not the corporate profit structure. The public is still being “permitted” to subsidize the institutions that are, in essence, being used to provide cheap research tanks for the Biotech industry, but the public does not get the benefit of the research they support: the Biotech companies do. The immense importance of land grant public research is hard to overstate. But with the “corporitization” of this publicly supported research capacity, the information goes to the This loss would be of immense proportion to every man, woman and child in America, and most of the people in most of the rest of the world as well.
Agricultural research, funded by public monies and carried out at the uniquely important land grant colleges of the US, has led to knowledge and food increase and productivity which has helped to ensure the prosperity of this country and offer nutrition and agricultural success to the world. All that is on the chopping block, thanks to the Big Biotech, one of the big winners in the Codex process as it currently stands.
Shame on the policy makers who have cannibalized the public land grant universities (and the private ones, for that matter) for their own ends. Shame on the administrators who are so eager for money to run their universities that they will trade their purposes for their budgets and shame on the Federal and State Legislators who have allowed their educational treasures, the US Land Grant Colleges, to be sold, like Esau’s birthright, for a mess of beans, and toxic genetically engineered ones, at that!
Following is the story as reported by Nancy Scola of AlterNet.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
Monsanto U: Agribusiness’s Takeover of Public Schools
By Nancy Scola, AlterNet
Posted on February 15, 2008, Printed on February 15, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/76804/
I’ve startled a bug scientist. “Yeah, now I’m nervous,” said Mike Hoffmann, a Cornell University entomologist and crop specialist who spends his days with cucumber beetles and small wasps. But he’s also in charge of keeping the research funding flowing at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. What have I done to alarm him? I’ve drawn his attention to the newly released FY 2009 Presidential Budget.
Like more than a hundred public institutions of higher learning, Cornell is what’s known as a “land grant.” Dotting the United States from Ithaca, N.Y., to Pullman, Wash., such schools were established by a Civil War-era act of Congress to provide universities centered around, “the agriculture and mechanic arts.” Congress handed each U.S. state a chunk of federal land to be sold for start-up monies, and for the last 150 years, it has funded ground-breaking research on all things agriculture, from dirt to crops to cattle.
The land-grant system has been, in short, a high-yield investment. The scientific research that has come out of land-grant labs and fields have aided millions of farmers and fed millions of Americans. And the land-grant reach doesn’t stop at ocean’s edge. Oklahoma State, the Sooner State’s land grant, says that the public funding of land-grant research “has benefited every man, woman and child in the United States and much of the world.”
That was until America’s land-grant system met George W. Bush. Tucked into the appendix of his latest national budget is a nearly one-third cut in the public funding for agriculture research at the land grants. The size of the cut is surprising, but not its existence — it’s part of a multiyear drive by the Bush administration to completely eliminate regular public research funding. In a press briefing last week, a USDA deputy secretary illuminated the Bush administration’s rationale for the transition to competitive grant making: “That’s how you get the most bang for the buck.”
Wallace Huffman, an Iowa State agro-economist, is deeply unimpressed with Bush’s “bang” approach to land-grant research. “There’s a sense in the president’s office that you invest in research like you invest in building cars,” Huffman told me last week. Land-grant school officials are similarly skeptical. In a survey, Kansas State argued that the loss of regular funding would upend education. Minnesota complained that cuts would undermine ongoing research projects. North Dakota simply asked, “What is the future of ag research?”
Good question. A reasonable answer? The future of agricultural research at America’s land-grant institutions belongs to biotech conglomerates like Monsanto. And it seems likely that it’s a future of chemical-dependent, genetically modified, bio-engineered agriculture.
In stark contrast to how the federal government and many states are wallowing in red ink, the St. Louis-based Monsanto boasted more than $7 billion in annual sales in 2007 — simply the latest in four years of record-smashing profits. And so when our president says that the time has come for public land-grant institutions to get cracking at “leveraging nonfederal resources,” you can be sure that Monsanto’s ears perk.
But, it doesn’t take a presidential invitation to get Monsanto to sink its roots in the land-grant system. Those roots are already planted. Iowa State’s campus boasts a Monsanto Auditorium and the school offers students Monsanto-funded graduate fellowships on seed policy with a special focus on “the protection of intellectual property rights.” Kansas State has spun off Wildcat Genetics, a side company whose purpose is the selling of soybean seeds genetically engineered to survive the application of Roundup® — the result of a decades long relationship with Monsanto, the pesticide’s maker.
But don’t get the wrong idea about Monsanto’s land-grant activities. By that, I mean, don’t think the company is the only multinational biotech conglomerate firmly rooted in American land-grant soil.
Head on down to Texas A&M. There you’ll find the a chair for the “Dow Chemical Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering.” Similar chairs exist at West Virginia State and Louisiana State. The agricultural college of the University of California at Davis is funded in part by DuPont and Calgene.
The University of California at Berkeley’s Plant and Microbiology Department entered into a $25 million/five-year quasi-exclusive research agreement with the Swiss-based Novartis, which then became Syngenta, which now funds the land-grant research group on soybean fungi. In 2005, Purdue, Indiana’s land-grant school, developed an application of the so-called Terminator gene pioneered by Delta Pine and Land Co.; school officials and researchers later took to the hustings when the public resisted the idea of self-sterilizing plants.
But the agricultural industry’s relationship with the land-grant system is not an entirely new development. In 1973, former Texas agricultural commissioner and activist Jim Hightower lamented the situation in his landmark report, Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times: The Failure of America’s Land Grant College Complex.
But the world of agriculture is today a far, far different place than when Hightower wrote.
For one thing, in the early 1970s Monsanto was still a decade away from genetically modifying its very first plant cell. For another, back then the federal government was still committed to providing steady research funding.
And, importantly, it was neither possible nor profitable for our nation’s bastions of higher learning to be players in the global agribusiness. But intervening tectonic shifts in American public policy help us to understand why a public institution like Purdue would fight so darn hard to defend a biotech advance like the Terminator gene: in a manner of speaking, they own the thing.
Jump ahead to 1980, when the U.S. Supreme Court under Warren Burger decided that, as long as they’d been tweaked from their natural state, living organisms from seeds to microbes or Terminator genes could be patented just as if they were a new cotton gin or tractor blade. And in that same year, Congress gave universities a kick towards the marketplace by encouraging institutions to file patent claims on the discoveries and inventions of their faculty researchers — no matter if their work was funded in whole or in part by taxpayer dollars.
The summed effect was that, suddenly, a public institution like Purdue had a great deal of motivation for working with Delta Pine and Land Co. to see if they might make a buck off their biotech invention in the marketplace. What’s more, the policy shift made it so individual lab geeks themselves stood to profit, eligible for a large slice of whatever windfall their discovery generated.
As the biotech industry has since exploded, the impact on the land-grant system is perhaps not unexpected. “Researchers want to be at both the cutting edge of science and the cutting edge of the marketplace,” says Andrew Neighbour, until recently the director of UCLA’s office on the business applications of faculty research. (The entire University of California system functions as that state’s “land-grant institution.”) And so the advent of patentable and profitable plants (and animals, for that matter) has meant a shift in research focus away new knowledge and towards the creation of marketable products.
The land-grant institutions find themselves in a pickle. “On the one hand,” says Paul Gepts, professor of agronomy and plant genetics at UC Davis, schools pushed into the free market have developed the habit of patenting research and found a taste for private business deals. But on the other hand, “they have a public role where the information they produce should be available to all.”
As things stand, “public universities,” says Dr. Gepts, “are a contradiction.”
This embrace of patents and profits means that land-grant agricultural research centers today are not playgrounds of academic collaboration they once were. “Things have changed enormously,” says William Folk, a plant geneticist at the University of Missouri. “When I started in the ’70s,” he recalls fondly, “meetings were filled with people criticizing each other and sharing ideas.” But today, he says “if you have an idea that has any potential commercial value, you’re reluctant to share.”
Not surprisingly, school administrators argue that a negative reading of the cozy relationship between agricultural researchers and biotech corporations like Monsanto and Syngenta is hogwash. When asked, Neal Van Alfen, dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, acknowledges that about 20 percent of the $165 million annual research budget is contributed by industry. But Dean Van Alfen is quick to add, “It forms just one part of who we work with.” Research conducted in conjunction with industry interests, he insists, is simply one chunk of “an awfully large amount of work.”
But numbers and percentages don’t tell the whole story, because of the way that industry engages in the land-grant system. In short, they skim. Here’s how it works: (a) federal and state governments hand over taxpayer money to build and sustain the basic infrastructure, without which research can’t hope to take place, then (b) the biotech industry injects some smaller amount of much-needed cash into the system, and then (c) agribusinesses skim off and patent the most promising (and potentially profitable) discoveries that rise to the top.
Still, administrators argue, scientific professionalism keeps industry in check — a researcher who fudges his or her findings to curry industry favor is in for a short career. But that line of reasoning misses the real concern. What’s alarming isn’t that global agribusiness conglomerates like Monsanto, Dow Chemical and DuPont are getting the answers they want from our land-grant entomologists, agronomists and plant geneticists.
It’s that at public institutions, private interests are the ones asking the questions.
What must be kept in mind is that land-grant researchers are generally expected to bring to the table their own research funding, and the situation can already be fairly dire. When UC Davis’ Paul Gepts comments on how his institution’s support is limited to a base salary, I attempt a lame joke: “They give you a desk too, right?” Yes, he responds, but a phone is another matter.
Faculty researchers are so hungry for funding that, says Missouri’s William Folk, “if companies want to entice researchers to work on their projects, all they have to do is wave a bit of money.” “The availability of funds, he says, “makes an enormous difference in what we can do.”
“We’re opportunists,” Folk says, with compassion, of himself and his fellow researchers, “we go after money where it might be.”
When it comes to how industry-university relations shape academic research, UCLA’s Andrew Neighbour is the person to talk to. While an administrator at Washington University in St. Louis, Neighbour managed the school’s landmark multiyear and multimillion-dollar relationship with Monsanto. (Note: WashU is a private institution.) “There’s no question that industry money comes with strings,” Neighbour admits. “It limits what you can do, when you can do it, who it has to be approved by.”
And so the issue at hand becomes one of the questions that are being asked at public land-grant schools. While Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, et al., are paying the bills, are agricultural researchers going to pursue such lines of scientific inquiry as “How will this new corn variety impact the independent New York farmer?” Or, “Will this new tomato make eaters healthier?”
It seems far more likely that the questions that multinational biotech conglomerates are willing to pay to have answered run along the lines of “How can we keep growing our own bottom lines?”
I put it to Dr. Folk. “The companies are there to make money, no doubt,” he responds.
What suffers for falling outside the scope of industry interest? Organic farming, for one. The Organic Farming Research Foundation was founded in the 1980s after, Executive Director Bob Scowcroft tells me, farmers interested in weaning themselves from chemical dependence approached their local land-grant outreach agents for help for pest management. As Scowcroft tells it, their advice was invariably in the spirit of, “Well, sure, I can tell you what to spray.”
OFRF began arming land-grant researchers with modest grants but found that academics interested in conducting organic-related research faced obstacles beyond funding.
“Coming out of the organic closet could be the beginning of the end of your career,” says Scowcroft. Looking outside biotech agriculture is, he says, “like throwing 30 years of the Green Revolution in your boss’s face.” Today, says John Reganold, an OFRF grantee and apple researcher at Washington State University, academics interested in organic farming “just don’t have the money to do what we need to do.”
Also the subject of minimal industry attention: so-called orphan crops, like sorghum and cassava, which feed millions of people in the developing world but aren’t considered patentable or profitable. UC Davis’ Paul Gepts is working to breed a disease-resistant variety of the East African common bean, an important protein source for AIDS sufferers. He’s turned to an English charitable group for funding, and all involved have agreed to resist patenting the plant — once a useful variety is developed, the science will be left in the public domain.
While it’s clear that funding cash is the carrot used by agribusiness to entice researchers into asking the questions industry is most interested in having answered, there is a stick involved: corporately held patents used to block them from asking others.
That’s certainly been Paul Gepts’s experience, when he thought he might tackle the question of gene transfer in Mexican maize varieties. The question, though, is a sensitive one for Monsanto, as one of the arguments against transgenic crops is the difficulty in containing their spread — raising the specter of a threat to the world’s biodiversity. As the maize he was interested in was patented by Monsanto, Gepts asked the company for some samples. Their response: no way.
When I asked Gepts for his take on Monsanto’s motivation for the refusal, I hadn’t yet finished the question when he answered: “Avoiding scrutiny,” he said. Missouri’s Folk seconds the contention that such private claims on science impede research, saying, “Our ability to do science is constrained by the patents held by agribusiness.”
All this said, it’s not fair to say that there hasn’t been resistance against public land-grant schools mutating into institutions of private science. After Novartis had become involved in UC Berkeley’s Department of Plant and Microbiology, the school ordered an internal review by the academic senate, which ultimately deemed the relationship “a mistake.” Lawrence Busch, a Berkeley faculty member who headed the review said at its conclusion: “I think it is high time for serious discussions of what the devil we want our universities to be.”
When Mike Hoffmann — the Cornell entomologist I startled by sharing Bush’s proposed budget cuts — recovers from his shock, he offers his take on “what the devil” our universities should be. The principle that should guide Cornell, Berkeley, Missouri and our other land-grant institutions is simple, he says: public funding for the public good. The mission of America’s centers of agricultural learning is, he concludes, “to produce new knowledge for the public benefit. That’s why we have the land-grant system, and I think it’s pretty important.”
Nancy Scola is a Brooklyn-based writer who has in the past served as the chief blogger at Air America, an aide to former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, as he explored a run for the presidency, and a congressional staffer on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
Making the World GM-Free and Sustainable
http://www.westonaprice.org/farming/gm-free-sustainable.html
By Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, PhD, director of the London-based Institute for Science in
Society (ISIS), ( i-sis.org.uk) delivered this article as the keynote
address at Wise Traditions 2006, the 7th annual conference of the Weston A.
Price Foundation.
Genetically modified (GM) crops epitomize industrial monoculture, with its
worst features exaggerated. They are part and parcel of the “environmental
bubble economy,” built on the over-exploitation of natural resources, which
has destroyed the environment, depleted water and fossil fuels and
accelerated global warming. As a result, world grain yields have been
falling for six of the seven past years. Expanding the cultivation of GM
crops at this time is a recipe for global bio-devastation, massive crop
failures and global famine. GM crops are a dangerous diversion from the
urgent task of getting our food system sustainable in order to really feed
the world.
We possess a wealth of knowledge for making our food system sustainable and
for providing food security and health for all, while effectively
mitigating global warming. The greatest obstacle to implementing that
knowledge is the dominant economic model of unrestrained, unbalanced growth
that has precipitated the current crises.
I have proposed to put together all the appropriate technologies in a
potentially highly productive zero-emission, zero-waste food and energy
“Dream Farm 2” based on a model of sustainable systems as organisms. It is
our best way forward to a greener, healthier and more fulfilling life
without fossil fuels.
Stunted Rats
The latest alarming findings on the health hazards of GM food come from the
laboratory of senior scientist Dr. Irina Ermakova at the Russian Academy of
Sciences in Moscow. Her experiments began two years ago, and the initial
results hit the world press when Ermakova was invited to address the 11th
Russian Gastroenterological Week in Moscow in October, 2005.
Female rats given a supplement of GM Roundup Ready soya beginning two weeks
before mating and continuing afterwards through pregnancy and lactation
produced litters in which more than a third of the pups were severely
stunted, and over half of the pups died within three weeks after birth.1
Stunting was five to six times, and mortality six to eight times those of
control litters produced by females on normal rat pellets only, or rat
pellets supplemented with non-GM soya. These results were confirmed in
further experiments. In addition, the surviving pups from the GM soya-fed
females were completely sterile when mated with one another whether they
continued to be fed GM soya or not.
Criminal Negligence
Ermakova’s findings are by no means an isolated case peculiar to a specific
batch of GM soya. They are the latest in a long line of evidence (see
sidebar) from all over the world indicating that GM food and feed may be
inherently hazardous to animal and human health.
Many GM crops–soybean, tomato, maize, cotton, potato, pea–with different
transgenes, fed to rats, mice, cows, sheep, chickens or human beings–have
resulted in illness and deaths. You don’t have to be a scientific genius to
suspect that the genetic modification process itself or the artificial
genetic material used in genetic modification could be causing problems.
Evidence of GM hazards has been emerging since the 1980s, evidence that
should have halted the development of many GM crops.2 But our regulators
have acted with bias in favor of GM from the beginning and have
systematically ignored and dismissed research findings that might harm the
fledgling biotech industry.11 By now, the evidence has accumulated to such
an extent that regulators should be answering a charge of criminal
negligence at the very least in continuing their campaign of denial and
misrepresentation while failing to impose a ban on further releases of all
GM crops until and unless they have been proven safe by thorough
independent investigations.5
A ban on further releases is all the more important, as so many scientists
have tried to tell the public what they know. But instead of decisive
action, Ermakova’s funding has been cut, and she is now strongly
discouraged from continuing with the research. She is pleading for other
scientists to repeat her work to see whether they can replicate her
results.
Meanwhile, the biotech industry is aggressively pushing the next generation
of GM food and feed, and our ever-permissive government regulators are
obligingly reassuring everyone that “GM food is safe.”
Think Again
For those who believe that “GM food is safe” because “people have been
eating GM food since its first release in 1994 and no one has fallen ill or
died from it,” think again. First, there has been no labeling in countries
like the US where GM food and feed are most available. Second, many GM
products are “de-regulated” and hence not known or traceable as such.
Third, there has been no post-release monitoring, so it is impossible to
tell how many people and animals have become ill or have died from eating
GM food and feed, even though in 1999, researchers at the Centers for
Disease Control published a paper suggesting that food-related illnesses
increased two- to ten-fold compared with results of a survey carried out
just before GM food was commercially released in 1994.12,13
Fourth, GM food and feed may be linked to chronic illnesses such as
autoimmune disease, slow viruses or cancer,14 which may be difficult to
detect. Finally, animal feed accounts for up to half the world’s harvest,15
so most of the GM produce so far has probably ended up in animal feed after
being processed for seed oil, corn starch, corn syrup and, increasingly,
ethanol and biodiesel.16,17 That means GM produce is seldom eaten directly
by either animals or human beings so far. But that is soon to change, if
proponents have their way.
New Generation GM foods
The first GM crop, Calgene’s Flavr Savr tomato for prolonged shelf life,
was approved for commercial release in 1992. It was a complete flop. Since
then, however, the area planted to GM crops has been steadily increasing,
and, according to industry sources, reached 90 million hectares in 2005.19
It should be emphasized that this comprises only 1.8 percent of the world’s
agricultural land, and is confined largely to the US, Argentina and Canada.
Two traits–herbicide-tolerance and insect-resistance–currently account
for nearly all GM crops, but not for long.
New GM crops with other traits and other GM gut bacteria are poised to
enter the market, in the guise of nutritional benefits and health
foods.20,21 Food crops genetically modified to overproduce single nutrients
could be public health hazards, as overdoses of many single nutritional
factors are known to be toxic; and genetically modifying natural gut
bacteria could turn into pathogens pre-adapted to invade the human gut.
[
]
In addition, the US FDA is set to approve foods derived from genetically
modified animals for commercial release.22 ,23 These are likely to be
contaminated by potent vaccines, immune regulators and growth hormones, as
well as nucleic acids, viruses and bacteria that have the potential to
create pathogens and to trigger cancer. The Institute for Science in
Society has submitted strong objections to United Nations regulator Codex
Alimentarius on these new developments.
Inherently Hazardous
Let me start with some basics. GM food is derived from genetically modified
organisms (GMOs). A GMO is an organism whose natural genetic material has
been modified by having synthetic genetic material inserted into it in the
laboratory, so as to give it special traits or characteristics.
It is generally not easy to get the synthetic gene or genes to work in an
organism, so a very aggressive signal or promoter is needed for each gene,
literally to force the cell to make the desired protein.25 The cauliflower
mosaic virus (CaMV) 35S promoter is the most popular one used, and is often
accompanied by other “boosters” from a variety of sources. The gene (coding
sequence) itself could also be a composite of pieces copied from other
organisms, with substantial changes in the coding sequence.
For example, MON863 maize is described on the AGBIOS Database as follows:
“The introduced DNA contained the modified cry3Bb1 gene from B.
thuringiensis subsp. kumamotoensis under the control of the 4-AS1 promoter
(CaMV 35S promoter with 4 repeats of an activating sequence), plus the 5′
untranslated leader sequence of the wheat chlorophyll a/b binding protein
(wt CAB leader) and the rice actin intron. The transcription termination
sequence was provided from the 3′ untranslated region of the wheat 17.3 kD
heat shock protein (tahsp17). The modified cry3Bb1 gene encodes a protein
of 653 amino acids whose amino acid sequence differs from that of the
wild-type protein by the addition of an alanine residue at position 2 and
by seven amino acid changes.”26
Thus, MON863 maize contains 9 bits of DNA from different sources including
the coding sequence, which has been quite substantially altered from the
natural gene.
The synthetic genes and combinations of genes inserted into GMOs and
introduced into our food chain have never existed in billions of years. The
genes code for proteins completely foreign to our food chain and are likely
to provoke immune reactions including allergy. That could happen even when
the proteins are copies of those in a closely related species. Thus, a
transgenic (GM) pea with a copy of a normally harmless bean protein
provoked debilitating immune responses in mice,4 simply because each
species processes its proteins differently, decorating them with distinct
carbohydrate chains. Transgenic proteins also differ from the native
proteins in amino acid sequences, some of which are intentional and others
unintentional. And if you just look at the amino acid sequences, 22 out of
33 transgenic proteins in GM crops already commercialized are found to have
similarities to known allergens, and are therefore suspected allergens.27
Direct evidence also exists indicating that the synthetic genes are not the
same as the natural genes. Take the Bt toxins isolated from the soil
bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis and incorporated into many GM maize,
cotton and other crop varieties to kill insect pests. Green lacewings
suffer significantly reduced survival and delayed development when fed an
insect pest (lepidopteran) that has eaten GM maize containing the Bt toxin
Cry1Ab, but not when fed the same pest treated with much higher levels of
the natural toxin.28,29 This extremely important effect, which is passed on
through the food chain, has been documented in several laboratories.
Unfortunately, the researchers misrepresented the results only to mean that
natural Cry1Ab does not harm beneficial insect predators.30
The synthetic genetic material is introduced into the cells of organisms
with invasive methods that are far from precise–they are uncontrollable,
unreliable and unpredictable. They end up damaging the natural genetic
material of the organism with many unpredictable, unintended effects,
including gross abnormalities that you can see, and metabolic changes that
may be toxic that you can’t see.31
The transgenic line is essentially derived from a single cell which has
taken up the trans gene, so its properties will depend on where and in what
form in the genome–the totality of the organism’s genetic material–have
landed in the insert or inserts, and what collateral damage is done. That
is why EU regulation now requires “event specific” characterization of the
transgenic insert or inserts, which also provides a way of detecting
transgenic contamination of GM produce, an increasingly frequent occurrence
involving transgenic lines that have not even been approved for commercial
release.32
Even more serious, transgenic lines are genetically unstable, so it is
impossible to control for safety or quality. This instability increases the
dangers from unintended horizontal gene transfer. The expression of the
genes can change from generation to generation and, most worrying of all,
the inserts may rearrange, insert at new sites in the genome or insert into
other genomes by horizontal gene transfer.24,25
The transgenic inserts in practically all the commercially approved lines
were found to have rearranged since they were first characterized by the
biotech companies. A frequent breakpoint is the cauliflower mosaic virus
promoter present in most, if not all transgenic lines, which we have warned
about.35,36 We have also warned about the fact that the promoter is active
in animal and human cells, contrary to the assumption of GM proponents that
it is active only in plant cells37 and this warning has also been recently
confirmed.38 The genetic instability itself is worrying, as the transgenic
variety effectively changed into something else, thereby invalidating all
previous safety assessments and making it difficult to detect contaminating
transgenic material.
Horizontal Gene Transfer
Another major worry is horizontal gene transfer and recombination. Many
foreign synthetic genes are copies of those from bacteria and viruses that
cause diseases and include antibiotic resistance marker genes to help track
the movements of the foreign gene inserts and select for cells that have
taken up the foreign genes.
Right from the beginning of genetic engineering in the mid 1970s,
geneticists themselves were concerned that releasing those synthetic
genetic materials increased the risk of creating new disease-causing
viruses and bacteria and spreading antibiotic resistance that would make
infections untreatable.39 They even imposed a moratorium subsequent to the
1975 Asilomar Declaration, which endorsed sustainable agriculture.
Unfortunately, the moratorium was short-lived, as geneticists were in a
hurry to begin commercial exploitation of genetic engineering. The
guidelines set up were totally inadequate, and remain so to this day.40
It is important to realize that the toolkit of genetic engineering is
precisely the same as that for making biological weapons.41 The US
government has been ostentatiously concerned about “biosecurity” ever since
September 11, which extends to experiments directly or indirectly involved
in creating lethal biological agents. Yet the regulators are still
reassuring us that all genetic engineering experiments and the release of
GMOs and products thereof are safe. I have warned the UK government that
there can be no biosecurity without biosafety.42 The numerous “biodefense”
labs set up in the US and elsewhere to research and genetically engineer
lethal pathogens for the stated purpose of creating vaccines pose the most
serious public health risks.
The genetic material persists long after the cell or organism is dead, and
can be taken up by bacteria and viruses in all environments. This
process–called horizontal gene transfer and recombination–is the main
route to creating dangerous pathogens. Genetic engineering is nothing if
not greatly enhanced horizontal gene transfer and recombination, and nasty
surprises have been sprung already. For example, researchers in Australia
“accidentally” transformed a harmless mousepox virus into a lethal pathogen
that killed all the mice, even those that were supposed to be resistant to
the virus.
Headlines in the New Scientist editorial of January, 2001 proclaimed: “The
genie is out, biotech has just sprung a nasty surprise. Next time, it could
be catastrophic.”43 The lead article continued in the same vein: “Disaster
in the making. An engineered mouse virus leaves us one step away from the
ultimate bioweapon.”44
The researchers added a gene coding for an immune signalling molecule to
the virus, which they thought would boost antibody production; instead, it
suppressed immune responses. The researchers had previously put the same
gene into a vaccinia virus and found that it delayed the clearance of virus
from the animals, so it may well have the same immune suppressive effects
for all viruses. Imagine what would happen if this gene ever got into a
smallpox virus.
[Genetic material combines and recombines in viruses in nature. The same is true of genetic material in bacteria. This recombination does not limit itself to natural genetic material but includes unpredictable transmission of genetically modified DNA as well. REL]
More surprisingly, in 2003, researchers at the University of California at
Berkeley reported that disrupting a set of disease-causing genes in the
tuberculosis bacterium resulted in a hyper-virulent mutant strain that
killed all infected mice by 41 weeks, while all the control mice exposed to
the unmodified bacterium survived.45 This goes to show how very little we
understand about the way bacteria and viruses cause diseases.
Cancer Triggers
Genetic engineering poses yet another insidious danger. The synthetic genes
created for genetic modification are designed to cross species barriers and
to jump into the genome of cells. Such constructs jumping into the genome
of human cells can trigger cancer. This is not just a theoretical
possibility; it has happened in gene therapy,46 which is genetic
modification of human cells using synthetic constructs very similar to
those for genetic modification of plants and animals.
In 2000, researchers in the Neckar Hospital in Paris, France, treated
infants with X-linked Severe Combined Immune Deficiency apparently
successfully by isolating bone marrow cells from the patients, genetically
modifying them in the test tube, and then injecting the genetically
modified cells back into the patients. In this way, they thought they had
avoided the widely acknowledged major hazards of gene therapy: creating
replicating viruses and triggering cancer. But since 2002, three infants
have developed leukemia, and one has died. The foreign synthetic gene
carried by the virus vector was inserted near a human gene that controls
cell division, making it overactive, resulting in uncontrollable
multiplication of the white blood cells.
Failure on All Counts
GM crops are industrial mono cultures, only far worse. Two traits account
for nearly all GM crops planted: herbicide-tolerance (almost all
glyphosate-tolerant or Roundup Ready) accounting for more than 80 percent
of GM crops, and insect-resistance (Bt-crops engineered with toxins from
the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis to kill insect pests), accounting
for 30 percent.19 (Eleven percent of GM crops have both traits.)
Evidence has been accumulating over the years that both types of GM crops
have failed on every count: yield drag, poor performance in the field, more
pesticides used, reduced profits for farmers (at times drastically so,
causing poor farmers to commit suicide), and bad for health and the
environment;49 so much so that many people, including me, were ready to
say, “Good-bye, GMOs,” in 2002.50 We were too optimistic; we did not
consider how powerful were corporate propaganda and disinformation.51
But a spate of recent findings not only confirms what we already know, but
also completes the debacle. And health hazards of GM food and feed are not
the only worry; Roundup-resistant super-weeds and Bt-resistant insect pests
have now been documented, rendering useless both Roundup-tolerant and Bt
crops.
The problems don’t end there. Roundup herbicide causes sudden crop death.
It is lethal to frogs and highly toxic to human placental cells, even at
one-tenth the recommended dosage. It is linked to cancers, neuro-defects
and spontaneous abortions.52 Bt crops express variable amounts of the
toxins, often insufficient to kill target pests but sufficiently poisonous
to harm beneficial insects including predators, bees and soil decomposers.
And Bt toxins are known to be actual or potential allergens that can
provoke strong immune reactions.53
Farmers from all over the world are now reporting that GM crops require
more water, and are less tolerant to drought than non-GM varieties;63 this
finding may prove to be a final nail in the coffin for GM crops.
It is sheer lunacy to expand the cultivation of GM crops across the world,
as the pro-GM lobby is pushing for. It can lead nowhere else but towards
global bio-devastation, massive crop failures and global famine.
A Dangerous Diversion
GM crops are a dangerous diversion that prevents us from addressing the
global energy and food crises. Perhaps people are still unaware or in
denial of the crises as food54,55 and energy run out56 and as global
warming accelerates.57
World grain yield has fallen for six of the past seven years, bringing
reserves to the lowest level in more than thirty years.58 Chronic depletion
of aquifers in the major bread baskets of the world, droughts, and soaring
temperatures, all from global warming, are taking their toll and are set to
do even more damage to food production. An international team of crop
scientists has already reported that crop yields fall by 10 percent for
each degree Centigrade rise in night-time temperature during the growing
season.59
The Inter government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that the
earth’s average temperature would rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees C within this
century.60 But the IPCC model fails to capture the abrupt nature of climate
change, which could be happening over a matter of decades or years.61 A
group based in Oxford University in the UK is predicting a greater
temperature rise of 1.9 to 11.5 degrees C when the carbon dioxide level in
the atmosphere doubles its pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million
sometime within the present century.62
Dream Farm
The good news is that we have a wealth of existing knowledge that can
provide food security and health for all while significantly mitigating
global warming.64,65 We have the knowhow to be food and fuel rich without
fossil fuels. A major obstacle to implementing this knowledge is the
overwhelming commitment of our elected representatives to the dominant
neo-liberal economic model, otherwise known as the environmental bubble
economy.
The dominant model glorifies competitiveness and unlimited growth involving
the most wanton and destructive exploitation of the earth’s natural
resources, laying waste to agricultural land and biodiversity, and
impoverishing billions of souls in the process.
In order to overcome these obstacles to implementing the knowledge, we have
proposed to set up Dream Farm 2.66
Dream Farm 2 is a model, integrated, zero-emission, zero-waste, highly
productive farm that maximizes the use of renewable energies and turns
“wastes” into food and energy resources, thereby completely obviating the
need for fossil fuels. It is our answer to the food and energy crises,
climate change and many other problems. It is a microcosm of a different
way of being and becoming in the world, and in that respect, nothing short
of a social revolution.
[This is very close to Songhai Center. The energy source described below is the biogas digester system Songhai Center uses ot produce abundant, safe, clean energy. REL]
In a way, I have dedicated the past 20 years towards developing Dream Farm
2. The technical underpinnings are described in my book The Rainbow and the
Worm – The Physics of Organisms (2nd Edition),67 which presents a theory of
the organism and sustainable systems, and the social and spiritual
revolution this theory entails.
The ideas have been taken further forward recently, thanks to theoretical
ecologist Robert Ulanowicz at the University of Maryland who co-authored a
paper with me entitled Sustainable Systems as Organisms?;68 and George
Chan’s Integrated Food and Waste Management System (IFWMS),69 which
inspired me to extend the theory of sustainable systems as organisms to
include growth and development explicitly. I call his model Dream Farm 1.
The farms are very diverse, depending on local resources, ingenuity and
imagination. Anaerobic digestion is the core waste-treatment and energy
technology in Dream Farm 1. It has numerous advantages over other
waste-treatment and energy technologies, including other biofuels71 The
Chinese government, by the way, is promoting the widespread use of biogas
digesters to support a burgeoning eco-economy.72
Unsustainable Versus Sustainable Systems
Dream Farm 1 gave me a lot of food for thought on how my theory of the
organism and sustainable systems contrasts with the dominant model.
The dominant model of infinite competitive growth can be represented as the
bigger fish swallowing the smaller ad infinitum, and it describes equally
how a person should behave and how a company should develop in order to be
successful. Another way to represent it is a diagram in Figure 1. The
system grows relentlessly, swallowing up the earth’s resources, laying
waste to everything in its path, like a hurricane. There is no closed cycle
to hold resources within, to build up stable organized social or ecological
structures.
Spiral
Figure 1. The dominant economic model of infinite unsustainable growth that
swallows up the earth’s resources and exports massive amounts of wastes and
entropy.
In contrast, the archetype of a sustainable system is a closed life cycle,
like that of an organism. It is ready to grow and develop, to build up
structures in a balanced way and perpetuate them, and that’s what
sustainability is all about. Closing the cycle creates a stable, autonomous
structure that is self-maintaining, self-renewing and self-sufficient.
In order to do that, one needs to satisfy as much as possible the
zero-entropy or zero-waste ideal, as shown in Figure 2. All natural systems
tend towards this ideal, which is why we don’t fall apart, and why we grow
old only very slowly. If we were perfect, we’d never grow old. The secret
is described in my book, the Rainbow Worm.
Zero Entropy Model
Figure 2. The zero-entropy ideal of a sustainable system.
The “zero-waste” or “zero-entropy” model of the organism and sustainable
systems essentially predicts balanced development and growth at every
stage, as opposed to the dominant model of infinite, unsustainable growth.
This immediately disposes of the myth that the alternative to the dominant
model is to have no development nor any growth at all, which is how most of
the dominant model critics see it.
Cycles Within Cycles
The system’s cycle contains more cycles within that are interlocked to help
one another thrive and prosper. The minimum integrated farm has the farmer,
livestock and crops. The farmer prepares the ground to sow the seeds for
the crops to grow, which feed the livestock and the farmer; the livestock
returns manure to feed the crops. Very little is wasted or exported to the
environment. In fact, a high proportion of the resources is recycled and
kept inside the system. The system stores energy as well as material
resources such as carbon. The extra carbon is sequestered in the soil as
the soil improves and in the standing biomass of crops and livestock.
The farm can perpetuate itself like that quite successfully and
sustainably, or it can grow by engaging more cycles, that is, units of
devolved autonomy that help support the other cycles so that all become
more productive and efficient.
In the old paradigm, organisms are predominantly viewed as competing for
resources and for space. But in nature there are three space dimensions and
the time dimension also. We’ve got space-time that we can fill up more
thickly with life cycles of different sizes that occupy different
space-times. That is exactly what organisms in a naturally biodiverse
ecosystem do to maximize the reciprocal, symbiotic relationships that
benefit all the species. So you can add fish, algae, poultry, worms,
mushrooms, and so forth, turning the “waste” from one cycle into resources
for another.
The more lifecycles incorporated, the more energy and standing biomass are
stored within the system, and the more productive the farm. It will also
support more farmers or farm workers.
Productivity and biodiversity always go together in a sustainable system,
as generations of farmers have known, and recent academic researchers have
rediscovered. It is also the most energy efficient. Why? Because the
different life cycles are essentially holding the energy for the whole
system by way of reciprocity, keeping as much as possible and recycling it
within the system.
In contrast, industrial monoculture–particularly monoculture based on GM
crops–is the least energy efficient system in terms of output per unit of
input, and often less productive than sustainable systems in absolute
terms, despite high external input, because it does not close the cycle, it
does not have biodiversity to hold the energy within, and it ends up
generating a lot of waste, entropy and soil depletion
In a recent visit to China as part of the Dream Farm 2 project, I was
delighted to discover that something very similar to my model of
sustainable systems as organisms is in the official Chinese mainstream
discourse–they call it the “circular economy.” Chinese farmers have
perfected this elegant system over the past two thousand years73 especially
in the Pearl River Delta of southeast China. This integrated agriculture
and fish farming system is a key component of George Chan’s IFWMS. The
success of this system really disposes of the Malthusian myth that a given
piece of land has only a constant carrying capacity in terms of the number
of people it can support. There is a world of difference between industrial
monoculture and circular integrated farming. The Pearl River Delta
sustained an average of 17 people per hectare in the 1980s, a carrying
capacity at least ten times the average of industrial farming, and two to
three times the world average.
Dream Farm 2 is a particular implementation and extension of George Chan’s
IFWMS concept, in that it consciously integrates food and energy
production, emphasizing consumption of both at the point of production.
While it operates as a farm, it will also serve as a demonstration,
education and research center and incubator for new ideas, designs and
technologies. Its aim is to promote and support similar farms springing up
all over Britain and the rest of the world, not only through publicity
about Dream Farm 2 itself, but also by collating and analyzing data from
all similar farms, and by serving as resource center and center for
information exchange (see Sidebar).66
Most significant of all, it runs entirely without fossil fuels. As Robert
Ulanowicz says, “I’ll bet people will be surprised at how quickly the
carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere can come down if we stop burning
fossil fuels.” I think he may well be right.
Sidebars
Damning Evidence Against the Safety of GM Food and Feed
1. Scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences reported between 2005 and
2006 that female rats fed glyphosate-tolerant GM soya produced excessive
numbers of severely stunted pups with more than half of the litter dying
within three weeks, and the surviving pups completely sterile (see main
article).
2. Between 2004 and 2005, hundreds of farm workers and cotton handlers in
Madhya Pradesh, India, suffered allergy symptoms from exposure to Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt) cotton.2
3. Between 2005 and 2006, thousands of sheep died after grazing on Bt
cotton crop residues in four villages in the Warangal district of Andhra
Pradesh in India.3
4. In 2005, scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organization in Canberra, Australia reported that a harmless
protein in beans (alpha-amylase inhibitor 1) transferred to peas caused
inflammation in the lungs of mice and provoked sensitivities to other
proteins in the diet.4
5. From 2002 to 2005, scientists at the Universities of Urbino, Perugia and
Pavia in Italy published reports indicating that GM-soya affected cells in
the pancreas, liver and testes of young mice.5
6. In 2003, villagers in the south of the Philippines suffered mysterious
illnesses when a Monsanto Bt maize hybrid came into flower; antibodies to
the Bt protein were found in the villagers, there have been at least five
unexplained deaths and some remain ill to this day.5
7. In 2004, Monsanto’s secret research dossier showed that rats fed MON863
GM maize developed serious kidney and blood abnormalities.6
8. Between 2001 and 2002, a dozen cows died in Hesse, Germany after eating
Syngenta GM maize Bt176, and more in the herd had to be slaughtered due to
mysterious illnesses.7
9. In 1998, Dr. Arpad Pusztai and colleagues formerly of the Rowett
Institute in Scotland reported damage in every organ system of young rats
fed GM potatoes containing snowdrop lectin, including a stomach lining
twice as thick as controls.8
10. Also in 1998, scientists in Egypt found similar effects in the gut of
mice fed Bt potato.9
11. The US Food and Drug Administration had data dating back to early 1990s
showing that rats fed GM tomatoes with antisense gene to delay ripening had
developed small holes in their stomach.8
12. In 2002, Aventis company (later Bayer Cropscience) submitted data to UK
regulators showing that chickens fed glufosinate-tolerant GM maize Chardon
LL were twice as likely to die compared with controls.10
The Language of the Dance
The greatest danger is the mindset of the GM proponents. Genetic
engineering of plants and animals began in the mid 1970s under the illusion
that the genetic material is constant and static and the characteristics of
organisms are hardwired in their genes. One gene determines one
characteristic. But geneticists soon discovered to their great surprise
that the genetic material is dynamic and fluid, in that both the expression
and structure of genes are constantly changing under the influence of the
environment. By the early 1980s, geneticists had already coined the term,
“the fluid genome,” to mark this major paradigm shift, as described in my
book, Living with the Fluid Genome.47
The processes responsible for the fluid genome are precisely orchestrated
by the organism as a whole in a dance of life that is necessary for the
organism to survive and thrive. In contrast, genetic engineering in the lab
is crude, imprecise and invasive. The synthetic genes can land anywhere, in
any form, causing a lot of collateral damage to the genome, and tending to
be unstable, basically because these rogue genes do not know the language
of the dance. Genetic engineers haven’t learned to dance with life.
Call for a Ban
In 2003, accumulating evidence on the many dangers of GM organisms prompted
dozens of prominent scientists from around the world to launch themselves
as the Independent Science Panel (ISP). Our stated goal: to overcome the
campaign of disinformation from pro-GM scientists who are working to
promote the corporate agenda, and to reclaim science for the public good.
We compiled all the evidence against GM crops as well as the evidence on
the successes and benefits of sustainable non-GM agriculture in an ISP
report, The Case for a GM-Free Sustainable World.48 Based on this evidence,
we have called for a ban on the environmental releases of GM crops and a
comprehensive shift to sustainable agriculture. Please support these
efforts by sending this article, which updates the evidence contained in
the ISP report, to your policy makers and elected representatives.
Advantages of Anaerobic Digestion to Recover Methane
* Potential to provide 11.7 percent of all energy needs or 50.2 percent
of transport fuels in the UK.
* Methane can be used as fuel for mobile vehicles or for combined heat
and power generation.
* Methane-driven cars are already on the market, and currently the
cleanest vehicles on the road by far.
* Biogas methane is a renewable and carbon mitigating fuel (more than
carbon neutral).
* Saves on carbon emission twice over, by preventing the escape of
methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere and by substituting for
fossil fuel.
* Conserves plant nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus for soil
productivity.
* Produces a superb fertilizer for crops as a by-product.
* Prevents pollution of ground water, soil and air.
* Improves food and farm hygiene, removes 90 percent or more of harmful
chemicals and bacteria.
* Can be adapted to produce hydrogen either directly or from methane.
Dream Farm 1
The anaerobic digester takes in livestock manure plus wastewater and
generates biogas, which provides all the energy needs for heating, cooking
and electricity. The partially cleansed wastewater goes into the algal
basin where the algae produce by photosynthesis all the oxygen needed to
detoxify the water, making it safe for the fish. The algae are harvested to
feed chickens, ducks, geese and other livestock. The fishpond supports a
compatible mixture of five or six fish species. Water from the fishpond is
used to “fertigate” crops growing in the fields or on the raised dykes.
Aquaculture of rice, fruits and vegetables can be done in floats on the
surface of the fishpond. Water from the fishpond can also be pumped into
greenhouses to support aquaculture of fruits and vegetables. The anaerobic
digester yields a residue rich in nutrients that is an excellent fertilizer
for crops. It could also be mixed with algae and crop residues for
culturing mushrooms after steam sterilization. The residue from mushroom
culture can be fed to livestock or composted. Crop residues are fed back to
livestock. Crop and food residues are used to grow earthworms to feed fish
and fowl. Compost and worm castings go to condition the soil. Livestock
manure goes back into the anaerobic digester, thus closing the grand cycle.
The result is a highly productive farm that’s more than self-sufficient in
food and energy.
Farm animals are central to this model. Dream Farm 1 is strong on animal
welfare.70 The animals are organically fed. The pigs are especially easy to
toilet-train(!) to deposit their manure directly into the digester, so the
animals and their living quarter are spotlessly clean, which makes for
healthy and contented animals.
Dream Farm 2
The complete model of Dream Farm 2 will be implemented at potential sites
now under consideration. Because this is an organic system in the sense I
have described, we don’t have to have all the elements all at once. We can
have a very simple system consisting of biogas digesters, livestock, crops
and algae basins without fishponds, as that essentially does the water
purification already and closes the cycle. The algae can be used to feed
livestock, as an alternative to grain or soybeans.
Notice that three biogas digesters are present, connected both in parallel
and in series. This is advisable, because it provides spares in case one is
not working properly. It also provides for the production of both hydrogen
and methane in a two-stage digestion process. I am also suggesting that we
include human manure in the biogas digestion, as well as restaurant wastes.
That way, we hardly export any waste to the outside.
The challenge now is to make Dream Farm 2 a reality, to put flesh on the
bare bones of the diagram, so we can start building the best when sites are
agreed upon, and we can promote and support a worldwide movement. Already,
we have potential partners in UK, US, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ethiopia,
Mauritius, and France. We believe this is the best way forward to a
greener, cleaner, healthier and more fulfilling life without fossil
fuels.59
Benefits of Dream Farm 2
1. Assembles in one showcase all the relevant technologies that can deliver
sustainable food and energy and a profitable zero carbon economy.
2. Generates all its own energy for heating and electricity, including
clean fuel for transport.
3. Energy use at the point of production enables combined heat and power
generation and improves efficiency by 70 percent.
4. Runs entirely without fossil fuels.
5. Saves substantially on carbon dioxide emissions, by preventing methane
and nitrous oxide escaping, by substituting for fossil fuels and by
improved energy efficiency.
6. Increases sequestration of carbon in soil and standing biomass.
7. Reduces wastes and environmental pollution to a minimum.
8. Conserves and purifies water and controls flooding.
9. Produces a diversity of crops, livestock and fish in abundance.
10. Fresh and nutritious food free from agrochemicals produced and consumed
locally for maximum health benefits.
11. Provides employment opportunities for the local community.
12. Provides a showcase and incubator for how appropriate new energy and
food technologies are implemented.
13. Provides hands-on education and research opportunities at all levels
from infants to university students and beyond.
14. Supports and promotes similar farms in the UK and all over the world.
References
1. Ho MW. GM soya fed rats: stunted, dead or sterile. Science in Society 33
(in press).
2. Ho MW. More illnesses linked to Bt crops. Science in Society 30, 8-10,
2006.
3. Ho MW. Mass deaths in sheep grazing on Bt cotton. Science in Society 30.
12-13, 2006.
4. Ho MW. Transgenic pea that made mice ill. Science in Society 29, 28-29,
2006.
5. Ho MW. GM ban long overdue. Dozens ill & five deaths in the Philippines.
Science in Society 29, 26-27, 2006.
6. “French experts very disturbed by health effects of Monsanto GM corn”
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7. Ho MW and Burcher S. Cows ate GM maize and died. Science in Society 21,
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56. Ho MW. Is oil running out? Science in Society 25, 50-51, 2005.
57. Ho MW. Global warming is happening. Science in Society 31, 23-24, 2006.
58. Dyer G. How long can the world feed itself? Energy Bulletin, 10 October
2006, http://www.energybulletin.net/21736.html
59. Peng S, Huang J, Sheehy JE, LazAa RC, Visperas RM, Zhong X, Centeno GS,
Khush GS and Cassman KG, Rice yields decline with higher night temperatures
from global warming. PNAS 2004, 101, 9971-5.
60. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contributions of Working
Group 1 to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge
University Press, New York, 2001.
61. Ho MW. Abrupt climate change happening. Science in Society 20, 23,
2003, 20, 23.
62. “Internet project forecasts global warming. Biggest-ever climate
simulation warns temperatures may rise by 11oC.” Michael Hopkin,
New@nature.com published online: 26 January 2005.
63. “Farmers ask why GM crops perform worse in drought” Network of
Concerned Farmers, 20 June 2005,
http://www.non-gm-farmers.com/news_details.asp?ID=2253
64. Ho MW. Sustainable food systems for sustainable development. Science in
Society 27, 33-35, 2005.
65. Ho MW, Bunyard P, Saunders PT, Bravo E and Gala R. Which Energy? 2006
ISIS Energy Report, Institute of Science in Society, London, 2006.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/onlinestore/books.php#238
66. Ho MW. Dream Farm 2 — story so far. Science in Society 31, 40-43,
2006.
67. Ho MW. The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms. 2nd
(enlarged) ed. World Scientific, Singapore, 1998, reprinted 1999, 2001,
2003 (available online from ISIS website www.i-sis.org.uk).
68. Ho MW and Ulanowicz R. Sustainable systems as organisms? BioSystems
2005, 82, 39-51. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/onlinestore/papers1.php#section3
69. Ho MW. Dream farm. Science in Society 27, 26-28, 2005.
70. Chan G. Dream Farms. Effective & economic possibilities in applying
ecological engineering means to sustainable agriculture & agribusiness.
Presentation at ISIS Dream Farm workshop, Kindersley Centre, Berkshire, UK,
21 January 2006. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/onlinestore/av.php
71. Ho MW. How to be fuel and food rich under climate change, Science in
Society 31, 37-39, 2006.
72. Li K-M and Ho MW. Biogas China, Science in Society 32, 34-37, 2006.
73. Ho MW. Circular economy of the dyke-pond system. Science in Society 32,
38-41, 2006.
About the Author
Mae Wan Ho, PhDMae-Wan Ho, PhD, obtained her B.S. degree in biology in 1964
and her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1967 from Hong Kong University. She was a
postdoctoral fellow in biochemical genetics from 1968 to 1972 at the
University of California in San Diego, during which time she won a
competitive fellowship of the U.S. National Genetics Foundation.
Since 1994, Ho has been scientific adviser to the Third World Network and
has played a major role in informing policy makers and the public during
negotiations of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, an international
agreement regulating the trade of genetically engineered products. Ho
continues to play a prominent part in exposing what she calls “the bad
science” of genetic engineering that’s driven both by a Darwinian
perspective of the world and the mistaken view that organisms are hardwired
in their genes.
In April 2003, she initiated the Independent Science Panel to oppose the
corporate takeover of science, and drafted an influential report, “The Case
for a GM-free Sustainable World,” in which independent scientists will be
joining forces with all sectors of civil society in a bid to make our food
system sustainable, that would also ameliorate the worst excesses of global
warming and provide food security for all. In April 2006, she co-authored
an extremely influential Which Energy report sponsored by dozens of civil
society organizations which sets out clear options for shifting to a
zero-carbon economy.
She has more than 300 publications and a dozen books spanning several
disciplines, including The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms
(1993, 1998), Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare? (1998, 1999), and
Living with the Fluid Genome (2003). She also edits the radical science
magazine, Science in Society.
Ho heads the Bio-Electrodynamics laboratory at the Open University in
Milton Keynes in the UK. For further information, visit www.i-sis.org.uk.
To read Dr. Rima’s blog on Day One of the Ghana Codex Working Group on the Labeling of Foods Obtained from Genetic Modification/Genetic Engineering, go to: https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?p=512
Day Two, January 29, 2008 passed much the same way as Day One. There was a mixture of excruciating (to me) trivia intermingled with decisions that could have life and death impact on the lives of people all over the world.
As a US Citizen, I was not proud of the side that my government, through the person of the FDA’s Barbara Schneeman, consistently took. But I was proud and thrilled by the position that Norway, Japan, Russia, the EU and others consistently took in response when they defended and inserted mention of the rights of consumers to have the information they wanted against the constant pressure of the US and its allies to prevent consumer access to truthful information. (By the way, although I took verbatim notes of the 3 days, my computer will not go on line at this hotel so I do not have access to those notes right now. When I can get that computer back on line, I will post them in their entirety for you to read if you like. Some of you will find the nitty gritty of a Codex meeting fascinating, some will find it laughable. I find it both.)
See Day 1 for details of the new unilateral “background” document the US sought to use to control the event. The Working Group’s thrust was powerful to find a way to make this Background Paper an official Codex document and while other options for forward movement toward consensus would come to the floor, there was no other option presented which had so much traction or forward momentum. The other options kept flopping, as it were, off the table and gasping for air on the floor. Fish out of water.
On the afternoon of the second day, during the lunch break, the EU and other interested countries came up with some proposals to give the background paper a proper “chapeau†(French for “hatâ€) or heading. The US helped to craft a proposal for a chapeau which quickly became two chapeaux. The wording and concepts proposed by the US seemed benign enough: ‘Foods are safe when they come to market and labeling is not a substitute for safety.’ ‘This document was for the use of countries as they developed their own framework for the labeling of GM foods’ and other balsamic-sounding phrases. But if an official Codex document says that foods on the market (like GM “foodsâ€) are safe by the time they get there, then a nation keeping GM foods out because of safety concerns might be creating a barrier to trade in the eyes of the WTO, mightn’t it?
If the document was for use by Codex member countries, might the use of anything not in that document constitute a barrier to trade since this document was the one that they were supposed to be guided by in such regulations? And so on. It all sounded wonderfully friendly but, looked at from the point of view of Codex/WTO trade sanction strategy which could be used to force an end to the mandatory labeling which the US opposes so strongly, it was a very dangerous document, indeed.
Yes, the day ended with the purveyors of half truths and distortions quite satisfied.
Day 3: January 30, 2008 Africa to the Rescue!
By the time the third day dawned, things were different. Norway continued to insist that the background document preamble (the “chapeauâ€) HAD to include the fact that preferences of consumers was a reason for regulatory requirements for labeling (the labels exist to inform consumers… duh). The US continued to reject any mention of the consumer’s needs and preferences and said that they were not relevant (Hmm, if not for the consumer, why have any label… the US position is quite batty).
Norway, in the spirit of conciliation, suggested changing “consumers†to “countries†in the statement that said that their preferences were different in different places. The US objected. But so did Nigeria, one of the authors of the Background Paper. “Noâ€, said the Codex Contact Point of Nigeria, a fine lady who really cares about what she is doing at Codex. “No!†, Mrs. Eschiet repeated. “The issue here is not countries. The mandate of Codex is first to protect the health of consumers and it is consumers, not countries, who should be protected here. Let us change the word back to ‘consumers’ †she said. There was nothing the US could do at that point except to state that they did not support this wording. But the US had an even bigger surprise in store. It was just about time to get out those “queasy stomach” prescriptions that Big Pharma likes to sell by the ton.
Member nations started presenting other Codex texts that the US sponsored “background” paper had left out… fancy that, people who didn’t want to inform the consumers not informing their Codex colleagues! And then the delegates began to suggest that they be included!
They began to introduce principles from CCGP, the Codex Committee on General Principles and from other Codex documents which supported the right of countries to make their own decisions, and of consumers to make theirs through adequate information.
The US delegation appeared to become quite unhappy. Sitting where I was I could see the vigorous head-shakes and the vigorous consultations between members of the Delegation including the people from the Department of Commerce, the biotech and grocery manufacturer’s people and others on the delegation whose identify I did not learn. This is not the usual demeanor of the US delegation, to say the least.
Things got more difficult for the no-right-to-know contingent as the session progressed. It was so encouraging to see people from around the world defending the consumer’s right to know.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has long maintained that concerted effort on the part of the developing nations and those who also do not see multinational corporate interests as their own can change the direction of Codex radically. We have also maintained that if this happened, Codex might become the greatest force for health and well being on the planet that the world has ever seen. If what we saw during this meeting, particularly at the end of it, is any indication of the beginning of a trend, we are right!
At the same time, we believe that, left unchanged as a playground for the greed (and worse) of the corporate interests which the US serves in all of its dealings within Codex, the impact of that organization can be disastrous to the lives and well-being of literally billions of people.
Well, what happened today, on the last day of the deliberations of this Working Group, was a confirmation that the first outcome is, in fact, a real possibility. We have been working with developing countries reminding them that, as a group, they are incredibly powerful. Acting in concert, they can control what happens at Codex and act in their own best interest, not be dragged along to act in the best interest of the developed world and the multinational corporations. That is part of the message we have been delivering at Codex meetings in our conferences with the delegates of the developing countries and on the ground, in their home countries. That is, in fact, one of the biggest reasons that we travel to these places and meet with their decision makers. The other, of course, is to promote their use of the Codex Two Step Process so that they can protect their health and avoid crippling World Trade Organization trade sanctions at the same time.
You see, many of the African states, who understand how dangerous GM foods are and fear their impact on their people and on their land, had met and had come up with absolutely brilliant modifications to the “chapeaux†(background document heading) that the US proposed. By taking out many of the future WTO mine fields (that the no-right-to-know gang had included in the initial draft of the document) while quoting from the Codex texts to get the wording precisely correct, they created a preamble to the document that protected their choices for labeling but cut the cheese from the carefully crafted mouse trap. They left out the provision about safety, leaving open the very real possibility that a food could have been brought to market which turns out not to be safe. Other countries supported them strongly. The US said that if this modification were to be adopted by the Working Group they would not be able to support the document and reiterated this several times.
When the group showed no signs of backing down, Dr. Schneeman had what would be classified, in my professional and personal opinion, as a “hissy fitâ€. She became (literally) red in the face and complained strongly to the chair persons that all the hard work of the past year was wasted in the face of this modification and that she was personally upset. And, indeed, she sounded personally upset. In fact, we overheard one member of the US delegation saying as he walked out for a break that the US was “getting slammedâ€. Dr. Schneeman certainly appeared to be aware that she, her paper, the US position and, by my estimate, its future WTO strategy, were, indeed, getting slammed.
That is not the same thing as the American people getting slammed; in fact, if the Right to Know countries succeed, Americans will be closer to having “truthful and not misleading” food labels regarding such matters as GM status, irradiation and the like. Codes, it seems, can be a double edged sword.
As they provided support for the African position, other countries as well noted relevant Codex texts which the US/Canadian/Nigerian background document did not mention, allude to or acknowledge. Principles for safety and labeling, for Risk Assessment of GM foods and for other strategies to protect the consumer’s health were brought forward to give countries latitude to protect its people and not be assaulted legally via trade sanctions. Africa became stronger and stronger and the US lost, it seemed to me, more and more ground.
At the end, the document’s chapeaux and the document itself were left for further consideration at CCFL this coming April in Ottawa. So the battle continues.
With your continuing financial help (urgently needed, by the way – make your generous tax deductible recurring donation at the link below) we can, indeed, continue to support the emergence of these alliances which can give strength to the push back against the multinational agendas. It happened here. It can happen everywhere in Codex. We need your continued support to be able to attend the Codex food labeling committee in Ottawa, where the battle will continue.
Donate here: https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189
We had the opportunity to speak at significant intensity and length to African delegates and tell them about our International Decade of Nutrition to help them feed themselves and to help them use the Codex Two Step process to make sure that their laws and food supply support health, not profit for the corporations which will exploit them… to death. We passed out our materials, the Codex Book and “Nutricide: the DVD†– the indispensable story of what Codex is, and how it came to be. The updated version contains the special video made specifically to explain the Codex Two Step to Codex delegates. You can find them on our web site, www.healthfreedomusa.org
And some wonderful news, thanks to your support!
The Natural Solutions Foundation was told that it can expect two more official letters of invitation from two more African governments to bring not only the International Decade of Nutrition, our technology and our assistance in producing clean and abundant food to these countries, but to bring our Codex information and strategy as well. We were invited by the host country, Ghana, to the Codex Committee for Africa, CCAfrica, in 2009, a year from now.
As you may recall, we will be in Ghana for a few days and then traveling to another West African country, followed by a middle eastern one and then an East African one for exactly these purposes. We are recording it all for the Codex documentary. You can easily understand that we do not want to advertise our travel plans right now since we do not want the considerable weight of the US’ 5000 lb ‘trade gorilla†to sit on these countries before they have developed their strategy for dealing with that consequence. But there is something that I will share with you. As of today, right here, right now, we do not have enough money to complete the trip. I cannot believe, however, that you will let us down. We need your generous support and we need it now.
Donate here: https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189
• We need it to build health freedom in the US and the rest of the world.
• We need it to reclaim food for you and your brothers and sisters around the world.
• We need it to change Codex into the most potent health force the world has ever seen.
You can be sure, by the way, that as that happens, the multinationals will try to kill it.
So think carefully about how much your health freedom is worth to you. $1 per week? $10 per week? $100 per month? How about a matching grant? All of your donations to the Natural Solutions Foundation are tax deductible since we are a tax exempt 501 ( c ) (3) organization.
Donate here: https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189
Oh, yes, one other thing: if you donate $100 or more to help fund our Codex/Health Freedom Video, we’ll give you a really nice “Thank you!†in the final version of this made for TV full length documentary! There is a special link on the donation page for that. Our wonderful videographers Mary Beth and Jim are getting some excellent footage and we’ll be able to show you what it is like to be where your heath and freedom are at stake.
Thanks.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
In a remarkable letter written on April 6, 2006 to the Helen Clark, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Scientists of the Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics [PSRG] took the bold step of warning the PM and every member of the New Zealand Parliament about the known and unknown dangers of biotech foods. They urged the PM and Parliament to move very cautiously on the approval of any genetically modified foods and cited a wealth or reasons why that caution was necessary.
They also urged that they not rely on US decision making since the US FDA and USDA cannot be relied upon to act responsibly in this issue and detail some of the reasons for that lack of trust questioning, among other things, the competency and accuracy of the US agencies involved with approval of GM foods. They charge, and document both FDA and USDA with very specific deficiencies, including the fact that they ignore their own scientists and approve GM foods as safe when there is no evidence that they are, in fact, safe. US approval, however, is generally taken around the world as strong and often compelling evidence of a food’s safety by the countries around the world which still chose to believe the deadly fiction that the US has the world’s best food supply, safety and security. The EU Food Safety organization takes some heavy hits, too, as it is quoted as saying that it has no idea how to analyze and, whether GM or not.
The report is rather technical in spots so, although it is presented without editing, I have taken the liberty of emphasizing parts of it which I find particularly interesting and relevant. In other words, I have placed all bold face text in that format since it does not appear in bold in the original letter.
Please share this information widely since it directly and compellingly offers information that consumers need to know as they choose their diets for themselves and their families. Please remember that the US FDA prohibits the accurate labeling of genetically modified foods so that consumers will not make the “mistake” of rejecting GM food in the US. It strongly urges the rest of the world to adopt the same potentially deadly standard through Codex and, in fact, the Working Group on Biotech (GM) Foods (Accra, Ghana, January 28-30, 2007) will consider this proposition again (as the same group did in Norway last year). The Natural Solutions Foundation will be there reporting on every development for you.
Support our kind of on-going information for yourself and your circle of influence. Join the Natural Solutions Foundation’s Health Freedom e-Alerts (https://staging.drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187). Your information is secure with us. I promise.
Oh, yes, there is something else you can do in this critically important process of reclaiming our food: disseminate widely (with proper attribution so people can find the Natural Solutions Foundation when they go looking for more information) and donate. Your tax exempt donations are the life blood of the Natural Solutions Foundation. Help us keep on helping you to maintain your health freedom!
And eat organic. You will note in the MP’s letter that the changes induced by the GM crops could be reversed over time even in adults. That should give you pause and hope. Organic, real organic, not phony Codex-standard organic, is the answer there.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
Letter to PM on genetically engineered organisms
Thursday, 6 April 2006, 2:56 pm
Press Release: Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0604/S00056.htm
The Right Hon. Helen Clark
Cc to all MPs
Prime Minister
ERMA
Parliament Buildings
FSANZ
WELLINGTON
Media
A letter addressed to Prime Minister Helen Clark
Dear Helen Clark
PSRG calls your attention to 8 April 2006, designated the day to inform people and to demonstrate public concern about genetically engineered organisms (GEOs).
Of particular concern to us are decisions of FSANZ and other regulatory bodies; the decision not to adopt country of origin labeling; the inadequacy of current GEO label ling requirements; the use of genetic engineering technology to produce pharmaceutical and industrial materials; and potential applications to release GEOs into the New Zealand environment.
(For the purposes of this letter, genetic engineering and genetic modification are synonymous.)
1. The effects on human consumers ingesting genetically engineered organisms
We advise you of the following research that raises serious concerns about the risks of consuming GEOs.
1.1. Eating genetically engineered soybeans affected the liver and pancreas of study mice.
In 2005, Italian researchers1 found that genetically engineered (GE) soybeans affected the liver and pancreas in mice. Previously, the researchers had shown that absorption of GE soy by mice induced modifications in the nuclei of their liver cells. It was later shown that reverting the diet of the mice to conventional food caused the observed differences to disappear. It was also found that several of these changes could be “induced in adult organisms in a very short time.”
1.2. Genetically engineered pea research abandoned because of adverse results
Also in 2005, CSIRO2 scientists abandoned a research project after ten years. They found that the genetically engineered peas they had developed caused lung damage in mice.
1.3. The cauliflower mosaic virus acting as a catalyst to provoke gene expression (2006)
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Dr Terje Traavik, scientific director of the University of Tromso’s Institute of Genetic Ecology in Norway, has demonstrated 3 that an element of the genetic structures used to engineer a plant – the cauliflower mosaic virus (35S CaMV) promoter – can provoke gene expression in cultured human cells. [In other words, this genetic element could promote cancer] Developers of genetically engineered plants have previously claimed that the promoter normally only performs that way with plants.
1.4. Monsanto’s MON 863 genetically engineered corn
In April 2004, a toxicological study released to Le Monde4 reportedly showed that rats fed with MON 863 presented anomalies, including an increase in the white blood cell count, changes in blood sugar, and a reduction in the red blood cell count. The paper claimed that in considering a decision on its release, despite re-examining the file, regulators did not reportedly take another look at Monsanto’s statistical analysis.
An independent study was commissioned from Gilles-Eric Seralini, of the University of Caen, and Dominique Cellier, of the University of Rouen. Dominique Cellier, a biocomputer specialist, is reported to have said that: “Monsanto’s statistical analysis of the differences observed in the rats was very superficial. They isolate the variables instead of using so-called multi-variable analysis methods, which consist of looking at the observed anomalies in a coherent way. If one uses those methods, one observes coherence between the weight, urinary tract, and haematological anomalies in the animals fed GMOs.”
Commenting on evaluating procedures for GEOs, Jean-Michel Wal of the GEO group of the European Authority on Food Security, is cited as saying: “We don’t know how to study a food overall, whether it’s a GMO or not; there’s no norm.”
2. Regulation and safety testing of GEOs
We wish to raise serious concerns about New Zealand’s reliance on the approval process of US government agencies. The companies that develop and promote genetically engineered food crops generally carry out toxicological studies on the effects of consuming them. These studies are meant to then be double checked by food safety authorities, but the criticism is that the experiments are simply not reproduced [by the FDA], even though industry studies often show adverse biological impacts.
2.1. Inadequate and unsatisfactory regulation
The FDA declared genetically engineered foods are substantially equivalent to conventional foods. It ignored the warnings of its own scientists and put in place food rules that assume no unforeseen effects will occur and, therefore, no safety testing is required, for genetically engineered foods. This premise has been well proven to be wrong.
2.1.a. Early in 2000, German scientists discovered that antibiotic resistant marker (ARM) genes from engineered canola were transferring their resistance to the bacteria found in the guts of bees that had consumed pollen from the plants.
2.1.b. Earlier European Union studies had revealed that ARM genes found in genetically engineered foods could transfer into bacteria in the human gut as well as soil bacteria (http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/genemarker.cfm ).
2.2. British Medial Association
Concerns were raised as long ago as 1999 when the British Medical Association called for a global moratorium on genetically engineered crops. The BMA were concerned that ARM genes would cause antibiotic resistance to develop in bacteria by horizontal gene transfer. Such resistance would serve to erode the effectiveness of antibiotics for humankind. Crops are still produced using ARM genes.
2.3. Recommended new safety test method
In 2006, agricultural economist, Dr Charles Benbrook – a former adviser to the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations – warned of serious concerns over safety in respect of generically engineered foods.5 He claims that these food crops should be re-tested using Australian food safety technology developed by the Australian National University. The failed pea trials were tested using it.
2.4. Instigating safety assessments
As a direct result of the failed pea trails (1.2), Western Australia has instigated an independent, long-term animal feeding trial to collect and assess data on the safety of GE food crops. New Zealand should also take the initiative.
3. Current applications for genetically engineered crops
Recent applications to Food Safety ANZ for the approval of foods derived from genetically engineered alfalfa and corn raise concerns.
a.. Food derived from glyphosate-tolerant Lucerne (Application A575) J101 and J163 for human consumption.
b.. Food derived from Monsanto’s high-lysine corn LY038 (Application A549) genetically engineered to have higher than usual levels of the amino acid, lysine, intended for animal feed.
It is stated that these will be used for animal feed, although some may find its way into human food products. PSRG maintains that the risks that it is intrinsically unwise to allow GE animal feed into the human food chain.
3.1. Transgenes in cows’ milk
In June 2004, a study was released by the Research Centre for Milk and Foodstuffs in Weihenstephan, Bavaria that showed that parts of the gene construct from RoundupReady soybean and from Bt176 maize was found in milk from cows fed these genetically engineered plants. The report says the gene segments may have got into the milk via feed or dust from the feed in the air. No further studies have been made to clarify the exact means by which the DNA fragments got into the milk. (See http://news.bbc.co.uk/.)
3.2. Transgenes in the gut bacteria of human volunteers
A study commissioned by the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) and carried out at the University of Newcastle, demonstrated that DNA from a genetically engineered food – in this case soybean in the form of a burger and a milkshake – found its way into the gut bacteria of human volunteers. (See the FSA Report on http://www.foodstandards.gov.uk/.)
3.3. The long-term effects of ingesting material from transgenic sources on a daily basis have not been assessed.
4. Adverse effects of genetically engineered crops – MON 8106, 7, 8 Monsanto’s MON 810 corn produces an artificial, truncated version of a Cry toxin derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. This family of toxins has a pathogenic effect on Lepidopteron insects.
4.1. Genetically engineered plants are not equivalent to bio pesticides
A study spanning several years has monitored the quantity of Cry1Ab toxins in DK-440 BTY (MON 810) corn. Cry toxins are compounds that have gained acceptance in pest control (i.e., in bio pesticides such as DIPEL). However, genetically engineered plants are not equivalent to these bio-pesticides from the aspect of environmental analysis and ecotoxicology.
The principal difference with regard to toxin release is related to the extent and duration of exposure: while bio-pesticide applications release a small quantity of the toxin on a single or several occasions, the GE plant produces the toxin protein on a continuous basis, unnecessarily, during its entire vegetation cycle, as long as the gene section(s) added artificially to the plant and responsible for encoding the protein are active.6
4.2. Cry toxin produced in the entire plant during the whole growth period Székács et al6 have confirmed that the Cry toxin is produced in the plant during the whole period of growth. That is, in a dry plant, under moderate temperature, the toxin remains biologically active for several years. Post-harvest the maize stubble contains a significant quantity of Cry toxin. Cry toxin, over-wintering in the stubble, can be detected in plant residues after a period of one year.
4.3. Comparisons between bio pesticides and Bt plants
Székács et al compared the quantity of Cry-toxin proteins produced by the Bt-plant with the doses registered and permitted for their use in bio pesticides, and determined the toxin quantity in DIPEL. They found that MON 810 Bt-corn produces 1500-3000 times more Cry1Ab toxin than the Cry1Ab toxin dose corresponding to a single treatment with DIPEL.
They also found that only part of the toxin from the Bt-plant is decomposed during the growth period. Further, a significant part of the remaining quantity in the stubble enters the soil, where it may affect soil life (animals and micro-organisms).
4.4. Cry pollen and contamination
A study (Marva’s et al)7 carried out over several years looked at the possible effects of the pollen of DK-440 BTY corn grown in Nagykovácsi, Júlia-major, a valley where no maize was grown during the years concerned.
The distance of the intra-specific hybrid formation was examined on white, tassel-free maize and the results showed that pollen transfer could occur at 800 metres.
This poses risks for organically grown maize where zero tolerance is accepted for GE [Genetically Engineered – editor] -hybrids. Seeds developing from a traditional female blossom pollinated with cry gene- containing pollen (i.e., from MON 810), have a high probability (1/3) of acquiring the capability of producing the Cry1Ab toxin.
4.5. The effects on essential insect species
Around fields planted with Bt-corn hybrids, the Bt-pollen settled on weeds, presenting a danger to the hatching caterpillars of protected varieties of butterflies. This means that in the case of extensive Bt-corn cultivation, butterfly species could recede [that is, be damaged or extermated – editor].
A study by Béla Darvas and Éva Lauber8 found that insects developed resistance to the toxin content in Bt-corn leaves. The conclusion is that this will generate a growth in the number of insect populations on which Bacillus thuringiensis products – used almost exclusively in organic farming – will no longer have a suitable effect.
5. Food crops engineered to produce non-food [chemicals and pharmaceuticals -editor] products – the potential contamination of other engineered, conventional and organically grown crops.
In 2004, the US Department of Agriculture oversaw 67,000 acres of biotech field trials, some of which involved producing non-food products in a food crop. Corn is the most utilized food crop for engineered traits because it is easy to work with and produces a lot of grain. The concern is that food plants genetically engineered for non-food products could contaminate plants engineered as food crops and/or conventional crops, and enter the food supply as did StarLink’s Cry9C protein in 2000.
5.1. Report on the US Department of Agriculture as a regulator9
A recent report found that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has failed to properly oversee field trials of genetically engineered crops, including plants engineered to produce chemicals for medical and industrial uses. The report says that the USDA “lacks basic information” on field trial locations and what happens to the crops after harvest. For example, auditors located two harvested pharmaceutical crops in storage, about which the USDA knew nothing nor had it approved.
The two-year safety audit by the United States Office of Inspector General also found that: “Current (USDA) regulations, policies and procedures do not go far enough to ensure the safe introduction of agricultural biotechnology.”
6. Pharmaceutical drugs produced using genetic engineering technology
Some people react differently to proteins that are genetically engineered as against equivalent proteins that are produced naturally. Genetic engineering technology is not as precise or as predictable as chemical drugs because it relies on the intricate workings of complex living cells in the process of manufacture, and even the subtlest of changes in the process can have unpredictable results. Some drugs – e.g. human insulin – are created by engineering the required human gene into bacterial or animal cells.
PSRG [Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics – REL] urges you, Prime Minister, to put safety before industry profit and instigate changes to the NZ system of regulation that will protect New Zealanders.
Signed by the Trustees of Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics
Paul G Butler, BSc, MB, ChB, Dip. Obst. (Auckland), FRNZCGP General Practitioner, Trustee PSRG, AUCKLAND
John R Clearwater, BSc, MSc, PhD
Principal Scientist, Clearwater Research and Consulting, Trustee PSRG, AUCKLAND
Bernard J Conlon, MB, BCh, BAO, DCH, DRCOG, DGM, MRCGP (UK), FRNZCGP General Practitioner, Trustee PSRG, MURUPARA
Elvira Dommisse, BSc(Hons), PhD
Former Research Scientist, Trustee PSRG, CHRISTCHURCH
Michael E Godfrey, MBBS, FACAM, FACNEM
Director, Bay of Plenty Environmental Health Clinic, Trustee PSRG, TAURANGA
Neil Macgregor, BSc, MSc, PhD
Soil Microbiologist, Institute of Natural Resources, Massey University, Trustee PSRG, PALMERSTON NORTH
Peter R Wills, BSc, PhD
Associate Professor, University of Auckland, Trustee PSRG, AUCKLAND
Robert G Anderson, BSc, PhD
Lecturer retired, Trustee PSRG, TAURANGA
Jean Anderson
Businesswoman retired, Trustee PSRG, TAURANGA.
Signed on behalf of PSRG
Jean Anderson
Secretary
www.psrg.org.nz.
for the Trustees of Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics
You know we have to travel a lot to represent your interests at international meetings, such a Codex Alimenatrius. When I go to Europe I eat with a feeling of moderate confidence that my food, unless imported from the US, will be free of Genetically Modified (GM) ingredients. Moderate confidence, I say, because, as a meat eater I know that although food intended directly for people is, for the most part GM free, animals raised in the EU for human consumption can be fed GM feeds. The foreign DNA, and the artificially introduced antibiotic resistance which is used as a marker for GM techniques in the laboratory, are transmitted to the animal and then to you, the eater.
Vegetarians what are ready to take smug satisfaction from that fact, however, should consider that the EU authorities are adding new species of approved GM crops on a nearly daily basis. That means that the confidence with which you eat food in Europe should decline almost on a daily basis.
Now there is another kick to the consumer’s safety and confidence in Europe. “Probably safe” apparently is safe enough, at least for the EU regulators. Cloned food, now judged to be “probably safe”, is being approved in the US along with cloned meat. It is true, of course, that Dolly the cloned sheep died young and the health of other cloned animals is questionable over time. Dolly not only contracted a “common livestock disease” (What? Her immune system was not strong and effective in protecting her from it even with the superb care she must surely have been receiving?) and her cells showed signs of premature aging! What about your cells when you invite Dolly to dinner – and eat her? The cloned DNA was not actually identical in terms of keeping the animals alive and well over time. Well, to my mind, just as the foreign and unstable DNA in GM foods gets woven into your DNA and may provide one of the worst health disasters in human history, so cloned DNA may add to the debacle. Of course, according to the AP, the EU’s 47 page report, released this week, stated that “there was “only limited data available” on animal cloning” and it did urge consultation with scientists and consumer groups which have in the past objected to allowing such products onto the market.”
In the US, however, where there is just as little data available, the FDA has exercised no such caution. In fact, it has rushed headlong into the approval process for milk and meat and stipulates that because IT, the FDA, says that there is no danger (or at least no danger KNOWN – yet) both meat and milk will be permitted in our markets and our mouths. And when we find that cloned meat and milk are dangerous? Well, think Vioxx.
The headlong rush to make the Biotech industry happy [remember, a Monsanto employee was seated as a member of the US Delegation at last year’s Codex Working Group on Labeling Foods Derived from BioTechnology (that’s GM foods when you take away the fancy language) in Oslo] is a perfect example of why the FDA, controlled solely and totally, as far as anyone observing it can see, by the industries it supposedly regulated, MUST be divested of its food regulatory authority. Not only is the FDA clearly incapable of resisting the pressures – and payments – of Big Pharma, Big Biotech, Big Agribiz and all the other Bigs, it receives a significant portion of its operating budget from drug company “User Fees” and now wants to receive similar “User Fees” from the Food, Chemical and Biotech industries! This is a killer system. The consumer is the victim. As a consumer, an eater (and not a useless one, I would assert!), I find this industry-centric, consumer-contemptuous approach appalling.
Join the Natural Solutions Foundation, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org, in supporting protective standards for consumers, not the multinational corporations! Sign up today for our Health Freedom eAlerts and become part of the global community speaking for health freedom! Your data is safe with us. You have my promise.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
EU Report Says Cloned Food Probably Safe
There were no consumer advocates or independent scientists on that delegation, of course. IN a few weeks General Stubblebine and I will be attending this year’s iteration of that meeting in Ghana. It will be interesting to see who is sitting on the US Delegation this time!
Published: 1/11/08, 6:46 PM EDT
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) – Meat and milk from cloned animals is probably safe for humans, the European Union’s food safety agency said in a preliminary report released Friday. The report, by the European Food Safety Authority, seems likely to fuel new debate over whether the EU should allow cloned animals to enter the food chain.
The 47-page draft cautioned, however, that there was “only limited data available” on animal cloning. It urged consultation with scientists and consumer groups, which have in the past objected to allowing such products onto the market.
The EU’s Food Safety Authority, which is based in Italy, was directed by the EU’s executive office in Brussels last year to investigate what risks were involved in making projects for human consumption from cloned animals.
The 27-nation union currently has no laws regulating animal cloning and food. The European Commission is trying to decide whether legislation is needed, said Nina Papadoulaki, spokeswoman for EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou.
“Based on current knowledge, there is no expectation that clones or their progeny would introduce any new food safety risks compared with conventionally bred animals,” the preliminary report said.
Papadoulaki said the commission hoped the report would help EU officials determine whether there is public support for allowing cloned food onto supermarket shelves.
She said the commission would seek further advice from an ethics group specializing in science and new technologies, which includes 15 scientists, philosophers, theologians and lawyers.
That group is scheduled to issue its own report on the “ethical aspects of animal cloning for food supply” on Jan. 16.
Some countries outside the EU are moving to permit cloned animals to enter the food chain.
The United States is expected to allow food from cloned animals onto the market sometime this year. A poll conducted in 2006 found, however, that 64 percent of Americans were uncomfortable with animal cloning.
The issue is also under review in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada.
Scientists across Europe have for years investigated different animal cloning techniques. The most famous example was the cloning of Dolly the sheep in Britain. Dolly was euthanized in 2003 after she contracted a common livestock disease and her cells showed signs of premature aging.
Italian scientists cloned a racehorse in 2005, hoping to pass on genetic lines of champion thoroughbreds.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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