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This document was submitted to the South African Parliament by Ingrid Blank during a discussion period on GMO impact on Human and Environmental Health Risks posed by GMOs.

SUBMISSION TO THE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS AND TOURISM

BY MS. INGRID BLANK 7 MODDER ROAD MERRIVALE 3291
Tel: 033 3302722

RISKS TO THE ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN HEALTH POSED
BY GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS

Preface

While I appreciate the Portfolio Committee’s invitation for public comment, it is nevertheless disturbing to note that according to Ms. Kakaza the invitation had only been sent to various “stakeholders’ – whoever the latter might be – and had not been published in all major regional newspapers thus affording ordinary citizens, who, after all, are the ones most adversely affected by GMOs, an opportunity to voice their opinion and outrage at having been force-fed for years with untested and highly dangerous GM organisms without their knowledge and consent. The latter, one would assume, is the underlying concept of a democratic government elected by and for the people, resting upon the consent of the governed. Instead, by blatantly refusing to apply the precautionary principle, although the latter ironically constitutes an essential element of its own party manifesto, the decision-makers of this government have violated and keep violating the constitutional rights of its citizens, i.e. the right to a healthy environment and healthy food, the right of informed choice and consent and participation in decision-making processes relating to this contentious issue, the right to information and above all the individual’s human right to bodily integrity, the latter being the most significant provision of the Nuremberg Code, which sets forth the legal requirements for human experimentation, i.e. “ voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential”. Likewise, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares bodily integrity central to both human rights and human dignity and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights unmistakably declares that “no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation”. By deliberately ignoring the precautionary principle and refusing to implement mandatory labeling of GM products, this government allows its citizens to be used as guinea pigs, sacrificing the nation’s health for corporate greed.

Surely nobody can be that naïve and intelligence-compromised as to believe that the heads of biotech companies woke up one morning overcome by the pressing urge to alleviate poverty in third-world countries. This is yet another myth spread by biotech-proponents which has already been debunked and I am hereby submitting some comments in this respect to the Committee for their review.

Introduction

There is no relationship between the prevalence of hunger in a given country and its population. For every densely populated and hungry nation like Bangladesh or Haiti, there is a sparsely populated and hungry nation like Brazil and Indonesia. The world today produces more food per inhabitant than ever before. Enough is available to provide 4.3 pounds every person everyday: 2.5 pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of meat, milk and eggs and another of fruits and vegetables. The real causes of hunger are poverty, inequality and lack of access. Too many people are too poor to buy the food that is available (but often poorly distributed) or lack the land and resources to grow it themselves (Lappe, Collins and Rosset l998). (Lappe, F.M., J. Collins and P. Rosset (1998). World Hunger: twelve myths, p. 270. Grove Press, NY. As cited in: “Ten reasons why biotechnology will not ensure food security, protect the environment and reduce poverty in the developing world”; Miguel A. Altieri, UC Berkeley and Peter Rosset, Institute for Food and Development Policy, Oakland, CA)

Dr. Geoffrey Clements (physicist and leader of the Natural Law Party, UK): “Perfectly safe natural alternatives are readily available, and no one believes the propaganda that GE crops are essential to help feed the hungry or to secure food stocks for the future. In fact, if the GE revolution is not halted and if the balance of Nature continues to be disrupted, we would well see the worst famines and disease of all time.”

Far from being a solution to the world’s hunger problem, the rapid introduction of GE crops may actually threaten agriculture and food security. First, widespread adoption of HT seeds may lead to greater use of chemicals that kill weeds. Yet, many noncrop plants are used by small farmers in the third world as supplemental food sources and as animal feed. In the United States, the Fish and Wildlife Service has found that Roundup already threatens 74 endangered plant species. Biological pollution from GE organisms may be another problem. Monsanto is poised to acquire the rights to a genetic engineering technique that renders a crop’s seeds sterile, insuring that farmers are dependent on Monsanto for new seed every year. Farming in the 3rd world could be crippled if these genes contaminate other local crops that the poor depend on. And such genes could unintentionally sterilize other plants, according to a study by Martha Crouch, an associate professor of biology at Indiana University. Half the world’s farmers rely on their own saved seed for each year’s harvest. (Peter Rosset, “World Hunger: Twelve Myths”)

Substantial Equivalence

After the long walk to freedom and having freed itself of the shackles of first colonialism and then apartheid, it is absolutely inconceivable that the decision makers in this unholy and fundamentally flawed process delivered our beautiful country into bondage again – this time into the shackles of multi-national biotech companies. Even more pathetic is the fact that the puppets of the puppet masters live under the arrogant misconception that any educated person would actually believe in the broken-record slogans of corporate yarn spinners, true to the motto of Hitler’s quotes in “Mein Kampf “ “the broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one” and “ the greater the lie the greater the chance that it will be believed” , e.g.. “GM food is safe”, “there is no difference between conventional breeding and genetic engineering” and that “genetically engineered foods are “substantially equivalent” to their natural counterparts. If that were the case, then there would be no need to patent GMOs, right?! In fact, their unscientific ramblings prove one thing beyond reasonable doubt, namely that the consumption of GM food inevitably leads to the Pinocchio syndrome and they must all be tripping over their long noses by now. The alleged “safety” of GM food has never been established and Monsanto’s safety claim was recently rebuked by the Advertising Standards Authority, which also mandated Monsanto to provide independent verification of such safety claim. In fact, Monsanto is not in the least concerned about the safety of their genetically engineered concoctions, as once so aptly expressed by Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications “ Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring it’s safety is the FDA’s job” .

The concept of substantial equivalence is by no means based on evidence-based science, but was coined by scientifically illiterate lawyers of the biotech industry, in particular Michael Taylor of Monsanto and in 1992 written into law by the likewise scientifically-illiterate H.W. Bush who issued an Executive Order proclaiming GM plants (soya, corn) to be “substantially equivalent” to its traditional counterparts and therefore not needing any special health safety study or testing. Ethical scientists and researchers, including my own daughter who is a genetic researcher with a BSc Honours degree in molecular genetics and a BSc Master’s degree in genetics, refute the validity of the substantial equivalence principle and consider it the biggest farce and fraud ever committed in the science field. The FDA, supposedly established to protect peoples’ health, and other regulatory bodies such as EPA blindly adopted this ill-begotten ruling, which, however, is not surprising given the amply documented corrupt symbiosis between the FDA and pharma and biotech companies. And anyone involved in the GM debacle, as I have been for the past ten years, is well aware of the meanwhile legendary revolving door at the FDA, the best example of which was the approval of aspartame and Monsanto’s rBGH drug, which was approved against the advice and conscience of the FDA’s own scientists thanks to the moles planted in the FDA by Monsanto, such as Michael Taylor mentioned above. The wording of the approval, i.e. “the risks to animals and humans is MANAGEABLE” goes down in history as the most appalling case of total disregard to human health by the very agency that is supposed to protect the latter and is the first time ever that a veterinary drug had been approved for human consumption because the risk was considered manageable. Of course, it will be “manageable”, namely by the billion-dollar cancer industry, given the fact that according to independent researchers, scientists and physicians NOT bought and funded by bio-tech companies rBGH may cause colon, prostrate and breast cancer. Think of all the wonderful blockbuster drugs that will subsequently be invented and approved by FDA “scientists” who have financial stakes in the very drug or biotech companies whose drug they blindly approve and unleash on the unsuspecting public and – oops – too bad when such drugs then kill 70,000 people as happened in Merck’s Vioxx case.

I urge this committee to read the article written by F. William Engdahl (March 29, 2006) and published in Global Research, which clearly exposes the dirty politics behind the GMO industry:

WTO, GMO and Total Spectrum Dominance

WTO rules put free-trade of agribusiness above national health concerns

Quote

In February, a private organization with unique powers over world industry, trade and agriculture, issued a Preliminary Draft Ruling on a three-year-old case. The case was brought by the Bush Administration in May 2003 against European Union rules hindering the spread of genetically-engineered plants and foods. The WTO ruling, which is to be final in December, will have more influence over life and death on this planet than most imagine.

The ruling was issued by a special three-man tribunal of the World Trade Organization, in Geneva Switzerland. The WTO decision will open the floodgates to the forced introduction of genetically-manipulated plants and food products– GMO, or genetically-modified organisms as they are technically known– into the world’s most important agriculture production region, the European Union.

The WTO case arose from a formal complaint filed by the governments of the United States, Canada and Argentina—three of the world’s most GMO-polluted areas.

The WTO three-judge panel, chaired by Christian Haberli, a mid-level Swiss Agriculture Office bureaucrat, ruled that the EU had applied a ‘de facto’ moratorium on approvals of GMO products between June 1999 and August 2003, contradicting Brussels’ claim that no such moratorium existed. The WTO judges argued the EU was ‘guilty’ of not following EU rules, causing ‘undue delay’ in following WTO obligations.

The secretive WTO tribunal also ruled, according to the leaked document, that in terms of product-specific measures, the completion of formal EU government approval to plant specific GMO plants had also been unduly delayed in the cases of 24 of 27 specific GMO products that the European Commission in Brussels had before it.

The WTO tribunal recommended that the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), the world trade policeman, call on the EU to bring its practices ‘into conformity with its obligations under the (WTO’s) SPS Agreement.’ Failure to comply with WTO demands can result in hundreds of millions dollars in annual fines.

Trade über Alles

SPS stands for Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. On the surface it sounds as if health concerns were part of the WTO considerations. The reality is the opposite. Only minimal health standards are to be allowed to be enforced under WTO free trade rules, and any nation attempting anything more strict, such as the EU ban on import of US hormone-fed beef, can be found guilty by WTO of an ‘unfair restraint of trade.’

Today the EU must pay a fine of $150 million yearly to maintain its ban on the US hormone-fed beef. WTO rules in effect put free-trade interests of agribusiness above national health concerns. That means, de facto, that the EU Commission must complete its approval process for the 24 outstanding applications to plant GMO crops in Europe once the final ruling is made later this year.

That will mean a flood of new GMO products in EU agriculture. Monsanto, Syngenta and other GMO multinationals have already taken advantage of lax national rules in new EU member countries such as Poland to get the GMO ‘foot-in-the door.’ Now it will be far easier for them. Pro-GMO governments such as that of Angela Merkel in Germany can claim they are only following WTO ‘orders.’

What is the significance of this WTO ruling, assuming it remains as is in final form by December? It represents a major, dangerous wedge into largely GMO-free EU agriculture, permitting powerful agribusiness multinationals such as Monsanto, Dow Chemicals or DuPont to overrun national or regional efforts to halt the march of GMO. For this reason, it is potentially the most damaging decision in the history of world trade agreements.

A strategic Washington matter

The case first came before the World Trade Organization in a filing made by the Bush Administration in May 2003, just as the military occupation of Iraq was entering a new phase. The US President held a rare press conference to tell the world that the US was formally charging the EU, accusing the EU ‘moratorium’ on GMO approval of being a cause of starvation in Africa. Their twisted logic argued that so long as a major industrialized region such as the EU resisted planting GMO crops domestically, it caused sceptical African governments to harden their resistance to US food aid in the form of GMO crops. That, Bush charged, was causing unnecessary ‘starvation’ in Africa because some countries refused USDA food aid in form of GMO crop surpluses.

The issue of breaking resistance barriers in the European Union to the proliferation of GMO crops has been a matter of the highest strategic priority for those controlling policy in Washington since 1992 when then-President George H.W. Bush , the father of the current President, issued an Executive Order proclaiming GMO plants such as soybeans or GMO corn to be ‘substantially equivalent’ to ordinary corn or soybeans, and, therefore, not needing any special health safety study or testing.

That ‘substantial equivalence’ ruling by President Bush in 1992 opened the floodgates to the unregulated spread of GMO across the American agriculture landscape. As basis for its 2003 WTO filing against the EU, Washington, on behalf of agribusiness interests including Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and others, charged the EU with violation of the American ‘substantial equivalence’ doctrine!

So long as the world’s second most powerful agriculture trade region, the EU, firmly resisted the introduction of untested GM plants, the global spread of the GMO revolution would remain strategically crippled. For the past decades, breaking up the system of domestic agriculture protection of the EU, centered around its Common Agriculture Program, has been a strategic political and trade goal of the US Government and US-based agribusiness. The creation of the WTO in 1995, a result of the GATT Uruguay Round trade talks during the 1980’s, opened the possibility for the first time of forcing the EU to drop its defenses on US threat of sanctions.

The secret process behind WTO

When the final WTO Panel ruling is published and official this coming December, assuming no major changes take place in the 1,050 page preliminary ruling of February 7, a major barrier to the global spread of largely untested and highly unstable genetically modified foods will be gone. This will become unstoppable, as it was in the USA, unless political pressure from a sceptical European population forces the EU Commission to pay a WTO fine or penalty, in lieu of acceding to the demands of the WTO.

It’s relevant to ask what is this body, WTO which exercises such enormous power over laws of nations? What is its mandate and who controls its policies?

The negotiations of world trade since the establishment of the Bretton Woods postwar monetary system at the end of World War II, had been made through a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a series of trade rounds on specific issues between specific member countries. In September 1986, on US -led pressure, the Uruguay Round of GATT was launched in Punta del Este Uruguay. The result was creation of a new, powerful private international agency, the WTO.

In late 1994 the US Congress voted to join the WTO, the new permanent trade body established by the GATT Uruguay Round. There was almost no debate. It was clear in Washington who would dominate the new body. Unlike GATT which had no enforcement power, and which required unanimous member vote for sanctions, the WTO would be given tough sanction and enforcement powers. More important, how it reached decisions was to remain secret, with no democratic oversight. The most vital issues of economic life on the planet were to be decided behind closed doors in Geneva WTO headquarters or in Washington and Brussels. It could choose its ‘experts’ as it saw fit and ignore what evidence it saw fit. In the EU GMO dispute, three of four initial scientific experts chosen were from either US or UK institutions, two countries most in favour of GMO. (1)

Two years earlier, in 1992, at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Rio, 175 UN governments signed a convention to on the safe handling and treatment of GMOs, a major vote of the world community to examine the health and economic impacts of GMO agriculture before it could be allowed in a country. The US Government of President George Bush Sr. aggressively opposed the CBD, arguing that a Biosafety Protocol was unnecessary. Under the CBD agreement, a country could prohibit GMO imports.

The GMO industry, led by Monsanto, DuPont and Dow of the US, sabotaged this agreement. A group of six countries controlling the world Biotech or GMO market—Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia Chile and USA– forced a clause into the CBD text which would subordinate the Biosafety Protocol to the WTO. They argued that limiting trade based on ‘unproven’ biosafety concerns should be considered a ‘barrier to trade’ under WTO rules!

Traditional liability law holds that a new product must first be proven safe before being allowed on market. This WTO rule placing the burden of proof not on the producer of a new GMO product, but on the potential victims, turned prudence and health safety issues on its head. In the end the US destroyed the Biosafety Protocol by refusing to include soybeans and corn, 99% of all GMO products, making the Protocol near worthless regarding GMO health issues.

The WTO serves as the weapon for the powerful coalition of Washington and the powerful private GMO giants, led by Monsanto. Earlier in 1992, Bush, on advice of Monsanto and the emerging US GM giant companies, ruled that GM organisms were ‘substantially equivalent’ to ordinary seeds for soybeans or corn and such. As ‘substantially equivalent,’ GM seeds required no special testing or health controls before being put on the market. This was crucial to the future of Monsanto and the GMO lobby.

By Presidential Executive Order, the US had defined GMO seeds as harmless and hence not needing to be regulated for health and safety. It made sure this principle was carried over into the new WTO in the form of the WTO’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS), which stated, ‘Food standards and measures aimed at protecting people from pests or animals can potentially be used as a deliberate barrier to trade.’ The US charge against the EU in the present GMO dispute charged the EU with violation of the SPS agreement of WTO.

Other WTO rules in the Agreement to Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) forbid member countries from using domestic standards or testing, food safety laws, product standards, calling them an ‘unfair barrier to trade.’

The impact of those two US-mandated WTO rulings meant that Washington could threaten that any government restricting import of GM plants on grounds they might pose threats to health and safety of their population, could be found to be in violation of WTO free trade rules! This is what the US Government, on behalf of its agribusiness private corporations has done against the EU restrictions on GMO.

Under the WTO’s Technical Barriers to Trade, the US has argued that no labelling of GMO plants was required, as the plants have not been ‘substantially transformed’ from normal or non-GM soya, corn or other plants. This conveniently ignored the fact that Washington simultaneously insisted that GMOs, due to the genetic engineering process, are sufficiently transformed, i.e. NOT equivalent, to be patented as ‘original’, and protected under WTO TRIPS intellectual property patent rights. (2).

The Agreement on Agriculture

The heart of the WTO machinery is the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), which under the sheep’s wool of ‘free trade,’ hides the wolf of private agri-business GMO monopoly power. Under AoA rules, since 1995 poorer developing countries have been forced to eliminate quotas and slash protective tariffs, at the same time the Bush Administration voted to increase its subsidies to US agribusiness farming by $80 billions.

The net effect has been to allow the powerful monopoly of five grain trading giants—Cargill, ADM, Bunge, Andre (formerly) and Louis Dreyfus—to dramatically increase the dumping of food commodities globally, ruining millions of family farmers worldwide in the process, while maximizing their private corporate profits.

The AoA of WTO ignores the reality of agriculture markets which are qualitatively different from, say, the market for cars or CD’s. Agriculture and national food safety and security are at the heart of a nation’s sovereignty, and its obligation to its own citizens to support the basics of life. Agriculture is unique in this respect, along with water rights.

The AoA was written by the US-dominated agribusiness giants such as Cargill, ADM, Monsanto and DuPont, to serve the agenda of these global supranational private companies, whose sole aim is to maximize profits and market monopoly, regardless of human consequences. Their focus is the domination of the $1 trillion global agriculture trade. The actual author of the AoA of WTO was Daniel Amstutz, a former Vice President of Cargill Grain, who was at the time in the Washington US Trade Representative’s Office, before going back to the grain trade.(3).

Who controls WTO?

The essential control of WTO decisions, decisions which have the full power of international law and can force governments to repeal local laws for health, safety and such is held by private interests, by a global US-centered agribusiness cartel. There are no public or democratic checks on the power of WTO.

On paper, WTO rules are made by a consensus of all 134 member countries. In reality, four countries, led by the United States, decide all important agriculture and other trade issues. As in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, Washington exercises decisive control behind the scenes. And it does so in the interest of the private agribusiness cartel.

The four WTO controlling countries, known as the QUAD countries, are USA, Canada, Japan and the EU. In the QUAD, in turn, the giant agri-business multinationals exercise controlling influence, most clearly in Washington.

The WTO is designed to impose the wishes of giant private companies over the legitimate democratic will of entire nations and duly-elected governments. WTO has one mission: enforce rules of a ‘free trade,’ an agenda which is in no way genuinely ‘free’ but rather suits the needs of agribusiness giants.

Under the secretive WTO rules, countries can challenge another’s laws for restricting their trade. The case is then heard by a tribunal or court of three trade bureaucrats. They are usually influential corporate lawyers with pro-free trade bias. The lawyers have no conflict of interest rules binding them, such that a Monsanto lawyer can rule on a case of material interest to Monsanto.

Further, there is no rule that the judges of WTO respect any national laws of any country. The three judges meet in secret without revealing the time or location. All court documents are confidential and are not published unless one party releases it. It is a modern version of the Spanish Inquisition, but with far more power.

The EU banned the import of US beef treated with growth and other hormones, and the US lodged a formal WTO complaint. There was a long report from independent scientists showing that the hormones added to US beef were ‘cancer-causing’. The WTO three judge panel ruled that the EU did not present a ‘valid’ scientific case to refuse import, and the EU was forced to pay $150 million annually for lost US profits. (4).

The powerful private interests who control WTO agriculture policy prefer to remain in the background as little-publicized NGO’s. One of the most influential in creating the WTO is a little-publicized organization called the IPC– the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council, shortened to International Policy Council.

The IPC was created in 1987 to lobby for the GATT agriculture rules of WTO at the Uruguay GATT talks. The IPC demanded removal of ‘high tariff’ barriers in developing countries, remaining silent on the massive government subsidy to agribusiness in the USA.

A look at the IPC membership explains what interests it represents. The IPC Chairman is Robert Thompson, former Assistant Secretary US Department of Agriculture and former Presidential economic adviser. Also included in the IPC are Bernard Auxenfans, Chief Operating Officer, Monsanto Global Agricultural Company and Past Chairman of Monsanto Europe S.A.; Allen Andreas of ADM/Toepfer; Andrew Burke of Bunge (US); Dale Hathaway former USDA official and head IFPRI (US).

Other IPC members include Heinz Imhof, chairman of Syngenta (CH); Rob Johnson of Cargill and USDA Agriculture Policy Advisory Council; Franz Fischler Former Commissioner for Agriculture, European Commission; Guy Legras (France) former EU Director General Agriculture; Donald Nelson of Kraft Foods (US); Joe O’Mara of USDA, Hiroshi Shiraiwa of Mitsui & Co Japan; Jim Starkey former Assistant US Trade Representative; Hans Joehr, Nestle’s head of agriculture; Jerry Steiner of Monsanto (US). Members Emeritus include Ann Veneman, former Bush Administration Secretary of Agriculture and former board member of Calgene, creator of the Flavr Savr genetically-modified tomato.

The IPC is controlled by US-based agribusiness giants which benefit from the rules they drafted for WTO trade. In Washington itself, the USDA no longer represents interests of small family farmers. It is the lobby of giant global agribusiness. The USDA is a revolving door for these private agribusiness giants to shape friendly policies. GMO policy is the most blatant example.

Brussels also dominated by GMO lobby

The power of the giant GMO companies and US-centered agribusiness companies extends to control of key policies in Brussels at the European Commission. Typical is the fact that former EU Agricuolture Commissioner Franz Fischler is a member of the powerful pro-GMO IPC.

For years it has been common knowledge among EU farm experts that grain policy was not set by national governments but by the Big Five private grain traders led by Cargill and ADM. Now the powerful weight of Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and the GMO lobby has been added. This is clear in the recent announcement of a new EU program, SAFEFOODS, a successor to the controversial pro-GMO ENTRANSFOOD project. ENTRANSFOOD was set up to ‘facilitate market introduction of GMO’s in Europe, and therefore to bring the European (sic) industry into a competitive position.’

ENTRANSFOOD, now called the more innocuous SAFEFOODS, claims to combine different views on GMO food. In reality, its key Working Group 1, responsible for ‘Safety Testing of Transgenic Foods’ consists of representatives not from independent consumer organizations, but from Monsanto, Unilever, Bayer Corp., Syngenta and BIBRA International, a consultancy close to agribusiness and the pharmaceutical industry. As well, Dr. Harry Kuiper, a Dutch scientist member of the food safety GMO group of SAFEFOODS in Brussels, is Coordinator of SAFEFOODS. Kuiper chairs the EU European Food Safety Authority GMO Panel. He also has also been leading the vicious slander attack campaign to discredit genetic scientist Dr Arpad Pusztai who dared to go public with alarming evidence of organ damage from rats fed GMO potatoes and was fired on the intervention of Monsanto in 1999.(5). The WTO today is nothing more than the global policeman for the powerful GMO lobby and the agribusiness firms tied to it.

With the new German coalition government under Chancellor Angela Merkel and Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer now officially on record supporting the role of Germany as a future leader in biotech crops and GMO, the impact of the latest WTO ruling on food safety in the EU and beyond has put European and hence, world food safety world in danger. UNQUOTE

___________________________

In view of the revelations above, I urge this committee to remember our president’s objective of the African Renaissance, which will never materialize if we do not stand proud and blindly walk into new slavery created by the greedy puppet masters revealed in the article above instead.

Cauliflower mosaic virus and HIV infection

In the context of the South African landscape and that of other countries ravaged by HIV infections and AIDS, it is inconceivable and grossly negligent that South Africa allows our staple food, white maize, to be grown in genetically modified form without prior testing as to the impact on human health, in particular the health of those people – mostly poor and black – whose health and particularly the immune system has already been compromised by malnutrition, the typical infections prevalent in Africa and above all HIV! Monsanto’s GM maize NK603 is and has been eaten in SA for years. Results of an analysis of Monsanto’s test data, carried out by the French scientific research institute CRIIGEN, showed that rats that were fed the GM maize exhibited differences in their kidney, brain, heart and liver measurements, as well as significant weight differences compared to those fed with normal maize. Almost 70 statistically significant differences were observed and reported – 12 for hematology parameters, 18 for clinical chemistry parameters, nine for urine chemistry parameters, six for the organ weights (brain, heart, liver), 14 for body weights and body weight changes, and eight for food consumption. These could be warning signs of toxicity, but further tests still need to be done to confirm this.

Imperative would and should be the immediate commissioning of independent studies conducted by ethical researchers and scientists to confirm whether or not the cauliflower mosaic virus was used as a promoter in genetic engineering of all GM crops currently in circulation in SA. World-renowned scientists and researchers, such as Prof. Joe Cummins and Dr. Mae-Wan Ho have warned against the use of this virus as a promoter in genetic engineering and the probability of the devastating impact on human health for years. It goes without saying that their findings have been vilified by the academic mouthpieces of the biotech industry, particularly by their handsomely rewarded Prof. C.S. Prakash who receives multi-million dollar funding for his vilification exercises, as revealed in the article of GMWatch. Org. below:

Prof Channapatna Prakash, the great deceiver

QUOTE Prof CS Prakash, Director of the Center for Plant Biotechnology Research at the Tuskegee Institute in Texas and a roving GM ambassador for the US State Dept, is a man who knows how to tempt poor farmers. Last summer Prof Prakash told the Tanzanian press that GM “doubles production”, whle in the Philippines he told a press conference, “most genetically-modified crops have longer shelf life”. For resource poor farmers struggling with poor infrastructure these are enticing claims.

The fake claims come packaged with manufactured smears. Prakash told the assembled journalists in Manila that Greenpeace could be getting money for opposing GM crops from “some companies that think their business operations will be greatly affected by widespread use of genetically modified crops.” Who could these secret backers be? According to the Philippine Star, “Prakash would not say if pesticide companies are financing the operations of Greenpeace.”

Such lies and smears are far from the full extent of the Prakash fraud, however. Take Prof Prakash’s “AgBioWorld Foundation”. Prakash presents this as a mainstream science campaign, in support of “agbiotech”, that has “emerged from academic roots and values” and which eschews corporate support. The centre piece of AgBioWorld’s campaign is Prakash’s petition supporting the “judicious” use of genetically engineered crops in the developing world. This declaration has always been presented by Prakash as a Third World scientist’s rallying point for fellow academics. But according to the annual report of the Competitive Enterpise Institute (2000), the petition formed a key part of the CEI’s much wider campaign against “death by regulation”!

Recently, Prakash has been more open about the fact that Greg Conko of the CEI was a “co-founder” of his campaign. The midwifery of an organisation described by PR Watch as “a well funded corporate front”, and which opposes restrictions on smoking just as vociferously as it does those on GM foods, sits a little oddly with Prakash’s claims of AgBioWorld’s “academic roots and values”!

Prakash also runs the AgBioView e-mailing list which has accused critics of genetic engineering, variously, of fascism, communism, imperialism, nihilism, murder, corruption, terrorism, and even genocide; not to mention being worse than Hitler and on a par with the mass murderers who destroyed the World Trade Centre.

In 2002 AgBioView worked flat out to label the biotech industry’s critics as “killers of the hungry” over their criticism of USAID and its tied GM aid for Africa. Unmentioned by Prakash was the fact that he is an advisor to USAID or that his university enjoys multi-million dollar contracts with the agency. In autumn 2002 Prakash and Conko issued an AgBioWorld press release falsely implying the activities of anti-GM activists on the food aid issue had been responsible for the deaths of 10,000 people in the Indian state of Orissa. In reality, all the deaths were due to a super-cyclone.

The fakery and sleight of hand doesn’t even stop there. In April 2002 the journal Nature, in an unprecedented move, disowned the research of UC Berkeley scientists, Ignacio Chapela and David Quist, which had demonstrated the contamination of traditional maize landraces in a remote part of Mexico. Prakash has been quite happy to admit that AgBioWorld “played a fairly important role in putting public pressure on Nature” and has even claimed, in a fund-raising e-mail, that AgBioWorld’s campaign led directly to the disavowal of the research.

Certainly the AgBioView list took the lead in promoting and coordinating the attacks on the Berkeley researchers. The inflammatory series of e-mail attacks that kicked off AgBioView’s campaign came from a “Mary Murphy” and an “Andura Smetacek”. These e-mails claimed Chapela was politically motivated and that his research could only be understood in the light of his collusion with “fear-mongering activists” with whom, it was insinuated, he had designed the research. And Smetacek even asked how much money Chapela was getting in “expenses” from the anti-biotech “industry”.

Both “Murphy” and “Chapela” were fronts. “Mary Murphy” was run by Monsanto’s PR company, Bivings, while the postings of “Andura Smetacek” have been traced back directly to Monsanto in St Louis. In all Prakash posted around 70 of their poison pen attacks on his list. And their attacks on Chapela were all placed at the top of Prakash’s AgBioView bulletins. Yet according to CS Prakash, he and AgBioWorld have absolutely no connections with any PR companies or biotech corporations. In reality, however, his connections with both are more direct than even the Murphy/Smetacek mails might suggest. An error message received while we were searching the messages in Prakash’s original AgBioView archive – now closed – showed that this AgBioView database was hosted on Bivings’ main apollo server. A technical audit of AgBioWorld’s website showed it had all the hallmarks of having been designed by Bivings. Monsanto’s front persona for circulating attacks on the internet, “Andura Smetacek”, even created an online petition clling for the jailing of Jose Bove that stated it had been created by Smetacek *on behalf of Prakash’s AgBioWorld* – Prakash was amongst that petition’s early signatories.

A Monsanto PR “phantom” can speak on behalf of AgBioWorld because Prakash’s AgBioWorld is, in reality, just one of a series of virtual shopwindows created by Monsanto and Bivings in order to influence the GM debate. Smetacek and Prakash even speak from the same script. When claims made about Greenpeace by Smetacek on Prakash’s AgBioView list ended up in a Scottish newspaper, it resulted in a libel case. One of the claims at the centre of the case, which Greenpeace won, was that Greenpeace was getting financial backing from companies. It was agreed in the High Court that this claim was without foundation. Yet this is exactly the claim that Prakash made in the Philippines – the added twist being that Prakash who fronts for an agrochemical giant “would not say if pesticide companies are financing the operations of Greenpeace.”

CS Prakash speaks Monsanto’s script just as readily as Monsanto’s own fake persona. He is the mannequin in Monsanto’s virtual shopwindow and one who seems prepared to go anywhere and say or do almost anything to promote the interests of the US biotech industry. Witness his fake claims and smears in Manila which occurred in the build up to the approval of Monsanto’s Bt corn in the Philippines. The deceit that Prakash has been involved in has been on such a monumental scale that his smoking undergarments have burnt their way into the record books. UNQUOTE

I would like to draw the Committee’s urgent attention to Prof. Joe Cummins research on the use of the cauliflower mosaic virus:

The Use of Cauliflower Mosaic Virus 35S Promoter (CaMV) in Calgene’s Flavr Savr Tomato Creates Hazard

Joseph E. Cummins 3jun94

QUOTE Joseph E. Cummins, Professor Emeritus (Genetics) Dept. of Plant Sciences University of Western Ontario

The majority of crop plant constructions for herbicide or disease resistance employ a Promoter from cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV). Regardless of the gene transferred, all transfers require a promoter, which is like a motor driving production of the genes’ message. Without a promoter, the gene is inactive, but replicated, CaMV is used because it is a powerful motor which drives replication of the retrovirus and is active in both angiosperms and gymnosperms. The CaMV pararetrovirus replication cycle involves production vegetative virus containing RNA which is reverse transcribed to make DNA similar to HIV, Human Leukemia Virus and Human hepatitis B. (Bonneville et al. RNA Genetics Vo.11, Retroviruses, Viroids and RNA Recombination pp. 23-42, 1988). CaMV is closely related to hepatitis B and is closely related to HIV (Doolittle et al. Quart.Rev.Biol. 64,2, 1989; Xiong and Eickbush, EMBO Joumal 9, 3353, 1990).

The CaMV promoter is preferred above other potential promoters because it is a more powerful promoter than others and is not greatly influenced by environmental conditions or tissue types. CaMV has two Promoters 19S and 35S, of these two the 35S promoter is most frequently used in biotechnology because it is most powerful. The 35S promoter is a DNA (or RNA) sequence about 400 base pairs in length. The use of the CaMV promoter in plants is analogous to the use of retrovirus LTR promoters in retrovirus vectors used in human gene therapy. The majority of human gene therapy trials employ LTR promoters to provide motors to activate genes.

Antisense genes are genes constructed to have a complementary sequence to a target gene, thus producing a product that combines with a gene message to inactivate it. Antisense is analogous to an antibody which combines with an antigen like a key fitting a lock. Antisense is being used to treat human cancer and HIV infection. Antisense is used to prevent spoilage in tomatos, either by targeting an enzyme degrading cell walls (polygalacturonase), or production of ethylene a hormone promoting ripening (P. Oeller et al. Genetic Engineering 49, 1989; R. Fray and D. Grierson, Trends Genetics 9, 438, 1993). Most frequently antisense targets production of a chemical metabolite producing ethylene. The antisense gene also influenced polyamines spermine and spermidine production through S-adenosylmethionine. The implication is that the plant antisense gene product should be tested in animals to ensure that critical functions including gene replication, sperm activity and gene imprinting are not disrupted.

The perceived hazards of CaMV in crop plants include the consequences of recombination and pseudo recombination. Recombination is the exchanges of parts of genes or blocks of genes between chromosomes. Pseudorecombination is a situation in which gene components of one virus are exchanged with the protein coats of another. Frequently viruses may incorporate cellular genes by recombination or pseudorecombination, it has been noted that such recombinants have selective advantages (Lai, Micro. Rev. 56, 61, 1992).

It has been shown that the CaMV genes incorporated into the plant (canola) chromosome recombine with infecting virus to produce more virulent new virus diseases. The designers of the experiment questioned the safety of transgenic plants containing viral genes (S. Gal et al., Virology 187: 525, 1992). Recombination between CaMV viruses involves the promoter (Vaden and Melcher, Virology 177: 717, 1992) and may take place either between DNA and DNA or RNA and RNA and frequently creates more severe Infections than either parent (Mol. Plant-Microbe Interactions 5, 48, 1992). Recently related experiments suggest altered plants may breed deadlier diseases (A. Green and R. Allison, Sciences 263: 1423, 1994). DNA copies of RNA Viruses are frequently propagated using the CaMV 35S promoter to drive RNA virus production (J.Boyer and A. Haenni, Virology 198: 4l5, 1994 and J.Desuns and G.Lomonossoff, J. Gen. Vir. 74: 889, 1993). In conclusion CaMV promoters recombine with the infecting viruses to produce virulent new diseases. CaMV viruses and promoter may incorporate genes from the host creating virulent new diseases.

CaMV can recombine with insect viruses and propagated in insect cells (D. Zuidema et al. J. Gen. Vir. 71: 312, 1990). Thus it is likely that as large numbers of humans consume CaMV modified tomatos recombination between CaMV and hepatitis B viruses will take place creating a supervirus propagated in plants, insects and humans.

Plant biotechnology has grown out of recombinant DNA research that began in the early 1970’s. The special nature of recombination has been debated since that time. In recent years, government regulators on the American and European continents, under pressure from well-funded lobby representing the biotechnology industry, have chosen to ignore the special nature of recombination. They have chosen instead to base regulations on existing frameworks for toxic chemicals and pathogenic organisms. Ignoring the special nature of recombination is likely to have costly, if not terminal, environmental consequences. A worst-case example includes the complete cloning of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) on an E. coli plasmid. When the plasmid is used to transform animal cells, intact HIV viruses are released from the cells. A careless (but legal) release of HIV bacteria to the environment would allow the plasmid to transfer to Salmonella as well as E. coli. Thus, numerous mammals and birds could contain HIV bacteria which could transform the animals, which would in turn produce HIV particles unable to target the animals T-cell receptors but easily transmitted to humans. When all the animals are HIV carriers, human survival would be marginal. The special concerns of recombination in plant biotechnology include the viruses and bacteria used in crop plant construction and gene flow between related crop plants and weeds in the field.

Currently most experts agree that virus diseases such as influenza gain strength for epidemics by alternating between animal hosts (pigs and ducks) and man. Epidemics begin when rare combinations appear in large closely associated populations such as in asia. CaMV can propagate in plant and insect hosts following recombination. It may not be outlandish to predict that CaMV may recombine with related Hepatitis B or for that matter HIV to create a most powerful disease. The salient feature being large number of people or animals consuming large numbers of virus genes incorporated into crop plants making up a major part of human and animal diet.

The use of CaMV promoter is seldom an issue in reviews of safety of gene tinkered crops. Few people have raised the important issue and more often than not their concerns are ignored by government officials “protecting” public safety. This omission may be a fatal one because it has potentially the most damaging impact, and the one perceived at the beginning of gene splicing.

Comment

CaMV promoter genes are used both in Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Soy and in Ciba’s Bt Maize. About 15 percent of the soy crop in USA is expected to be RR-soy.

The FlavrSavr tomato brand has been withdrawn because it turned out to have unexpected deficiencies that did not make it useful for commercial production. UNQUOTE

According to five researchers of the John Inns Centre and Sainsbury Laboratory in the U.K. , “the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV) and the HIV virus have interchangeable components. If they meet in nature they could recombine to form chimeric viruses with potentially devastating properties. This can happen, for example, if pollen from a GE plant is inhaled by an HIV-infected or AIDS-stricken person.

The same warning was published as early as in December 1999 by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Angela Ryan and Prof. Joseph Cummins “Cauliflower Mosaic Viral Promoter – A Recipe for Disaster? Microbal Ecology in Health and Disease:

QUOTE The use of the cauliflower mosaic viral promoter has the potential to reactivate dormant viruses or create new viruses in all species to which it is transferred. CAMV is known to be found in practically all current transgenic crops released commercially or undergoing field trials . This transgenic instability increases the possibility of promotion of an inappropriate over-expression of genes to the transferred species. The development of cancer may be one consequences of such over-expression of genes. The scientists behind the research strongly recommend that all transgenic crops containing CaMV 355 or similar promoters which are recombigenic should be immediately withdrawn from commercial production or open field trials. All products derived from such crops containing transgenic DNA should also be immediately withdrawn from sale and from use for human consumption and animal feed.UNQUOTE

Given the scientifically-based evidence provided by the eminent scientists cited above, in particular the close relation between the cauliflower mosaic virus and the HIV virus, it would not only be wise but imperative to check the rise in HIV infections since Monsanto’s GM maize was unleashed on the unsuspecting public without the latter’s knowledge and consent. Furthermore, if the decision-makers in this country were and are aware of the severe health implications, including the probability of HIV infection caused by the cauliflower mosaic virus, then those responsible for unleashing these toxins, including the manufacturer, may not only be accused of gross negligence but also of willful intent and culpable homicide. The only way to negate such probability would be long-term human safety studies, a moratorium on all GM trials and imports of GM products and mandatory labeling of all GM food products currently in circulation.

Finally, I want to draw the committee’s attention to an allegedly “new discovery” made by researchers, i.e. that “the human genome might not be a tidy collection of independent genes after all, with each sequence of DNA linked to a single function, but appear to operate in a complex network” – facts, which the scientists cited above have already claimed years ago – published in the New York Times on July 1, 2007. This blows the presumption of independently operating genes, on which the entire biotech technology industry is built and above all the patentability of such genes straight out of the sky.

A Challenge to Gene Theory, a Tougher Look at Biotech

Last month, a consortium of scientists published findings that challenge the traditional view of how genes function. The exhaustive four-year effort was organized by the United States National Human Genome Research Institute and carried out by 35 groups from 80 organizations around the world. To their surprise, researchers found that the human genome might not be a “tidy collection of independent genes” after all, with each sequence of DNA linked to a single function, such as a predisposition to diabetes or heart disease.

Instead, genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood. According to the institute, these findings will challenge scientists “to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do.” Biologists have recorded these network effects for many years in other organisms. But in the world of science, discoveries often do not become part of mainstream thought until they are linked to humans.

With that link now in place, the report is likely to have repercussions far beyond the laboratory. The presumption that genes operate independently has been institutionalized since 1976, when the first biotech company was founded. In fact, it is the economic and regulatory foundation on which the entire biotechnology industry is built.

Innovation begets risk, almost by definition. When something is truly new, only so much can be predicted about how it will play out. Proponents of a discovery often see and believe only in the benefits it will deliver. But when it comes to innovations in food and medicine, belief can be dangerous. Often, new information is discovered that invalidates the principles — thus the claims of benefit and, sometimes, safety — on which proponents have built their products. For example, antibiotics were once considered miracle drugs that, for the first time in history, greatly reduced the probability that people would die from common bacterial infections. But doctors did not yet know that the genetic material responsible for conferring antibiotic resistance moves easily between different species of bacteria. Overprescribing antibiotics for virtually every ailment has given rise to “superbugs” that are now virtually unkillable.

The principle that gave rise to the biotech industry promised benefits that were equally compelling. Known as the Central Dogma of molecular biology, it stated that each gene in living organisms, from humans to bacteria, carries the information needed to construct one protein.

Proteins are the cogs and the motors that drive the function of cells and, ultimately, organisms. In the 1960s, scientists discovered that a gene that produces one type of protein in one organism would produce a remarkably similar protein in another. The similarity between the insulin produced by humans and by pigs is what once made pig insulin a life-saving treatment for diabetics.

The scientists who invented recombinant DNA in 1973 built their innovation on this mechanistic, “one gene, one protein” principle. Because donor genes could be associated with specific functions, with discrete properties and clear boundaries, scientists then believed that a gene from any organism could fit neatly and predictably into a larger design — one that products and companies could be built around, and that could be protected by intellectual-property laws. This presumption, now disputed, is what one molecular biologist calls “the industrial gene.”

“The industrial gene is one that can be defined, owned, tracked, proven acceptably safe, proven to have uniform effect, sold and recalled,” said Jack Heinemann, a professor of molecular biology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and director of its Center for Integrated Research in Biosafety.