GM safeguards scrapped in the UK

February 2022

As Westminster continues its love affair with high-tech industrial agriculture, the dismantling of GM safeguards in the UK is underway.

Towards the end of 2021, our Environment Secretary announced regulatory exemptions for field trials of "plants produced by genetic technologies where genetic changes could have occurred naturally or could have been a result of traditional breeding methods".

GM animals on the menu

January 2022

As we enter 2022, what happened to the GM edible animals that we've been promised over the years?

Super-fast growing GM salmon have been trying to emerge from the lab since 1989 [1,2,3].

Having gained regulatory approval in America in 2015, GM salmon are now legal to produce and sell there despite being declared unlawful in 2020 due to the absence of any environmental risk assessment.

Bad laboratory practice

December 2021

In the 1970s, there was a massive scandal when America's largest contract research laboratory, responsible for a third of all its pre-approval toxicology testing, was found to have been manipulating studies and systematically falsifying experimental data for over a decade. 

Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) carried out around a third of US pharmaceutical and chemical product safety testing during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) audited the company, 71% of its studies were invalidated, and thousands were found to be fraudulent or grossly inadequate.

What started as serious concerns about poor quality research expanded into a criminal investigation, and in 1983 three men from IBT were convicted for fabricating key safety tests to gain government approvals. The fraud brought into question 15% of the pesticides approved for use, besides many pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals.

IBT clients included Monsanto, Dow, and DuPont.

America's response to this fraud was to devise 'Good Laboratory Practice' (GLP). This quality assurance system provides a legal framework which specifies, for example, standard requirements for equipment and facility maintenance, experimental conditions, documentation of all procedures and data, archiving of all findings and materials, monitoring of personnel, and external auditing of test facilities.

Good Laboratory Practice was introduced into America in 1978 and adopted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1992 making it a world-wide standard. It was formally adopted by the EU in a 2004 Directive.

Problem sorted. 

Or, is it?

Caution! GM ahead

September 2021

Sedated by the GM food labelling and risk assessment requirements of the EU, many British people have been lulled into thinking GM has become a bit of a non-issue. However, just before Covid 19 obliterated all other news, many media outlets were picking up on the real possibility that, post-Brexit, "Supermarkets could be stocked with genetically modified food under future UK-US trade deal" (The Sun). Indeed, some were warning of the risk of a race to the bottom [1] and asking what happened to Westminster's pledge to take back control of our markets [2].

What started it was that, while "Boris Johnson has repeatedly claimed that negative impacts of Brexit will pale in comparison to the benefits" (Lib Dems quoted in PoliticsHome), the government's own figures suggest the 'benefits' could be as low as 0.02% of GDP. The UK Trade Policy Observatory at Sussex University commented "The numbers are very small. It just goes to show how tiny the gains are from a free trade agreement with the US compared to losing our present arrangements with the EU".

To avoid upsetting the public, the Government categorically ruled out involving the NHS in any trade negotiations, while allowing the health and safety issues surrounding US produce (which our Prime Minister has dismissed as "mumbo jumbo"), to be side-lined into the easily explained issues of chlorine-treated chicken and hormone-treated beef. On the subject of GM and food safety, however, the UK's negotiating stance has been over-generalised and elastic: "Any agreement will ensure high standards and protections for consumers and workers, and will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards." (quoted in The Sun)

This is not good news for British farmers who face the double-whammy of their home market being flooded with cheap (GM, and heavily subsidised) American produce just at the same time as their export markets to Europe have vanished.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) for England and Wales, whose mission is to give farmers a voice, to protect their way of life, to campaign for a stable and sustainable future for British farmers, and to secure them the best deal, has been narrowly focusing on a ban on chlorine-treated chicken. At the same time, despite knowing its members' customers clearly rejected GM foods in the past and have no reason whatsoever to have changed their minds, the NFU is lobbying hard for gene editing. The organisation claims that this unproven GM technology will put the UK "in a world-leading position to showcase sustainable climate-friendly farming " (Blythman). Given the unpredictable disturbances in gene edited genomes increasingly being revealed by science [3,4,5,6], the NFU's wild optimism really doesn't sound like the best deal for farmers. This US-style, high-tech idealism puts the NFU at odds with its sister organisations in Scotland and Northern Ireland which have banned GM crops of all kinds.

As journalist Joanna Blythman warned pre-Brexit:

The precision problem in genome editing

August 2021

In 2018, the European Court of Justice gave its opinion on EU law with regard to gene editing. It concluded that techniques which use lab-made nucleic acids (such as DNA or the related RNA) to alter genetic material in a way that does not occur naturally are GM and are, therefore, subject to GMO regulation [1].

Glyphosate on the plate

March 2020

Food-related uses of glyphosate-based herbicides in a nutshell:

The vast majority of commercial GM food crops - including maize, soya, canola, sugar-beet and cotton (consumed as cotton-seed oil) - are glyphosate tolerant and therefore sprayed with glyphosate-based herbicides. Applications of the herbicide on these crops have been stepped up year-on-year due to evolving weed resistance.

Besides GM crops, glyphosate-based herbicides are used as a pre-harvest desiccant on wheat, barley, oats (and other grains), sugar cane, lentils, beans, peas, chickpeas, sunflower, mints, potatoes and cantaloupe.

What happened to taking back control?

February 2020

• Democracy - government by the people, direct or indirect
• Tyranny - government by an absolute ruler

The huge and complex task of 'taking back control' of our regulations preparatory to Brexit seems to be ensuring that current and future rules will not be subject to proper political or public scrutiny [1].

US to eliminate animal testing

January 2020

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving to eliminate all animal testing of new chemicals by 2035. In its place will be cheap, quick and easy computer modelling, cultured cells and tiny invertebrates.

To achieve the shift only requires that the Agency cuts its funding for animal-based trials.

The Brexit race to the bottom

January 2020

By the time this article pops up on the net, who knows what Brexit chaos might be unfolding. It is, however, worth being forewarned about what's been sneaked into place at the time of writing. As GM Watch points out, there's so much political upheaval in the UK and Europe, we risk "being so overwhelmed by the noise and sense of urgency that we miss what's really going on".

For example ...

Climate change and GM go hand in hand

September 2019

Paul D. Thacker, a journalist with a nose for industry-led corruption of science and regulations, has commented that climate change denial and promotion of GMOs go together like peanut butter and jelly.

At first glance, it's not obvious why: it seems to involve a unique ability to entertain two opposing beliefs at the same time.  Climate change deniers say climate change isn't happening so we don't need to do anything.  GMO promoters say we need GM 'solutions' to feed the world and to save the environment because of climate change. 

However, when there's money involved, some people can believe anything.  Admitting that climate change is a damaging reality and rejecting GM foods are both harmful to big business

Action on new GMOs

August 2019

Pro-GM lobbyists continue to put pressure on EU regulators to abandon their precautionary laws requiring approval, safety checks, traceability and labelling of all GM crops, foods and livestock.

In particular, the biotech lobby is striving to evade any regulation of 'new' GMOs produced with 'gene editing' techniques. With recent EU elections and Brexit, this is the perfect time for them to push for light-touch, corporate-friendly GM laws.

New gene editing - more of the same old thing

July 2019

Gene editing has been described as 'promising', 'powerful', 'precise', and of course 'safer'. What is it actually going to do to our food and farming?

Recently published work by Chinese scientists is probably a good indication of what to expect.

Acrylamide in potatoes

December 2018

One of the hot issues in 2002 was the discovery of 'acrylamide' in food, especially in potatoes.

This wasn't good news because the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies acrylamide as Group 2A, 'probably carcinogenic to humans'. The main evidence for this is that, at high doses and in pure chemical form, acrylamide causes cancer in laboratory animals. It's linked to a whole stack of other toxic effects too, but it's the carcinogenic one that regulators struggle with most because of the difficulty in defining the actual risk and in setting a 'safe' dose.

Stay-white GM spuds

December 2018

When genetic engineer whizz-kid, Caius Rommens put his mind to enhancing the potato-experience for all spud-users from farm to factory to fork, he homed in on the annoying black patches which often sully the whiteness of the perfect potato.

The black areas are caused by the presence of a black pigment made by the potato itself, so the remedy was obvious: pop in a bit of artificial DNA which would switch off one of the genes the potato needed to create the black stuff.

Thus were born, 'Innate' stay-white spuds which don't bruise when harvested from the field, nor when they're trucked to the shops or factories, nor when they're streaming through a processing machine. Users don't have to spend time, energy and money cutting out all those black bits, and there's less waste at every level of the bruising supply chain.

All this sounds like a GM fairy-tale ending, and it might have been except that ...

Cost-cutting in Brazil

November 2018

In 2016, organic food sales in Brazil were mushrooming by 20 to 30 percent a year.  At the same time, some 70 percent of organic produce was being exported to Europe.  Farmers there recognise that "Growing organics is the future", and the people are increasingly "wanting healthier food free from pesticides".

Were it not for the alliance between the government and Big Agriculture, which is driving the economy, and the supermarkets, which are controlling the food supply system, organics would be a key growth industry.  Instead, it remains a tiny fraction of the whole, swamped by Big Ag's desire for GM crops and their supporting chemicals.  Supermarkets, of course, promote cut-throat competition amongst their suppliers, and the 'winners' are the unrestrained fraudsters passing off conventional pesticide-laden food as 'organic'.

Faced with this scenario, the Brazilian government is busy pushing through two far-reaching pieces of legislation.

GM veggie oil for fish

November 2018

The earliest suggestions that certain 'fatty acids' (the building block of oils) might be, like vitamins, vital to health in small quantities were ridiculed by the scientific establishment: oils were viewed as simply a concentrated source of energy for the body and devoid of any role in health promotion.

Science has moved a long way since then: fatty acids have been implicated in the healthy function and development of cells and tissues at every stage of life.  Two fatty acids in particular, 'EPA' and 'DHA' omega-3s*, are the subject of an "impressive documentation ... related to health benefits” with special reference to the heart and cardiovascular system.  Despite this, "the cellular and molecular mechanisms for (EPA and DHA) action are still insufficiently understood" (Gil). 

USA missing the main markets

October 2018

America has been gung-ho about declaring gene-edited plants somehow not really GM, paving the way for the new-GM crops now lining up for entry to the US food market [1,2].

The back-drop to this is interesting.

New GM wheat with fibre

October 2018

Wary of negative public reaction and export market collapse, America has never pursued the commercialisation of GM wheat.

However, the recent US Department of Agriculture (USDA) decision that gene-edited crops are somehow not genetically engineered [1], has opened the door to the development of new-GM wheat.

GMOs are not GMOs in America

September 2018

Unlike the Brits, who easily talked themselves into believing gene-edited plants are somehow 'natural' enough not to need regulation, only to be disabused of that notion by the European Court of Justice [1], the American biotech industry has had no such problems. Never having had any GM regulations in the first place made things much more straightforward*. With no clear legal nor scientific concept of what constitutes artificial manipulation of the genome, or of the nature of the risks, it was easy for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to pronounce gene-edited plants the same as any other.

Keep hidden gene-edited crops out of the food chain

September 2018

Biotech scientists in the UK have successfully fooled themselves and their regulators into believing that artificial mutation is somehow a "natural phenomenon", and that the outcomes of new mutagenesis techniques could somehow happen in nature. Earlier this year, encouraged it seems by the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE), our Department of the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was happy to give consent for field trials of GM Camelina*. These experimental crops include two lines produced using CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing [1].

Both scientists and regulators were so convinced that the preliminary opinion issued by the European Court of Justice Advocate General in January this year had said that all mutagenesis techniques should be exempt from regulation instead of what it did actually say [2], that they forged ahead with the development of gene-edited crops. The field trials have, therefore, not been subject to any GM-related safeguards.