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.

Brexit, imports and GMOs

January 2018

The big issue for Scotland in 2018 is going to be Brexit, especially the associated risk that it could usher in GM crops to our fields and to our food.

Without the carefully crafted EU Directives controlling the cultivation, import and sale of GMOs in force, major safeguards will disappear. Gone will be the precautionary principle, the recognition of the irrevocable nature of any harm caused to the environment, the right not to grow GM crops, the respect for ethical concerns, traceability and labelling.

Our biggest threat is from uncontrolled imports of GMOs from America.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals on the menu

July 2015

Photo Creative Commons

As human fertility plummets, and cancer, diabetes and obesity soar relentlessly upwards, attention is on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) as a possible major player.

EDCs can mimic, block or alter the level of hormones. Hormones are, of course, vital to many processes in the body. Their disturbance is harmful to health, and can cause irreversible damage at key stages of development.

Exposure to EDCs comes from their wide use in the manufacture of plastics, cosmetics, carpets, computers and construction materials. A special concern, however, is pesticides. Pesticidal chemicals are intimately present in our food, water and air, but despite this they've never been tested for endocrine-disrupting effects.

Advice for advisers

March 2015

In 2013, journalist George Monbiot asked "What happens to people when they become government scientific advisers?" because somehow "they soon begin to sound less like scientists than industrial lobbyists".

Monbiot gives examples of how UK chief scientist advice on BSE, badger culling and neonicotinoids read suspiciously like a public sedation exercise: they just happen to support the position of the government, and can be timed to influence government voting procedures.

It might reasonably be expected that a chief scientist will provide an independent account of what the science shows, where its limitations lie, and what gaps in the science need to be filled before the government can implement responsible and effective policies and regulations. Fundamental to the role is, therefore, an understanding of the 'precautionary principle' defined by the Rio Convention as "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation". It's that potential for 'serious or irreversible damage' and level of 'scientific certainty' which a chief scientists needs to grasp and communicate.

Risk avoidance made easy

September 2014

Crop spraying. CC photo by Tamina Miller on Flickr

Risk-assessment of a substance is carried out by examining all the inherent dangers posed by it, and factoring in how likely it is that anyone will actually be exposed to these dangers.

 

A risk-assessment obviously can't be done without looking at the real-life context in which the substance is used.

 

Glyphosate herbicide, widely used on GM crops, is very safe as these things go, providing you're not a plant or a micro-organism.

 

This fact seems to have been exploited by German assessors when they recommended the re-approval and increased 'Acceptable Daily Intake' of the herbicide earlier this year [1].

Roundup and declining fertility

May 2014

Photo from Creative Commons

Male infertility has been rising in industrialised countries worldwide for four to five decades.

 

One in five healthy men between the ages of 18 and 25 produce abnormal sperm counts. In men without fertility problems, the average sperm count has halved, 20 percent of young European men have sperm counts at a level likely to result in infertility, and a further 40 percent have sperm counts likely to result in delayed pregnancy (Word Health Organisation). Demands for assisted reproductive technology (ART) are growing; in Denmark, for example, more than seven percent of all children born in 2007 were conceived using ART.

 

In parallel with the decline in semen quality, there has been a rise in testicular germ cell cancer. This type of cancer is initiated during foetal development, and, in many countries, is the commonest cancer in young men (15 to 35 years of age). Testicular germ cell cancer is associated with impaired fertility even prior to cancer development.

Evidence that Glyphosate causes cancer

April 2014


In March 2013, GM-free Scotland described Gilles-Eric Séralini's controversial GM feeding study on rats as “the first ever life-long study” [1]. This was the first such test of Roundup herbicide and of the Roundup-tolerant maize which accumulates the herbicide. It was not, however, the first life-long feeding-study on glyphosate, the active herbicidal ingredient in Roundup.

A 1995 review of glyphosate toxicology carried out by the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides refers to three life-long studies which were received by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its safety assessment. These are unpublished and so little information on the test conditions is available (for example, number of animals used or dosage of glyphosate administered).

However we can ascertain that results from the first one were received by the EPA during 1982 and 1983. It tested Sprague-Dawley rats (the same strain as used by Roundup's manufacturer, Monsanto, and by Séralini), and reported testicular tumours in males and increased thyroid cancers in females.

dsRNA: silencing regulation

July 2013

Photo from Creative Commons by CIMMYT on Flickr

If you've just read RNA-MODIFIED FOOD - July 2013, you'll be aware that this latest GM development carries some serious new risks.

This latest GM fad doesn't introduce novel genes or proteins but creates much trickier transgenic regulatory RNA elements.

Now, you may be wondering whether our regulators are awake to the problems?

Lip-service is frequently paid to the 'precautionary principle', but rarely backed up by action. The prevailing regulatory culture seems to be one in which marketing of novel materials is encouraged to proceed until some proof of harm emerges. Scientific uncertainty is not used as a reason to delay their launch.

Scotland's principles on GMOs

February 2013

Image by Timothy Valentine (off the grid) on Flickr

Just in case you thought that MP Owen Paterson's orchestrated media campaign (see WESTMINSTER'S PRO-GM PUSH - January 2013) and MP George Freeman's various carefully-positioned friends (see KEEPING WESTMINSTER ON THEFRONT FOOT - January 2013) are succeeding in changing attitudes to GM in Scotland, relax.

The Scottish Government is very clear about the key principles which guide its opposition to GM:

• The precautionary principle - insufficient evidence has been presented that GM crops are safe
• The preventative principle - the cultivation of GM crops could tarnish Scotland's natural environment and damage wider aspects of the Scottish economy such as tourism and the production of high quality, natural food.
• The democratic principle - science-based decision making cannot replace the will of the people. There is no evidence of a demand for GM products by Scottish consumers.

And Scotland is not 'going it alone'.

The importance of early warnings

September 2011

Questions over GM maize.
Photo © Greenpeace / Martin Langer

The 'Precautionary Principle' entails identification of risk, scientific uncertainty and ignorance, and involves transparent and inclusive decision-making processes (Freestone and Hey, 1997).  It is a primarily a tool for policy decision, but must impact on the scientific research agenda.  It is the scientists, not the policy-makers who are in a position to identify risks, to pinpoint uncertainties and unknowns, and to provide the basis for communication.  Thus, it is of key importance that scientists take responsibility for the anticipation of problems.