The case for diversity

September 2019

The need for diversity in our food supply has been a hot topic lately [1, 2].

Green Revolution agriculture gave us monocultures of a tiny range of high-calorie crops.  The Gene Revolution of recent decades compounded this with GM versions of the same crops. Commercial GM plants are overwhelmingly designed to be used in conjunction with a single herbicide, and many generate a small range of very similar insecticides.

Paradoxically, the end-products of these staple crops have diversified.  The excuse for developing them may originally have been feeding the hungry, but large quantities of that 'food' are now diverted into biofuel-production, industrial chemicals and animal feed.

Those that do reach the human stomach are highly processed carbohydrates and chemicals (a.k.a. junk food, or food-like substances).  In the dietary desert we now inhabit, our animals' nutritional needs are better met than ours.

Take horizontal gene transfer seriously - now

February 2019

The risk to health from artificial antibiotic resistance genes being used as markers during the creation of most GMOs was recognised in Europe back in the 1990s. However, lulled by mathematical modelling suggesting horizontal gene transfer (HGT) would never be significant in a complex, natural environment, the problem wasn't taken too seriously [1].

Triple stacked GM maize causes leaky stomachs

September 2018
Because partially digested food can be held in the stomach for some hours, the stomach is the part of our body most exposed to the materials in our diet. Yet, tests able to reveal pathological changes and gastric dysfunction, such as measurements of stomach tissue structure or diagnostic staining of stomach cells, are never included in GM safety assessments.

An Australian team of scientists has made a start on filling this gap.

Too much trade is bad for you

July 2018

Once upon a time, trade was a mutual give-and-take which promised lasting prosperity for both partners; and with prosperity would come well-being.

The modern way redefines 'prosperity' in terms of ever-expanding trade whose boundaries are global. Now, 'trade' has winners and losers, and the 'well-being' part is nowhere.

GMM contamination

September 2017

Many food and feed additives, produced once upon a time by chemical synthesis or extraction from natural sources, are now derived from fermentation of GM micro-organisms (GMMs).

EU rules require that such additives in the final product must be pure. This means that the GMM itself (alive or dead) or any artificial DNA inserted into it must have been removed.

Accordingly, no special labelling is required for GMM-derived additives. Also, there is no regulatory control system in place for the products of GMMs. It is assumed the company marketing the additive will verify the absence of the GMM and its novel DNA in the final substance.

Besides use as food processing aids and as a means of conferring artificial qualities on food products, GMM-derived additives include 'health' promoting substances, such as vitamins.

In 2014, EU regulators were notified that a German official enforcement laboratory had detected live GM bacteria in a consignment of 'riboflavin' feed additive from China.

Crop diversity disaster

September 2017

"It is agronomically, ecologically, nutritionally, and economically risky and unsustainable to rely almost exclusively on a handful of major crops to provide food for the world's (future population)" (Dempewolf).

The 'agronomic' problem is the need for crop diversification to achieve adaptation and resilience of our food production systems in the face of climate change.

The 'ecological' problem is that monocultures are an unbalanced hole in the ecosystem which can generate disease and spread toxins.

The 'nutritional' problem is that a diverse and varied diet is vital for our nutrition and health.

The 'economic' problem stems from all of the above.

Feeding disease

December 2016

Photo: Creative Commons

In 1973, the US Farm Bill was passed to assure a plentiful supply of staple foods at reasonable prices. The 'staples' are corn, soya, wheat, rice and sorghum, all subsidised by the US tax-payer.

Forty years on, US farmers planted maize over an area almost as big as California, and the area growing soya isn't far behind.

Prices for these commodities have been low in recent years, perilously close to their costs of production. Yet, courtesy of the government, they have been the safest bet for the growers of the vast fields of American monocultures.

How these subsidised 'staple food' crops are streamed into the market is a lesson in itself .

Well done Waitrose!

December 2016

Photo: Creative Commons

Three years ago, when major supermarkets, such as Tesco, Mark & Spencer, Sainsbury's and the Co-op, collectively moved to allowing GM-fed animal produce on their shelves, whether their customers wanted it or not, Waitrose went out on a limb.

Stacked GM allergies

November 2016

Photo Creative Commons

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has many fine words to say about the need for transparency in the science relating to GM safety issues, but it has some difficulty, it seems, in matching the words with action [1].

A recent EFSA Opinion on a multiple-stacked-trait GM for food and feed use was published on 26th August 2016, during the quiet European summer holiday period.

Feed me the truth

November 2016

Photo Creative Commons

Most people in the UK don't eat food made from GM ingredients, but supermarkets across the UK are selling products from GM-fed livestock with not a GM label in sight.  

This means that, unwittingly, people are eating eggs, milk, dairy products, poultry, red meat and farmed fish from animals that have been fed GM soya and/or maize.

On the subject of the absent labels, one professor of food marketing told farmers "we find it convenient not to make a big noise about it".

TAKE ACTION

It's time YOU made a big noise whether food marketers find it convenient or not.  

Check out GM Freeze campaign at www.gmfreeze.org/feedmethetruth/ and demand to be FED THE TRUTH on GM animal feed in your food-chain.

Glyphosate infusion into the world

October 2016

Photo Creative Commons

Glyphosate herbicide usage has got so out of control, it seems to have taken on a life of its own.

Most of the livestock which provide us with our meat, dairy and eggs are fed maize, soya and cotton seed. Most of these three crops are liberally sprayed with glyphosate because they've been genetically transformed to accumulate this weedkiller.

Livestock aren't the only animals eating GM crops. Bees can forage over several miles, and monocultures of GM maize, soya, cotton, and oilseed rape in flower provide a bees' banquet. Hardly surprising then that American honey is ubiquitously contaminated with the herbicide.

GM-free fed Lidl

August 2016

Photo Creative Commons

If you follow the business news, you'll be aware that the Big Four UK grocers have seen their sales figures go into reverse in the past few months. Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Asda are just discovering that, in uncertain times, customers are less interested in choice and brand names than they are in value-for-money.

German 'discounter' Lidl, which offers select bulk-bought staple products at a minimum price, is one of the up-and-coming grocers into which the Big Four's customers are diverting.

German herd sickened by Bt silage

March 2016

One GM-crop enthusiast in Germany has tried it, tested it, looked at the outcome, and changed his mind.

Farmer Glöckner is an experienced dairy farmer with an award for high productivity and a masters degree in Agricultural Sciences. He was one of the first to work with the biotech industry and to trial GM crops. From 1998 to 2002, he grew Syngenta's Bt176 GM maize and prepared silage from it to feed his herd. Progressively increasing amounts of the maize were included in the feed, so that by 2000, the maize content of the feed (40% of the total) was entirely Bt.

Glöckner kept meticulous records, was quick to notice changes in his herd, and quick to call for veterinary and laboratory support. When things had clearly gone wrong, he sued Syngenta and received partial compensation.

What had gone wrong with the Bt-fed herd has been summarised and reported in the scientific literature by Professor Giles-Éric Séralini, a scientist who has long had doubts about industry claims of GM feed safety.

Germany shows the way to GM-free soya

December 2015

We're at last beginning to face up to the reality that the world's natural resources are finite and that we're choking to death in waste of our own creation. The buzz-word du jour is 'sustainability', because without it, we're doomed.

Sustainability of our food crop production is of course a multi-dimensional issue.

Poisoned lab rats are normal

August 2015

Photo from Creative Commons

Concerns have been raised before that the outcome of routine experiments supposed to investigate effects of GM feed are unreliable. This is because, for example, too-low levels of GM in test feeds, or the use of control feeds with unknown levels of GM ingredients or unknown agrichemicals may have compromised the results [1].

A study has just been published which explores, for the first time, the true extent of contaminants in rodent chow.

Herbicides may promote superbugs

June 2015

Photo Creative Commons

Evidence of another insidiously harmful effect of Roundup herbicide has been published. Scientists in New Zealand presented findings which extend to Roundup and two other common commercial herbicides (Dicamba and 2,4-D) which, like Roundup, are sprayed on crops genetically transformed to tolerate them and are used in parks, roadways and gardens.

It seems antibiotics and herbicides don't mix.

Glyphosate is a probable carcinogen

May 2015

As part of its remit to re-evaluate the carcinogenic potential of agri-chemicals, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has just produced its report on glyphosate herbicide.

The outcome is that gyphosate is now classified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) body as "probably carcinogenic to humans". This is one step short of "carcinogenic", a category to which very few chemicals as assigned.

Accepted scientific conclusions require that several different lines of evidence are investigated, all of which support the conclusion drawn. Accordingly, the IARC routinely examines data from three types of study:

GM soya harms new-born goats

April 2015
GM-free Scotland has regularly voiced concerns about the lack of GM-food safety studies focused on the most vulnerable populations, especially the very young. Routine feeding tests use healthy, post-weaning laboratory rats fed standard laboratory chow with optimised nutrition: they won't identify problems in infancy.

During the first hours after birth, before the mothers' milk as we know it is produced, suckling mammals receive 'colostrum'.

Colostrum is a clear fluid of concentrated nutrients. It's packed with essential fats and proteins including immune system and growth promoters, protective antibodies and tissue maturation factors. These antibiotic properties of colostrum plus its role in intestinal cell development are thought to be responsible for the formation of a healthy digestive system and gut microbial flora.

In other words, colostrum is what the vulnerable newly-born need to protect themselves from disease and to form the healthy organs and tissues vital for their future growth.

So, what happens to the mother's colostrum when she eats GM food?

GMOs in Europe - 2015

February 2015
On 13th January 2015, the European Parliament adopted a game-changing new Directive on the "renationalisation of GMO authorisation procedures".

The 'game-change' is that the Directive has been crafted to open the flood gates to GM authorisations in Europe. How the game was changed seems to have been a sleight-of-hand which substituted biotech industry interests for those originally put forward.

Corinne Lepage's* proposal to tighten GMO regulations and give EU countries the freedom to declare a moratorium on GM received a positive response in its first reading by the European Parliament.

How much disease is Roundup causing?

December 2014

Pesticide warning sign. CC photo by the justified sinner on Flickr

"We have dispersed hundreds of millions of tonnes of (chemical pollutants and GMOs) in the ecosystem. Most are stable and toxic and penetrate every form of life. For instance, results show that there is no human breast milk on the planet that is free from insecticides (such as DDT) and plasticizers. There is no fetus without several hundred pollutants attached to its genes. There is no Member of the European Parliament measured without at least fifty pollutants in his blood." (G. E. Séralini's team)

This toxic mix from our environment and food now includes artificial DNA, analogues of viral DNA such as the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus gene promoter (CaMV), novel proteins, analogue 'Bt' insecticides, and increased levels of agrichemicals associated with GMOs.

Within the last 20 years there has been an alarming increase in serious illnesses in the US, along with a marked decrease in life expectancy. The onset of serious illness is appearing in increasingly younger cohorts.

Following on from the data presented last year by Dr. Nancy Swanson describing disturbingly parallel annual increases of chronic diseases and glyphosate use [1], her investigation has now been expanded and published.