Gene escape is seriously bad news

March 2022

In 2005 the scientific view was that "... the movement of transgenes beyond their intended destinations is a virtual certainty" (quoted in Ellstrand)

Gene escape from GM crops is something environmental activists have done a lot of shouting about. However, although regulatory lip-service is paid to it in risk assessments, the consequences of walk-about genes seem to be swept under the carpet. The biotech mindset is that artificial genes (including edited ones) will only do what they've been constructed to do wherever they end up: for example, herbicide-tolerance genes will be neutral in the absence of the herbicide, pesticide-generating genes specific to a target pest will be neutral in the absence of that pest, and anyway artificial genes won't find their way into a comfortable, alternative plant host often enough for it ever to matter.

In real-life, not all GM plants are growing neatly in fields [1] and, where wild relatives grow within pollinating distance of GM plants, gene-pollution of their weedy cousins has been widely reported. Although studies on the ecological consequences of this are thin on the ground, what little information we have is ominous.

Escaped genes - a risk assessment minefield

March 2022

While conventional breeding speeds up the evolution of plants and skews it gradually to fit human needs, genetic engineering forces abrupt and disruptive changes in genome structure and function. The artificial gene (or edit) functions as it's designed to within the highly uniform genetic and environmental context of a modern commercial crop. How does it function in any other genome and ecosystem?

Risk assessment of GM plants has always focused on the intended artificial trait coupled to an assumption that if the altered bit of DNA 'escaped' into other plant populations it would fizzle out over time unless it conferred a clear, identifiable, risk-assessable fitness advantage. Now that we've grown GM crops in various environments for over two decades and there's been time for gene contamination incidents to inform the science, this trait-centred risk assessment is proving shaky.

Dicamba - Worse Than Glyphosate

October 2021 

 

After all the whitewashing of glyphosate herbicide revealed when its manufacturer, Monsanto, was taken to court by users who now have cancer [1], it should come as no surprise that dicamba herbicide [2] looks like being a re-run of the same story.

Nasty GM surprises

March 2020

Farmers' knowledge about the cycles of nature, their land, their crops and livestock, their soil, and all the life that shares their estates seem to have been swept aside by reductionist 'solutions' sold to them by corporations with $-lined technological tunnel vision.

Simple, GM 'solutions' have a habit of leading to complex outcomes and nasty surprises.

Weeds designed to rove

September 2019

Scientific weed wisdom assured farmers that there would never be a weed able to resist 'Roundup' glyphosate-based herbicide because it required too big a change in a plant's biology.  The humanly-devised Roundup Ready GM crops were thought smarter than weeds could ever be.  Glyphosate-based herbicides became crucial to the productivity of American agriculture.

From this came an entrenched attitude that any Roundup-tolerant weed which chanced to appear in a location would be a one-off: it would have evolved independently and would remain a local problem.

The dramatic increase in both the quantity of Roundup used and the area sprayed after the advent of GM crops was accompanied by a dramatic emergence of glyphosate-tolerant weeds which took everyone by surprise.

Weed scientist wisdom didn't, it seems, factor in the qualities which make a weed a weed.

America's GM plans

August 2019

Since the Big Bang of synthetic pesticides during World War II, US regulators from both major political parties have adopted lax, pro-industry standards that have kept potentially dangerous pesticides legal. This attitude has extended to GMOs.

Let's think omnigenics

April 2019

You don't have to look too far to realise that the one, consistent, feature of all the products of GM technology is that they have failed to deliver on their promises.

In 1994, we were informed of an imminent series of world-changing GM crops destined to emerge in five-year leaps. Monsanto Vice President, Robert Fraley, listed 60 plant species which had already been genetically transformed. The first wave of GM crops would be pest-free, weed-free, and virus-proof by 2000. After this we would have GM improved foods on our tables by 2005, followed by pharmaceuticals from the fields by 2010, and finally GM-grown speciality chemicals.

The only limit to what was possible was the imagination of the genetic engineers, but the basis for this five-year leaping GM programme was never questioned, nor explained.

Now, over two decades later, how many of these leaps have actually been leapt?

The rosy face of gene drive organisms (GDOs)

February 2019

Much attention has been focused on gene drives to eliminate mosquitoes plus all the horrible diseases they carry [1], and to eliminate invasive small mammals plus all the havoc they wreak in foreign ecosystems [2]. The take-home message is that gene drives can be harnessed for the common good as invaluable tools in medicine and conservation.

Odd really, because the patents filed for gene drives are largely for agricultural applications.

Outside the media radar lie plans to eliminate insect pests and weeds, plans to speed-breed GM seeds and higher-yielding GM livestock, and even plans to convert whole bee colonies to a GM form which can be directed by light beams to the required crop needing pollinated, and plans to create GM locusts which don't swarm.

Superfit GM superweeds

June 2018

Protester dressed as a superweed
CC photo by Steve Rhodes on Flickr

World-wide, the big biotech success story is crops which are genetically transformed to survive glyphosate-based herbicides.

Glyphosate interferes with a plant enzyme key to the production of, for example, auxin (a plant growth hormone, also important in reproduction), lignin (woody supportive material), and defensive compounds against pests and disease. All of these are vital and are part of tightly controlled processes in a healthy plant. When glyphosate wipes out that enzyme, the weed or non-GM plant dies.

The magic gene inserted into glyphosate-tolerant crops generates a novel version of the enzyme which isn't inactivated by the herbicide. However, the expression of an artificial gene, isn't controlled. GM glyphosate-tolerant plants will therefore generate an excess of the enzyme, and this suggests that their growth, reproduction, physical robustness, and susceptibility to disease will be altered.

Dicamba and dust

October 2017

The major herbicidal chemicals used by US farmers haven't really changed very much over the decades. Various forms of 'dicamba', first introduced in 1967, and 'glyphosate', first introduced in 1974 , feature in America's agricultural landscape as much today as they did a quarter of a century ago.

Both these herbicides have a low acute toxicity to animals (you'd need to eat an awful lot before you'd drop dead). However, their properties, modes of action and applications are very different.

Dicamba selectively kills broad-leafed weeds, but not grasses. In 1994, 90% of the 27.6 million pounds of dicamba formulation used in US fields was applied to maize.

Glyphosate kills all plant life. Until the late 1990s, glyphosate was used to clear the ground before a crop was planted, and in 1995 27.6 million pounds of glyphosate-based weedkiller was used in US fields. Since then, usage has increased some fifteen-fold due to widespread planting of GM glyphosate-tolerant soya and later several other similarly-engineered major crops.

In a bizarre twist of fate, glyphosate's popularity has led to a "battle between farmers" and even a farmer's murder, caused by dicamba.

The GM Glyphosate game

February 2017

In the last five years, concerns surrounding glyphosate-based herbicides have been the subject of some 90 articles here on GM-Free Scotland, one-fifth of the total.

These herbicidal formulations have been, and continue to be, the lynch-pin of GM crops, the vast majority of which have been engineered to survive spraying with glyphosate. They have, therefore, been central to the profitability of GM and to the biotech industry's control of agriculture.

A recent pest-protection consultant review of the history and future of this herbicide describes the predicament which this particular GM-based agriculture has got us into.

US court notes GMO concerns

January 2017

Photo: Creative Commons

A US court has ruled that Federal law doesn't prevent States and Counties from passing their own local laws to regulate or ban commercial growing of GM crops.

Most importantly, the court acknowledged that growing GM raises "several well-documented concerns", including economic impacts due to gene pollution, and environmental impacts from increased use of pesticides, superweeeds, pest-resistance, and reduced biodiversity.

This is significant because GM crops and life-destroying chemicals are inseparable. 

RNAi - Lite GM superweed control?

December 2015

In 2013, Monsanto succeeded in taking out a patent for the next trend in biotechnology.  This is based on interfering with gene expression rather than trying to put artificial genes into the plant.

The prime focus of the patent is a clever method for undoing all the problems caused Monsanto's herbicide-tolerant GM crops  in the first place.

Noise about cancer

October 2015

Photo Creative Commons

The manufacturer of glyphosate-based herbicides and glyphosate-tolerant GM crops was quick to 'disagree' with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reclassification of its prize agrichemical as a 'probable carcinogen' [1].

Besides the usual disparaging remarks about the IARC, the gist of Monsanto's disagreement was one we've heard repeatedly. Since the industries' own (unpublished) studies have successfully persuaded regulators (who didn't have anything much else to go on) that glyphosate is safe, it is therefore proven safe.

Monsanto also made a good attempt to fudge the issue. It suggested that no link had been established between glyphosate and cancer incidence in humans. This needs to be put in perspective.

Shaky meta-analysis of GM benefits

January 2015

Corn harvest. CC photo by United Soybean Board on Flickr

A heavily-promoted 'meta-analysis' of the performance of GM crops world-wide concluded it "revealed robust evidence of GM crop benefits for farmers in developed and developing countries" which "may help to gradually increase public trust in this technology".

 

Meta-analysis is a statistical technique which examines the combined effect of a number of studies on the same topic, to give an overall picture of what the total data might, or might not, be showing. The more studies included, and the more closely comparable the data sets, the more robust the results.

 

What the meta-analysis found was "On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries.

Supertoxic remedies for superweeds

September 2014



Common pigweed. CC photo from Wiki Commons

American farmers have a problem: their crops are drowning in a sea of weeds and their machines are choking to death.

 

In desperation, Texas cotton growers recently petitioned the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to allow 'emergency' use of propazine, a weed-killer widely banned because it causes birth defects, is an endocrine disruptor, a possible carcinogen, ends up in waterways and takes years to breakdown. Fortunately for the public and the environment, the petition was denied. But how did we come to such a pass?

The 'GM helps climate change' myth unravels

September 2014



Fertiliser applied to no-till field in US.
CC photo By Lynn Betts [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In contrast with the traditional ploughing-under of weeds before the sowing of seeds, no-till agriculture involves destruction of weeds on the surface then planting of seeds in grooves or holes with minimal disturbance to the soil.

There are several recognised benefits of no-till. In particular, valuable soil structure is preserved, reducing erosion and increasing important biological activity, plus the retained plant-matter holds more water. For the farmer, no-till means reduced labour and fuel costs.

Also, because breaking up the soil by ploughing triggers a loss of the carbon locked up by soil organisms, no-till has become part of the solution to climate change (see below).

Fit as a weed

September 2014

 

Wild rice. CC photo by Denrdoica cerulea on Flickr

The vast majority of GM crops now being grown commercially have had a gene inserted to make them resistant to glyphosate herbicide.

 

After spraying with glyphosate, the yield of the GM crop is protected because the weeds competing for nutrients are killed.

 

Gene escape from glyphosate-tolerant crops into wild relatives has never been considered an important problem because unless the wild GM derivatives are sprayed with the herbicide, they will have no special fitness advantage and no reason to run riot. But, this 'wisdom' has been challenged by a team of Chinese scientists.

 

Glyphosate kills plants by inactivating an enzyme, 'EPSPS'*. EPSPS is vital to a number of key metabolic processes because it's responsible for generating a class of essential amino acids (the building block of proteins). These amino acids are vital to the formation of, for example, the plant's supportive material (lignin), plant growth hormone, and a huge range of immune-system substances, which together can account for as much as 35% of a plant's biomass. 

Pests create pests

July 2014

Brinjal, or Aubergine, is an important crop in Bangladesh (see article)
CC photo by Joe Athialy on Flickr

In 1978, US entomologist and champion of biological pest control, Professor Robert Van den Bosch, looked at the data and pointed out that pesticides create pests.

 

Chemical pesticides are a disaster for all mankind except, of course, those who sell them.

 

Then, as now, truths inconvenient to industry addressed the evidence by shooting the messenger. Poor Prof. Van den Bosch.

 

The problem, already obvious four decades ago, was industrial agriculture. Since then, all the most harmful aspects of this chemical-based agri-infrastructure have been made worse by GM.

Pest and pesticide problems

June 2014

CC photo by Roger Smith on Flickr

A recent report on GM crop-growing in America since 1996 prepared by the US Department of Agriculture made specific mention of the burgeoning problem of weeds resistant to glyphosate herbicide which is used on most GM crops (see THE GM DEBATE: 'OVER', OR BARELY STARTED? - June 2014).

 

The report came just too late to include the latest study on what may be the next big problem with GM crops: emerging pest-resistance to the 'Bt' insecticides generated by GM maize.

 

Pest-resistance has previously been found in laboratory studies, but these have been shrugged off as too artificial to extrapolate to what would actually happen in the field.