GM wheat in Argentina

February 2022

In 2004, the US, Canadian and European wheat markets breathed a sigh of relief when Monsanto yielded to pressure and withdrew its glyphosate-tolerant GM wheat from the pipeline.

Predictably, it was just a matter of time before GM wheat popped up again, this time as 'HB4' with combined drought-resistance and tolerance to glufosinate herbicide.

HB4 has now been approved by Argentina: no surprise there, because the country has long been a key route used by the agrichemical industry as a bridgehead to the rest of Latin America for the (legal and illegal) dissemination of its products.

Gene edited 'healthy' bread

January 2022

One elusive, and potentially very lucrative, holy grail long pursued by the biotech industry is GM wheat. Not just any GM wheat of course, but one which is acceptable to consumers and to their food suppliers.

Realising that the ace to play in winning over a biotech-sceptical public could well be the anti-cancer card, the US market is being sounded out using gene-edited potatoes designed not to give you cancer [1] and cancer-busting GM purple tomatoes [2]. In the UK, the government is forging ahead with a field trial of gene-edited wheat which they claim, like the GM spuds, won't give us cancer. 

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.

Revolution, legend or myth

June 2019

The Legend of the Green Revolution in India

Once upon a time in India, there were too many people and their agriculture was too old-fashioned and burdensome to feed them all.  There was famine in the land, and so many were facing death from starvation that there were fears the people would soon be feeding on each other.

Then came the Green Revolution.  Modern high-yielding wheat and rice which only needed a dab of artificial fertiliser and pesticides to grow just about anywhere.  The foundations of this Revolution lay in crops with short stalks which didn't collapse under the weight of their great big yield.

Thus, a billion lives were saved, Indian peasants were freed from the drudgery of farming, and they all lived happily ever after.

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.

A soya model NOT to follow

April 2018

Argentina's 'modelo sojero', once promoted as a shining economic example for others to follow, seems instead to have led straight to the social disaster many predicted.

The 'modelo sojero' [1] is based on a move to high-tech monocultures of a few commodity crops (in this case mainly GM soya, a lot of wheat and GM maize) produced for export markets and for growing the country's GDP. Boosted by extreme free-trade, light-touch regulations and privatisation, the model channels the cash flowing in from far-off lands into state hand-outs to reduce poverty.

Glyphosate causes crop disease

June 2017

In 2003, during a 5-year study of crop disease, the first alarm was raised that wheat appeared to be worse affected by 'fusarium head blight' in fields where glyphosate herbicide had been applied just before planting. Laboratory studies at the time also indicated that fusarium grows faster when glyphosate-based weedkillers are added to the medium they're growing in.

Fusarium head blight is a devastating fungal disease which destroys a fifth of wheat harvests in Europe alone. This fungus produces 'mycotoxins' (poisons) known to cause cancer of the liver and kidney, disorders of the blood and lung, vomiting, and damage to the immune system. Anything which promotes fusarium is a serious business.

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 .

GM wheat pollution mark III

October 2016

Wheat field in Oregon, USA: Photo Creative Commons

In 2013, when GM wheat was found growing in Oregon eight years after the last GM wheat field trial there, the Organic Consumers Association asked "How many other unknown instances of contamination have occurred but have yet to be discovered?" [1].

As of August 2016, we can tentatively answer that question: one per year.

Simply fussy plants

July 2016

Oilseed rape: photo Creative Commons

"Genetically modified organism means an organism's DNA was changed to make it different, often to make it ... contain more usable parts."

One old-timer plant biologist recalls "heady times" when he walked up and down rows of flourishing GM oilseed rape growing side-by-side with its "struggling" conventional counterpart in an experimental low-nutrient soil.

This GM rape had an extra artificial gene, copied from barley, which helped it use nitrogen more efficiently. It promised to be the answer to the world's increasingly degraded and depleted soils.

The 'barley' gene itself doesn't seem too controversial, and has been successfully inserted into wheat and rice, both major staple food crops. Nevertheless, while Big Biotech has been developing fertilizer-frugal GM crops for over a decade, it admits these are still at the 'proof-of-concept' stage and nowhere near the market.

Ancient industry evidence won't do

August 2015

Photo Creative Commons

In response to the World Health Organisation International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) re-classification of glyphosate herbicide as a "probable carcinogen" [1], Monsanto said "We don't know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe".

Well, here's how.

A constant supply of GMO contamination

June 2015

Photo Creative Commons

Switzerland has never allowed the cultivation nor import of GM oilseed rape. Despite this, in 2011 and 2012, GM rape was found to be growing wild along railway lines near the freight station and in port areas in Basel.

The following year, further more detailed sampling was carried out to investigate how this has come about.

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.

Meaningless prohibitions

October 2014

Anti-GMO protester

So far, America has single-handedly contaminated the world rice market with an experimental GM variety (herbicide-tolerant LL62, illegal at the time but legalised in a hurry by the US administration), permanently contaminated its own commodity maize supply with a GM variety (insect-resistant StarLink, legally grown for a short time and since banned on safety grounds), and is grappling with two inexplicable contamination-incidents involving two different GM wheat varieties (both herbicide-tolerant, one in Oregon and one in Montana, neither legal anywhere).

Are these real-world warnings being taken to heart?

After recurrent contamination problems from experimental trials of GM pharmaceutical plants APHIS* was stirred into action.

*Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the US Department of Agriculture

Biotech company, Prodigene, was fined a modest $3,500 for the infringements, but the Company and its “successors in interest” were also prohibited from carrying out any future GM releases.

Gene pollution update 2013

November 2013

Wheat growing in Oregon, USA. Photo Gary Halvorson
Oregon State Archives [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons

The chance discovery of illegal GM wheat growing in a field in Oregon highlighted some uncomfortable home-truths (see GM CONTAMINATION DÉJÀ VU - June 2013).

Despite its wholesale move to GM agriculture and widespread field-trials of experimental GM plants, America isn't monitoring gene 'escapes': the rogue herbicide-tolerant wheat only became obvious when it survived spraying with Roundup herbicide, and its source has never been pin-pointed. While it seems unlikely that a single field could become so widely contaminated accidentally, no other similarly polluted areas have been identified.

dsRNA Media Centre

August 2013

Plant propagation in a lab. CC photo by IRRI Images on Flickr

It comes as no surprise that safety assessment of the latest DNA-altered crops with 'ds-RNA' traits, is being side-stepped. These GM crops have identifiable risks, and raise many questions which are being 'answered' using assumptions and generalisations, but scant science (see RNA-MODIFIED FOOD and dsRNA:SILENCING REGULATION - July 2013).

Nor does it come as a surprise that the scientists who published safety evaluations critical of dsRNA and the dsRNA-based GM wheat now under development in Australia have come under attack. Needless to say, the studies they prepared are fully referenced, up-to-date in their science, and have passed the most rigorous peer-review process in existence.

Frankenwheat

July 2013

Wheat. CC photo by Wheat Initiative on Flickr

The latest development in genetic modification isn't inserting genes, it's inserting DNA to induce RNA interference, in particular double-stranded RNA, 'dsRNA' .

As described in RNA-MODIFIED FOOD - July 2013, the technique has a huge potential for side-effects. Reading this, “How can anyone still think it's safe to apply (RNA interference) in genetic modification?” (Institute of Science in Society).

Yet, dsRNA technology is in several pipe-line GM crops, one of which is a major global staple food, wheat.

This GM wheat is being developed in Australia* to have altered starch composition. The intention seems to be to create wheat grain with starch which is less digestible than normal. The hope is this will make it 'healthier' by improving large bowel health and cholesterol levels, and by reducing blood sugar in the same way as oats, rye, lentils and peas do.

A database investigation, however, has revealed a number of side-effects which will not be so healthy.

GM contamination déjà vu

June 2013

Wheat field in Oregon. Photo by Gary Halvorson
Oregon State Archives [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons

GM Freeze has repeatedly pointed out that the coexistence of GM and non-GM crops without contamination is almost impossible. GM pollen, GM seed and inevitable human error conspire to spread artificial DNA around no matter how rigorous the prescribed containment procedures.

In May 2013, US regulators announced that Roundup(herbicide)-resistant wheat had been found growing on a farm in Oregon: analysis confirmed it contained Monsanto's modified genes.

Scientists ignore gene flow in wheat

June 2012

Picture of conventional wheat
Photo by User:Bluemoose (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The apparently orchestrated media storm surrounding the GM wheat trial at the Rothamstead research facility near London (see THE MEDIA DEBACLE AROUND THE ROTHAMSTED GM WHEAT PICNIC-PROTEST - June 2012) led to a final summing-up article in the Guardian.

Like the GM-concern groups, the Guardian noted that, in contrast to past years, the media reporting and comment have been “mostly neutral and positive about the experiments, or actively hostile to the protester” and that the scientists involved have “adopted a new tactic”. It, too, asked “What has changed?”

The article went on to answer its own question. Seemingly, the researchers have adopted a new strategy of acting with “reason and openness”: they are coming “across as genuine in their desire simply to find out the answers” with a message to the activists “to discuss the issues rather than resort to criminal damage”.

To illustrate the new “reason and openness”, the author described how keen the scientists had been to 'point out' that “the risk of pollen from their wheat reaching surrounding crops is vanishingly small because the crop is self-fertilising”. Thus, the logic continued, the urgency claimed by the protesters to stop an open-air GM trial because it could have profound effects on the environment “simply did not exist”.

Is this true?