Agricultural reality shows no yield benefit for GM

January 2014

Conventional wheat in Hertforshire, England. CC photo from Flickr

During a conference in Zürich in 2010, molecular-biologist, Professor Jack Heinemann heard an off-hand remark from an economics professor which raised his eyebrows.  The comment was that because Europe has shunned GMOs, it had lost productivity compared to the US where most staple commodity crops are now largely GM.

Even at the time, a spot check of corn yields on the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation data-base during the first fifteen years of the GM era indicated that yields for corn were neck and neck on either side of the Atlantic.

This led Heinemann to make a more detailed comparison of 'like-for-like' crops in America and Europe. 

Fighting fire with fire

January 2014

Food and Chemical Toxicology's decision to discredit and obliterate the most in-depth toxicological study of a GM crop and its associated herbicide ever published [1,2], may well prove a turning point in biotech 'science'. 

The reason given for the retraction of Professor Séralini's life-long rat feeding-study was that “no definitive conclusion” could be reached from the data on mortality and tumour incidence due to the number of animals in each group and the strain of rat used.

Torching the science

January 2014

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell, author of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'

The frantic damage-limitation exercise launched in response to the publication of Professor Séralini's evidence of long-term harm from a GM maize and its associated herbicide [1] has stepped up an interesting notch. 

After spending over a year listening to the sounds of pro-biotech panic, the editors of Food and  Chemical Toxicology (FCT) journal have decided to retract the paper.  An unnamed FCT panel has recommended that, because “no definitive conclusion” could be reached from the data on mortality or tumour incidence due to the number of animals in each group and the strain of rat used, the science should be written out of scientific history. 

Healthy plants chat

December 2013



The discovery that some plants react to the presence of carnivores in their environment by altering their metabolic rate and increasing their root-system was counter-intuitive [1].  But why should it have been?  After all, where there are carnivores, there will be herbivores for them to eat, and a meat-eater with any sense won't wipe out its entire food supply.  The plants have every reason to brace themselves for being nibbled by herbivores if there are carnivores out there.

Hmmm ... Plants and animals apparently observing, reasoning and acting accordingly? Research in Scotland has uncovered something else, pretty smart, going on in the under-world of plants.

Pesticide regulations with implications

December 2013

... for GM crops and food.

The European Commission (EC) is currently planning to update its regulations controlling chemicals to which the public are exposed. Two aspects critical to these efforts are proving controversial.

The first involves the determination of a 'safe' threshold for a chemical: if none can be determined, industry would have to demonstrate that the socio-economic benefits outweigh human health risks, or, that there are no alternatives.  

The second involves a requirement that endocrine disruptors must be removed from the market.

GM reality checks

December 2013

Soybeans. CC photo by Scott Robinson on Flickr

 2013 may well go down as the year of the GM reality checks. 

Reality Check No.1

GM crops increase the use of toxic chemicals in our food and in our environment. 

In August, the US Department of Agriculture quietly approved the first next-generation GM crop, Bayer's soya which is resistant to 'Balance' herbicide containing 'isoxaflutole' (IFT).   

IFT is classed as a “probable human carcinogen”, and is linked to liver and thyroid tumours and foetal toxicity.  The herbicide is persistent in the environment, including ground-water sources of drinking water. 

Right behind IFT in the GM/pesticide pipeline, a veritable “herbicide Armageddon” with matching GM crops is looming:

• Dow AgroSciences is awaiting approval of 2,4-D-resistant maize and soya.  This herbicide has been linked to immune-system cancer and adverse reproductive impacts.
• BASF is preparing an imidazolinone-resistant soya.  One form of this herbicide has been linked to bladder and colon cancer
• Syngenta has GM soya resistant HPPD inhibitors (related to IFT) which have been linked to toxic effects in the liver.
• Monsanto has its own GM soya and cotton resistant to Dicamba, a herbicide linked to cancer and developmental toxicity.

If you're really unlucky, you'll find yourself eating these traits stacked with our old friends glyphosate- and glufosinate-resistance, along with a cocktail of all the associated chemicals.  Also, as the grape-growers in Winsconsin have found to their cost, you might get any of these herbicides in any non-GM food grown near a GM field (that is, if your non-GM food has survived the spray-drift).

Genetic damage from 'inert' dsRNA

December 2013

This year, 2013, kicked of with the publication of another alarming GM feeding study.  It involved double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) which can be generated by artificial DNA to control existing genes rather than generate novel proteins (see [1]). 

Research has already established that dsRNA is stable and can transfer from food into the consumer.  Once inside, the long chains of dsRNA are cleaved into an assortment of smaller chains ('siRNA') which can interfere with metabolic processes. 

The reason for the latest feeding study wasn't anything to do with GM foods or crops.  It was to clarify a technical detail in the way laboratory investigations of insect genes are carried out.  When studying gene function, it's common practice to disable the gene using an appropriate siRNA.  As a comparative control in such experiments, scientists have been using a sequence of dsRNA which couldn't arise naturally.  Their assumption has been that the foreign siRNA won't find any DNA in the insect genome to interfere with.  However, unexpected observations of changes in gene expression, pigmentation and developmental timing in control bees (who should have been entirely 'normal') put this assumption in doubt.  Further investigation was clearly warranted.