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.

N-Fix - too good to be true?

November 2013
 

CC photo by Wheat initiative on Flickr

The holy grail of gene technology has long been the creation of plants which can fix nitrogen from the air to provide their own nitrogen fertiliser.  Scientific and financial resources have been poured into attempts to develop such GM crops in Britain. 

There's no doubt that world agriculture desperately needs to find an alternative to our current dependence  on artificial nitrogen fertilizers.  They’re expensive, energy- and fossil fuel-hungry, climate-, environment- and health-damaging. 

Natural conversion of nitrogen gas in the air to a form usable by plants is carried out by soil bacteria.  Scientists who are aware of the complexity of nitrogen-fixation in such bacteria have reservations about whether the process can be translated by GM into higher plants.  Besides the 20 genes involved (each structured to express in bacteria not in plant cells) and the enzymes needed (some of which are assembled from separately generated components and some of which incorporate iron and molybdenum ions), the reaction itself can only take place if oxygen is excluded.  The energy costs and metabolic contortions needed to achieve such novel reactions and conditions in a plant are so extensive that achieving a robust crop at the end of the day may be a “pipe-dream” (Institute of Science in Society). 

However, researchers at Newcastle University have been following another line of inquiry.  They've come up with 'N-fix' technology. 

The Minister for GM hype

November 2013



CC photo by CIAT on Flickr

Conservative MP, Zac Goldsmith, has dubbed Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, the UK's “Minister for GM Hype”. 

Goldsmith describes Paterson's recent well-broadcast comments on the 'wicked' campaigners who voiced concerns about GM 'golden rice' [1] as “staggering”, and his suggestion that anyone has died because of their actions as “grotesque”.  Indeed, Goldsmith backs up his remarks with a concise summary of all the main issues surrounding the vitamin A producing rice, and concludes that

 

“Without the success story, GM relies on hype”. 

GM cotton contact

November 2013

Cotton worker in India. CC Photo by Jeremy Evans Thomas on Flickr

When you think 'cotton', you probably think T-shirts, towels, bedding, bandages, personal care products.

All the cotton bolls which are processed into such textiles start off full of seeds which have to be removed. The spare seeds are use up by conversion to animal feed. Other cotton by-products of textile production consist of 'gin trash', a mess of seeds, stalks, leaves, burrs, twigs and dirt.

Gin trash is sold on to food processors to create cotton seed oil (a common component of 'vegetable' oil), vitamins, food additives, and bulking agents.

So, besides the cotton derivatives which end up inside you via your gut, there's a lot of cotton textile dust in the air which ends up inside you via your lungs.

Saudi Arabia finds GM food pollution

November 2013

Market in Riyadh. CC photo by Edward Musiak on Flickr

Saudi Arabia imports around 60-70% of its crops and food. Quality checks are made regarding the nutrient content and mycotoxin levels in the food, but GM declarations have never been required and there's no labelling.

Noting that in Europe regulators demand labelling of imported food and feed at GM levels above 0.9%, and noting that GMOs have been detected in raw and processed foods in Brazil, Egypt, Canada and Malaysia, scientists in Saudi Arabia carried out a survey of the food on sale in their country.

Are pests needed to control climate change?

November 2013

CC photo by William Warby on Flickr

A recent study by American ecologists has cast an interesting new light on our intuitive concept of the carbon cycle, especially on the realities of carbon storage, carbon release as CO₂, and the resulting threat of climate change.

We've never before doubted that plants left undisturbed will grow maximally, and store maximum carbon from their photosynthetic endeavours. Nor have we ever doubted that the destruction of plants by herbivorous animals will reduce carbon storage, while the action of carnivorous animals will keep the herbivores in check and thus offset the carbon lost to them.

We've never questioned the role of liberal applications of insecticidal chemicals, and more recently 'Bt' GM plants which suffuse themselves with insecticidal proteins, in enabling maximal carbon storage and growth of our crops.

But, interestingly, no one's ever scientifically verified these 'intuitions'.