ISIS Report 1/02/04
Approving GM Crops is Abusing Science
Scientific evidence has gone decisively against GM crops. So why is
commercial growing allowed? Scientists from the Independent Science Panel are
calling for an enquiry. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
reports.
Prominent scientists representing more than a thousand colleagues around
the world voiced their deep concerns at the lack of social accountability of
publicly funded science, especially in genetically modified (GM) crops.
They spoke out at a Briefing to an audience of 120 at the Greater London
Assembly on Monday, 19 January 2003, organised jointly by Green Party member of
the Assembly Noel Lynch and the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS).
The scientists are particularly incensed at the persistent denial and
dismissal by the government’s scientific advisors of the now extensive
scientific evidence on the hazards of GM crops to health and the environment,
in total disregard for the precautionary principle.
The scientists belong to the London-based Institute of Science in
Society, representing more than 670 scientists from 76 countries, and
Scientists for Global Responsibility, with a membership of 600. All are also
members of the Independent Science Panel (ISP) on GM, launched 10 May 2003 at a
public conference in London attended by the then environment minister Michael
Meacher and 200 other participants.
The 24 scientists on the ISP published their report, The Case for a
GM-Free Sustainable World on the ISP website
www.indsp.org 15 June 2003, billed as "a
complete dossier of evidence on the problems and hazards of GM crops as well as
the proven successes of all forms of non-GM sustainable agriculture".
By July 3, the Report was downloaded 12 000 times in the United States
alone. It has since been published by ISIS and the Third World Network,
republished by a commercial publisher in the US, and widely translated.
Spanish, French and German translations have been done, and Indonesian and
Portuguese translations are on the way.
The evidence reviewed in this authoritative report, containing more than
200 references to primary and secondary sources, received ample corroboration
from new data released recently. The US Department of Agriculture confirmed
that GM crops increased herbicide and pesticide use by more than 50 million
pounds since 1996.
UK’s Farm Scale Evaluations (FSEs), much criticised for being
limited in scope and biased in methodology, nevertheless confirmed that two of
the three GM crops harmed wildlife.
The third, GM maize tolerant to the herbicide glufosinate, appeared to
do better only because the conventional maize crop was sprayed with the deadly
herbicide atrazine that Europe banned a week before the FSEs Report was
released. This was exposed and universally condemned by public interest
organisations. A spokesperson of GM-Free Cymru – a group campaigning to
ban GM crops from Wales - called it a "cynical and dishonest" manipulation of
the scientific process.
Despite all that, the Advisory Committee on Release to the Environment
gave the green light to growing the GM maize in Britain.
"Scientific evidence has gone decisively against GM crops," said Dr.
Mae-Wan Ho, Director of the Institute of Science in Society. "But that’s
only scratching the surface."
She revealed how twelve dairy cows died in a farm in Hesse, Germany,
after being fed GM maize. "That is by no means an isolated incident." She said,
and reminded her audience of research by Arpad Pusztai and his collaborators,
by other scientists, plus a host of anecdotal evidence showing that
different GM feed also harmed other livestock and lab animals (see "GM
food safe?" series, Science in Society
21). "This suggests there may be something seriously wrong with GM food and
feed in general."
It has to do with the overwhelming instability of GM varieties, she
said. Practically every GM variety analysed by French and Belgian scientists
recently, including the T25 GM maize that the UK government is authorising for
growing in Britain, turned out to be unstable, and in some cases, non-uniform.
"This would make them illegal under European legislation." She pointed out.
"We all want to benefit from what new technologies have to offer, but
history shows that, all too often, we have failed to heed well-founded warnings
and made very expensive mistakes, and GM could be one of these;" says Professor
Peter Saunders, bio-mathematician, King’s College, London, "Precaution is
the key, and precaution is inseparable from good science." He also insisted it
was up to companies to prove "beyond reasonable doubt" that their products are
safe, in analogy to a court of law. The current practice is
anti-precautionary, for the burden on proof is misplaced, as it is left
up to the public to prove something "harmful" before it could be withdrawn.
He demolished all the objections of critics, including the one that says
the precautionary principle would prevent any innovation in society. "On the
contrary," he said, "It would not have prevented Sir Walter Raleigh from
introducing cigarettes to the world as there was no evidence suggesting
cigarettes were harmful; but it would surely have prevented tens of millions of
deaths had the precautionary principle been applied when evidence linking
smoking to lung cancer became available."
Dr. Vyvyan Howard, medical toxi-pathologist, Liverpool University,
showed how so-called risk assessment is based on fictitious, simplistic models
that are a travesty of nature’s complexity. That’s what he called
"fact-free" risk assessment. "The £1.6 million given by the UK Government
to Dr. Pusztai was to develop hazard assessment techniques for novel
foods. That tells us the regulators recognized that the methods in use then
were not adequate to protect human health. Not much has changed, and it seems
that line of research is no longer seriously pursued. Consequently, the current
risk assessments are still totally inadequate."
Dr. Arpad Pusztai, formerly of Rowett Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland,
concurred. "Science is able to provide the tools for conducting thorough risk
assessments on GM foods, yet this is not being done adequately. It leads one to
ask, ‘Who is responsible for not ensuring that GM foods are properly
assessed, and why?’"
The risk assessment process is a sham, said Joe Cummins, Emeritus
Professor of Plant Genetics from University of Western Ontario, Canada. For
example, there are many toxins isolated from the soil bacterium Bacillus
thuringiensis –Bt toxins - incorporated into crops. Many are synthetic
versions of the natural toxins, and they are also processed differently in
plants, with different carbohydrate added to the protein. "But companies are
allowed to test the natural toxins instead of the toxins from the GM plants, as
they would be eaten by animals and human beings." Said Joe Cummins.
Joe Cummins is also very critical of his own government: "The Canadian
government pumped millions of dollars into developing GM crops, especially GM
wheat, owned by the corporations. In return, the corporations agreed to enhance
the salaries of agricultural bureaucrats. The cosy relationship between the
corporations and government has resulted in lax regulation and widespread
pollution of non-GM crops. Worse still, scientists are intimidated into
silence; they are afraid to speak out, let alone do experiments on the risks
and hazards of GM."
Many scientists deplore the pervasive commercial and political conflicts
of interests in both research and development and regulation of GM. Dr. Eva
Novotny, astrophysicist, formerly from Cambridge University, and spokesperson
for Scientists for Global Responsibility sums it up: "Vested interests must not
override science, economics and what the public want."
Who are the winners and the losers in this GM debate? The environment,
farmers and consumers are all losers if GM crops are to be grown. Companies may
appear to be winners, but consumers have roundly rejected their offerings,
farmers who grew GM crops elsewhere have lost their markets. A report released
last April by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors signalled that agricultural
biotechnology is a high-risk industry not worth investing in. The Economics
Review commissioned by the UK Government last summer confirmed that there is no
market for GM crops. "GM companies might do best to cut their losses and begin
producing something their potential customers will actually want." Said Eva
Novotny.
The scientists are keen to work in partnership with farmers in research
and development of sustainable agriculture. John Turner, organic farmer from
FARM, a group set up in 2002 to represent independent and family farmers in the
wake of the foot and mouth epidemic, confirms that farmers in his organisation
overwhelmingly reject the commercial growing of GM crops. He is very
enthusiastic about the possibility of forming a scientists-farmers coalition.
He says: "This will ensure that science can respond to the present needs of
agriculture, and anticipate future aspirations and needs of farmers and
consumers."
"The problem with our government’s scientific advisors is that they
not only refuse to look at evidence in their own field of molecular genetics,
they refuse to look at evidence from other fields, such as the documented
successes of non-GM sustainable agriculture." Mae-Wan Ho pointed out.
She just returned from visiting Ethiopia, which has a Green as
president. The head of its Environment Protection Authority, Dr. Tewolde
Egziabher, and Sue Edwards, Director of the Institute of Sustainable
Development, started a small project in sustainable agriculture in the state of
Tigray at the very north of the country in 1996.
Mae-Wan Ho summarised the work with great enthusiasm: "The results were
so good that the project rapidly spread, and now 2 000 families are involved.
Over a range of agricultural land from wet to very dry, from rich soils to very
poor thin soils, farmers found that just by adopting pit composting, the
traditional way in Ethiopia, they were able to increase yields up to 4-fold,
and do better than chemical fertilizers in the overwhelming majority of farms.
That is something Londoners can do in their garden while they keep London and
Britain GM-Free."
The Briefing itself was webcast. To see this, go to
http://wms5.westminster-digital.co.uk/gla/meetings/winningthegmdebate_190104.
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