ISIS Report 20/11/05
Announcing Science in Society #28 Winter 2005
The Only Radical Science Magazine on Earth
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 From the Editor
GM ending for Africa?
South Africa sprang a big surprise when it slapped a moratorium on genetically
modified (GM) imports at the end of October. The country has been the biotech
industry’s main entry-point into Africa as the industry was being driven out
of Europe. South Africa has a weak biosafety regime with biotech lobbyists acting
in a regulatory capacity, and is the only country on the continent that has
commercialised GM crops. This puts it seriously out of step with neighbouring
Lesotho, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, which are among the dozen or so African
countries that have imposed bans and restrictions on GM imports following Zambia’s
outright rejection of GM food aid in 2002 (SiS
16, SiS
17).
The South African government has commissioned
its Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to study the implications of GM
imports on trade; and the moratorium is not likely to end before the DTI study
is complete by the end of next year.
As a major food producer
and exporter, South Africa is clearly worried about trade, especially
in GM maize. GM maize accounts for 70 percent of maize traded on the global
market. As very few countries want to import GM maize, there is a glut. So
South Africa, a net maize-exporter, finds it cheaper to import GM maize from
Argentina than to source it from within the country, with the result that
3.5 million tons of local non-GM maize could not be sold in 2005, leaving
South African farmers devastated.
Meanwhile, Zambia
is holding firm against GM food aid and imports despite projected food shortages
due to drought, and amid intense pressure to accept GM crops from an international
pro-GM lobby. It is opting instead for organic and other low input agriculture
that are boosting yields and farm income, and most important of all, liberating
farmers from decades of indebtedness and dependence on agrochemicals.
Whether intentional or not,
South Africa and Zambia are both making wise moves towards food
security for the same reason. High input/GM agriculture and cheap imports
both depend on cheap oil, which is fast disappearing.
Petrol queues are increasingly
common across the globe, and Zambia is no exception. Crude oil
price keeps rising, while fuel production lags further and further behind
consumption. On one occasion, I was trapped in my hotel room in Lusaka with
no electricity for part of the day because the hotel had been “shedded” from
the grid on a regular basis for weeks; and taxis were going nowhere because
the petrol pumps were empty. Could the end of cheap oil signal the end of
subsidised dumping as well as high input/GM agriculture?
If governments need more
convincing to give up GM crops, they should look at the new damning scientific
evidence.
GM crops debacle now complete
GM crops are industrial monocultures only far worse. Two traits account for
very nearly all the GM crops grown commercially worldwide: more than 75 percent
are herbicide tolerant, nearly all to the herbicide glyphosate, or Roundup,
Monsanto’s formulation; the rest are insect-resistant, due to a class of Bt-toxins
from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.
Evidence
has been accumulating over the years that all is not well with both types
of GM crops: yield drag, poor performance in the field, more pesticides used,
reduced profit for farmers, and bad for health and biodiversity.
A spate of recent findings
not only confirm what we already know, but also complete the debacle. Roundup
resistant superweeds and Bt-resistant insect pests have now been documented,
making both Roundup tolerant crops and Bt crops useless. The problems don’t
end there.
Bt crops express variable amounts of the toxins, often
insufficient to kill target pests; but harm beneficial insects including predators,
bees and soil decomposers. (Bt toxins are already known to be actual or potential
allergens and can provoke strong immune reactions.)
Roundup herbicide causes sudden crop death. It is lethal
to frogs, and highly toxic to human placental cells, even at one-tenth the
recommended dosage. (It is already linked to cancers, neuro-defects and spontaneous
abortions.)
That’s not all. A research
team led by Dr Irina Ermakova of the Russian Academy of Sciences
has just reported that 36 percent of rats born to GM-soya fed mothers were
severely stunted compared with 6 percent of rats born to mothers fed non GM-soya.
Within three weeks, 55.6 percent of the progeny of GM-soya fed rats died;
the death rate was six to eight times that of progeny from rats fed non-GM
soya, or a diet without added soya. This latest is perhaps the most dramatic
in a string of revelations indicating that GM food is far from safe, which
have been systematically dismissed, suppressed or not followed up.
It is sheer lunacy to expand the cultivation of GM crops
like these across the world, as the pro-GM lobby is pushing for. It can lead
nowhere else but towards global biodevastation, massive crop failures and
global famine.
Stop GM soya in Latin America
We need look no further than Latin America for the nightmare scenario. It
is being destroyed by soya cultivation, especially with the arrival of GM soya
(“Argentina’s GM woes”, SiS
20; “How Europe is recolonizing America”, SiS
25). Soya is inextricably tied to the meat industry ever since agronomists
discovered that adding soya to grain could improve the feed to meat conversion
ratio up to two-fold. Countries like Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and
Uruguay are driven to grow soya for foreign exchange, to repay foreign debt,
and in response to demand from importing countries especially China, currently
the world’s largest importer of soybean and soybean products. Soya fields have
been spreading in Latin America like an ecological canker, eating up the pampas,
the savannahs and the Amazonian forests; bringing with it massive infrastructure
projects for transporting and processing soybean that obliterate natural habitats
far beyond the areas cleared for soya cultivation. This is happening just when
the integrity of the Amazonian forests is absolutely essential for stabilizing
global climate against the increasingly frequent climatic catastrophes of hurricanes,
floods, droughts, and heatwaves.
It is time to wipe GM crops
off the planet. Governments in Latin America should put a halt
to the spread of GM soya right away and reconvert monoculture soya fields
back into forests or sustainable agro-forests with the help of the international
community, under the provision of the Kyoto Protocol. The rest of us can contribute
by rejecting not only GM soya, but also soya-fed beef in favour of organic
grass-fed beef.
Scientists and universities for rent
Unfortunately, a powerful pro-GM lobby has infiltrated
every level of civil society from international aid agencies to governments,
and academia; I have crossed paths with it all too often.
Monsanto and other
biotech corporations have been funding university scientists to do their research
cheaply, yes; but also to do propaganda and to ‘debate’ with scientists like
me. We are defamed and libelled at public conferences, in the popular media
and pages of the learned journals. This happens worldwide. In Lusaka
recently, I came up against a scientist from the University of Zambia leading
an aggressive disinformation campaign against his country’s rejection of GM
crops, and exploiting the most horrendous image of a starving African child
to make his case. Following him, a scientist from Kenya used the same image
and told the exact same story.
Scientists like us
risk losing research grants and jobs, even those relatively high up in the
academic echelon.
Fred Kirschenmann
was director of the Leopold Center in Iowa State University
for the past five years, until he was suddenly and involuntarily made “distinguished
fellow”. His sins? He argued once too often that there is an urgent need for
“a more intelligent, diversified farming system.” Genetic modification, he
said, is “simply another tool to make the monoculture work a little longer”
in the face of the pests and diseases that monocultures encourage.
For his parting shot, Kirschenmann said Iowa State’s College of Agriculture “draws agribusiness cash the
way a penned-up pig wallowing in its own waste draws flies.”
If it’s any comfort, I have found it refreshing and liberating
to work outside academia since I was strongly encouraged to retire early in
2000, for speaking out on the risks of genetic modification.
Sustainable World Weekend Workshop
There is nothing to stop us independent scientists from telling the truth and
making science work for a sustainable and equitable world. To do just that,
we are organizing a weekend workshop with living legend Professor George Chan
of “Dream farm” fame (SiS
27), plus other
luminaries (see backcover). Do apply early, as places are strictly limited.
All SiS issues and articles can be accessed at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews.php
Contents
From the Editor
Mission ISP
Technology watch
Living Test for Mad Cow Disease
Marker Assisted Selective Breeding
Nanotoxicity: A New Discipline
No to Releases of Transgenic Plants with Antimicrobial Peptides
Sustainable world
Less is More for Nepali Rice
Organic Farmer Who Values His Freedom Above All
Brother Paul’s Organic Cotton & Vegetable Farm
Organic Boom Around the World
Organic Yields on Par with Conventional & Ahead During Drought
GM-Free
GM Soya Disaster in Latin America
Scientists Confirm Failures of Bt-Crops
Zambia Holding Firm to GM Ban
Roundup Ready Sudden Death, Superweeds, Allergens…
GM Crops for Africa? No Thanks!
Sustainable World Policies
Science In and For Society
India’s Biotech Future
Outsourcing Ecological and Health Risks
Policies for Sustainable Food Systems, National and Global
Food and Energy Security: Local Systems Global Solidarity
Food Miles and Sustainability
Can the EU Help Build a Sustainable World?
Corporate takeover alert
Hybrid Seed
Compromise on EU Vitamins and Minerals
Letters to the Editor
New Age of Water
First Sighting of Structured Water
Positive Electricity Zaps through Water Chains
Water Smoothing Protein Relationships
Subscribe
now, or download this magazine in its entirety as a PDF document from the ISIS members area. The first few pages are viewable here.
Individual hardcopies are available from our online store.
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