Omaha World-Herald March 4, 2000 SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 52
Farmers Warned of Uncertainties With Crops' Genetics by BILL HORD WORLD-HERALD BUREAU Kearney, Neb.
Farmers whose fields will soon be planted with genetically altered seeds were left Friday with the image of an atomic bomb exploding in the north 40.
Toxicologist, biologist and pharmacologist Suzanne Wuerthele painted that mental picture here Friday for about 400 Nebraska farm leaders in a talk about genetic engineering at the annual Governor's Agriculture Conference.
"This is probably one of the most technologically powerful developments the world has ever seen," Wuerthele said. "It's the biological equivalent of splitting the atom."
Wuerthele, who analyzes potential harm to humans from chemicals for the Environmental Protection Agency in Denver was the first speaker after Gov. Mike Johanns promised attendees a "provocative" agenda for the annual conference.
Questions about how genetically altered crops and livestock will affect Earth's ecosystem have been raised as the technology spreads throughout the world, potentially jeopardizing the benefits farmers have received from seed varieties that fight pests and weeds.
Although Wuerthele's words seemed extreme, she said her intention was to let farmers know that scientific questions about genetic engineering need to be answered. "This is a huge controversy," she said.
"Regardless of who is raising the issues, the scientific issues are valid. When we work with biological things, they can be very powerful."
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Fewer US farmers to plant modified corn- NCGA poll
Reuters Story - March 07, 2000 13:24
ORLANDO, Fla., March 7 (Reuters) - Fewer U.S. farmers plan to grow genetically modified corn this year compared with 1999, with those abandoning the crops citing uncertainty about their marketability as a factor in the decision, according to a survey released Tuesday by the National Corn Growers Association.
About 20 percent of the farmers who said they grew genetically modified crops last year said they would not do so this year.
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Genetic engineering does not yield pesticide reduction
TORONTO, March 7 /CNW/ via NewsEdge Corporation -
Genetically-engineered (GE) crops cannot be depended on to reduce pesticide use, according to a report released today by World Wildlife Fund Canada titled Do Genetically Engineered Crops Reduce Pesticide Use? The Evidence Says Not Likely. Working to reduce reliance on pesticides in Canada, WWF is concerned that false hopes about biotechnology's ability to reduce pesticide use will impede progress towards sustainable agriculture.
"Genetic engineering is not a magical short cut to pesticide reduction," said Julia Langer, Director of WWF's Wildlife Toxicology Program. "The path to pesticide reduction will be paved with reforms to the dysfunctional and outdated Pest Control Products Act and through strong support for farmers to implement ecological practices."
Biotechnology companies have focused on the genetic engineering of major crops such as corn, soybeans, potatoes, cotton and canola, all of which are heavily sprayed. Most of the GE crops on the market have genes from bacteria inserted into them (transgenic engineering) which give crops one of two kinds of new characteristics: either resistance to herbicides so that the crop can be sprayed with an herbicide without being killed, or the ability to produce toxins of a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) which will kill some insect pests. Since pesticides can harm birds, fish, other wildlife, and natural enemies of pests, and are also associated with harm to people's health, it would be beneficial if GE crops resulted in reduced pesticide use.
However, recent US data show that GE crops are not producing such reductions. Farmers planting GE crops have often actually increased their use of herbicides and insecticides.
The WWF report outlines six key reasons underlying why genetic engineering does not decrease pesticide reliance:
- Herbicide-resistant GE crops often increase the use of the herbicide for which the crop is resistant and, because uncommon weeds emerged with the planting of the GE crops, do not necessarily reduce the use of other herbicides.
- Transfer of inserted foreign genes from GE crops to related plants will increase weediness, requiring additional sprays to control them. This is especially an issue where weeds are closely related to the engineered crop, such as canola.
- Bt crops do not necessarily result in reduced spraying of insecticides to control target pests. In fact, more acres of conventional corn are being treated with insecticides than before GE corn introduction.
- GE crops will increase resistance of pests to both pesticides and the GE crop itself. This was predicted during the regulatory review of GE technologies.
- GE food crops have negative impacts on beneficial insects such as lacewings and ladybugs, which would otherwise help farmers to control pests.
- GE crops reinforce poor crop rotation practices which are the real key to sustainable pest management.
In one analysis, the greater expense of GE seeds and the increased herbicide costs resulted in a 50 per cent increase in farmers' weed management costs.
Since GE is not performing according to claims and significant risks continue to emerge, including concerns regarding the impact of Bt corn on monarch butterflies, WWF concludes that sure-fire ways of achieving pesticide reduction, including IPM and organic techniques, should be preferentially adopted.
WWF's report, Do Genetically Engineered Crops Reduce Pesticide Use? The Evidence Says Not Likely, is available in the pressroom of WWF Canada's web site at http://www.wwf.ca or by calling WWF at 1-800-26-PANDA.
/For further information: Julia Langer, Director of Wildlife Toxicology, WWF Canada, at (416) 489-4567 ext. 258 or Gregory Hamara, Media Relations Manager, WWF Canada, at (416) 489-4567 ext. 276
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Natural Law Party Report from Europe on the OECD Conference on GM Food Safety
(OECD is the Organization for Economic Cooperationa and Development)
7 March 2000
CHALLENGE TO OECD CONFERENCE TO CALL FOR WITHDRAWAL OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS
During last week's OECD Conference on GM Food Safety, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, US public interest attorney Steven Druker created a dramatic impact when he revealed how US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists repeatedly warned the agency about the health hazards of genetically engineered foods and how their warnings were systematically covered up. For the international press corps covering the event this was one of the most exciting and newsworthy developments during the three-day conference, the rest of the debate being fairly predictable.
Towards the end of the first session of the OECD conference on Monday 28 February, Patrick Holden, Director of the Soil Association (the organisation that maintains organic standards in the UK), gave a powerful speech from the floor of the conference to the 400 delegates. He said that he had been refused an opportunity to speak from the platform and that there was a clear bias in the agenda in favour of genetically engineered food. He announced a lunch time press conference at which Steven Druker and others would speak.
The event took place at the Scottish Parliament and had to be moved to the largest Committee Room available in order to accommodate the 50 media who turned up along with well over 50 "observers" from the main conference - OECD officials, representatives of the biotech companies, etc. In the packed room it was a lively and powerful event that felt like history in the making.
Facing a bank of television cameras and speaking into a dozen microphones, Steven Druker was supported at the event by Dr Geoffrey Clements, leader of the Natural Law Party of the UK, and the leaders of the Soil Association, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and GeneWatch. The event, which had been organised at the suggestion of the Natural Law Party, was hosted by Robin Harper of the Green Party, who was recently elected as an MSP - a Member of the new Scottish Parliament.
"Precautionary principle" must be respected with regard to GM food
Collectively the speakers challenged the OECD conference to take note of the information that has come to light in the lawsuit Mr Druker is co-ordinating against the US FDA - 44,000 pages of internal FDA documents indicating a massive cover up of scientist's warnings (refer to press release we sent you on 17 February 2000 - available on our web site at www.natural-law-party.org). Mr Druker said that with this new information the OECD conference should recommend that international law on the "precautionary principle" must be respected and that all GM foods must be withdrawn immediately.
Dr Clements brought out the parallels in the UK with many eminent scientists, including scientists at the John Innes Centre (a leading adviser to the UK government on GM risk assessment), having identified important risks for health or the environment from genetically engineered food and crops. Dr Clements urged Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, to stand by his recent statement that he would ensure "the most rigorous safety assessments in the world" and therefore suspend all approvals for GM foods in the UK.
Journalists from all over the world were in attendance along with most of the national media from Scotland and the UK. This included the Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Financial Times, BBC, Sky TV, New Scientist, Nature, the Scotsman, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Kyodo News (Japan), Canadian Broadcasting, Irish national radio news, Toronto Star, Dow Jones, six US newspapers, Nationen (Norway), and many others.
The event ran for three times as long as scheduled and then continued into several other impromptu press briefings in the corridors as representatives of the US FDA and the OECD were pressed by journalists to answer the questions that had been raised. It was also referred to by almost every speaker at the conference for the rest of the day, including the conference chairman, Sir John Krebs, who encouraged delegates to address the issues that had been raised.
"US accused of suppressing GM food fears" declared the headline of the Daily Telegraph's report on the OECD conference the next day. "Lawyer's challenge to US over GM safety claims" proclaimed The Guardian. Similar reports appeared in most of the British media. The Scottish Herald devoted its font page to the issue, under the banner headline: "Cover-up claim on the safety of GM foods - Challenge to US as Edinburgh talks open".
"The Other GM Summit" at Edinburgh University
The next day Steven Druker and the Natural law Party were invited to participate in a special evening debate with other OECD conference delegates in front of an audience of well over 100 at the Centre for Human Ecology, which is associated with Edinburgh University. The debate called "The Other GM Summit" was lively and dramatic. As soon as the audience heard that Steven Druker was there they burst into spontaneous applause. There were strong exchanges between Mr Druker and pro-GM scientists.
During the debate, Patrick Holden of the Soil Association said that genetic engineering is just the latest in a series of "scientific" interventions in agriculture over the last fifty years that are only making things worse because they deal with symptoms rather than working with Nature.
Peter Warburton, Deputy Leader of the UK Natural Law Party, said that the degree of risk and uncertainty involved in GM foods is so great that they should not be grown at all. He was applauded when he called for a widening of the debate beyond considering the merits of GM food to investigate truly natural sustainable systems of agriculture, such as Vedic agriculture, which comes from the most ancient, holistic system of knowledge of Natural Law.
Other positions in the debate became clear when the spokesman for biotech company Novartis said that the main objective of his company was to be as profitable as possible for their share holders, and the president of Gene Campaign, India, called for help in the developing world to stand up to commercial exploitation by the multinational biotech companies.
The document summarising the deliberations of the OECD conference will be passed on to the next G8 summit of the leaders of the most wealthy industrialised nations for them to decide the way forward for the world. It is very clear from the conference that world leaders can no longer ignore public opinion on this issue and that the Natural Law Parties have made considerable progress in their world-wide campaign to educate the public about the dangers of genetically engineered foods and to achieve a total ban.
Mark Ritchie, President Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy 2105 First Ave. South Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404 USA 612-870-3400 (phone) 612-870-4846 (fax) cell phone 612-385-7921 mritchie@iatp.org www.iatp.org
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