I found a very good summary on why say no to GM Foods. Pasting
here for future reference
http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/GMfree5.htm
5 reasons to keep
Britain [and the rest of the world] GM-free
The Ecologist spells out the five overriding reasons why
the commercialisation of GM crops should never be allowed in the UK
[and Mendocino County]
1. GM WILL REMOVE CONSUMER CHOICE
The UK government's official adviser on GM, the Agriculture and
Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC), has said it would `be
difficult and in some places impossible to guarantee' that any
British food was GM-free if commercial growing of GM crops went
ahead. In North America, farmers can no longer be certain the seed
they plant does not contain GM genes.
GM CROPS CONTAMINATE
Cross pollination
GM genes are often `dominant' - ie, they are inherited at the
expense of non-GM genes when cross-pollination occurs between GM
and conventional species. With the first GM crops considered for
commercialisation - oilseed rape and sugar beet and maize - the
`gene flow' (ability to contaminate non-GM varieties) is `high' and
`medium to high', respectively.
To prevent cross-pollination, the official advice in the UK is
that there should be a separation distance of just 50 metres
between GM oilseed rape and non-GM varieties. But pollen can travel
a lot further than that. Bees, for example, regularly fly for up to
10 kilometres; hence, oilseed rape pollen has been found in hives
4.5 kilometres from the nearest GM crop field. Tree pollen grains
have been recorded in the essentially treeless Shetland Isles,
which are 250 kilometres from the nearest mainland. And the
University of Adelaide has published research into wind pollination
distances that shows oilseed rape pollen can travel for up to 3
kilometres.
SEED MIXING AND SPILLAGE
GM seed, or parts of GM root crops like sugar beet, may be shed
and left in a field where they may grow later.
Combine harvesters move from field to field, and leftover GM
seed may be spilt if equipment is not cleaned properly.
Lorries removing a harvested crop from a farm may spill seed
near fields where non-GM or organic crops are grown.
For crops with very small seeds like oilseed rape spillage can
be high.In May 2002 the European Commission's Joint Research Centre
(JRC) echoed the AEBC almost verbatim when it warned that if GM
crops were widely adopted, preventing contamination of organic food
would be `very difficult and connected to high costs, or virtually
impossible'.
The biotech industry is fully aware of this. As Don Westfall,
vice president of US food industry consultancy Promar
International, says: `The hope of the [GM] industry is that over
time the market is so flooded [with GM] that there's nothing you
can do about it. You just surrender.'
Likewise, the Soil Association's investigation into the impact
of GM in the US concludes: `All non-GM farmers in North America are
finding it very hard or impossible to grow GM-free crops. Seeds
have become almost completely contaminated with GM organisms
(GMOs), good non-GM varieties have become hard to buy, and there is
a high risk of crop contamination.'
2. HEALTH RISKS HAVE NOT BEEN DISPROVED
Pro-GM voices claim that after six years there have been no
adverse health effects from eating GM foods in the US. But then,
there has been no effort by the US authorities to look for health
impacts either.
GM APPROVAL SYSTEMS LAX
Safety data comes from the biotech firms themselves.
Independent, peer-reviewed research showing that GM food poses no
danger to human health is not required. One Monsanto
director said: `[We] should not have to vouchsafe the safety of
biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as
possible.' 
`Substantial equivalence'
The common methodology for government food-safety requirements
in North America and Europe has traditionally been a comparison
between a food and a conventional counterpart. The assumption is
that existing foods have a long history of safe use. So, if a GM
crop is found to be `the same' as a non-GM counterpart, it can
claim this history. This is called `substantial equivalence'. But
GM crops are not the same, because of the random nature and
uncertain consequences of modification. Biotech firms acknowledge
this when it suits them - stating, for example, that their GM
varieties are distinctive enough to warrant their own patents.
There have been no properly controlled clinical trials
looking at the effects of short- or long-term ingestion of GM foods
by humans. Moreover, as Dr Arpad Pusztai (who was sacked when he
printed research about the effects of GM potatoes on lab rats)
warns: `There is increasing research to show they may actually be
very unsafe.'
THREE MAJOR CONCERNS
Allergic reactions
Genetic modification frequently uses proteins from organisms
that have never before been an integral part of the human food
chain. Hence, GM food may cause unforeseen allergic reactions -
particularly among children. Allergens could be transferred from
foods to which people are allergic to foods they think are safe.
When a new food is introduced, it takes five to six years before
any allergies are recognised.
In 2000 GM `StarLink' maize was found in taco shells being sold
for human consumption in the US - even though the maize had only
been approved for animal feed. StarLink is modified to contain a
toxin that could be a human allergen; it is heat stable and does
not break down in gastric acid - characteristics shared by many
allergens.
Antibiotic resistance
Genetic modification could also make disease-causing bacteria
resistant to antibiotics. This could lead to potentially
uncontrollable epidemics. Antibiotic-resistance genes are used as
`markers' in GM crops to identify which plant cells have
successfully incorporated the desired foreign genes during
modification.
A 2002 study commissioned by the UK's Food Standards Agency
(FSA) showed that antibiotic-resistance marker genes from GM foods
can make their way into human gut bacteria after just one meal (see
box below). Two years previously, the British Medical Association
had warned: `The risk to human health from antibiotic resistance
developing in micro-organisms is one of the major public health
threats that will be faced in the 21st century.'
Industrial and pharmaceutical crops
Since 1991 over 300 open-field trials of `pharma' crops have
taken place around the world. In California, for example, GM rice
containing human genes has been grown for drug production.
Pharmaceutical wheat, corn and barley are also being developed in
the US, France and Canada.
Last year in Texas 500,000 bushels of soya destined for human
consumption were contaminated with genes from maize genetically
modified by the US firm Prodigene so as to create a vaccine for a
stomach disease afflicting pigs. A major concern is that GM firms
are using commodity food crops for pharm-aceutical production. If
there were such thing as a responsible path with `pharma' GM it
would be to use non-food crops.
3. FARMERS WILL BE DESTROYED
Within a few years of the introduction of GM crops in North
America the following occurred:
Almost all of the US's $300m annual maize exports and Canada's
$300m annual rape exports to the EU disappeared;
The trade for Canadian honey was almost completely destroyed
because of GM contamination;
Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea - the biggest
foreign buyers of US maize, stopped importing North American
maize;
Just like domestic consumers, food companies - including Heinz,
Gerber and Frito-Lay - started to reject the use of GMOs in their
products.
Former White House agriculture expert Dr Charles Benbrook
calculates that the lost export trade and fall in farm prices
caused by GM commercialisation led to an increase in annual
government subsidies of an estimated $3-5 billion.
In December 2000 the president of Canada's National Farmers
Union, Cory Ollikka, said: `Farmers are really starting to question
the profit-enhancing ability of products that seem to be shutting
them out of markets worldwide.'
Farm, which represents UK farmers, has said: `Farmers are being
asked by the agro-biotech companies to shoulder the economic and
public-image risks of their new technology, for which there appear
to be few or no compensating benefits. The claimed cost savings are
either non-existent or exaggerated. The long-term health and
environmental impacts are still uncertain. And consumers don't want
to eat GM food. So why would farmers sow something they can't
sell?'
HIGHER COSTS, REDUCED PROFITS
The Soil Association's US investigations found that GM crops
have increased the cost of farming and reduced farmers' profits for
the following reasons:
1- GM varieties increase farmer seed costs by up to 40 per cent
an acre; GM soya and maize, which make up 83 per cent of the GM
crops grown worldwide, `deliver less income on average to farmers
than non-GM crops';
2- GM varieties require farmers to pay biotech firms a
`technology fee';
3- The GM companies forbid farmers to save their seeds for
replanting; contrary to traditional practice, farmers have to buy
new seed each year; and
4- GM herbicide-tolerant crops increase farmers' use of
expensive herbicides, especially as new weed problems have emerged
- rogue herbicide-resistant oilseed rape plants being a widespread
problem; contrary to the claim that only one application would be
needed, farmers are applying herbicides several times.
Even a 2002 report by the US Department of Agriculture, a key
ally of the biotech industry, admitted that the economic benefits
of cultivating GM crops were `variable' and that farmers growing GM
Bt corn were actually `losing money.'
LOWER YIELDS
The University of Nebraska recorded yields for Monsanto's
Roundup Ready GM maize that were 6-11 per cent less than those for
non-GM soya varieties. A 1998 study of over 8,000 field trials
found that Roundup Ready soya seeds produced between 6.7 and 10 per
cent fewer bushels of soya than conventional varieties.
Trials by the UK's National Institute of Agricultural Botany
showed yields of GM oilseed rape and sugar beet that were 5-8 per
cent less than conventional varieties.
CORPORATE CONTROL GROWS
Adopting GM crops would place farmers and the food chain itself
under the control of a handful of multinational corporations such
as Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and DuPont. For US farmers this has
meant:
1- Legally-binding agreements that force farmers to purchase
expensive new seeds from the biotech corporations each season;
2- Having to buy these corporations' herbicides (at a cost
considerably above that of a generic equivalent) for
herbicide-tolerant crops;
3- Paying the biotech firms a technology fee based on the
acreage of land under GM;
4- The development of so-called `traitor technology' crops on
which particular chemicals will have to be applied if the crops' GM
characteristics (such as their time of flowering or disease
resistance) are to show;
5- The invention of `terminator technology' that stops GM plants
producing fertile seeds; thus farmers are physically prevented from
sowing saved seed and have to buy new seed from the biotech firms
instead; and
6- Biotech firms buying up seed companies. This creates
monopolies and limits farmers' choices still further. DuPont and
Monsanto are now the two largest seed companies in the world. As a
result of their control of the seed industry, farmers are reporting
that the availability of good non-GM seed varieties is rapidly
disappearing.
PRISONERS TO GM
US farmers are obliged by their contracts to allow biotech
company inspectors onto their farms. As with all crops, leftover
seed from GM plants can germinate in fields since used to grow
different crops; the seeds produce so-called `volunteers'. If
biotech company inspectors find any such plants, they can claim -
and have repeatedly done so - that the farmers are growing
unlicensed crops and infringing patent rights. For example, David
Chaney, who farms in Kentucky, had to pay Monsanto $35,000; another
Kentucky farmer agreed to pay the firm $25,000; and three Iowa
farmers are on record as having paid it $40,000 each. These and
other farmers have also had to sign gagging orders and agree to
allow Monsanto complete access to their land in subsequent years.
Crops have also been destroyed and seed confiscated. The biotech
industry currently has legal actions pending against 550 farmers in
North America.
ORGANIC FARMERS RUINED
Internationally, the organic movement has rejected GM because of
its potential for genetic contamination and its continued reliance
on artificial chemicals.
The Soil Association reports that in North America `many organic
farmers have been unable to sell their produce as organic due to
contamination'. Contamination has already:
1- meant the loss, at a potential cost of millions of dollars,
of almost the entire organic oilseed rape sector of
Saskatchewan;
2- cost US organic maize growers $90m in annual income (the
losses were calculated by the Union of Concerned Scientists in an
analysis for the US Environmental Protection Agency); and
3- forced many organic farmers to give up trying to grow certain
crops altogether. Last month a survey by the Organic Farming
Research Foundation found that one in 12 US organic farmers had
already suffered direct costs or damage because of GM
contamination.
4- If commercial planting of GM crops took place in Britain, the
UK's burgeoning organic sector - now worth £900m, and set to
increase with (supposed) government support - would perish. If, by
some miracle, contamination could be avoided the costs involved
would inevitably lead to organic farmers going bust. A study
published by the JRC in May predicted that efforts to protect
conventional and organic crops from contamination would add 41 per
cent to the cost of producing non-GM oilseed rape and up to 9 per
cent to the cost of producing non-GM maize and potatoes.
4. THE ENVIRONMENT WILL SUFFER
INCREASED USE OF HERBICIDES
The proponents of GM argue that the technology will lead to a
reduction in the use of chemical weedkillers. But for the majority
of GM crops grown so far, the evidence does not bear this out.
Four years worth of data from the US Department of Agriculture
shows herbicide use on Roundup Ready soya beans is increasing.
In 1998 total herbicide use on GM soya beans in six US states
was 30 per cent greater on average than on conventional
varieties.
The Soil Association's US investigation found that `the use of
GM crops is resulting in a reversion to the use of older, more
toxic compounds' such as the herbicide paraquat.
WHY?
Genes modified to make crops herbicide-resistant can be
transferred to related weeds, which would then also become
herbicide-resistant.
Crops can themselves act like weeds. Because GM crops are
designed to have a greater ability to survive, leftover seeds can
germinate in later years when a different crop is growing in the
same field. The leftover volunteer plants would then contaminate
the new crop. In Canada, where GM herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape
has been grown since 1998, oilseed rape weeds resistant to three
different herbicides have been created. These oilseed rape weeds
are an example of `gene-stacking' - the occurrence of several
genetically-engineered traits in a single plant. Gene-stacking was
found in all 11 GM sites investigated in a Canadian ministry of
agriculture study. As professor Martin Entz of Winnipeg's
University of Manitoba observes, `GM oilseed rape is absolutely
impossible to control'.
Following a review of the Canadian experience, English Nature -
the UK government's advisory body on biodiversity - predicted:
`Herbicide-tolerant gene-stacked volunteers of oilseed rape would
be inevitable in practical agriculture in the UK.'
INCREASED USE OF PESTICIDES
There has also been an increase in pesticide use by farmers
attempting to cope with pest resistance created by GM Bt crops. Bt
crops are modified to produce the insecticidal toxin Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt) in all their tissues.
However, the World Bank says insects can adapt to Bt within `one
or two years'. And scientists at China's Nanjing Institute of
Environmental Sciences have concluded that if it was planted
continuously Bt cotton would probably lose all its resistance to
bollworm - the pest it is designed to control - within eight to 10
years.
Meanwhile, pests' adaptability to pest-resistant GM crops could
force farmers onto a `genetic treadmill' of ever more technical
biotech fixes (including new varieties of pest-resistant crops) and
more frequent spraying, and more toxic doses, of chemical
pesticides. It could also destroy the effectiveness of Bt as a
natural insecticide in organic agriculture.
Perversely, GM pest-resistant crops could make agriculture more
vulnerable to pests and disease; they could end up harming
beneficial soil micro-organisms and insects like ladybirds and
lacewings that keep certain pest populations in check.
The Delhi-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and
Ecology found in a study of four Indian states that `not only did
Monsanto's Bt cotton not protect plants from the American bollworm,
but there was an increase of 250-300 per cent in attacks by
non-target pests like jassids, aphids, white fly and thrips'. And
researchers at Cornell University in the US found that the pollen
from Bt corn was poisonous to the larvae of monarch
butterflies.
As GM `pest-resistant' crops fail to deliver, Australian farmers
have been advised to spray additional insecticide on Monsanto's Bt
cotton by the Transgenic and Insect Management Strategy Committee
of the Australian Cotton Growers Research Association. Overall
insecticide applications on Bt maize have also increased in the
US.
GENETIC POLLUTION
GM crops may also reduce the diversity of plant life by
contaminating their wild relatives and indigenous crop varieties in
areas where the crops evolved. Widespread GM contamination of
conventional maize has already been detected in Mexico. In Europe,
contamination of wild relatives of oilseed rape and sugar beet is
considered inevitable if GM commercialisation goes ahead. The same
applies to wild relatives of rice in Asia.
IMPLICATION
If wildlife is harmed `unexpectedly' (ie, without that harm having
officially been predicted), and an official risk assessment had not
previously decided that GM crops were safe, it is the state and
society that will have to pay for putting things right - if this is
possible.
5. GM CROPS WILL NOT FEED THE POOR
The idea that GM will end global poverty is probably the biggest
of all the GM apologists' lies - the one used to accuse anti-GM
campaigners in rich countries of not caring about the Third World.
The truth is that the introduction of GM crops into the developing
world will result in decreased yields, crop failures and the
impoverishment of literally billions of small farmers.
DECREASED YIELDS
As already statedon page 36, there is no evidence that genetic
modification increases yields. But, just to make the point,
consider the following:
1- a US Department of Agriculture report published in May 2002
concluded that net yields of herbicide-tolerant soya bean were no
higher than those of non-GM soya, and that yields of pest-resistant
corn were actually lower than those of non-GM corn;
2- in September 2001, the state court of Mississippi ruled that
a Monsanto subsidiary's `high-yielding' GM soya seeds were
responsible for reduced yields obtained by Mississippi farmer
Newell Simrall; the farmer was awarded damages of $165,742.
But then, no commercial GM crop has ever been specifically
engineered to have a higher yield.
CROP FAILURES
Crop failures (and, therefore, drastically reduced yields) have
already occurred with GM soya and cotton plants in the developing
world. This is largely due to the unpredictable behaviour of these
crops. GM soya's brittleness, for example, has made it incapable of
surviving heat waves. And in 2002 `massive failure' of Bt cotton
was reported in the southern states of India; consequently, in
April the Indian government denied Monsanto clearance for the
cultivation of its Bt cotton in India's northern states.
THE RUIN OF SMALL FARMERS
GM would force the two billion people who manage the developing
world's small family farms to stop their age-old practice of saving
seeds. Each year they will have to buy expensive seeds and
chemicals instead. The experience of North American farmers shows
that GM seeds cost up to 40 per cent more than non-GM
varieties.
TECHNOFIXES DON'T WORK
Inadequate yields are not the cause of hunger today. As Sergey
Vasnetsov, a biotech industry analyst with investment bank Lehman
Brothers, says: `Let's stop pretending we face food shortages.
There is hunger, but not food shortages.' In 1994, food production
could have supplied 6.4 billion people (more than the world's
actual population) with an adequate 2,350 calories per day. Yet
more than 1 billion people do not get enough to eat.
Furthermore, the types of GM crops being produced are almost
exclusively for the processed-food, textiles and animal-feed
markets of the West. Instead of being used to grow staple foods for
local consumption, millions of hectares of land in the developing
world are being set aside to grow GM corn, for example, to supply
grain for pigs, chicken and cattle. In May, ActionAid published a
report called GM Crops: going against the grain, which revealed
that `only 1 per cent of GM research is aimed at [developing] crops
[to be] used by poor farmers in poor countries'. And ActionAid
calculates that those crops `stand only a one in 250 chance of
making it into farmers' fields'. As the UN Development Programme
points out, `technology is created in response to market pressures
- not the needs of poor people, who have little purchasing
power'.
SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVES
Sustainable agriculture projects have led to millet yields
rising by up to 154 per cent in India, millet and sorghum yields
rising by 275 per cent in Burkina Faso and maize yields increasing
by 300 per cent in Honduras. Combined with reforms aimed at
achieving more equitable land ownership, protection from subsidised
food imports and the re-orientation of production away from export
crops to staple foods for local consumption, sustainable farming
could feed the world.
In 1998 a delegation representing every African country except
South Africa submitted a joint statement to a UN conference on
genetic research. The delegates had been inspired by a Monsanto
campaign that used images of starving African children to plug its
technology. The statement read: `We strongly object that the image
of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant
multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither
safe, environmentally-friendly nor economically beneficial to us.
We do not believe that such companies or gene technologies will
help our farmers to produce the food that is needed in the 21st
century. On the contrary, we think it will destroy the diversity,
the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems that
our farmers have developed for millennia, and that it will
undermine our capacity to feed ourselves.'
__________
Sources: Briefing papers by Genewatch, Friends of the Earth, the
Soil Association, GM Free Wales, Farm
http://www.theecologist.org/article.html?article=432
