Fwd: Excellent article from UK + Super Sale on Take Action Packets

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19 Aug 2003 08:23:41 -0000

 

News Update from The Campaign

Excellent article from UK + Super Sale on Take Action Packets

 

News Update From The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods

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Dear News Update Subscribers,

 

The Ecologist, published in London, is the world's longest running

environmental magazine. It is read by people in over 150 countries.

 

The August issue has a lengthy article (posted below) titled " 5 Reasons

To Keep Britain GM-Free " Although it discusses genetically engineered

crops from Britain's perspective, the points it makes are applicable to

any country. The five reasons are:

 

1. GM Will Remove Consumer Choice

2. Health Risks Have Not Been Disproved

3. Farmers Will Be Destroyed

4. The Environment Will Suffer

5. GM Crops Will Not Feed The Poor

 

One of the sub-topics under " Farmers Will Be Destroyed " is " Organic

Farmers Ruined. " Unfortunately that is starting to happen now in the

United States as more and more organic crops become contaminated with

the genes from genetically engineered crops. Over time, the new " USDA

ORGANIC " label may come to represent an inferior organic product

compared to organic crops from those countries that are not allowing

genetically engineered crops to be grown.

 

The fastest way to dramatically reduce the acreage of genetically

engineered crops being grown in the United States is to pass mandatory

labeling legislation. Once genetically engineered foods are required to

be labeled, manufacturers will begin using non-genetically engineered

ingredients. And if food manufacturers stop buying genetically

engineered crops, farmers will stop growing them. It is the basic law of

supply and demand. Remove the demand and the supply will quickly go

away. So let's work hard to get the labeling legislation passed into

law.

 

SUPER SALE ON TAKE ACTION PACKETS

 

In celebration of HR 2916, the " Genetically Engineered Food Right to

Know Act of 2003, " being introduced into the U.S. House of

Representatives, we are putting our popular 32-page, full-color, Take

Action Packets on sale for 50 percent off through the end of August:

http://www.thecampaign.org/tap.php

 

This is the best price we have ever offered on our highly acclaimed Take

Action Packets. With a box of Take Action Packets you can easily get

dozens of your friends and associates to understand the importance of

fighting the spread of genetically engineered foods. And the Take Action

Packets even contain form letters to send to members of Congress.

 

Speaking of form letters, The Campaign's web site now has new form

letters for all 435 members of the House of Representatives encouraging

them to co-sponsor HR 2916, the " Genetically Engineered Food Right to

Know Act of 2003 " :

http://www.thecampaign.org/national.php#write

 

Everyone reading this is encouraged to print out the form letter for

your House Representative, sign it and mail it by US Postal Service.

Mail sent by the U.S. mail has far more impact than e-mail. While you

are at it, go ahead and print out extra copies of the form letter and have

your friends sign them. It is fine to mail in a few dozen form letters

to your House Representative in one 9 " x 12 " envelope.

 

Thanks in advance for mailing the new form letter to your House

Representative -- and getting your friends to send letters.

LEGISLATION + LETTERS = SUCCESS!

http://www.thecampaign.org/national.php#write

 

Remember to take advantage of the great 50 percent off sale on

Take Action Packets by ordering before the end of the month:

http://www.thecampaign.org/tap.php

 

Craig Winters

Executive Director

The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods

 

The Campaign

PO Box 55699

Seattle, WA 98155

Tel: 425-771-4049

Fax: 603-825-5841

E-mail: label

Web Site: http://www.thecampaign.org

 

Mission Statement: " To create a national grassroots consumer campaign

for the purpose of lobbying Congress and the President to pass

legislation that will require the labeling of genetically engineered

foods in the United States. "

 

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The Ecologist - August 2003

 

5 reasons to keep Britain GM-free

http://www.theecologist.org/article.html?article=432

 

The Ecologist spells out the five overriding reasons why the

commercialisation of GM crops should never be allowed in the UK

 

 

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. 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 stated on 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 type 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

 

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If you would like to comment on this News Update, you can do so at the

forum section of our web site at: http://www.thecampaign.org/forums

 

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