How GMOs Threaten Us All
 

by Dave Steele, Ph.D.

For ten thousand years, we humans have been genetically modifying our food crops. If we had a corn variety that was particularly sweet, we'd cross it to another with, say, drought resistance and work slowly towards creating tasty, drought-resistant corn. It might take a lot of crosses and a lot of years, but eventually we'd get what we wanted... with the added benefit of generating a whole lot of additional varieties we never dreamed we'd create.

These days, though, "genetically modified" has taken on a whole new meaning. Big corporations have taken over and they consider traditional crosses to be positively gauche. Why spend years and years crossing and crossing when you can spend a much shorter time sticking a bacterial gene in instead? You can patent that gene and, best of all, you can generate crops that'll help you sell your chemical herbicides, to boot. There's a whole lot more money in that. And a lot more control. The average consumer will never know the difference.

Now the question is, 'Is this good for us?' Business and government both say it's perfectly safe. There's nothing to worry about. GM crops are "substantially equivalent" to their traditional brethren. Problem is, we know nothing of the sort.

GMOs threaten us in a plethora of ways.

Because they are called "substantially equivalent," regulation is lax; testing is poor. With government complicity, companies like Monsanto and Syngenta foist new GMOs on us with almost no oversight. According to a stinging 2001 report from the Royal Society of Canada — Canada's premier scientific body — field trials are almost always sloppily performed; test results can be virtually uninterpretable. We can't even tell whether the crops perform as advertised, let alone whether they pose any dangers. To quote directly from the report, "this approach [substantial equivalence] is fatally flawed for genetically modified, or GM, crops and exposes Canadians to several potential health risks, including toxicity and allergic reactions." Still, despite these unknown dangers, GMOs are ever more widely planted.

Conventional farmers must deal with the "superweeds" that arise in the field as herbicide-resistant GM crops cross with each other and with wild relatives. Most of these weeds can't be killed by conventional herbicides.

Organic farmers deal with cross-pollination by GM varieties planted far from their own. Soon they'll be faced with insects resistant to their favourite natural pesticide bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), too. Engineered corn, cotton, etc. carrying the Bt toxin gene is slowly giving rise to resistant pests. It's just a matter of time.

GMOs threaten the control of our food supply. GMOs are patented and the corporations who hold those patents hold a tight rein on them. Ask Percy Schmeiser, the seed-saving Saskatchewan farmer who recently lost 5-4 to Monsanto in the Canadian Supreme Court. Schmeiser was forced to pay damages to Monsanto for saving seed that was contaminated — probably by wind-blown cross-pollination from a neighboring farm — with the "Round-up Ready gene." He didn't contaminate it but, nevertheless, the Supreme Court has ruled, he must pay for its presence in his crop. Now even unwanted cross-pollination is a profitable thing for Monsanto — what a great tool to keep farmers in line!

GMOs may threaten even the global food supply itself. As the limited numbers of GM crops displace thousands of traditional varieties, the varying resistances these traditional plants carry are being lost. As field after field is planted with the very same kind of Round-up ready corn or Btcotton, the chances that a single disease could decimate the vast bulk of a worldwide crop increases. We're putting ourselves at risk for an Irish-famine type disaster.

And all this is just the tip of the iceberg. Plants and animals are being "engineered" to produce pharmaceuticals; pigs are being engineered for human organ transplants. Animal cloning is rampant... always at the cost of hundreds of 'defective' sibs. Unethical scientists are even racing to clone human beings. How they can live with themselves, I have no idea.

New viruses are being made every day in labs around the world. The vast majority are benign. But what about the rare dangerous one that gets out and wreaks havoc with us or one of our planetary co-inhabitants. Because living creatures multiply, rare events can quickly spin out of control. Who knows when an ill-conceived GMO might collapse a whole ecosystem? Who knows when a killer virus may be unwittingly unleashed?

Things You Can Do

• Buy organic food. Organic food is by definition GMO-free.
• If you must buy conventionally-grown crops, buy those that are not genetically modified. Peas, for example, are unlikely to be GM; conventional corn probably is. You can learn more about this at www.truefoodnow.org/shoppersguide/
• Write your MP, the Prime Minister and the Agriculture Minister. Tell her or him that you want labeling and strict regulation.
• Let your local supermarket manager know that you're not buying the GMOs. If we all do this the supermarkets will respond. Again True Food Now has useful resources for this: www.truefoodnow.org/supermarkets

Dave Steele has a Ph.D in Genetics and Molecular Biology from Emory University. As a genetic scientist at Cornell University in the 1990s, he designed and built the first artificial mitochondrial gene, but refused to patent it. An outspoken social justice activist, he is currently on the research faculty of the University of British Columbia. He was a featured speaker at the Taste of Health in 2004.

Reprinted by permission from the Canada Earthsaver. (Originally Published in the September/October 2004 edition of Canada EarthSaver)

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