Latest on GM dilemma 

As the agricultural biotechnology industry continues its struggle to expand the use of commercially grown GM crops and livestock, arguments are escalating about their safety to health and the environment, and to developing countries. 

No agreement over GM
A consultation on genetic engineering held in Brussels in January, Towards Sustainable Agriculture in Developing Countries, ended in disagreement over whether or not genetically modified (GM) crops can feed the world. Called by the European Commission as a forum to debate the role of life sciences and biotechnology in developing countries, the conference did not form a consensus view. A number of presentations focused in the challenges faced by developing countries, and differing views were expressed on how to deal with them. Supporters of GM considered that production deficits and population growth are the main problems, whereas those opposed to GM regarded problems with food distribution, and crop losses due to poor post-harvest storage, are the most serious. However, most delegates agreed on the need to increase food production, and that dietary preferences would change with increased wealth.
    Two different approaches were proposed: to concentrate on existing, promising agricultural methods allied to equitable trade, or rely primarily on GM technology. Presentations focused on the lack of benefits of GM to farmers, particularly in poor, developing countries, while others addressed unequal trade access and regulations covering Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). 

GM: the only way?
Florence Wambugu, of the organisation ‘A harvest biotechnology foundation international(2)’ which promotes GM in Africa, argued that the technology is the only solution to the problems of food security on the continent. She claimed that groups in Europe seeking to prevent the adoption of the technology in Africa are immoral, and that spending by anti-GM non-governmental organisations in the US far exceeded that of the biotech industry by US$100 million. However, reports from the US show that Monsanto and its partners spent US$6 million just on opposing the campaign to make GM labelling mandatory in the 2002 elections in Oregon.

Research funding bias
Louise Fresco of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) stressed the importance of not confusing life sciences, biotechnology and GM. FAO are concerned at the lack of regulatory systems and that the emphasis on GM is putting at risk existing interdisciplinary work on soil water management. She argued that too much funding is being diverted into genetics, but non-biotechnology has far more potential to improve quality and productivity. Further consequences of increased private sector research funding may include issues about equity and access, for example, in (IPRs). Farmers are losing control over their own discoveries made in traditional agriculture, and there is a blurring between discovery and invention. 
    Timothy Reeves, from the University of Adelaide, emphasised that biotechnology is not just GM. He pointed out that the greatest impacts from biotech have been advances in fingerprinting, cloning and hybridisation. He called for increased public funding, more applied research and technology and integrated approaches. Research should focus on the needs of farmers and consumers in poor countries, and there should be more public investment in agriculture. Corporate social responsibility, including new approaches to IPRs are needed, and on the other side, advocacy groups should be more responsible.

Conclusions
During summaries from panellists, a heated debate erupted from the floor, with pro-GM speakers heralding it as the ‘miracle cure’, countered equally strongly by the anti-GM campaigners. Mamadou Cissokho, from Senegal reminded delegates that his country has made progress agriculturally without GM technologies, but that further improvement is blocked by subsidies in the European Union, US and China: these economic barriers are a greater impediment than any technology. Several pro-GM speakers were highly critical of organic agriculture as a solution, claiming it had ‘failed Africa’. 
    Missing from the programme were sessions covering the disadvantages of imposed regimes of industrial agriculture, such as the Green Revolution, and the reliance of GM on subsidies. Grassroot success stories about Integrated Pest Management (IPM), and whole farm approaches using traditional knowledge, were not discussed. 

GM: less pesticides?
Claims have been made in China(3) of seasonal reductions of pesticide spraying from 15 to one or two. However, reports from India(4) describe catastrophic failures of crops genetically engineered with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), many of them due to bollworm, resistance to which is supposedly engineered into the plants. A Greenpeace report(5) has highlighted the problems with Bt cotton in China after five years of commerical growing: pest susceptibility fell, resistance increased and populations of the natural enemies of bollworms fell. 
    Analyses(6) of studies suggesting yield increases from Bt GM crops have found significant flaws. Scientists have found that they often do not take account of spatial and temporal variability of pest populations, are based on ‘experimental’ rather than ‘commercial’ operations, over-generalise results, and do not compare results against non-Bt varieties. Yield increases may also not be due to the new gene, but to the high-yield variety into which it is engineered: but comparisons can be impossible if the non-GM version is no longer on the market.

Safety rules still missing
A report by Consumers International(7) has highlighted problems with rules drawn up by the the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the notification of new GM products. A draft of the rules requires 120 days notice before commercialisation, and acknowledges that there are differences between genetically engineered and traditionally bred products.
Data would be required on each separate transformation event: ‘Because some recombinant DNA-induced unintended changes are specific to a transformational event (for example, those resulting from insertional mutagenesis), FDA believes that it needs to be provided with information about foods from all separate transformational events, even when the agency has been provided with information about foods from rDNA-modified plants with the same intended trait and has had no questions about such foods. In contrast, the agency does not believe that it needs to receive information about foods from plants derived through narrow crosses [for example, traditional breeding](8).’ 
    However, the new rules have yet to be implemented, and requirements for allergenicity testing of GM crops by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and FAO have so far been ignored. This is of particular concern in relation to Bt crops, as field tests have revealed the presence of antibodies related to known allergens in field workers. GM crops have also escaped so far rules on food safety testing agreed by Codex Alimentarius(8).
    Biotech companies have recently been accused of giving wrong answers or submitting wrong data to regulators(9), noted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest(10) who are pro-GM. The group found weaknesses in regulatory requirements for allergenicity testing and for new products such as Vitamin A rice. For example, a GM papaya has been approved, despite containing amino-acids identical to a known allergen(11). Requests for information were rejected by the companies, and the (FDA) has no power to require disclosure. Concerns about long-term health impacts recently led Dr Stanley Ewen of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary to call for more rigorous and long term testing before GM crops are introduced(12). Scientist Richard Lacey, a British food safety expert, has also expressed concern that ‘each insertion event is unique and can yield deeply different results ... Therefore, the only way even to begin to assure ourselves about the safety of a genetically engineered food-yielding organism is through carefully designed long-term feeding studies employing the whole food; and it would be necessary to test each distinct insertion of genetic material(13).’

Biopharmaceuticals in food?
Plants from a field that had previously hosted a trial of corn crops engineered to produce a treatment against pig diarrhoea may have ended up in a soya crop grown the following year(14). The cost to ProdiGene, the company running the trials, of paying for the contaminated soya, has been around US$2.8 million.

Legal challenge to GE cows
Experiments in New Zealand(15) on cattle to create milk which is easier to process have caused several problems. The live birth-rate of calves was only 6%, and surviving calves have suffered organ malformations, immune system breakdowns and early death: half of them have died before weaning. A legal challenge is in progress. (SF)

References
1. Organised by the European Commission and the European Group on Life Sciences, Towards sustainable agriculture in developing countries: options from life sciences and biotechnology, Brussels, 30-31 January, 2003, www.europa.eu.int/
comm/research/conferences/2003/sadc/index_en.html
2. www.ahbfi.org
3. Zhang-Liang Chen and Li-Jia Qu, The status of agricultural biotechnology, Peking University, Beijing 100871 
4. Vandana Shiva, In praise of cow-dung, Znet Sustainer Program, 20 November 2002. 
5. www.greenpeace.org/~geneng/reports/
env_impact_eng.pdf
6. Letourneau, D K, Hagen J A, Robinson G S, Bt crops: evaluating benefits under cultivation and risks from escaped transgenes in the wild, in Letourneau D K, and Burrows B E (Editors), Genetically engineered organisms: assessing environmental and human health impacts, CRC Press, 2002.
7. Michael Hanson for Consumers International, Government lack of safety standards for GM crops revealed, Media Briefing, 10 January 2003.
8. Consumers International, 2003, Ibid.
9. Leila Abboud, Modified crop-makers faulted on safety data sent to Food and Drug Administration, The Wall Street Journal, 7 January 2003.
10. www.cspinet.org
11. Cummins, J. Allergenic GM papaya scandal, Institute of Science in Society, 2 February, 2003. 
12. Rob Edwards, Sunday Herald, GM expert warns of risk from crops, 8 December 2002 www.sundayherald.com/2982/
13. Declaration by Dr Richard Lacey to the US District Court, DC, in Alliance for biointegrity, 28 May 1999, www.biotech-info.net/Lacey_deposition.html.
14. John Nichols, The Three Mile Island of Biotech?, 12 December 2002, www.thenation.com
15. GE Free New Zealand, press release 15 January 2003 www.gefree.org.nz/press/15012003.htm

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 59, March 2003, pages 16-17]