October 7, 2015 — The GMO debate is one from which I’ve kept a purposeful distance.
For one thing, it’s an issue that has already garnered more than its fair share of attention. For another, when you consider that many domesticated crops resulted from seed irradiation, chromosome doubling and plant tissue culture — none of which are genetically engineered — the boundaries of “natural” are more porous than they initially appear.
But I study seed science and policy, in which genetically engineered organisms — more often referred to as genetically modified organisms, aka GMOs — are pervasive, so it’s an issue I cannot ignore. Most recently, the director of a science communications program asked if I could engage her students on a few topics: Is there a scientific consensus on GMOs? How is the media doing when it comes to covering biotech in the food system? Where are the biases and blind spots in reporting?
Swapping emails, we discussed the retraction of a study on “golden rice,” a Slate feature calling the war against GMOs “full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud,” and the infamous tangle among Vandana Shiva, David Remnick and Michael Specter in the aftermath of “Seeds of Doubt,” a critical New Yorker profile of Shiva’s crusade against genetically modified crops. (Read Shiva’s response to the profile, and Remnick’s counter response.) Anyone who examines these stories will appreciate the thicket of fact, interpretation and framing that makes the GMO terrain explosive.
Why do the merits or demerits of GMOs grab more headline space than systemic food and agriculture concerns?
Let me begin with a frank admission: I am a proponent of agroecology, food sovereignty, and the rights of farmers to save and reproduce their seed. But I am not anti-GMO. In agreement with my colleagues at various universities and non-governmental organizations, I believe that some GM crops could have some benefits. What I object to is a lack of complex evaluations of the technology, the overzealous selling of its benefits and the framing of cautionary skeptics as anti-science scaremongers. The tendency to treat GMOs in isolation from their historical, social and political contexts is also of no help: The technology was developed as a tool to enhance the scope and scale of industrial agriculture. I don’t argue that GMOs cannot be — and never will be — extricated from that context, but that discussion is very different from the more common debate about health benefits or risks.
Why do the merits or demerits of GMOs grab more headline space than systemic food and agriculture concerns? Can we get past what Jonathan Foley calls the “silver bullet” and reductionist thinking on this issue? As a molecular biologist turned science journalist turned social scientist, I’ve been puzzling over these questions for some 15 years. What I’ve come to realize is that GMO stories point to deeper struggles over how science is conducted, interpreted and deployed in the arena of “sustainable food.”
The New Yorker, Slate, National Geographic and numerous other media outlets have been part of an unfortunate trend in which GMO skeptics are framed as anti-science wing nuts. If scientists happen to work at an NGO, the credibility of the organization is frequently assailed — as if researchers outside the academy cannot provide intelligent critiques. To the contrary, organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Food Safety and Pesticide Action Network support scientists whose research offers an invaluable supplement to academic work. In fact, they often are more willing to pursue “politicized” issues than university researchers who feel to do so would threaten their credibility or “impartiality.” There are benefits to this precaution (we want to be as objective as we can be) but also considerable drawbacks, because it tends to deter scientists from considering the larger societal contexts of their research. That food and agriculture researchers are expected to wear the veil of value-free science is especially unfortunate now, when agribusiness is proving phenomenally successful at marginalizing its critics.
Though there are many angles from which to look at this issue, I think three are particularly important to help us get past less consequential aspects of this technology and on to things that are having a greater impact. The first is the construction of scientific consensus around GMO safety. The second is the framing of biotech benefits, which are often exaggerated. Finally, I think it’s important to discuss the increasingly murky waters of scientist-industry-media relations.
What Is Safe?
“Good science” is often said to be based on strong scientific consensus, which, in turn, is a powerful statement about the use of rigorous methods and knowledge of science. Therefore, industry has a strong stake in demonstrating the existence of scientific consensus. Most people think of such consensus as emerging purely from objective studies of the natural world. But scholars of science and society argue that consensus is also negotiated and constructed through mechanisms such as conferences, expert panels, assessments of science and policy statements by scientific societies. When expert panels are assembled, for example, who is included — and excluded — can go a long way toward shaping what consensus emerges.
One needn’t search far to find media narratives suggesting that the verdict is in: The vast majority of scientists have forged robust agreement around GMO safety; there is no evidence that engineered foods are unsafe to eat. These tactics are reminiscent of those of Big Tobacco and Big Oil, but with an interesting twist. Whereas those groups primarily sought to inflate scientific doubt, in the case of GMOs we are told that the science is settled.
Yet no good scientist would be content with the “epidemiologically shabby construct that if there’s no evidence something isn’t safe, it must be safe,” Tim Wise, director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, points out. Scientific consensus on GMO safety simply doesn’t exist.
The most up-to-date analysis I know of is a 2011 peer-reviewed report that attempted to survey all studies available in international scientific journals on human safety impacts of GMOs. The researchers found that about half of animal-feeding studies conducted in recent years found cause for concern. The other half didn’t, and as the researchers noted, “most of these studies have been conducted by biotechnology companies responsible for commercializing these GM plants.”
“Safety,” in sum, has been narrowly defined as human nutritional health, excluding many important safety dimensions and ignoring impacts on the larger agricultural, social and ecological systems.
Importantly, this assessment — comprehensive as it was — only recognized the toxicological health risks to humans of ingesting GM foods. It did not analyze broader environmental and social impacts, which is where my primary concerns lie. These include overusing GMO-compatible herbicides, promoting the development of herbicide resistant weeds and degrading habitats for biodiversity such as monarch butterflies. Monoculture cropping frequently associated with GMOs brings a host of other concerns: loss of biological pest control (requiring more pesticides), reduced soil fertility (requiring more fertilizer), and strain on nutrition and food security when traditional crop varieties are displaced by GM varieties or contaminated by their pollen. And the combination of GM crops with patent protection has resulted in concentrated seed industry control that has not only diminished public breeders’ and farmers’ access to germplasm, but also reduced crop genetic diversity, boosting vulnerability to environmental change.
Opportunity costs of pursuing GMOs should be a concern, too. Biotech tends to be expensive, and money spent there is not spent on research and development elsewhere. According to a University of California, Berkeley, review, over the past century, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has devoted less than 2 percent of its budget to agroecological and organic agriculture.
“Safety,” in sum, has been narrowly defined as human nutritional health, excluding many important safety dimensions and ignoring impacts on the larger agricultural, social and ecological systems. These, to me, are far more frightening than any “frankenfood.”
Lately, a few studies have begun to consider these broader dimensions, with troubling results. In March 2015, the World Health Organization reviewed the health effects of the herbicide glyphosate (aka Roundup) — designed to kill weeds without harming GM glyphosate-resistant crops — and decided it should be classified as “probably carcinogenic,” meaning animal studies have demonstrated a definite link between cancer and exposure to glyphosate. There is limited but growing evidence of harm to humans — mostly in the form of studies of farm workers who are more highly exposed to the pesticide. (But, as a growing range of toxicological studies are demonstrating, exposure levels may not be as important as once thought, as low doses of chemicals, including pesticides, are being demonstrated as harmful to humans — not to mention the potential effects of compounding exposure to multiple chemicals.) In August 2015, the Guardian reported on a possible link between human birth defects and pesticides applied to GM crops in Hawaii. The Fund for Investigative Journalism–sponsored article underscored that scientists don’t yet have epidemiological data, but connecting the dots between incidence and exposure, researchers indicated ample cause for concern.
In the words of 300 scientists in a joint statement published in the journal Environmental Sciences Europe last January,
“…the totality of scientific research outcomes in the field of GM crop safety is nuanced; complex; often contradictory or inconclusive; confounded by researchers’ choices, assumptions, and funding sources; and, in general, has raised more questions than it has currently answered.”
Exaggerated Benefits
A second issue is hyperbole. Despite the fact that over the past 25 years, classical plant breeding in both the U.K. and the U.S. has generally been subordinated to molecular biological methods in terms of resources and attention, biotech advances have not materialized as initially prophesied.
Take yield, for example. Testifying before the National Academies of Sciences in September 2014, North Carolina State crop scientist Major Goodman observed that it’s actually classical crossbreeding that continues to set the yield bar. In corn, he said, transgenics have made a roughly 5 percent gain in yields over the past 18 years, while standard breeding produces an estimated 1 percent yield gain annually.
Conventional breeding also appears to be outperforming genetic engineering in the race to develop crops that can maintain productivity in the midst of drought, extreme temperatures, salty soils and shifting pest regimes. A September 2014 Nature News article describes the work of researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, or CIMMYT, in Mexico City and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria, around the use of non-GMO methods to develop drought-resistant corn varieties in 13 African countries. In field trials, these varieties are matching or exceeding yields from nonresistant crops under good rainfall — and yielding up to 30 percent more under drought conditions. The project already has 153 varieties in trial stages, and other seeds are already well beyond trial stage, enabling some 3 million smallholder farmers in Africa to increase yields by an average of 20 to 30 percent.
To date, roughly 99 percent of GM acreage has gone to industrial soy, canola, cotton and corn for which the principal end-uses are biofuels, industrial animal feed, oils and ingredients for processed foods.
Meanwhile, Monsanto, CIMMYT and other researchers are still hoping to get a transgenic drought-tolerant seed trait to Africa “by 2016 at the earliest.” Even then, Monsanto’s drought-tolerant seeds have been shown to increase yield only about 6 percent in the U.S., and only under moderate drought conditions. Direct comparisons are always tricky, of course, but as the Nature article put it: “Old-fashioned breeding techniques seem to be leading genetic modification in a race to develop crops that can withstand drought and poor soils.”
I don’t doubt that next-generation biotech methods — such as genomic editing— will slowly make inroads where current biotechnologies come up short. But complex gene-environment interactions and traits defined by multiple genes — including yield and drought resistance — are reminding scientists that living systems are tough nuts to crack. The major successes of GM to date have all been single-gene tweaks, sometimes called low-hanging fruit. However, as Goodman told the academy, “They’re not low-hanging fruit. They were things that were picked up off the ground.”
The media often makes GM skeptics sound as though they are ignoring a gold mine of benefits — or worse, depriving Africans, Latin Americans and Southeast Asians of biotech solutions to hunger. But to date, roughly 99 percent of GM acreage has gone to industrial soy, canola, cotton and corn for which the principal end-uses are biofuels, industrial animal feed, oils and ingredients for processed foods. In Foley’s words, “While the technology itself might ‘work,’ it has so far been applied to the wrong parts of the food system to truly make a dent in global food security.” (For more on this topic, see anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone’s “Golden Rice: Bringing a Superfood Down to Earth.”)
Of course, there are exceptions: virus-resistant papaya and summer squash have had local benefits, and cassava has been engineered for resistance to brown-streak disease, answering to many critics’ concerns that biotech will ignore regionally important, smallholder crops. Yet even examples that are laudable in one sense (bye-bye, streak disease) require a hard look at ecological factors (why is streak a problem in the first place?) and the political and socioeconomic implications of an engineered solution. For example, as several west African countries prepare to allow GM cowpea to enter their markets, scientists are raising concerns over effects on the informal seed sector, traditional barter and gift practices, and local economies. What is at stake is only partly about GMOs per se, since modified seeds might cross-pollinate with traditional cowpea. It is also about using engineered seeds, alongside favorable marketing, intellectual property and biosafety laws, to open food systems to private sector development without participation or consent from local people.
Muddied Waters for the Media
So where does the media come in? To me, the Guardian’s Hawaii story and others like it (e.g., Michael Moss’s expose of the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center) illustrate the importance of in-depth reporting. The agri-food space is not an easy beat, with the waters muddied by industry public relations campaigns, conflicting studies and heightened intermingling of science with corporate interests. Witness Eric Lipton’s recent New York Times investigative report detailing efforts by Monsanto, Dow and other companies to enroll scientists as spokespersons for GMOs to achieve “the gloss of impartiality and weight of authority that come with a professor’s pedigree.” The organic industry was also implicated, and a finger pointed to Charles Benbrook for receiving support from companies like Stonyfield Organic. However, Times readers (in the comment section) and academics (on email listservs) immediately bristled. It was an attempt, they said, to create a balanced profile without discussing the disproportionate nature of the practice: The biotech industry side has invested vastly more resources than the alternative side in corralling scientific support. In addition, Benbrook has consistently disclosed his backing publicly, whereas many of the industry affiliations are only coming to light because NGOs and journalists are requesting records via the Freedom of Information Act.
Scientists aren’t the only ones being enlisted in the GMO wars.
While the Times story helpfully ignited a conversation over FOIA and transparency, it left underexplored the extent of industry-research relations. The few scientists named in the piece only hint to a larger network of economists, consultants, lobbyists, industry executives and prestigious academics with a deep history of producing peer-reviewed publications, influencing U.S. Department of Agriculture regulatory policy and working to defuse public concern over GMOs. Hardly a better example can be found than the Cornell Alliance for Science, formed in 2014 with a US$5.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Cornell University to “depolarize” the debate over GM foods. Soon after, I saw an alliance job posting indicating the work would entail outreach to groups that “may not be well informed about the potential biotechnology has for solving major agricultural challenges.” A colleague of mine joked that this sort of depolarization amounts to loading up one side with more ammunition.
Scientists aren’t the only ones being enlisted in the GMO wars. Another strategy, according to a report recently published by U.S. Right to Know, Friends of the Earth and author Anna Lappé, is the grooming of front groups that appear to be independent media sources and are frequently quoted in the press without reference to their industry ties. These groups include the Alliance to Feed the Future (which produces Common Core–compliant curricula on healthy food for public schools) and the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (whose stated goal is “to enhance U.S. consumer trust in modern food production to ensure the abundance of affordable, safe food,” and whose partners include the animal pharmaceutical company Elanco, biotech giant Monsanto, and chemical companies DuPont, Dow and Syngenta). Lappé estimates that such third-party coalitions spent US$126 million from 2009 to 2013 “to shape the story of food while presenting the veneer of independence.”
Such PR strategies are not new, but it’s notable that they’ve surged at precisely the time when chemical-intensive farming, antibiotic use in livestock and genetic engineering are under intense public scrutiny. Journalists now need to critically evaluate not only the claims of bona fide scientists, farmer coalitions and hunger organizations, but also those made by deceptively named front groups. Some researchers may not even recognize the powerful sway of funding and sponsorships at institutional levels, or the politics of persuasion in elite inner circles. As New York University molecular biologist Marion Nestle argues, a substantial body of literature exists on industry-funded science — much of it looking at the effects of pharmaceutical industry funding of medical professionals. This literature suggests that industry-sponsored research tends to produce findings favoring the sponsor’s interests. Such conflicts are “generally unconscious, unintentional, and unrecognized by participants,” but they are nonetheless there.
What I would like to pull out from this picture is something more subtle than corporate money corrupting impartial science. The key is learning to recognize that no science exists in a cultural vacuum. The very fact that certain scientific fields (such as molecular biology) are seen as more legitimate than others (such as organic farming and agroecology) grows out of longer-running social and political histories, institution-building and internal struggles for validation. “Fact” is far more densely layered than meets the eye.
What we do know is that since the 1940s, when World War II pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer technologies dovetailed with revolutions in hybrid seed and patenting, agriculture has increasingly moved toward simplified, intensive monoculture to supply multinational food companies with a steady supply of interchangeable ingredients. Surplus production has fended off the Communist Menace, underwritten the expansion of military-strategic interests under the guise of food aid, and extended the market reach of input suppliers, commodity traders, food processors and retail giants to economies from Papua to Plano.
What are the conditions under which GMOs might work more effectively? Can they be compatible with the needs of farmers, eaters and their communities, not only with the aims of corporations and biotech scientists?
It should come as no surprise, then, that science and technology conducive to these developments has gained clout among certain governments, industry leaders and funding agencies. When those actors have the power to invest in particular research directions, build educational programs and forge science policy advisory networks, one paradigm — e.g., simplified farming systems + biotechnologies = feed the world — can easily gain traction over another. What comes to appear “normal” papers over what scholars Sheila Jasanoff and Brian Wynne call the co-production of science and political order that shores up the legitimacy of each.
This phenomenon is extraordinarily important for journalists to appreciate because it helps us see how reporting on food means not just weighing objective science against crank science, but teasing through science’s sociopolitical contexts. Unless journalists are willing to tread into this space, polarization of the GMO debate will continue, and journalists will be helping ascribe wing nut status to anyone who challenges the status quo.
Building a Better GMO
What are the conditions under which GMOs might work more effectively? Can they be compatible with the needs of farmers, eaters and their communities, not only with the aims of corporations and biotech scientists?
We can start by broadening the conversation around human health to include social science and natural science perspectives, and encompassing the ripple effects of technologies packaged with GMOs. Farmworker health, rural indebtedness and ramifications for aquatic invertebrates, soils and the warming climate must be part of the picture.
Second, we can open the floor to engaged citizens and laborers across the food system. We can consider how GMOs affect not just yields, but also farmers’ margins of return, food cultures and communities. We should listen to experiences of Bt cotton growers in India, Roundup Ready farmers in Iowa and academics who remind us that many things once considered safe — DDT, PCBs, BPA and thalidomide, to name a few — later showed “scientific consensus” to be more fragile than popularly perceived.
GMOs, in sum, point us to deeper issues that underlie the entire food system.
We also need better regulatory oversight. Many (probably most) GMO crops will be safe to eat, but some could be harmful. What should we do about those without a robust regulatory system? Labeling is one important prong of such a system; not surprisingly, it’s being fought tooth and nail by industry. Other regulatory pegs include putting the burden of proving safety onto GMO developers, supporting long-term epidemiological studies and removing the bullying tactics of international trade regimes that pressure countries to deregulate their markets in favor of GM production and imports.
Finally, I would like to see GM research and development moved into the public sphere. Decoupling profit interests from R&D could open up a realm of possibilities: GMOs adapted for agroecological systems instead of monocultures, GMOs developed through participatory plant breeding, GMOs available to all under open-source seed licenses. As a concrete start, we can re-evaluate the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, which allows universities to own and commercialize inventions made with federal funding — including granting exclusive licensing of GMO innovations to the private sector. While Bayh-Dole was intended to speed the flow of science into the marketplace “for the public good,” backward pressure from industry onto university administrators and faculty has come to profoundly shape the direction of crop and agricultural science. Land-grant universities, strapped by shrinking state budgets, are increasingly pushed to conduct research that leads to patentable outcomes of resale value to industry. Private funding of land-grant schools has been outpacing federal funding for decades.
GMOs, in sum, point us to deeper issues that underlie the entire food system. A nonreductionist evaluation of GMOs can push us toward thinking about effects at multiple scales and time spans. Such an evaluation can get us to think deeply about who benefits from technologies, who controls their availability and access, and who makes such decisions. We get to think about the entanglements of politics, the media and public interest in shaping scientific validity and “consensus.” In short, we are invited to think socially and ecologically — indeed agroecologically — about the utility and value of engineered seeds.
If GMOs can survive such scrutiny and emerge as a beneficial tool, I’m certainly not anti-GMO. Let’s hope I won’t be labeled a wing nut. 
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Sadly the public opinion on almost all topics is ruled by fear and uncertainty. Scientists are generally the small portion of the public that are more comfortable with things being "unknown".
Ask the average consumer around the world what GMO means. They think it means "Plants that produce pesticide". Pesticide of course means toxic poison that is bad for you and everything else. Bt and RoundUp is all that they know about. All other types of GMO's are unknown except maybe the Terminator Gene that was never released.
The organic movement came into being because of a very effective marketing ploy. It relies upon fear of the mysterious science and that traditional=good.
Both sides have polarized over the years until logical discussions are rare. Sadly great inventions like golden rice, many virus resistances in varied species, and other highly beneficial innovations are relatively unknown. The vast majority of GMO's are never released as the cost of deregulation is prohibitive and consumer backlash is very strong.
With the rapid destruction of germplasm due to illogical government policies (Peru, India, etc...), GMO's will become more vital in the future.
GMO's are a tool like a hammer. A hammer can be used to build a house or kill your neighbor. The ethical debate on how to use the tool hopefully will never end.
The sentence that demonstrates this misreading of the results is the following:
"The most up-to-date analysis I know of is a 2011 peer-reviewed report that attempted to survey all studies available in international scientific journals on human safety impacts of GMOs. The researchers found that about half of animal-feeding studies conducted in recent years found cause for concern. "
The researchers the authors refer to found no such thing. The author of this piece is either misreading this research exactly as Jon suggests or is deliberately misrepresenting the research.
Let's face it. The anti-gmo crowd does have its share of yogic fliers, chemtrail seekers, fluoride fearers, Hitlisters and phantom organism chasers. Maybe all are not wing nuts, but they're certainly loose screws.
And the 300 scientist letter (it's not a study), proclaiming no consensus? Take a look at the authors. You got Vandana Shiva in the mix, for one, who unabashedly condones uncontrolled arson on universities and anywhere else that might be connected to GMO's. At least they didn't have Bruce Banner on this one!
You include this statement.
“...epidemiologically shabby construct that if there’s no evidence something isn’t safe, it must be safe,...”
As if little looking has been involved. Yet there are about 2000 studies done (See biofortified.org's Genera) pointing to no evidence. At some point, you have to declare, there's no invisible dragon in the garage. You can never get rid of all doubt, but we are beyond reasonable doubt.
Beyond that, it's easy to see in context that the point of referencing the Domingo paper was to observe that the questions we are asking about GM "safety" are too narrow. Determining whether or not GMOs are "safe" from a nutritional or toxicological perspective ignores a large range of cultural and ecological concerns that are not part of the current conversation on the benefits and detriments of GM crops. I find it interesting that the one bone you choose to pick with this article is the very same one Montenegro is saying is already far too prominent in the dialogue about the role GM technology should play in agribusiness and poverty relief.
You may be correct: perhaps we scientists sometimes are “over-the-top” in our defense of genetic engineering (GE). In fairness, many of us perceive questionable challenges to the very legitimacy of GE as a suite of tools for crop improvement. These challenges are often based on “cherry-picking” or misinformation, and I cannot stress enough that this deprives the public of the valid, informed choice that it deserves. To your credit, you don’t exclude a role for GE, used wisely. Too bad you are so far away—I would enjoy buying you a cup of coffee and sharing ideas.
Not every scientist favorable to GE is part of a science-industry media machine: http://biotechcropsandsustainability.blogspot.com/2015/09/disclosures-industry-biotechnology-and.html. Also, I don’t see GE as the only answer. It is merely a suite of tools, to be used as the breeder sees fit to achieve breeding goals. If a non-GE technique gets us there, fantastic! In this context, I also second your point about the value of participatory research.
As a plant pathologist, I see vast potential for GE help with crop disease control. You mentioned a couple of examples, and there are others, including citrus greening, late blight of potato, and so on. Potential opportunities continue to pop up in the peer-reviewed literature “like mushrooms.” As merely one example of a very recent paper, this paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25871857) makes me wonder if we can silence nematode effectors required for pathogenicity, perhaps achieving pesticide-free nematode control. With respect to sustainability, I ponder the possibility of pesticide-free disease control into the indefinite future via a strategy of stacking resistance genes, and then switching gene constructs every few years (in annual/biennial crops with active breeding programs, like cereals)? Such a strategy is based on the well-established importance of agroecosystem diversity, and to me, it seems quite consistent with principles of agroecology.
Am I correct that gene constructs typically segregate as single, dominant alleles? If so, combined with the fact that patents expire, it seems that all patent-protected traits eventually become part of the public breeding pool.
You wondered about decoupling GM from the private sphere. My interest is not in defending mega-corporations, but I wonder how and whether to even advocate for that. Certainly, corporations have the right to pursue reasonable profit-making opportunities in our capitalistic world. In any case, this is not a scientific question. It may be more complex than the scientific ones.
This review may also be of interest to you: http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Nicolia-20131.pdf
Anyway, if ever coming to the region of Lexington, KY, contact me and I will arrange for a seminar, if you are willing.
With respect,
Paul Vincelli
University of Kentucky
http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcollege/plantpathology/people/vincelli.htm
http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/07388551.2013.823595
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2011.11.048
http://dx.doi.org/10.2527/jas.2014-8124
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-10-1688_en.htm
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nbt.2012.12.001
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jf400135r
... or also this regularly updated overview: http://gmopundit.blogspot.be/2007/06/150-published-safety-assessments-on-gm.html
Greenpeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/agriculture/problem/genetic-engineering/growing-doubt/
Fringy folks: http://www.seedsofdoubtconference.com/
I would encourage the author to take off her green-tinged glasses and really look.
Step 1: Formulate a Hypothesis
Step 2: Develop a Consensus in the Scientific Community
Step 3: Immediately Stop Asking All These Annoying Questions!
Nobody owns skepticism. Not industry, not independent researchers, not journalists, not activists, not fringey crackpots. Doubt belongs to everyone, and is an essential part of healthy science.
I've had a brief read of the first 3 of them and you are correct.
The papers indicate that perhaps the author of this article is not very well informed on this field.
Perhaps you should look at the other side for a change? Play Devil's Advocate and try to find holes in the dialogue presented by activists.
For instance, why do organizations such as Greenpeace cry out for more testing, but then organize the destruction of test fields?
Why is streak a problem?
Not sure whether the author wonders about streak in the sense of 'appearance' or the extent of damage it causes. Either way, cassava mosaic and brown streak are the two major cassava diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa. Brown streak is the main cause of yield losses in cassava.
In Uganda, over 10 million people consume cassava as main food.
Over 90% of the current and previous research conducted to address mosaic and brown-streak diseases is conventional.
Conventionally, there has not been much head way in terms of solution, except a few incidents of tolerant but not resistant varieties.
In Uganda for example, the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO) in most cases explores genetic engineering if all other conventional research options have failed. The potential of genetic engineering to address these challenges is currently under research, and preliminary results show GM cassava being more resistant to brown streak virus than non-GMO.
On informal seed systems, Crops like cassava and banana largely fall under the informal seed sector ('farmer saved seed') and these have been previously given out by government through the public extension system. The same distribution system will apply to GM cassava since it is public sector driven.
On traditional barter and gift practices, no farmer (for the ones I know and interacted with) exchanges a bad seed with another. If a farmer found out that their cassava is superior to their peers', they would be quick and happy to share it. That 'variety' could even be integrated in the local community by labeling it as 'FARMER X' variety.
This was one of the key findings on a project ( http://www.reading.ac.uk/.../res.../apd-resess-ISAGRLEA.aspx ), that I worked on as a research assistant, where a certain improved cassava variety was locally named 'Nankinga', a name of the female farmer who introduced it in the village.
Rarely would you find a farmer who cares more about how the crop was bred (whether conventionally or other means) than the problem / need it would address.
Vide comments, not quite passim. Cui bono? Beyond expanding the market for specific, apparently carcinogenic, pesticides and generally expanding the monetization of the natural world, what are the benefits and for whom? To what extent are they counterbalanced by harms to others, such as subsistence farmers? What process is in place for addressing those dislocations? I read this piece as calling for an expanded dialog and none of the critical comments seem to acknowledge that adequately. And never forget the great lesson of the ill-named Flavr-Savr tomato: it tasted lousy.
Thanks for sharing these papers. I have not made my way through all of them with a fine-toothed comb yet but a brief review does not reveal anything contrary to my primary claims.
Several of these papers are animal-feeding studies looking for toxicological effect. My primary point, as commenter Chris S. notes, is that I really want to shift the focus away from the danger of eating GE food. Much of it will be perfectly safe to ingest.
Even within these feeding studies, however, I was interested to see the heavily qualified conclusions. For example, Snell et al. 2012 acknowledge the lack of qualitatively sufficient data. They write:
"Despite the exploratory nature of the studies reviewed here, the step-by-step approach is supported by their results. Considering all of them, it is clear that GM food is not revealed to be harmful when the duration of feeding is increased to well over 90 days. Therefore, no evidence is available to show that a duration of 90 days is insufficient to assess the effects of GM food. Studies lasting two years, for example, do not seem necessary except when doubt remains after performing 90-day studies. The concept of nutritional equivalence has been proven to be sufficient to assess the safety of GM food and feed, and it has recently been supported by the use of technologies such as metabolomics, proteomics and transcriptomics (see Ricroch et al., 2011 for a review).
Yet, this review reveals deep weaknesses shared by most long-term studies because of non-adherence to standard procedures outlined in the OECD Test (1998).
4.2. Standard protocols and quality of the studies
The studies reviewed here are often linked to an inadequate experimental design that has detrimental effects on statistical analysis as far as the most frequently used statistics are concerned. Internationally agreed test methods should be used for toxicity testing (EFSA, 2011).The experimental protocol currently used is described in the OECD Test Guideline No. 408, initially designed for assessing the toxicity of chemicals (OECD, 1998). It recommends populations of at least 10 animals per sex and per group, with 3 doses of the test substance and a control group. Six out of the 24 studies examined here used an appropriate number of experimental animals: three long-term studies (Daleprane et al., 2009a, Daleprane et al., 2010 and Sissener et al., 2009) and three multigenerational studies (Brake et al., 2003, Flachowsky et al., 2007 and Haryu et al., 2009). It should be mentioned that increasing the number of animals tested increases the statistical power but is more costly. High costs may hinder the public sector from conducting such studies. A balance should be found between robust toxicological interpretations and a reasonable cost (i.e. affordable by the public sector)."
In other words, if I am interpreting this text correctly, only one quarter of the studies they reviewed even met their own criteria (the OECD Test criteria) for toxicity assessment.
Not to lose the forest for the trees, I was encouraged that some of the other assessments ("An overview of the last 10 years of genetically engineered crop safety research"; and "A decade of EU-funded GMO research") do in fact look at broader environmental and social effects, though in a limited way. The majority emphasis is on gene flow (to other crops and wild relatives), a bit on soil biodiversity, and individual-scale economic impact.
What I found very interesting is that the soil ecology profiles actually highlights a need for continued monitoring. For instance, on page 119:
"The most consistent finding is that Bt maize in field trials in Europe has so far had no systematic or reproducible effects on any of the invertebrates or soil
organisms studied over several years where, over a similar period, other agronomic factors have had large
and measurable effects. Resistance development in corn borers should be monitored, as well as the potential
effects on certain non-target biotic groups."
That is, they cannot conclude anything except for a trend, plus further study of impacts on non-target species and resistance -- exactly the kind of holistic analysis I argue for in this piece.
It will take me more time to work through the entire volume - 268 pages of it - but a quick skim reveals vanishingly little
on political economy side (seed industry concentration, intellectual property, trade, marketing laws) that currently position GE in an antagonistic relationship to farmers' rights to seed. Nor is there much on the cultural impacts of displaced seed varieties, with attendant implications for material livelihoods, foodways, physical and psychological health.
In addition, language in many places of the report indicate a strong inclination towards the benefits of biotechnology and industrial farming, making it difficult for me to appreciate the assessment as objective.
"To guarantee a constant supply of affordable, high-quality food to European citizens, agriculture on a large semi-industrial scale is essential." (p. 30)
"The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has suggested that possible introgression of foreign genetic material into related species in centres of crop biodiversity is insufficient justification for barring GM crop deployment in the developing world." (p. 36)
In sum, I would say these studies point to at least two levels of what we call "undone science": (1) within the boundaries of eating/nutrition, they underline the insufficiency of current data. Although the eating aspect is not my primary concern, I still contend we cannot reasonably conclude "safety" on account of much undone research. (2) On the broader terrain of social and environmental health, studies are only beginning to connect dots - the absence of sociological, anthropological, and political economy/trade perspectives is glaring. If GM crops are going to have a place in sustainable food, I think we must begin by doing the work of this undone science and connecting dots on a systemic level.
I would gladly take you up on your offer for a coffee! It would be nice to chat in person. Since that is not possible at the moment, a few responses to your comment, though I can't possibly do justice here to the complexity of the subjects you raise.
Yes, I am aware that, as you put it, "Not every scientist favorable to GE is part of a science-industry media machine." I hope I didn't give that impression in my essay. What interests me greatly is whether and how GE might be extricated from a pathway that is highly amenable to reinforcing the status quo. When designed to be compatible with chemicals, cropped in monoculture, and made proprietary via intellectual property (patents in the US and in Europe PVP), the modified seed has ripple effects that are far more potentially corrosive than any genetic tweak (or allergenic food effect). Can GE be used in participatory breeding, within biologically diversified systems? I am interested in what you say regarding pesticide-free nematode control, and stacking gene constructs with switches every few years.
As you may know, there is an ongoing federal project on public sector breeding called "Seeds & Breeds." Its contributors include several experts on the Open Source Seed Initiative. They, like I, suggest that it's important to be locally specific in the decisions about appropriate technologies. Phenotypic breeding (selecting by phenotype), for example, remains cheaper than marker assisted selection or other genomic selection methods. Gene-stacking is likely to be capital intensive compared with traditional introgression breeding, even when the latter is combined with molecular selection. In general, the higher up the totem pole we go in terms of capital-intensive and specialized techniques, the potentially less conducive to a decentralized and participatory breeding process, and hence to adaptation to local or regional conditions -- i.e. in sync with agroecologically sound systems.
As for markets and capital, we could likely write another essay right here. In brief, I don't say that markets or corporations are evil. But the consolidation of the seed industry (see Phil Howard's lucid infographic here: https://msu.edu/~howardp/seedindustry.html) has gone beyond the ken. A recent editorial from 'serious economists' compared the gene giants to the banking system - too big to fail. And these are just a microcosm of concentrated capital and power in the larger agri-food system. I don't believe we will ever get to your pesticide-free nematode control for agroecological landscapes under today's conditions. At best, GE would remain a fix for the technical problems of farming system we have, not a helpful tool for the system we want.
We should discuss further offline if you are amenable. I thank you again for such a thoughtful comment.
I WONDER HOW THEY SLEEP AT NIGHT. I ALSO WONDER WHERE THEY SHOP FOR THEIR FOOD?
http://timeless-environments.blogspot.se/2015/10/headline-news-flash-biotech-world.html
For example, they think they can simply splice in a gene to make a crop drought resistant, rather than, say, building porous soil rich in organic matter that increases rates of water absorption and leads to vastly larger stores of water retained (particular in times of low rainfall) - which itself often includes mixed stocking of crops and animals (among a host of other techniques). Or that pest resistance again comes down to adding another gene, rather than building the plants own existing defenses (again, through a robust soil teeming with biodiversity) and attracting and encouraging beneficial predators with a healthy and biodiverse landscape. It actually speaks largely to an all-too-common reductionist (not to mention "gene-centric") approach across the sciences - we've lost sight of (or simply failed to identify in the first place) the mutualistic relationships of nature.
Here, mycologist Paul Stamets describes one such relationship between a grass, mychorriza fungi, and a virus that allows the grass to grow and thrive in an environment with extreme temperatures (should be cued up around 23:42):
Paul Stamets and John B. Wells - Mushrooms & Environment
https://youtu.be/90vhfdj1zic?t=23m42s
You can't just genetically modify that into existence, you have to foster the relationship. It, in my opinion, is a much more advanced science/technique than the myopic "gene for every mean" approach. Which is why it's not only disingenuous, but exceedingly patronizing and insulting, for people like the NYT's Amy Harmon to throw around "anti-science" accusations and seedy equivocations. It not only falsely frames the terms of the debate (thus cementing positions and automatically granting one side an imagined intellectual high-ground), it ignores good science itself:
Organic agriculture: deeply rooted in science and ecology
http://bit.ly/1LvMjlc
Like farmer Joel Salatin says:
"Of course I think I’m using science, but so does Monsanto. And so the question is whose science will be used as a regulatory foundation and enforcement action? It won't be pasture-based livestock, compost and symbiosis through multispeciation. It will be further animal abuse, chemicals and pathogen-friendly protocols."
Further, problems like malnutrition (like Vitamin-A deficiency) involve a myriad of issues, including the physical (involving a broader lack of a complex of dietary fats and nutrients...which are actually required for proper absorption of Vitamin A) and the socio-politico-economical. GM-opia ignores the scope of the issues and smacks of simplistic solutionism.
Final thought, I'd even challenge the thought that "most" of the GMOs are safe to eat. Particularly those that exist in actual fact today. Reason being, almost no thought (and certainly hardly any study, particularly from the industry) has gone into considering the effects of these foods on our microbiome - those trillions of bacteria and other micro-organisms that live on and within our bodies (a large portion of which are in the gut), that are crucial in not only keeping us healthy but alive in the first place. One reason for this is we are only beginning to discover, realize, and appreciate just how crucial these critters are to health and well-being, with functions ranging from digesting and deriving nutrients in our food, to fighting off pathogens and regulating/boosting our immune-system. In fact, it is those very bugs in our guts we have to worry about when it comes to GMOs - not only when it comes to the chemical pesticides that the plants are engineered to withstand, but especially those "modified" with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) within the plant itself. Plenty of our "modern" disease epidemics seem to be rooted in inflammation stemming from gut/GI issues...and it could very well be that these "foods"/ingredients derived from them are contributing to that problem in large degree (and I seem to recall some preliminary findings hinting at such).
How Wolves Change Rivers
https://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q
This is the way we also need to look at war. Instead of focusing on drones or ISIS fear, we must work with the complexities of a goal of stopping war.
Let me start by first saying that not everything you read on the internet is true. Most of the arguments that claim GMOs are bad are made up and the research is a fraud. To prove this statement, the anti-GMO lobby has stated that the Bt protein is dangerous when engineered into crops, but is perfectly safe when produced by bacteria and sprayed onto plants by farmers. The Bt protein causes mortality to insects that try to eat plants it has been sprayed on. The anti-GMO lobby’s argument was that Bt crops produced too much of the bacterial toxin. Greenpeace, an anti-GMO lobby, actually once stated that Bt toxin GM crops had 1,000 more times the toxin than found in Bt sprayed crops. However, based on Greenpeace’s initial research, this is a lie. According to a 2002 Greenpeace research report, Chinese lab tests concluded that the toxin level in Bt crops was extremely limited. For another example, Chipotle has declared off GMOs, claiming that they “produce pesticides” and “create herbicide resistant weeds.” Chipotle uses the research conducted by Benbrook to prove their claims; they say that the study showed “pesticide and herbicide use increased by more than 400 million pounds as a result of GMO cultivation.” However, Chipotle has misrepresented what Benbrook found, and hidden half of what was actually concluded. Benbrook’s real finding was that: Bt crops reduced insecticide use, and therefore reduced the use of pest-killing chemicals. Also Benbrook found that the problem that’s creating so much herbicide use is not genetic engineering, but instead monoculture. Monoculture is when a single crop is only cultivated in a single area. To read more about fraud in the GMO debate and to check my facts please refer to: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html
Many children in third world countries and living in poverty suffer from a vitamin A deficiency. These children’s main diet consists of rice. In effort to fix this deficiency, a new rice was created by genetic modification. It inserts the gene that creates β-carotene into rice. When eaten the β-carotene is converted into vitamin A. Golden rice has the potential to help many people living in poverty and give them the proper nutrition they require. However, the anti-GMO lobby is causing problems for the researchers and protesting its research. This has, unfortunately, stunted the study and therefore the release.
In reply to Kim Broekhuizen’s comment, GMOs are not causing gluten intolerance. There is no proper evidence that concludes this. Many people who gluten intolerance say all their symptoms stop if they quite eating gluten. If GMOs were causing gluten intolerance, their symptoms would continue and they would have to cut out a lot more from their diet. Furthermore, in 2014 when many people were discovering their gluten intolerance, commercialized wheat was not even genetically modified. Please refer to this article to see where my information is coming from https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/03/28/do-genetically-modified-foods-cause-gluten-allergies/.
In conclusion, I would like to ask those of you whom are anti-GMO to think about the benefits. And to double check all things you hear about GMOs and follow it back to the true study. Then you may decide where you really stand in the GMO debate.