Genetically Modified Crops and Food

The debate about the safety and need for genetically modified (GM) crops and foods has raged since 1998. A lot of time and money has been spent by biotechnology companies and scientists, as well as the Government, to convince people that there is really nothing to worry about, and that this new technology will provide benefits to all. But while GM crops are now being used widely by farmers in the United States, in the European Union and Japan consumers have reacted strongly against them. Although this has slowed the rate at which GM crops and foods are being introduced, the biotech industry continues to push ahead with them. This briefing explains why people should still be concerned about GM crops.

Finding new genes can be a time consuming and expensive process, so the same genes tend to be used again and again. For example, the novel gene 'pat' (which provides resistance to a type of weedkiller) has been inserted into at least 9 different crop plants on the market in the EU and the US, including GM maize, oilseed rape, sugar beet and soya.

What Types of GM crops are there?
Many different types of GM crops are now being developed. In the UK, all the GM crops that are close to gaining commercial approval to be grown by farmers are herbicide (weedkiller) tolerant. These have been engineered to be tolerant to powerful herbicides which kill all plants. This means that only the crop can survive being sprayed, and all the other plants in the field die. In the United States, insect resistant crops are widely grown. These have been engineered to produce a bacterial toxin which kills the pests that normally feed on the crop. Other crops have been developed which ripen more slowly, or are more resistant to plant diseases.

Scientists are also working on crops which they hope will be useful for industry, such as plants that produce oil for the cosmetics industry, as well as crops with altered nutritional value.

The safety testing of GM foods is based on the concept of 'substantial equivalence'. This is the idea that if a GM food can be shown to be 'substantially' the same as a non GM food then it is considered to be safe. It was developed because of the difficulties and cost of conducting traditional safety tests (like those used for new drugs) on GM foods. But it has been severely criticised by some scientists because it is not clear what level of similarity makes something 'substantially' equivalent 6.

For example, the biotech company Aventis analysed its GM 'T25' maize. These tests showed significant differences in the amount of fat and carbohydrate and some amino acids compared to non GM maize7. They even found that the levels of two fatty acids in the GM maize were outside the range of values recorded in any other published study for this crop8. But in spite of this, the company still claimed that the GM maize was “not materially different” from non-GM maize 9 and this was accepted by Government authorities.

The safety of GM foods depends on government assessment of tests conducted by the GM companies themselves. Most of these tests have never been published or subjected to independent peer review. For example, a Spanish researcher who investigated this in 2000 could only find 8 published safety studies on food from different GM crops10, but there are over forty GM crops approved for sale around the world.

Antibiotics
Many GM crops contain genes which provide resistance to commonly used antibiotics such as ampicillin. There is concern that these could be passed from food to the bacteria in the guts of humans and animals. In the Netherlands, researchers used a model of a human gut to look at what would happen to GM food after it is eaten. They predicted that 6% of the genes from GM tomatoes would survive digestion11 and considered that the genes could survive for long enough for bacteria to pick them up. There is as yet no evidence of this having happened, but researchers in the UK have found that bacteria in the mouth can pick up pieces of DNA from saliva12. The UK Government's own advisory body on the safety of GM foods has expressed concerns about just this issue13, but this has not stopped such foods being put on the market.

In addition, the Novel Foods regulation contains a fast track route for processed GM foods. This fast track route does not require a full safety assessment either. As long as a company can claim that its food is 'substantially equivalent' to non GM foods, then all it has to do is tell the European Commission that it wants to start selling the food in Europe. So far, foods from four types of GM maize and oil from seven types of GM oilseed rape have been approved in this way14.

Although food from 13 GM crops have been approved for sale in the EU, most supermarkets and food manufacturers in the UK have removed GM ingredients from their produce.

GM herbicide tolerant crops allow farmers to apply 'broad spectrum' weedkillers to their field, which killall other plants. There is concern that this will continue the decline of farmland wildlife because the use of these GM crops could lead to the removal of weeds from all crops in the normal arable rotation. This will reduce the food supply for insects and birds. These concerns led English Nature to state in 1998 that the “untested introduction of GM crops could be the final blow for such species as the skylark, corn bunting and the linnet, as the seeds and insects on which they feed disappear.”17.

The biotech industry body SCIMAC (the Supply Chain Initiative on Modified Agricultural Crops) has produced guidelines for farmers which aim to ensure best practice as regards GM agriculture and the environment - but they provide no advice to farmers on how to protect wildlife. Baroness Young, then Chairman of English Nature, pointed out that “Farmers could follow the code to the letter, but using these new crops could still remove all wildlife using their fields”18.

Contamination
One of the main difficulties which farmers will encounter when growing GM crops is that there is no way to contain pollen movement. In the case of oilseed rape, researchers have found that its pollen can travel up to 4km and can escape from fields even when they are surrounded by barrier crops to prevent this19 20. The industry body SCIMAC has produced separation distances between GM and non GM crops. These only require farmers to leave a distance of 50m-200m between GM and non-GM oilseed rape. The separation distances are 6m-600m for sugar beet and 80m-200m for maize. But the evidence shows that this is clearly not enough to protect farmers and consumers from GM contamination. There have already been several serious incidents of GM contamination, despite the fact that GM crops are only grown by a minority of farmers worldwide.

In spring 2000, the seed company Advanta announced that they had discovered that batches of oilseed rape seeds they had sold to farmers in France, Germany, Sweden and the UK were contaminated with a GM oilseed rape variety. The GM oilseed rape, produced by Monsanto, was not authorised for cultivation in the European Union. Advanta blamed the contamination on cross pollination of their seed crop with a GM crop that had been at least four kilometres away21. Over 5000 hectares of contaminated seed were grown in the UK22 and the farmers affected could not sell their crops or wereforced to destroy them.

In June of 2000, Friends of the Earth Austria discovered that Canadian honey in shops was contaminated with pollen from a Monsanto GM oilseed rape not approved in the EU. In the same month, farmers in a large area of south-western France found they had unwittingly sown maize, imported from North America, which was contaminated with three different GM varieties, only one of which was even allowed into the EU, and none of which could legally be grown. The French Maize Growers Association threatened to sue the government if it ordered the destruction of the maize, and so it was grown through to harvest.

As can be seen, GM contamination is already a problem. The long distances that viable pollen can travel mean that the isolation distances between GM and other crops would have to be very large to be effective.

Liability
In a recent legal case in Canada, it was declared that Monsanto owns any seeds containing the novel genes it has developed and so must be paid for their use. This is the case if someone buys seeds from Monsanto, but also if seeds blow onto their land, or even if the seeds results from cross pollination of non GM crops with GM pollen from neighbouring fields23. Regardless of how the genes arrive in the crops on farmers' land, they still must pay Monsanto a fee. Yet there is no system in place to protect farmers or the public from the damage that could be caused by these plants, or the financial loss caused by contamination from a GM crop.

The principle that “the polluter should pay” is part of EU law and is generally agreed to be fair and effective at preventing damage. Legislation specifying who is liable for any damage and allowing citizens to seek redress can be a very effective way of ensuring that the polluter pays. In particular, a civil liability regime can help to balance the powerful commercial interests of producers with the protection of the environment, public health and the livelihoods of other business people.

In the event of damage by the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment and food chain, under current European law, thebiotechnology industry would largely avoid liability for compensating those affected or restoring the environment. It is high time that companies introducing new technology or products should be held liable for any harm arising from their actions.

In the EU, the release and marketing of GMOs is regulated by the GMO Deliberate Release Directive. FOE believes that this should be amended to include a clause to make biotechnology companies strictly liable for any harm to the environment and human health caused by their products, or new regulations should be developed to cover this.

There are large areas of GM crops being grown at test sites around the UK. Also, as part of a voluntary agreement between the Government and the biotechnology industry24, additional 'farm scale' evaluations of GM herbicide tolerant crops are going on until at least 2003. These trials are being paid for by government and are run in co-operation with the influential biotechnology industry lobby group, SCIMAC. The crops included in these trials are Aventis's herbicide tolerant fodder maize, spring and winter oilseed rape. Parallel, industry sponsored trials, are being carried out on Monsanto's herbicide tolerant sugar beet.

The Farm Scale Trials
There are now more than 100 farm scale trials around the UK, each covering an area of seven to ten hectares. Many groups, including Friends of the Earth, have grave concerns about the safety of farm scale trials, and remain unconvinced about their scientific legitimacy.

The farm scale trials are meant to be examining changes in wildlife biodiversity in fields put over to GM crops. But, as was pointed out in a 1999 report by the Government's Pesticide Safety Directorate25, very little is known about the biodiversity of non GM crops and so it will be difficult to make comparisons. The farm-scale trails have gone ahead without attempting to fill this knowledge gap.

Many different factors play a part in determining the diversity and abundance of wildlife in crop fields. These include soil type, weather, previous crops, what pesticides were used in the past, as well as the pesticides used during the GM trials. Within a large field, such as those being used, considerable variation in wetness and soil type can occur. All this means that there is likely to be a high level of variation within and between the fields used in the trials26. When there is already a lot of variation, it becomes much harder to detect any additional changes. Friends of the Earth believes that important changes in wildlife biodiversityare likely to go undetected in these trials.

Some changes in biodiversity take place over a longer time scale than will be examined. If no significant differences are found in three years then the crops will be given a clean bill of health, but major changes may not become apparent until GM crops have been grown on the same farm over a prolonged period.

The benefits of GM herbicide tolerant crops are already being promoted to farmers. In the future envisaged by the biotechnology industry, the UK will be “carpeted” 27 in GM crops. It is very doubtful that the farm scale trials will be able to tell us what will happen to UK farmland wildlife in these circumstances. There has already been widespread opposition to these trial sites, and Friends of the Earth has produced a list of where they are which can be found on our website at:
www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/real_food/press_for_chang e/gm_trial_locations/

In Aventis' application for EU approval for the GM maize, only one page out of the 85 looked at its potential environmental impacts. The impact of growing the GM crop on wildlife was not even mentioned. In the UK, the application was considered for its environmental safety by the Government's Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE). But draft 'advice' from the committee, which stated that the product did not pose a risk to the environment or human health, was circulated by civil servants one day before members of ACRE had even seen the application28.

Four years after T25 maize received marketing approval and was considered “safe” for the environment, the crop is still being tested for impacts on wildlife in the farm scale trials programme.

In support of its GM crop, Aventis also provided the Government with a report on a feeding trial in which the GM maize, intended for cows, was fed to chickens. In this trial, twice as many chickens died when fed GM maize than when fed non-GM maize (although this was not statistically significant), and there was much greater variation in factors like body weight and weight gain in the GM-fed group. Independent scientists from Bristol University said these results were 'suspicious' and should have prompted further investigation. They were very critical of the way the experiment had been done, with one scientist stating that “It is very basic science that has fallen down at this stage, and I am amazed that it has not been picked up.”29 The safety of this GM maize for use in animal feed was considered in 1996 by the Government's Interdepartmental Group on Novel Feed Developments. This was set up in the wake of the BSE crisis to advise the Government on animal feed issues. They strongly criticised the safety evidence presented by Aventis and said that "The current concerns over BSE mean that MAFF must take the precautionary approach ..."30. They recommended that further testing take place, particularly testing the safety of T25 maize for the animal to which it would be fed. However, this advice was ignored and no further testing was done.

The EU's decision to approve T25 maize for human consumption was based on a report produced by the UK's Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP). The ACNFP's report stated that the GM food was safe for humans, but when they wrote it they had not even seen the chicken feeding study described above.

Friends of the Earth has only had the resources to investigate one GM crop approval this thoroughly. However, we believe that these are likely to be common errors and failures of government, rather than being unusual. For more information, visit Friends of the Earth's website at:
www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/bad_science_decisi ons.pdf

It is not just a simple case of there being more people, so more food should be grown. There is more than enough food to feed everyone very well at the moment,yet hundreds of millions of people go hungry and nearly two billion are malnourished. For example, 36 million people go hungry every year in the United States, one of the richest countries in the world.

Friends of the Earth does not believe that the best way to feed people in developing countries is to grow GM crops. Most GM crops being grown at the moment are destined for markets in rich countries. Soya and maize are used mainly for animal feed and for adding to processed food in rich countries. Such products will not help to feed the poor and hungry of the world. The majority of GM crops being grown around the world at the moment are herbicide tolerant. These crops are designed for use in intensive farming systems, with single crops in large fields requiring heavy use of chemical inputs. Many farmers in developing countries are small scale, growing many different crops and they often cannot afford the chemicals needed.

* Stop GM crops being planted in the UK until their safety and need are proven
* End pesticide residues in our food
* Ensure that a third of farmland becomes organic by 2010
* Support local producers and markets
* Give a fair deal for farmers who safeguard our future
* Save food and farming from unfair global trade rules.