OT: GM Contamination Accelerating - No Co-Existence Possible

[Sheri Nakken]

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMCANCEP.php

ISIS Press Release 16/12/05
GM Contamination Accelerating No Co-Existence Possible

Untried and untested GM crops are out of the bottle even in the UK where no
GM crops are commercially grown. Rhea Gala

A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members’
website. Details here

GM crops, the vast majority engineered for just two traits - herbicide
tolerance and Bt pesticide, or stacked with both - have been released on
five continents for up to nine years, causing widespread contamination of
food, feed, seed and the environment across the globe.

Genetically modified DNA from any part of a GM plant can enter the
environment unobserved, for example, through pollen transfer to a
conventional crop, through seed dispersal or plant decomposition and
persistence in soil ecology. The toxins encoded in the DNA also kill
wildlife and contaminate soil and water, as do herbicides such as
glyphosate and glufosinate ammonium that are an essential component of the
herbicide tolerant crop system.

Outcrossing between a GM crop plant and a wild relative and over dependence
of the GM crop on herbicides to which the crop is tolerant, are causing a
wave of “superweeds” to emerge in the US and elsewhere; the UK has reported
a potential candidate earlier this year.
UK’s herbicide tolerant weed hybrids

The UK government reported genetically modified herbicide tolerant (GMHT)
hybrid weed seedlings at field trial sites earlier this year. One was a
cross between Bayer’s GMHT oilseed rape (Brassica napus) and its distant
relative the common arable weed, charlock (Sinapis arvensis), and two were
hybrids of Brassica napus and B. rapa.

The findings, which were not announced, were nevertheless widely reported
and somewhat exaggerated in the press [1] because many politicians and
government scientists had repeatedly downplayed the possibility of GM gene
transfer to wild relatives, the emergence of GM superweeds, or any other
adverse effects of GM crops. For example, in 2000 the EU Environment
agency concluded, “ There appears to be general agreement that natural gene
flow is not likely to occur between B. napus and S. arvensis”. The EU has
an industry-sponsored forward plan for ‘coexistence’ in European countries
for GM, conventional and organic crops to 2025 (“Beware the New Biotech
Eurovision” SiS 24).

The report to DEFRA from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Dorset,
found that [2], “The commercial growing of genetically modified,
herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape is seen to result in the potential for the
inserted gene to escape from the crop and become incorporated in the
genomes of one or more related wild crucifer species, potentially giving a
competitive advantage to the recipients.”
The “virtually impossible” already happened

The emergence of two GMHT B. napus and B. rapa hybrids was inevitable as B.
rapa is a parent of the commercial variety B. napus and spontaneous hybrids
are well known to occur. Although the two plants generally do not share
the same distribution, B. rapa may be overlooked because of its similarity
to feral oilseed rape. The finding of these hybrids and the GMHT charlock
hybrid show that the difficulties of coexistence between GM and
conventional crops will be insuperable. Despite that, the authors still
concluded, “The risks of transfer of herbicide tolerance to wild relatives
of oilseed rape appear to be minimal.” But Dr Brian Johnson, an ecological
geneticist and head of the Biotech Advisory Unit at English Nature, said
that the charlock superweed would be fertile through its pollen to
neighbouring plants [1]; and that charlock seeds can remain in the soil for
20 to 30 years before they germinate.

Huge problems of cross-contamination and herbicide resistance have arisen
in countries like Canada and the US (see for example “GM sugar beet turned
sour”, SiS 25; “Roundup Ready sudden death”, SiS28).
Herbicide tolerant volunteers

Herbicide tolerant volunteers were found in the two years following the
Farm Scale Evaluations, and they tend to persist, requiring control with
toxic herbicides other than glufosinate ammonium. The authors thought that
volunteers may pose a greater risk for gene flow of the bar gene into the
environment, than hybridization with wild relatives, especially if the same
gene construct is introduced into other crop species. They also pointed
out that these problems “highlight implications for the EU threshold limits
of GM content in oilseed rape crops set at 0.1 percent, 0.3 percent and 0.9
percent for organic seed, certified seed and food & feed, respectively” [2].
GM contamination lasts at least 15 years in soil

The BRIGHT report [3] on a study in the UK begun in 1998 with funding from
Monsanto, Bayer CropScience, BASF, and Agrovista UK Ltd, among others,
tried to underplay problems to wildlife from GM crops; but found that when
HTGM sugar beet followed HTGM winter oilseed rape, additional herbicides
were needed to control volunteer rape.

There were also problems with crossbreeding between herbicide tolerant
varieties of rape, producing seeds resistant to more than one herbicide,
and making management of minimal herbicide regimes very tricky even for
experienced practitioners.

The authors of BRIGHT have since looked further into the problem of
persistence of GM seeds in seedbanks in a new study on the population
dynamics of volunteer rape, Brassica napus, comparing two GMHT winter
oilseed rape cultivars and two conventional cultivars [4].

They found that seed remaining in the field after harvest averaged 3 575
seeds per square metre but ranged from less than 2 000 up to more than 10
000 seeds. There was a rapid decline in seed number during the first few
months after harvest; a mean loss of 60 percent of seeds thought to be
removed by wildlife. But in subsequent seasons, the seedbank declined much
more slowly at four of the five sites, at about 20 percent per year. The
models predicted a 95 percent seed loss after approximately nine years,
resulting in nearly 200 seeds per square metre, which would give rise to at
least two HT rape volunteers nine years after the original crop was sown.
This predicts the emergence of an average of one plant per square metre
after 15 years.

Although there was no difference between the four cultivars in either the
number of seeds shed at harvest or in their subsequent persistence, the
importance of the persistence of GM rape seeds, simply in the context of
the coexistence of GM and non-GM crops is a clear cause for concern. The
researchers concluded that the density of more than two volunteers per
square metre would exceed the European Union threshold of 0.9 percent
adventitious presence of GM seeds in a non-GM crop, if the subsequent crop
were conventional.

These results come in the same week as DEFRA’s report showing that the
harmful effects on wildlife from GMHT crops in the Farm Scale Evaluations
(see “GM crop fails final test” SiS 26) persist for at least two years [5].
Results showed that weed seedbanks following GMHT spring oilseed rape were
significantly lower than following conventional crops over this period as
was the case with winter oilseed rape [6]. Seedbanks following GMHT beet
were also smaller providing empirical evidence for longer-term effects of
GMHT cropping on farmland biodiversity [5]. Seedbanks for GMHT maize were
higher than conventional, mostly probably due to the use of the now banned
herbicide atrazine on the conventional crop.
Illegal contamination with GM material

These cases of environmental contamination with GM material have been
detected in the UK where there is as yet no commercial planting of GM
crops; emphasising that contamination in countries such as Canada, the US
and Argentina - where GM monocultures are becoming, or are already the norm
– is far more extensive (“Soya disaster in Latin America”, SiS28).

Though hardly reported in the mainstream press, well over 60 incidents of
illegal or unlabelled GM contamination have been documented in 27 countries
on five continents; eight of which occurred in the UK. And those are only
the recorded incidents [7]. The worst single contamination incident was of
StarLink Maize, a GM variety approved only for animal feed which entered
the human food chain in seven countries, the US, Canada, Egypt, Bolivia,
Nicaragua, Japan and South Korea.

Moreover GM DNA is in the European human food chain via GM animal feed
(“DNA in food and feed” SiS 23), but milk and meat are not labelled as
such, and are considered safe by the UK Food Standards Agency.
Recent GM contamination in Europe

UK Member of Parliament Michael Meacher recently condemned seven years of
secrecy over GM food and feed safety [8]. “On the seventh anniversary of
the first disclosure of scientific concern about GM food safety I am
supporting calls for freedom of access to the data used by the Government
to approve GM foods.” Meacher said, “ Since the issue is the launching of
GM products into the nation’s food supply that have never been
independently tested, this is a public scandal of huge proportions.”

Next year the EU will decide how member countries will draft ‘coexistence
laws’ for GM, conventional and organic crops to be grown together. But at
a conference in Bologna, Italy, in September, experts maintained such
‘co-existence’ to be biologically impossible. Angelika Hilbeck of the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich said that [9], “[trying to
prevent GMO contamination] starts with the seeds; you want to make sure you
get uncontaminated seeds. This is the origin of everything, from there on
the contamination multiplies. For example, in Canada it is hardly possible
to get GM-free canola seeds.”

News emerged in October about Monsanto’s massive illegal GM contamination
of Romania. The country has the largest GM cultivated landscape in Europe;
officially half the 140 000 hectares of soya planted in 2005 is registered
to be GM. However, according to representatives of farmers’ associations
and even biotech giant Monsanto’s former Romanian manager, up to 90 percent
of soya is GM. The core of the problem is due to genetically engineered
crops contaminating the traditional cultures, as well as the illegal
selling of GM soya seeds. GM potatoes and plums were also found [10].

Greenpeace protesters stopped the 125 000 tonne bulk-carrier Étoile’s huge
consignment of GM animal feed from the US from being unloaded in Bristol.
The feed was destined for British dairy cows to produce milk for the UK’s
biggest supermarkets. Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda, Waitrose and Morrisons all
sell own-brand milk from cows fed on American GM feed. The GM varieties
were banned in Europe, but were found by expert laboratory analysts in
samples taken from ships over the last two years.

Campaigners believe that only strict rules with liability regulations
applied by governments can stop the unauthorised spread of GM seeds and
products, which seems to be increasingly out of control all around the
world. Doreen Stabinsky of Greenpeace International says, “If states do
not act and set strict rules now GM crops will further contaminate lands,
seeds and food around the world.” But no Government or international
agency has established a public record of contamination incidents or other
problems associated with GM crops. GeneWatch UK and Greenpeace
International are launching the first on-line register of genetically
modified contamination incidents. The on-line, searchable web site gives
details of all the known cases of GM contamination of food, feed, seed and
wild plants that have taken place worldwide [11].

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Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath
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