RESOURCES
DOCUMENTS:
GM CROPS ARE AN ECONOMIC DISASTER
"Instead of cutting the losses and limiting further damages, the scientific establishment refuses to change direction, and our governments are organising massive bailouts of the biotech industry with public funds at a time when our agriculture and national health are lurching from crisis to crisis under the failures of the old reductionist paradigm."
– Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Living with the Fluid Genome.
The following text is an excerpt from The Fluid Genome by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Director of the Institute for Science in Society and Scientific Advisor to the Third World Network. The GM debacle
This book argues that the biotech empire is in danger of collapsing because it's got the science wrong. It is written by a scientist who has been warning that genetic engineering is both dangerous and futile for over a decade. The author believes the whole biotech enterprise, from GM crops to gene drugs and human cloning, is a phenomenal waste of public finance and scientific imagination. She exposes the degenerate research programme of mainstream biology and provides a dossier of scientific evidence of the most serious GM hazards. The book includes a personal account of one scientist's stuggle against a corrupt scientific establishment bent on promoting genetic modification. More importantly, she demolishes the oudated and simplistic dogma of genetic determinism with her brilliant account of the fluid genome. This book should be essential reading for all concerned, and we recommend it highly. It was published by the Institute for Science in Society and the Third World Network in 2003. ISBN: 0-9544923-0-7. The book can be ordered directly from ISIS at www.i-sis.org.uk
© 2003 Mae-Wan Ho and Third World Network.
A study carried out by the UK Soil Association and released in September 2002 concluded that GM crops were an economic disaster. They reportedly cost the United States an estimated US$12 billion in farm susbsidies, lost sales and product recalls due to transgenic contamination.
Massive failures of GM cotton, up to 100%, were reported in several Indian states, including failure to germinate, root-rot and attacks by the American bollworm, for which the 'Bt cotton' were supposed to be resistant. A university based study in India confirmed that the Bt-cotton was heavily infested (up to 80%) with the bollworm.
Biotech market shares peaked in autumn 2000, but have been falling sharply since, and performing well below the industrial average on both sides of the Atlantic. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs in mass layoffs from both the agricultural and genomics sectors. Most companies have suffered double-digit losses, and venture capital has dried up.
The cutbacks and spin-outs of agricultural biotechnology have been spectacular, and major retreats from funding academic research were staged in 2002.
Aventis was taken over by Bayer, which spun it out to Bayer CropScience. But Bayer has announced repeated job cuts in crops science amounting to a total of 15,000 over the next four years.
Monsanto suffered a series of setbacks in write-offs and lost profits after being taken over and spun out by Pharmacia. Pharmacia was later taken over by Pfizer on condition that it shed Monsanto. Just before Christmas (2002), Monsanto's chief executive and president resigned, citing pouur financial performance.
In September (2002), Syngenta ended a three-year collaboration with UK's John Innes Centre that had hardly begun, abandoning the Syngenta Laboratory, part of a new Genome Centre complex completed eight months previously at the tax-payer's expense. Then, less than three months later, the corporation stunned the academic world by annnouncing the closure of its Torrey Mesa Research Institute (TMRI) at the end of January 2003. TMRI, barely four years old, had led Syngenta's efforts to sequence the rice genome. And word is out that the controversial partnership between Syngenta and the University of California, Berkeley, begun in 1998 will probably not be renewed when the $25 million deal expires this year.
Meanwhile, evidence of the inherent hazards of GM has accumulated.
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Gene therapy claimd its first cancer victim last year, from among the only 9 cases of unequivocal success in the world. The regulators pronounced the mishap as 'rare' and regrettable, and gave the green light for similar trials to resume after several emergency meetings. The second case was discovered months later (see Chapter 8).
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GM soya-flour eaten in a milk shake and hamburger meal was discovered to transfer GM DNA to gut bacteria of human subjects, confirming fears that antibiotic resistance genes may spread to pathogens and new viruses and bacteria that cause diseases may be created (see Chapter 10).
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Multi-herbicide tolerant GM canola - that combined the single-herbicide tolerant traits created by different companies - has evolved rapidly in Canada and the United States, becoming serious weeds.
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Super-tolerant weeds tolerant to the herbicide Roundup are plaguing GM soya and cotton fields in the US.
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Both established seed stocks and indigenous landraces have been contaminated by GM vqrieties, posing serious threats to agricultural and natural biodiversity.
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Hazards associated with gene drugs may be generic. The body often produces antibodies against them, compromising their effectiveness, and in a minority of cases, causing serious illnesses and death (see Chapter 11).
Not surprisingly, there is world-wide rejection of GM crops.
Zambia made headlines in rejecting GM maize from the United States to alleviate the threat of famine in the country, on grounds that the safety of GM foods is unproven at best and the threat of transgenic contamination is all too real. Zambia received widespread support, and has galvanised African countries into uniting towards self-sufficiency and sustainability.
Media reports, such as the following, indicate the breadth and depth of opposition to GM technology:
All what buyers in China, Korea, and Japan have announced they will not buy the GM wheat that Monsanto is field-testing and planning to release commercially.
Italy's largest miller, Grandi Molini Italiani, has declared it will not import any GM wheat from the US, and may stop importing from other countries growing GM wheat.
Farmers and retailers in Switzerland have agreed never to produce or sell GM food.
Brazil's newly elected presidend intends to keep Brazil GM-free.
The elite French three-star chefs have launched a 'crusade' for a Europe-wide ban on GM crops and livestock.
China has cooled to GM crops after initial enthusiasm. Its Agriculture Ministry has just announced that China's northeast region of 127 counties will be developed into the world's largest producer of non-GM soya over the next five years, in a move to compete with foreign beans.
