10 reasons why GM won't feed the world
Mark Anslow
The Ecologist
March 1, 2008
Genetic modification can't deliver a safe, secure future food supply. Here's why...
1. Failure to deliver
Despite the hype, genetic modification consistently fails to live up to industry claims. Only two GM traits have
ever made it to market: herbicide resistance and BT toxin expression (see below). Other promises of genetic
modification have failed to materialise. The much vaunted GM ‘golden rice’ – hailed as a cure to vitamin A
deficiency – has never made it out of the laboratory, partly because in order to meet recommended levels of
vitamin A intake, consumers would need to eat 12 bowls of the rice every day.1 In 2004, the Kenyan
government admitted that Monsanto’s GM sweet potatoes were no more resistant to feathery mottle virus
than ordinary strains, and in fact produced lower yields.2 And in January 2008, news that scientists had
modified a carrot to cure osteoporosis by providing calcium had to be weighed against the fact that you
would need to eat 1.6 kilograms of these vegetables each day to meet your recommended calcium intake.3
2. Costing the Earth
GM crops are costing farmers and governments more money than they are making. In 2003, a report by the
Soil Association estimated the cost to the US economy of GM crops at around $12 billion (£6 billion) since
1999, on account of inflated farm subsidies, loss of export orders and various seed recalls.4 A study in Iowa
found that GM soyabeans required all the same costs as conventional farming but, because they produced
lower yields (see below), the farmers ended up making no profit at all.5 In India, an independent study
found that BT cotton crops were costing farmers 10 per cent more than non-BT variants and bringing in 40
per cent lower profits.6 Between 2001 and 2005, more than 32,000 Indian farmers committed suicide, most
as a result of mounting debts caused by inadequate crops.7
3. Contamination and gene escape
No matter how hard you try, you can never be sure that what you are eating is GM-free. In a recent article,
the New Scientist admitted that contamination and cross-fertilisation between GM and non-GM crops ‘has
happened on many occasions already’.8 In late 2007, US company Scotts Miracle-Gro was fined $500,000 by
the US Department of Agriculture when genetic material from a new golf-course grass Scotts had been
testing was found in native grasses as far as 13 miles away from the test sites, apparently released when
freshly cut grass was caught and blown by the wind.9 In 2006, an analysis of 40 Spanish conventional and
organic farms found that eight were contaminated with GM corn varieties, including one farmer whose crop
contained 12.6 per cent GM plants.
4. Reliance on pesticides
Far from reducing dependency on pesticides and fertilisers, GM crops frequently increase farmers’ reliance on
these products. Herbicide-resistant crops can be sprayed indiscriminately with weedkillers such as
Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ because they are engineered to withstand the effect of the chemical. This means that
significantly higher levels of herbicide are found in the final food product, however, and often a second
herbicide is used in the late stages of the crop to promote ‘dessication’ or drying, meaning these crops
receive a double dose of harmful chemicals.10 BT maize, engineered to produce an insecticidal toxin, has
never eliminated the use of pesticides,11 and because the BT gene cannot be ‘switched off’ the crops
continue to produce the toxin right up until harvest, reaching the consumer at its highest possible
concentrations.12
5. ‘Frankenfoods’
Despite the best efforts of the biotech industry, consumers remain staunchly opposed to GM food. In 2007,
the vast majority of 11,700 responses to the Government’s consultation on whether contamination of organic
food with traces of GM crops should be allowed were strongly negative. The Government’s own ‘GM Nation’
debate in 2003 discovered that half of its participants ‘never want to see GM crops grown in the United
Kingdom under any circumstances’, and 96 per cent thought that society knew too little about the health
impacts of genetic modification. In India, farmers’ experience of BT cotton has been so disastrous that the
Maharashtra government now advises that farmers grow soybeans instead. And in Australia, over 250 food
companies lodged appeals with the state governments of New South Wales and Victoria over the lifting of
bans against growing GM canola crops.13
6. Breeding resistance
Nature is smart, and there are already reports of species resistant to GM crops emerging. This is seen in the
emergence of new ‘superweeds’ on farms in North America – plants that have evolved the ability to
withstand the industry’s chemicals. A report by then UK conservation body English Nature (now Natural
England), in 2002, revealed that oilseed rape plants that had developed resistance to three or more
herbicides were ‘not uncommon’ in Canada.14 The superweeds had been created through random crosses
between neighbouring GM crops. In order to tackle these superweeds, Canadian farmers were forced to
resort to even stronger, more toxic herbicides.15 Similarly, pests (notably the diamondback moth) have been
quick to develop resistance to BT toxin, and in 2007 swarms of mealy bugs began attacking supposedly pestresistant
Indian cotton.
7. Creating problems for solutions
Many of the so-called ‘problems’ for which the biotechnology industry develops ‘solutions’ seem to be notions
of PR rather than science. Herbicide-resistance was sold under the claim that because crops could be doused
in chemicals, there would be much less need to weed mechanically or plough the soil, keeping more carbon
and nitrates under the surface. But a new long-term study by the US Agricultural Research Service has
shown that organic farming, even with ploughing, stores more carbon than the GM crops save.16 BT cotton
was claimed to increase resistance to pests, but farmers in East Africa discovered that by planting a local
weed amid their corn crop, they could lure pests to lay their eggs on the weed and not the crop.17
8. Health risks
The results of tests on animals exposed to GM crops give serious cause for concern over their safety. In
1998, Scottish scientists found damage to every single internal organ in rats fed blightresistant GM potatoes.
In a 2006 experiment, female rats fed on herbicide-resistant soybeans gave birth to severely stunted pups,
of which half died within three weeks. The survivors were sterile. In the same year, Indian news agencies
reported that thousands of sheep allowed to graze on BT cotton crop residues had died suddenly. Further
cases of livestock deaths followed in 2007. There have also been reports of allergy-like symptoms among
Indian labourers in BT cotton fields. In 2002, the only trial ever to involve human beings appeared to show
that altered genetic material from GM soybeans not only survives in the human gut, but may even pass its
genetic material to bacteria within the digestive system.18
9. Left hungry
GM crops have always come with promises of increased yields for farmers, but this has rarely been the case.
A three-year study of 87 villages in India found that non-BT cotton consistently produced 30 per cent higher
yields than the (more expensive) GM alternative.19 It is now widely accepted that GM soybeans produce
consistently lower yields than conventional varieties. In 1992, Monsanto’s own trials showed that the
company’s Roundup Ready soybeans yield 11.5 per cent less on harvest. Later Monsanto studies went on to
reveal that some trials of GM canola crops in Australia actually produced yields 16 per cent below the non-
GM national average.20
10. Wedded to fertilizers and fossil fuels
No genetically modified crop has yet eliminated the need for chemical fertilisers in order to achieve expected
yields. Although the industry has made much of the possibility of splicing nitrogen-fixing genes into
commercial food crops in order to boost yields, there has so far been little success. This means that GM crops
are just as dependent on fossil fuels to make fertilisers as conventional agriculture. In addition to this, GM
traits are often specifically designed to fit with large-scale industrial agriculture. Herbicide resistance is of no
real benefit unless your farm is too vast to weed mechanically, and it presumes that the farmers already
farm in a way that involves the chemical spraying of their crops. Similarly, BT toxin expression is designed to
counteract the problem of pest control in vast monocultures, which encourage infestations. In a world that
will soon have to change its view of farming – facing as it does the twin challenges of climate change and
peak oil – GM crops will soon come to look like a relic of bygone practices.
Mark Anslow is the Ecologist’s senior reporter
References
1 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8521
2 http://www.greens.org/s-r/35/35-03.html
3 Telegraph, 14th January 2008, http://tinyurl.com/38e2rp
4 Soil Association, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/33bfuh
5 http://ianrnews.unl.edu/static/0005161.shtml
6 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php
7 Indian Muslims, 20th November 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2u7wy7
8 New Scientist, ‘Genes for Greens’, 5th January 2007, Issue 2637, Vol 197
9 http://gmfoodwatch.tribe.net/thread/a1b77b8b-15f5-4f1d-86df-2bbca5aaec70
10 http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9927
11 http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/usdagmeconomics.htm
12 http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9927
13 http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/27/18463803.php
14 http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/publication/PDF/enrr443.pdf
15 Innovations Report, 20th June 2005, http://tinyurl.com/3axmln
16 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8658
17 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMcropsfailed.php
18 All references from ‘GM Food Nightmare Unfolding in the Regulatory Sham’, Mae-Wan Ho, Joe Cummins,
Peter Saunders, ISIS report.
19 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php
20 http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8558
Source: http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1185
