Genetically modified food controversies
Encyclopedia
The genetically modified foods controversy is a dispute over the relative advantages and disadvantages of genetically modified (GM) food
crops and other uses of genetically-modified organisms in food production. The dispute involves biotechnology companies, governmental regulators, non-governmental organizations and scientists. The dispute is most intense in Japan
and Europe
, where public concern about GM food is higher than in other parts of the world such as the United States
. In the United States GM crops are more widely grown and the introduction of these products has been less controversial.
The key areas of political controversy related to genetically engineered (GE) food are food safety, the effect on natural ecosystems, gene flow into non GE crops and corporate control of the food supply. While it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods, to date, no adverse health effects caused by products approved for sale have been documented, although two products failed initial safety testing and were discontinued, due to allergic reactions
.
Most feeding trials have observed no toxic effects and saw that GM foods were equivalent in nutrition
to unmodified foods, although a few non-peer-reviewed reports speculate physiological
changes to GM food. Although there is now broad scientific consensus that GE crops on the market are safe to eat, some scientists and advocacy groups such as Greenpeace
and World Wildlife Fund call for additional and more rigorous testing before marketing genetically engineered food.
, and Greenpeace
claim the long-term health risks which GM could pose, or the environmental risks associated with GM, have not yet been adequately investigated. In Japan, Consumers Union of Japan
are opposed to GMO foods. They also claim that truly independent research in these areas is systematically blocked by the GM corporations which own the GM seeds and reference materials.
The European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation 2010 report on GMOs noted that "The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research, and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies." A 2008 review published by the Royal Society of Medicine
noted that GM foods have been eaten by millions of people worldwide for over 15 years, with no reports of ill effects. Similarly a 2004 report from the US National Academies of Sciences stated: "To date, no adverse health effects attributed to genetic engineering have been documented in the human population." A 2004 review of feeding trials in the Italian Journal of Animal Science found no differences among animals eating genetically modified plants. A 2005 review in Archives of Animal Nutrition concluded that first-generation genetically modified foods had been found to be similar in nutrition and safety to non-GM foods, but noted that second-generation foods with "significant changes in constituents" would be more difficult to test, and would require further animal studies. However, a 2009 review in Nutrition Reviews found that although most studies concluded that GM foods do not differ in nutrition or cause any detectable toxic effects in animals, some studies did report adverse changes at a cellular level caused by some GM foods, concluding that "More scientific effort and investigation is needed to ensure that consumption of GM foods is not likely to provoke any form of health problem".
A review published in 2009 by Dona and Arvanitoyannis concluded that "results of most studies
with GM foods indicate that they may cause some common toxic effects such as hepatic, pancreatic, renal, or reproductive effects and may alter the hematological, biochemical, and immunologic parameters". However responses to this review in 2009 and 2010 note that the Dona and Arvanitoyannis concentrated on articles with an anti-GM bias that have been refuted by scientists in peer-reviewed articles elsewhere - for example the 35S promoter, stability of transgenes, antibiotic marker genes and the claims for toxic effects of GM foods. In 2007, a review by Domingo of the toxicity by searching in the Publimed database using 12 search terms, cited 68 references, found that the "number of references" on the safety of GM/transgenic crops was "surprisingly limited" and questioned whether the safety of genetically modified food has been demonstrated; the review also remarked that its conclusions were in agreement with three earlier reviews by Zdunczyk (2001), Bakshi (2003), and Pryme and Lembcke (2003). However, an article in 2007 by Vain found 692 research studies focusing on GM crop and food safety and identified a strong increase in the publication of such articles in recent years. Vain commented that the multidisciplinarian nature of GM research complicates the retrieval of GM studies and requires using many search terms (he used more than 300) and multiple databases.
" to its natural counterpart.
The issue of GM food safety was first discussed at a meeting of the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO), the World Health Organization
(WHO) and biotech representatives in 1990. The "substantial equivalence" concept was proposed by the FAO in 1993 and endorsed by the FAO and WHO in early 1996 as a means to reassure consumers by obtaining official approval for genetically modified foods. The testing normally required for new food products can cost millions of dollars and take years of testing before a product gains approval for marketing which was also seen as inhibiting the development of biotechnology companies. The adoption of the concept of substantial equivalence permitted marketing of new foods without any safety or toxicology tests as long as they were not grossly different in chemical composition to foods already on the market.
"Substantial equivalence embodies the concept that if a new food or food component is found to be substantially equivalent to an existing food or food component, it can be treated in the same manner with respect to safety (i.e., the food or food component can be concluded to be as safe as the conventional food or food component)" . The rationale for this approach is that it would be impossible to test all the new crop varieties every year for food safety. Only a few food crops on the market have been shown to cause adverse health effects and all of these were the result of conventional genetic modification, not from genetic engineering To decide if a modified product is substantially equivalent, the product is tested by the manufacturer for unexpected changes in a limited set of components such as toxins, nutrients or allergens that are present in the unmodified food. If these tests show no significant difference between the modified and unmodified products, then no further food safety testing is required. The manufacturer's data is then assessed by an independent regulatory body, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
However, if the product has no natural equivalent, or shows significant differences from the unmodified food, then further safety testing is carried out. A 2003 review in Trends in Biotechnology identified seven main parts of a standard safety test:
This process was examined further in a review published by Kuiper et al. 2002 in the journal Toxicology, which stated that substantial equivalence does not itself measure risks, but instead identifies differences between existing products and new foods, which might pose dangers to health. If differences do exist, identifying these differences is a starting point for a full safety assessment, rather than an end point. The authors concluded that "The concept of substantial equivalence is an adequate tool in order to identify safety issues related to genetically modified products that have a traditional counterpart". However, the review also noted difficulties in applying this standard in practice, including the fact that traditional foods contain many chemicals that have toxic or carcinogenic effects and that our existing diets therefore have not been proven to be safe. This lack of knowledge on unmodified food poses a problem, as GM foods may have differences in anti-nutrients and natural toxins that have never been identified in the original plant, raising the possibility that harmful changes could be missed.
The application of substantial equivalence has also been more strongly criticized. For example, in a speech in 1999, Andrew Chesson of the University of Aberdeen
, stated that substantial equivalence testing "could be flawed in some cases" and that some current safety tests could allow harmful substances to enter the human food chain. In a commentary in Nature, Millstone et al. argued that all GM foods should have extensive biological, toxicological and immunological tests and that the concept of substantial equivalence based solely on chemical analyzes of the components of a food should be abandoned. They stated that this is necessary since it is currently impossible to predict the biological properties of a substance only from knowledge of its chemistry. This commentary was controversial and was criticized for misleading presentation of data and presenting an over-simplified version of safety assessments. For example, Kuiper et al. responded to this criticism by noting that equivalence testing does involve more than chemical tests and may include toxicity testing.
Medical writer Barbara Keeler and Marc Lappé argued in a 2001 article in the Los Angeles Times that the differences between genetically modified and conventional foods challenge the presumption of equivalence. Using Roundup ready soy
that has been on the market since 1995 as an example, they noted the differences when compared to its unmodified counterpart. Significantly lower levels of protein than unmodified soy. Significantly lower levels of phenylalanine
, an essential amino acid
and as a dietary supplement, the reason doctors advise the consumption of soy products. Levels of trypsin inhibitor
were 27% higher and after toasting, lectin
was double that found in conventional soy; both are known allergens. GM soy also has 29% less choline
, a B-complex vitamin. Round up ready soy had also stunted the growth of rats in Monsanto's study but had not affected cattle although it had increased the fat content of their milk. The authors do not maintain that modified soy is a hazard but that the FDA accepting such significant differences as being substantially equivalent illustrates the need for more rigorous testing, and preferably not by the biotech industries themselves.
However, a 2008 paper by Cheng et al. showed that genetic engineering of soybeans causes smaller unintended changes than are seen with traditional breeding. A 2002 paper by Ridley et al. showed that genetically engineered maize was equivalent to conventional maize for proximates, fiber, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamin E, nine minerals, phytic acid, trypsin inhibitor, and secondary metabolites. Baudo et al. in a 2006 paper compared transgenic wheat with conventionally bred wheat and concluded that "...transgenic plants could be considered substantially equivalent to untransformed parental lines." A 2008 paper by di Carli et al. compared genetically engineered Lycopersicon esculentum (a tomato) and Nicotiana benthamiana (a close relative of tobacco) with their untransformed counterparts and concluded that genetic engineering did not significantly affect the plants proteanic profile.
The value of current independent studies is problematic as, due to restrictive end-user
agreements, researchers are forbidden by law from publishing independent research in peer-reviewed journals without the approval of the agritech companies. Cornell University's
Elson Shields, the spokesperson for a group of scientists who oppose this practice, submitted a statement to the United States Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) protesting that "as a result of restrictive access, no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology". Scientific American
noted that several studies that were initially approved by seed companies were later blocked from publication when they returned "unflattering" results. While recognising that seed companies' intellectual property rights need to be protected, Scientific American calls the practice dangerous and has called for the restrictions on research in the end-user agreements to be lifted immediately and for the EPA to require, as a condition of approval, that independent researchers have unfettered access to GM products for testing.
The Welsh pressure group GM Free Cymru argues that governments should use independent studies rather than industry studies to assess crop safety. GM Free Cymru has also stated that independently funded researcher, Professor Bela Darvas of Debrecen University
was refused Mon 863 Bt corn to use in his studies after previously publishing that a different variety of Monsanto corn was lethal to two Hungarian protected insect species and an insect classified as a rare.
and Greenpeace, have suggested that GM food might trigger food allergies, although other environmentalists have implicated causes as diverse as the greenhouse effect
increasing pollen levels, greater exposure to synthetic chemicals, cleaner lifestyles, or more mold in buildings. A 2005 review in the journal Allergy
of the results from allergen testing of current GM foods stated that "no biotech proteins in foods have been documented to cause allergic reactions".
A well-known case of a GM plant that did not reach the market due to it producing an allergic reaction was a new form of soybean intended for animal feed. The allergen
was transferred unintentionally from the Brazil nut
into genetically engineered soybeans, in a bid to improve soybean nutritional quality for animal feed use. This new protein increased the levels in the GM soybean of the natural essential amino acid
methionine
, which is commonly added to poultry feed. Investigation of the GM soybeans revealed that they produced immune reactions in people with Brazil nut allergies, since the methionine rich protein chosen by Pioneer Hi-Bred happened to be a major source of Brazil nut allergy. Although this soybean strain was not developed as a human food, Pioneer Hi-Bred discontinued further development of the GM soybean, due to the difficulty in ensuring that none of these soybeans entered the human food chain.
In November 2005 a pest-resistant field pea developed by the Australian CSIRO for use as a pasture crop was shown to cause an allergic reaction in mice. Work on this variety was immediately halted. The protein added to the pea did not cause the reaction in humans or mice in isolation, but when it was expressed in the pea, it exhibited a subtly different structure which may have caused the allergic reaction. The immunologist who tested the pea noted that crops need to be evaluated case-by-case, and a Greenpeace activist commented that to his knowledge, no countries required feeding studies for approval of genetically modified foods.
Plant scientist Maarten J Chrispeels has made these comments about this example:
These cases of products that failed safety testing can either be viewed as evidence that genetic modification can produce unexpected and dangerous changes in foods, or alternatively that the current tests are effective at identifying any safety problems before foods come on the market.
Genetic modification can also be used to remove allergens from foods, which may, for example, allow the production of soy products that would pose a smaller risk of food allergies than standard soybeans. A hypo-allergenic strain of soybean was tested in 2003 and shown to lack the major allergen that is found in the beans. A similar approach has been tried in ryegrass
, which produces pollen that is a major cause of hayfever: here a fertile GM grass was produced that lacked the main pollen allergen, demonstrating that the production of hypoallergenic grass is also possible.
. However this concern was disproved by six comprehensive articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. Monarch populations increased, despite increased Bt corn probably due to reduced pesticide use. Other possible effects might come from the spread of genes from modified plants to unmodified relatives, which might produce species of weeds resistant to herbicides. In some areas of the US "superweeds" have evolved
naturally, these weeds are resistant to herbicides and have forced farmers to return to traditional crop management practices.
There has been controversy over the results of a farm-scale trial in the United Kingdom
comparing the impact of GM crops and conventional crops on farmland biodiversity
. Some claimed that the results showed that GM crops had a significant negative impact on wildlife. They pointed out that the studies showed that using herbicide resistant GM crops allowed better weed control and that under such conditions there were fewer weeds and fewer weed seeds. This result was then extrapolated to suggest that GM crops would have significant impact on the wildlife that might rely on farm weeds. The President of the Royal Society
, the body that had carried out the trials, stated that "To generalize and declare ’all GM is bad’ or ’all GM is good’ for the environment as a result of these experiments is a gross over-simplification", arguing that although the trials showed that the combination of some GM crops with long-lasting herbicides were bad for biodiversity, using other GM crops without these herbicides increased biodiversity.
In July 2005 British scientists showed that transfer of a herbicide-resistance gene from GM oilseed rape to a wild cousin, charlock, and wild turnips was possible.
Many agricultural scientists and food policy
specialists view GM crops as an important element in sustainable food security and environmental management. This point of view is summarized in the ABIC Manifesto:
Other scientists, such as Dr. Charles Benbrook, argue that improvement of global food security is hardly being addressed by genetic research and that a lack of yield is often not caused by insufficient genetic resources.
Regarding the issues of intellectual property
and patent law, an international report from the year 2000 states:
(or transgenic maize
) was the concern that pollen from Bt maize might kill the monarch butterfly
. This report was puzzling because the pollen from most maize hybrids contains much lower levels of Bt than the rest of the plant and led to multiple follow-up studies. One possible issue revealed in these studies is the possibility that the initial study was flawed; based on the way the pollen was collected, in that they collected and fed non-toxic pollen that was mixed with anther walls that did contain Bt toxin. A collaborative research exercise was carried out over two years by several groups of scientists in the US and Canada, looking at the effects of Bt pollen in both the field and the laboratory. This resulted in a risk assessment
that concluded that any risk posed by the corn to butterfly populations under real-world conditions was negligible. The USDA has stated that the weight of the evidence is that Bt crops do not pose a risk to the monarch butterfly. An independent 2002 review of the scientific literature concluded that "the commercial large-scale cultivation of current Bt–maize hybrids did not pose a significant risk to the monarch population" and noted that despite large-scale planting of GM crops, the butterfly's population is increasing.
In 2007 Andreas Lang, Éva Lauber and Béla Darvas criticized these studies, arguing that there can be a great difference in the effects between the acute exposure tested for and chronic exposure. Moreover, they stated that the "worst case conditions" performed were not in fact worst case scenarios, as laboratory conditions with ample food supply and a favorable climate ensure healthy subjects. They instead believe that in the wild, low temperatures, rain and parasites and disease might exacerbate a Bt effect on butterfly larvae. Their own experiments suggested that some butterfly species were negatively affected by such chronic exposure. Jörg Romeis, who conducted the original studies, replied that if species of Butterfly are affected as Darvas claims that a "more comprehensive assessment will be needed and, depending on the degree and nature of concern, this may extend to field testing".
A 2001 report in Nature presented evidence that Bt maize was cross-breeding with unmodified maize in Mexico
, although the data in this paper was later described as originating from an artifact and Nature stated that "the evidence available is not sufficient to justify the publication of the original paper". A subsequent large-scale study, in 2005, failed to find any evidence of contamination in Oaxaca. However, other authors have stated that they also found evidence of cross-breeding between natural maize and transgenic maize
.
There is also a risk that for example, transgenic maize
will crossbreed
with wild grass variants, and that the Bt-gene will end up in a natural environment, retaining its toxicity. An event like this would have ecological implications. However, there is no evidence of crossbreeding between maize and wild grasses.
In 2009 it was reported that 82000 hectares (202,626.2 acre) of Bt corn in South Africa
failed to produce seeds. Monsanto claimed average yield was reduced by 25% in those fields affected, it compensated the farmers concerned and the corn varieties were affected by a mistake made in the seed breeding process. Marian Mayet, an environmental activitist and director of the Africa Centre for Biosecurity in Johannesburg
, called for a government investigation and asserted that the biotechnology was at fault, "You cannot make a 'mistake' with three different varieties of corn". In 2009 South African farmers planted 1900000 hectares (4,694,998.1 acre) of GM maize (73% of the total crop).
As of 2007, a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder
(CCD) was noticed in bee
hives all over North America, and elsewhere. Although it is not certain if this is a new phenomenon, initial ideas on the possible causes ranged from poor nutrition, infections, parasites and pesticide use. More unusual speculations included radio waves from cellphone base stations, climate change, and the use of transgenic crops containing Bt. The Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium
published a report on 2007-03-27 that found no evidence that pollen from Bt crops is adversely affecting bees. Several researchers in the US have since attributed CCD to the spread of a new virus called Israeli acute paralysis virus, although other parasites have also been implicated.
raised concerns about environmental impacts that they believe the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) failed to address before approving planting of Roundup Ready alfalfa
. Organic growers were concerned that the GM alfalfa could cross-pollinate with their organic alfalfa, making their crops unsalable in countries that ban the growing of GM crops. In response, the California Northern District Court
ruled that the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) was in error when it approved planting. According to the presiding judge, Charles Breyer, the law required the USDA to first conduct a full environmental study, which had not been done. In June 2009, a divided three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Breyer's decision. Monsanto appealed to the US Supreme Court
and on 21 June 2010, in Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms
, they issued its first ruling regarding GM crop. The impact of the US Supreme Court ruling was somewhat unclear, with both sides appearing to claim victory. While Monsanto claimed technical victory the planting of GM alfalfa was halted.
In January 2011, despite protests from organic groups, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
announced that the USDA had approved the unrestricted planting of genetically modified alfalfa. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack commented "After conducting a thorough and transparent examination of alfalfa ... APHIS [Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service] has determined that Roundup Ready alfalfa is as safe as traditionally bred alfalfa." About 20 million acres (8 million hectares) of alfalfa were grown in the US, the fourth-biggest crop by acreage, of which about 1% were organic. Some biotechnology officials forecast that half of the US alfalfa acreage could eventually be planted with GM alfalfa.
Christine Bushway, CEO of the Organic Trade Association
said "A lot of people are shell shocked. While we feel Secretary Vilsack worked on this issue, which is progress, this decision puts our organic farmers at risk." The Organic Trade Association issued a press release in 2011 saying that the USDA recognized the impact that cross contamination could have on organic alfalfa and urged them to place restrictions to minimise any such contamination. Following the decision, organic farming groups, organic food outlets, and activists responded by publishing an open letter
saying that planting the "alfalfa without any restrictions flies in the face of the interests of conventional and organic farmers, preservation of the environment, and consumer choice." Commenting on the ruling, in a Joint Statement U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy
and Representative Peter DeFazio
said the USDA had the "opportunity to address the concerns of all farmers", but instead "surrender[ed] to business as usual for the biotech industry." The Center for Food Safety
said they will be suing on the decision.
. This is a case involving Monsanto's breed of pesticide-resistant sugar beets. While Judge Jeffrey S. White (issuing his ruling in the spring of 2010) allowed the planting of GM sugar beets to continue, he also warned that this may be blocked in the future while an environmental review is taking place.
On 13 August 2010, Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered the halt to the planting of the genetically modified sugar beets in the US. He indicated that "the Agriculture Department had not adequately assessed the environmental consequences before approving them for commercial cultivation."
In 2010, before the ruling, 95% of the sugar beet grown in the US was GM. About half the sugar supply in the US came from sugar beet.
In February 2011, a federal appeals court for the Northern district of California in San Francisco overturned a previous ruling by Judge Jeffrey S. White to destroy juvenile GM sugar beets, ruling in favor of Monsanto, the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and four seed companies. The court concluded that " The Plaintiffs have failed to show a likelihood of irreparable injury. Biology, geography, field experience, and permit restrictions make irreparable injury unlikely."
In February 2011, The USDA allowed commercial planting of GM sugar beet in the US under closely controlled conditions. Michael Gregoire from APHIS said "After conducting an environmental assessment, accepting and reviewing public comments and conducting a plant pest risk assessment, APHIS has determined that the Roundup Ready sugar beet root crop, when grown under APHIS imposed conditions, can be partially deregulated without posing a plant pest risk or having a significant effect on the environment." GM sugar beet opponents such as Earthjustice
said the USDA action circumvents court orders, and vowed they would fight the USDA in court.
, an expert on plant lectins, went public with research he was conducting with genetically modified potatoes. In a short interview in 1998 he reported that rats fed potatoes engineered to express lectin
, a natural insecticide in snowdrop
plants, had stunted growth and a repressed immune system. Confusion arose as to what gene had been inserted into the potato and Pusztai was suspended by the Rowett Institute's director, Philip James. A media frenzy resulted, Pusztai's contract was not renewed and he and his wife were banned from speaking publicly.
In October 1998 the Rowett Institute published an audit criticizing Pusztai's results, which, along with Pusztai's raw data, was sent to six anonymous reviewers who criticized Pusztai's results. Pusztai responded that the raw data was "never intended for publication under intense scrutiny". Pusztai sent the audit report and his rebuttal to scientists who requested it, and in February 1999, twenty-one European and American scientists released a memo supporting Pusztai. Stanley Ewen, who worked with Pusztai, conducted a followup study supporting Pusztai's work and presented the work to a lectin meeting in Sweden.
In October 1999 Pusztai's research was published in the journal The Lancet
. Because of the controversial nature of his research the data in this paper, co-authored by Stanley Ewen, was seen by a total of six reviewers when presented for peer review; five of these reviewers judged the work acceptable, although one of the five "deemed the study flawed but favored publication to avoid suspicions of a conspiracy against Pusztai and to give colleagues a chance to see the data for themselves". The paper did not mention stunted growth or immunity issues, but reported that rats fed on potatoes genetically modified with the snowdrop lectin had "thickening in the mucosal lining of their colon and their jejunum" when compared with rats fed on non modified potatoes. Three Dutch scientists criticized the study on the grounds that the unmodified potatoes were not a fair control diet, and that any rats fed only on potatoes will suffer from a protein deficiency; Pusztai responded to these criticisms by stating that the protein and energy were comparable, and that "a sample size of six is perfectly normal in studies like this".
. Anti-GM campaigner Jeffrey M. Smith, writing in Biophile Magazine, quoting comments from Pusztai and Seralini,has stated that nutritional studies typically use young, fast-growing animals with starting weights not varying by more than 2% from the average whereas Monsanto's research design used a mix of young and old animals with starting weights ranging from 198.4 to 259.8 grams. Seralini and two other authors published a study of these data, funded by Greenpeace, in 2007 making similar points.
The raising of this issue prompted the European Food Safety Authority
(EFSA) to reexamine the safety data on this strain of corn. The EFSA concluded that the observed small numerical decrease in rat kidney weights were not biologically meaningful, and the weights were well within the normal range of kidney weights for control animals. There were no corresponding microscopic findings in the relevant organ systems, and they stated that all blood chemistry and organ weight values fell within the "normal range of historical control values" for rats. In addition the EFSA review stated that the statistical methods used by Séralini et al. in the analysis of the data were incorrect. The European Commission has approved the ΜΟΝ863 corn for animal and human consumption. Food Standards Australia New Zealand
reviewed the 2007 Seralini et al. study and concluded that "...all of the statistical differences between rats fed MON 863 corn and control rats are attributable to normal biological variation."
Greenpeace stated in a 2007 press release that Séralini et al. had completed a similar analysis of the NK603 strain of corn and came to similar conclusions as they did in their previous study. Séralini et al. included this in a re-analysis of three existing rat feeding studies published in 2009.
The European Food Safety Authority reviewed the 2009 Seralini et al. paper and concluded that the author's claims were not supported by the data in their paper. They noted that many of their fundamental statistical criticisms of the 2007 paper also applied to the 2009 paper. There was no new information that would change the EFSA's conclusions that the three GM maize types were safe for human, animal health and the environment The French High Council of Biotechnologies Scientific Committee (HCB) also reviewed the 2009 study and concluded that it "..presents no admissible scientific element likely to ascribe any haematological, hepatic or renal toxicity to the three re-analysed GMOs." The HCB also questioned the author's independence. Food Standards Australia New Zealand concluded that the results from the 2009 Séralini et al. study were due to chance alone.
tolerant to herbicide residues in soil was developed by the Crop Development Centre (CDC) at the University of Saskatchewan
in Canada
. Named Flax variety FP967, but commonly called CDC Triffid
, research was controversially halted following protests from Canadian farmers who stood to lose up to 70% of their traditional export markets if it was introduced. GM Flax was deregistered, its sale was criminalized and in 2001 all modified seeds were destroyed. No modified crops had been planted and no seed had been sold but GM industry proponent Alan McHughen controversially passed out sample packets of seeds at presentations. In early September 2009, Flax imported into Germany
was found to be contaminated with CDC Triffid causing the price of Canadian Flax to fall 32 percent. By mid November 35 countries reported contamination of imported Canadian Flax which has now been banned by the European Union
. Canadian farmers are expected to be responsible for the cost of the cleanup and testing of future crops.
In 2000, Aventis
StarLink corn, which had been approved only as animal feed due to concerns about possible allergic reactions in humans, was found contaminating corn products in U.S. supermarkets. An episode involving Taco Bell
taco
shells was particularly well publicized which resulted in sales of StarLink seed being discontinued. The registration for the Starlink varieties was voluntarily withdrawn by Aventis in October 2000. Aid sent by the UN and the US to Central African nations was also found to be contaminated with StarLink corn and the aid was rejected. The US corn supply has been monitored for Starlink Bt proteins since 2001 and no positive samples have been found since 2004.
GeneWatch UK and Greepeace International set up the GM Contamination Register in 2005.
's Fish tomato
transgenic organism was conflated with Calgene's Flavr Savr transgenic food product. The Pew survey also showed that despite continuing concerns about GM foods, American consumers do not support banning new uses of the technology, but rather seek an active role from regulators to ensure that new products are safe.
Only 2% of Britons were said to be "happy to eat GM foods", and more than half of Britons were against GM foods being available to the public, according to a 2003 study. However a 2009 review article of European consumer polls concluded that opposition to GMOs in Europe has been gradually decreasing. Approximately half of European consumers accepted gene technology, particularly when benefits for consumers and for the environment could be linked to GMO products. 80 % of respondents did not cite the application of GMOs in agriculture as a significant environmental problem. Many consumers seem unafraid of health risks from GMO products and most European consumers did not actively avoid GMO products while shopping.
In Australia, GM foods that have novel DNA, novel protein, altered characteristics or has to be cooked or prepared in a different way compared to the conventional food have, since December 2001, had to be identified on food labels. However, multiple surveys have shown that while 45% of the public will accept GM foods, some 93% demand all genetically modified foods be labelled as such. A 2007 survey by the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand found that 27% of Australians looked at the label to see if it contained GM material when purchasing a grocery product for the first time. Labelling legislation has been introduced and rejected several times since 1996 on the grounds of "restraint of trade" due to the cost of labelling. The controversy erupted again in 2009 when Graincorp, the nations largest grain handler, announced it would mix GM Canola with its unmodified grain. Traditional growers, who largely rely on GM-free markets, had been told they would need to pay to have their produce certified GM free. Graincorp reversed its decision the same year. Critics such as Greenpeace and the Gene Ethics Network have renewed calls for more labelling.
Opponents of genetically modified food often refer to it as "Frankenfood", after Mary Shelley
's character Frankenstein
and the monster
he creates, in her novel of the same name. The term was coined in 1992 by Paul Lewis
, an English professor at Boston College
who used the word in a letter he wrote to the New York Times in response to the decision of the US Food and Drug Administration to allow companies to market genetically modified food. The term "Frankenfood" has become a battle cry of the European side in the US-EU agricultural trade war.
Critics have protested in regards to the appointment of pro GM lobbyists to senior positions in the FDA. Michael R. Taylor
has been appointed as a senior adviser to the FDA on food safety and Dennis Wolff is expected to take up the position of Under-Secretary of the newly created Agriculture for Food Safety. Taylor is a former Monsanto lobbyist credited as being responsible for the implementation of "substantial equivalence" in place of food safety studies and for his advocacy that resulted in the Delaney clause
that prohibited the inclusion of "any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man.. or animals" in processed foods being amended in 1996 to allow the inclusion of pesticides in GMOs. Wolff is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture who successfully lobbied to ban organic farmers from labeling their products as being GM free and was a proponent of the "ACRE" initiative which gave the Pennsylvania state attorney general’s office the authority to sue municipalities that banned GMOs. Several anti-GMO organisations have organised petitions demanding Taylor's resignation and opposing Wolff's appointment and also conducted letter writing campaigns protesting the conflict of interest.
Advocates
Governmental
Medical and scientific
Genetically modified food
Genetically modified foods are foods derived from genetically modified organisms . Genetically modified organisms have had specific changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering techniques...
crops and other uses of genetically-modified organisms in food production. The dispute involves biotechnology companies, governmental regulators, non-governmental organizations and scientists. The dispute is most intense in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, where public concern about GM food is higher than in other parts of the world such as the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. In the United States GM crops are more widely grown and the introduction of these products has been less controversial.
The key areas of political controversy related to genetically engineered (GE) food are food safety, the effect on natural ecosystems, gene flow into non GE crops and corporate control of the food supply. While it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods, to date, no adverse health effects caused by products approved for sale have been documented, although two products failed initial safety testing and were discontinued, due to allergic reactions
Allergy
An Allergy is a hypersensitivity disorder of the immune system. Allergic reactions occur when a person's immune system reacts to normally harmless substances in the environment. A substance that causes a reaction is called an allergen. These reactions are acquired, predictable, and rapid...
.
Most feeding trials have observed no toxic effects and saw that GM foods were equivalent in nutrition
Nutrition
Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthy diet....
to unmodified foods, although a few non-peer-reviewed reports speculate physiological
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
changes to GM food. Although there is now broad scientific consensus that GE crops on the market are safe to eat, some scientists and advocacy groups such as Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
and World Wildlife Fund call for additional and more rigorous testing before marketing genetically engineered food.
Present knowledge on GM food safety
Worldwide, there is a range of perspectives within non-governmental organizations on the safety of GM foods. For example, the US pro-GM group AgBioWorld has argued that GM foods have been proven safe, while other pressure groups and consumer rights groups, such as the Organic Consumers AssociationOrganic Consumers Association
The Organic Consumers Association is a consumer protection and organic agriculture advocacy group based in Finland, Minnesota. It was formed in 1998 in the wake of the mass backlash by organic consumers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture's controversial proposed regulations for organic food...
, and Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
claim the long-term health risks which GM could pose, or the environmental risks associated with GM, have not yet been adequately investigated. In Japan, Consumers Union of Japan
Consumers Union of Japan
or CUJ was founded in 1969 by Takeuchi Naokazu. CUJ is certified as a non-profit organization by Japan's NPO legislation. With offices in Nishi-Waseda, Tokyo, CUJ publishes "Consumer Report" as a member newsletter, as well as an online service in Japanese....
are opposed to GMO foods. They also claim that truly independent research in these areas is systematically blocked by the GM corporations which own the GM seeds and reference materials.
The European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation 2010 report on GMOs noted that "The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research, and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies." A 2008 review published by the Royal Society of Medicine
Royal Society of Medicine
The Royal Society of Medicine is a British charitable organisation whose main purpose is as a provider of medical education, running over 350 meetings and conferences each year.- History and overview :...
noted that GM foods have been eaten by millions of people worldwide for over 15 years, with no reports of ill effects. Similarly a 2004 report from the US National Academies of Sciences stated: "To date, no adverse health effects attributed to genetic engineering have been documented in the human population." A 2004 review of feeding trials in the Italian Journal of Animal Science found no differences among animals eating genetically modified plants. A 2005 review in Archives of Animal Nutrition concluded that first-generation genetically modified foods had been found to be similar in nutrition and safety to non-GM foods, but noted that second-generation foods with "significant changes in constituents" would be more difficult to test, and would require further animal studies. However, a 2009 review in Nutrition Reviews found that although most studies concluded that GM foods do not differ in nutrition or cause any detectable toxic effects in animals, some studies did report adverse changes at a cellular level caused by some GM foods, concluding that "More scientific effort and investigation is needed to ensure that consumption of GM foods is not likely to provoke any form of health problem".
A review published in 2009 by Dona and Arvanitoyannis concluded that "results of most studies
with GM foods indicate that they may cause some common toxic effects such as hepatic, pancreatic, renal, or reproductive effects and may alter the hematological, biochemical, and immunologic parameters". However responses to this review in 2009 and 2010 note that the Dona and Arvanitoyannis concentrated on articles with an anti-GM bias that have been refuted by scientists in peer-reviewed articles elsewhere - for example the 35S promoter, stability of transgenes, antibiotic marker genes and the claims for toxic effects of GM foods. In 2007, a review by Domingo of the toxicity by searching in the Publimed database using 12 search terms, cited 68 references, found that the "number of references" on the safety of GM/transgenic crops was "surprisingly limited" and questioned whether the safety of genetically modified food has been demonstrated; the review also remarked that its conclusions were in agreement with three earlier reviews by Zdunczyk (2001), Bakshi (2003), and Pryme and Lembcke (2003). However, an article in 2007 by Vain found 692 research studies focusing on GM crop and food safety and identified a strong increase in the publication of such articles in recent years. Vain commented that the multidisciplinarian nature of GM research complicates the retrieval of GM studies and requires using many search terms (he used more than 300) and multiple databases.
Safety assessments
The starting point for the safety assessment of genetically engineered food products is to assess if the food is "substantially equivalentSubstantial equivalence
Substantial equivalence is a concept, developed by OECD in 1991, that maintains that a novel food should be considered the same as and as safe as a conventional food if it demonstrates the same characteristics and composition as the conventional food. Substantial equivalence is important from a...
" to its natural counterpart.
The issue of GM food safety was first discussed at a meeting of the Food and Agriculture Organization
Food and Agriculture Organization
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is a specialised agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and...
(FAO), the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
(WHO) and biotech representatives in 1990. The "substantial equivalence" concept was proposed by the FAO in 1993 and endorsed by the FAO and WHO in early 1996 as a means to reassure consumers by obtaining official approval for genetically modified foods. The testing normally required for new food products can cost millions of dollars and take years of testing before a product gains approval for marketing which was also seen as inhibiting the development of biotechnology companies. The adoption of the concept of substantial equivalence permitted marketing of new foods without any safety or toxicology tests as long as they were not grossly different in chemical composition to foods already on the market.
"Substantial equivalence embodies the concept that if a new food or food component is found to be substantially equivalent to an existing food or food component, it can be treated in the same manner with respect to safety (i.e., the food or food component can be concluded to be as safe as the conventional food or food component)" . The rationale for this approach is that it would be impossible to test all the new crop varieties every year for food safety. Only a few food crops on the market have been shown to cause adverse health effects and all of these were the result of conventional genetic modification, not from genetic engineering To decide if a modified product is substantially equivalent, the product is tested by the manufacturer for unexpected changes in a limited set of components such as toxins, nutrients or allergens that are present in the unmodified food. If these tests show no significant difference between the modified and unmodified products, then no further food safety testing is required. The manufacturer's data is then assessed by an independent regulatory body, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
However, if the product has no natural equivalent, or shows significant differences from the unmodified food, then further safety testing is carried out. A 2003 review in Trends in Biotechnology identified seven main parts of a standard safety test:
- Study of the introduced DNA and the new proteins or metabolites that it produces;
- Analysis of the chemical composition of the relevant plant parts, measuring nutrients, anti-nutrients as well as any natural toxins or known allergens;
- Assess the risk of gene transfer from the food to microorganisms in the human gut;
- Study the possibility that any new components in the food might be allergens;
- Estimate how much of a normal diet the food will make up;
- Estimate any toxicological or nutritional problems revealed by this data;
- Additional animal toxicity tests if there is the possibility that the food might pose a risk.
This process was examined further in a review published by Kuiper et al. 2002 in the journal Toxicology, which stated that substantial equivalence does not itself measure risks, but instead identifies differences between existing products and new foods, which might pose dangers to health. If differences do exist, identifying these differences is a starting point for a full safety assessment, rather than an end point. The authors concluded that "The concept of substantial equivalence is an adequate tool in order to identify safety issues related to genetically modified products that have a traditional counterpart". However, the review also noted difficulties in applying this standard in practice, including the fact that traditional foods contain many chemicals that have toxic or carcinogenic effects and that our existing diets therefore have not been proven to be safe. This lack of knowledge on unmodified food poses a problem, as GM foods may have differences in anti-nutrients and natural toxins that have never been identified in the original plant, raising the possibility that harmful changes could be missed.
The application of substantial equivalence has also been more strongly criticized. For example, in a speech in 1999, Andrew Chesson of the University of Aberdeen
University of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
, stated that substantial equivalence testing "could be flawed in some cases" and that some current safety tests could allow harmful substances to enter the human food chain. In a commentary in Nature, Millstone et al. argued that all GM foods should have extensive biological, toxicological and immunological tests and that the concept of substantial equivalence based solely on chemical analyzes of the components of a food should be abandoned. They stated that this is necessary since it is currently impossible to predict the biological properties of a substance only from knowledge of its chemistry. This commentary was controversial and was criticized for misleading presentation of data and presenting an over-simplified version of safety assessments. For example, Kuiper et al. responded to this criticism by noting that equivalence testing does involve more than chemical tests and may include toxicity testing.
Medical writer Barbara Keeler and Marc Lappé argued in a 2001 article in the Los Angeles Times that the differences between genetically modified and conventional foods challenge the presumption of equivalence. Using Roundup ready soy
Soybean
The soybean or soya bean is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean which has numerous uses...
that has been on the market since 1995 as an example, they noted the differences when compared to its unmodified counterpart. Significantly lower levels of protein than unmodified soy. Significantly lower levels of phenylalanine
Phenylalanine
Phenylalanine is an α-amino acid with the formula C6H5CH2CHCOOH. This essential amino acid is classified as nonpolar because of the hydrophobic nature of the benzyl side chain. L-Phenylalanine is an electrically neutral amino acid, one of the twenty common amino acids used to biochemically form...
, an essential amino acid
Essential amino acid
An essential amino acid or indispensable amino acid is an amino acid that cannot be synthesized de novo by the organism , and therefore must be supplied in the diet.-Essentiality vs. conditional essentiality in humans:...
and as a dietary supplement, the reason doctors advise the consumption of soy products. Levels of trypsin inhibitor
Trypsin inhibitor
Trypsin inhibitors are chemicals that reduce the availability of trypsin, an enzyme essential to nutrition of many animals, including humans.There are four commercial sources of trypsin inhibitors....
were 27% higher and after toasting, lectin
Lectin
Lectins are sugar-binding proteins that are highly specific for their sugar moieties. They play a role in biological recognition phenomena involving cells and proteins. For example, some viruses use lectins to attach themselves to the cells of the host organism during infection...
was double that found in conventional soy; both are known allergens. GM soy also has 29% less choline
Choline
Choline is a water-soluble essential nutrient. It is usually grouped within the B-complex vitamins. Choline generally refers to the various quaternary ammonium salts containing the N,N,N-trimethylethanolammonium cation....
, a B-complex vitamin. Round up ready soy had also stunted the growth of rats in Monsanto's study but had not affected cattle although it had increased the fat content of their milk. The authors do not maintain that modified soy is a hazard but that the FDA accepting such significant differences as being substantially equivalent illustrates the need for more rigorous testing, and preferably not by the biotech industries themselves.
However, a 2008 paper by Cheng et al. showed that genetic engineering of soybeans causes smaller unintended changes than are seen with traditional breeding. A 2002 paper by Ridley et al. showed that genetically engineered maize was equivalent to conventional maize for proximates, fiber, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamin E, nine minerals, phytic acid, trypsin inhibitor, and secondary metabolites. Baudo et al. in a 2006 paper compared transgenic wheat with conventionally bred wheat and concluded that "...transgenic plants could be considered substantially equivalent to untransformed parental lines." A 2008 paper by di Carli et al. compared genetically engineered Lycopersicon esculentum (a tomato) and Nicotiana benthamiana (a close relative of tobacco) with their untransformed counterparts and concluded that genetic engineering did not significantly affect the plants proteanic profile.
The value of current independent studies is problematic as, due to restrictive end-user
End-user
Economics and commerce define an end user as the person who uses a product. The end user or consumer may differ from the person who purchases the product...
agreements, researchers are forbidden by law from publishing independent research in peer-reviewed journals without the approval of the agritech companies. Cornell University's
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
Elson Shields, the spokesperson for a group of scientists who oppose this practice, submitted a statement to the United States Environmental Protection Agency
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
(EPA) protesting that "as a result of restrictive access, no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology". Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
noted that several studies that were initially approved by seed companies were later blocked from publication when they returned "unflattering" results. While recognising that seed companies' intellectual property rights need to be protected, Scientific American calls the practice dangerous and has called for the restrictions on research in the end-user agreements to be lifted immediately and for the EPA to require, as a condition of approval, that independent researchers have unfettered access to GM products for testing.
The Welsh pressure group GM Free Cymru argues that governments should use independent studies rather than industry studies to assess crop safety. GM Free Cymru has also stated that independently funded researcher, Professor Bela Darvas of Debrecen University
University of Debrecen
The University of Debrecen is a university located in Debrecen, Hungary. It is the oldest continuously operating institution of higher education in Hungary .-History:...
was refused Mon 863 Bt corn to use in his studies after previously publishing that a different variety of Monsanto corn was lethal to two Hungarian protected insect species and an insect classified as a rare.
Allergenicity
Worldwide, reports of allergies to all kinds of foods, particularly nuts, fish and shellfish, seem to be increasing, but it is not known if this reflects a genuine change in the risk of allergy, or an increased awareness of food allergies by the public. Some environmental organizations, such as the European Green PartyEuropean Green Party
The European Green Party is the Green political party at European level. As such it is a federation of green parties in Europe.-History:...
and Greenpeace, have suggested that GM food might trigger food allergies, although other environmentalists have implicated causes as diverse as the greenhouse effect
Greenhouse effect
The greenhouse effect is a process by which thermal radiation from a planetary surface is absorbed by atmospheric greenhouse gases, and is re-radiated in all directions. Since part of this re-radiation is back towards the surface, energy is transferred to the surface and the lower atmosphere...
increasing pollen levels, greater exposure to synthetic chemicals, cleaner lifestyles, or more mold in buildings. A 2005 review in the journal Allergy
Allergy (journal)
Allergy is a peer-reviewed medical journal covering the field of allergy and immunology, that is published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology. It is indexed in PubMed and publishes both original articles and reviews. The current...
of the results from allergen testing of current GM foods stated that "no biotech proteins in foods have been documented to cause allergic reactions".
A well-known case of a GM plant that did not reach the market due to it producing an allergic reaction was a new form of soybean intended for animal feed. The allergen
Allergen
An allergen is any substance that can cause an allergy. In technical terms, an allergen is a non-parasitic antigen capable of stimulating a type-I hypersensitivity reaction in atopic individuals....
was transferred unintentionally from the Brazil nut
Brazil Nut
The Brazil nut is a South American tree in the family Lecythidaceae, and also the name of the tree's commercially harvested edible seed.- Order :...
into genetically engineered soybeans, in a bid to improve soybean nutritional quality for animal feed use. This new protein increased the levels in the GM soybean of the natural essential amino acid
Amino acid
Amino acids are molecules containing an amine group, a carboxylic acid group and a side-chain that varies between different amino acids. The key elements of an amino acid are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen...
methionine
Methionine
Methionine is an α-amino acid with the chemical formula HO2CCHCH2CH2SCH3. This essential amino acid is classified as nonpolar. This amino-acid is coded by the codon AUG, also known as the initiation codon, since it indicates mRNA's coding region where translation into protein...
, which is commonly added to poultry feed. Investigation of the GM soybeans revealed that they produced immune reactions in people with Brazil nut allergies, since the methionine rich protein chosen by Pioneer Hi-Bred happened to be a major source of Brazil nut allergy. Although this soybean strain was not developed as a human food, Pioneer Hi-Bred discontinued further development of the GM soybean, due to the difficulty in ensuring that none of these soybeans entered the human food chain.
In November 2005 a pest-resistant field pea developed by the Australian CSIRO for use as a pasture crop was shown to cause an allergic reaction in mice. Work on this variety was immediately halted. The protein added to the pea did not cause the reaction in humans or mice in isolation, but when it was expressed in the pea, it exhibited a subtly different structure which may have caused the allergic reaction. The immunologist who tested the pea noted that crops need to be evaluated case-by-case, and a Greenpeace activist commented that to his knowledge, no countries required feeding studies for approval of genetically modified foods.
Plant scientist Maarten J Chrispeels has made these comments about this example:
These cases of products that failed safety testing can either be viewed as evidence that genetic modification can produce unexpected and dangerous changes in foods, or alternatively that the current tests are effective at identifying any safety problems before foods come on the market.
Genetic modification can also be used to remove allergens from foods, which may, for example, allow the production of soy products that would pose a smaller risk of food allergies than standard soybeans. A hypo-allergenic strain of soybean was tested in 2003 and shown to lack the major allergen that is found in the beans. A similar approach has been tried in ryegrass
Ryegrass
Ryegrass is a genus of nine species of tufted grasses in the Pooideae subfamily of the Poaceae family. Also called tares , these plants are native to Europe, Asia and northern Africa, but are...
, which produces pollen that is a major cause of hayfever: here a fertile GM grass was produced that lacked the main pollen allergen, demonstrating that the production of hypoallergenic grass is also possible.
Environmental risks and benefits
The large scale growth of GM plants may have both positive and negative effects on the environment. These may be both direct effects, on organisms that feed on or interact with the crops, or wider effects on food chains produced by increases or decreases in the numbers of other organisms. As an example of benefits, insect-resistant Bt-expressing crops will reduce the number of pest insects feeding on these plants, but as there are fewer pests, farmers do not have to apply as much insecticide, which in turn tends to increase the number of non-pest insects in these fields. A 2006 study of the global impact of GM crops, published by the UK consultancy PG Economics, concluded that globally, the technology reduced pesticide spraying by 286,000 tons in 2006, decreasing the environmental impact of herbicides and pesticides by 15%. By reducing the amount of ploughing needed, GM technology led to reductions of greenhouse gases from soil equivalent to removing 6.56 million cars from the roads. However, a 2009 study published by the Organic Center stated that the use of genetically engineered corn, soybean, and cotton increased the use of herbicides by 383 million pounds (191,500 tons), and pesticide use by 318.4 million pounds (159,200 tons). As an example of a concern about environmental risk, a lab at Cornell University published an article which caused worry in the US that Bt-corn pollen might affect the monarch butterflyMonarch butterfly
The Monarch butterfly is a milkweed butterfly , in the family Nymphalidae. It is perhaps the best known of all North American butterflies. Since the 19th century, it has been found in New Zealand, and in Australia since 1871 where it is called the Wanderer...
. However this concern was disproved by six comprehensive articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. Monarch populations increased, despite increased Bt corn probably due to reduced pesticide use. Other possible effects might come from the spread of genes from modified plants to unmodified relatives, which might produce species of weeds resistant to herbicides. In some areas of the US "superweeds" have evolved
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
naturally, these weeds are resistant to herbicides and have forced farmers to return to traditional crop management practices.
There has been controversy over the results of a farm-scale trial in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
comparing the impact of GM crops and conventional crops on farmland biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
. Some claimed that the results showed that GM crops had a significant negative impact on wildlife. They pointed out that the studies showed that using herbicide resistant GM crops allowed better weed control and that under such conditions there were fewer weeds and fewer weed seeds. This result was then extrapolated to suggest that GM crops would have significant impact on the wildlife that might rely on farm weeds. The President of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, the body that had carried out the trials, stated that "To generalize and declare ’all GM is bad’ or ’all GM is good’ for the environment as a result of these experiments is a gross over-simplification", arguing that although the trials showed that the combination of some GM crops with long-lasting herbicides were bad for biodiversity, using other GM crops without these herbicides increased biodiversity.
In July 2005 British scientists showed that transfer of a herbicide-resistance gene from GM oilseed rape to a wild cousin, charlock, and wild turnips was possible.
Many agricultural scientists and food policy
Food policy
Food policy is an area of public policy concerning the production, distribution, and consumption of food. The policy consists of setting goals for food production, processing, marketing, availability, access, utilization and consumption, and describes the processes for achieving these goals...
specialists view GM crops as an important element in sustainable food security and environmental management. This point of view is summarized in the ABIC Manifesto:
Other scientists, such as Dr. Charles Benbrook, argue that improvement of global food security is hardly being addressed by genetic research and that a lack of yield is often not caused by insufficient genetic resources.
Regarding the issues of intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
and patent law, an international report from the year 2000 states:
Issues with Bt maize
A well publicized claim associated with Bt cropsBacillus thuringiensis
Bacillus thuringiensis is a Gram-positive, soil-dwelling bacterium, commonly used as a biological pesticide; alternatively, the Cry toxin may be extracted and used as a pesticide. B...
(or transgenic maize
Transgenic maize
Genetically modified maize has been deliberately genetically modified to have agronomically desirable traits. Traits that have been engineered into corn include resistance to herbicides and resistance to insect pests, the latter being achieved by incorporation of a gene that codes for the...
) was the concern that pollen from Bt maize might kill the monarch butterfly
Monarch butterfly
The Monarch butterfly is a milkweed butterfly , in the family Nymphalidae. It is perhaps the best known of all North American butterflies. Since the 19th century, it has been found in New Zealand, and in Australia since 1871 where it is called the Wanderer...
. This report was puzzling because the pollen from most maize hybrids contains much lower levels of Bt than the rest of the plant and led to multiple follow-up studies. One possible issue revealed in these studies is the possibility that the initial study was flawed; based on the way the pollen was collected, in that they collected and fed non-toxic pollen that was mixed with anther walls that did contain Bt toxin. A collaborative research exercise was carried out over two years by several groups of scientists in the US and Canada, looking at the effects of Bt pollen in both the field and the laboratory. This resulted in a risk assessment
Risk assessment
Risk assessment is a step in a risk management procedure. Risk assessment is the determination of quantitative or qualitative value of risk related to a concrete situation and a recognized threat...
that concluded that any risk posed by the corn to butterfly populations under real-world conditions was negligible. The USDA has stated that the weight of the evidence is that Bt crops do not pose a risk to the monarch butterfly. An independent 2002 review of the scientific literature concluded that "the commercial large-scale cultivation of current Bt–maize hybrids did not pose a significant risk to the monarch population" and noted that despite large-scale planting of GM crops, the butterfly's population is increasing.
In 2007 Andreas Lang, Éva Lauber and Béla Darvas criticized these studies, arguing that there can be a great difference in the effects between the acute exposure tested for and chronic exposure. Moreover, they stated that the "worst case conditions" performed were not in fact worst case scenarios, as laboratory conditions with ample food supply and a favorable climate ensure healthy subjects. They instead believe that in the wild, low temperatures, rain and parasites and disease might exacerbate a Bt effect on butterfly larvae. Their own experiments suggested that some butterfly species were negatively affected by such chronic exposure. Jörg Romeis, who conducted the original studies, replied that if species of Butterfly are affected as Darvas claims that a "more comprehensive assessment will be needed and, depending on the degree and nature of concern, this may extend to field testing".
A 2001 report in Nature presented evidence that Bt maize was cross-breeding with unmodified maize in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, although the data in this paper was later described as originating from an artifact and Nature stated that "the evidence available is not sufficient to justify the publication of the original paper". A subsequent large-scale study, in 2005, failed to find any evidence of contamination in Oaxaca. However, other authors have stated that they also found evidence of cross-breeding between natural maize and transgenic maize
Transgenic maize
Genetically modified maize has been deliberately genetically modified to have agronomically desirable traits. Traits that have been engineered into corn include resistance to herbicides and resistance to insect pests, the latter being achieved by incorporation of a gene that codes for the...
.
There is also a risk that for example, transgenic maize
Transgenic maize
Genetically modified maize has been deliberately genetically modified to have agronomically desirable traits. Traits that have been engineered into corn include resistance to herbicides and resistance to insect pests, the latter being achieved by incorporation of a gene that codes for the...
will crossbreed
Crossbreed
A crossbreed or crossbred usually refers to an animal with purebred parents of two different breeds, varieties, or populations. Crossbreeding refers to the process of breeding such an animal, often with the intention to create offspring that share the traits of both parent lineages, or producing...
with wild grass variants, and that the Bt-gene will end up in a natural environment, retaining its toxicity. An event like this would have ecological implications. However, there is no evidence of crossbreeding between maize and wild grasses.
In 2009 it was reported that 82000 hectares (202,626.2 acre) of Bt corn in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
failed to produce seeds. Monsanto claimed average yield was reduced by 25% in those fields affected, it compensated the farmers concerned and the corn varieties were affected by a mistake made in the seed breeding process. Marian Mayet, an environmental activitist and director of the Africa Centre for Biosecurity in Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, called for a government investigation and asserted that the biotechnology was at fault, "You cannot make a 'mistake' with three different varieties of corn". In 2009 South African farmers planted 1900000 hectares (4,694,998.1 acre) of GM maize (73% of the total crop).
As of 2007, a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder
Colony Collapse Disorder
Colony collapse disorder is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, the term colony collapse disorder was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of...
(CCD) was noticed in bee
Honey bee
Honey bees are a subset of bees in the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis...
hives all over North America, and elsewhere. Although it is not certain if this is a new phenomenon, initial ideas on the possible causes ranged from poor nutrition, infections, parasites and pesticide use. More unusual speculations included radio waves from cellphone base stations, climate change, and the use of transgenic crops containing Bt. The Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium
Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium
The Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium , established in 1997, is a regional group focused on addressing the pest management crisis facing the beekeeping industry in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States...
published a report on 2007-03-27 that found no evidence that pollen from Bt crops is adversely affecting bees. Several researchers in the US have since attributed CCD to the spread of a new virus called Israeli acute paralysis virus, although other parasites have also been implicated.
Alfalfa
In 2006, a coalition of groups led by the Center for Food SafetyCenter for Food Safety
The Center for Food Safety is a U.S. non-profit organization, based in Washington, D.C., that also maintains an office in San Francisco, CA...
raised concerns about environmental impacts that they believe the United States Department of Agriculture
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...
(USDA) failed to address before approving planting of Roundup Ready alfalfa
Alfalfa
Alfalfa is a flowering plant in the pea family Fabaceae cultivated as an important forage crop in the US, Canada, Argentina, France, Australia, the Middle East, South Africa, and many other countries. It is known as lucerne in the UK, France, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, and known as...
. Organic growers were concerned that the GM alfalfa could cross-pollinate with their organic alfalfa, making their crops unsalable in countries that ban the growing of GM crops. In response, the California Northern District Court
United States District Court for the Northern District of California
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California is the federal United States district court whose jurisdiction comprises following counties of California: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San...
ruled that the United States Department of Agriculture
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...
(USDA) was in error when it approved planting. According to the presiding judge, Charles Breyer, the law required the USDA to first conduct a full environmental study, which had not been done. In June 2009, a divided three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Breyer's decision. Monsanto appealed to the US Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
and on 21 June 2010, in Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms
Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms
Monsanto Co. vs. Geertson Seed Farms is a U.S. Supreme Court case decided 7-1 in which several groups including Geertson Seed Farms filed suit and challenged the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service on their decision to completely deregulate Roundup Ready Alfalfa , a genetically...
, they issued its first ruling regarding GM crop. The impact of the US Supreme Court ruling was somewhat unclear, with both sides appearing to claim victory. While Monsanto claimed technical victory the planting of GM alfalfa was halted.
In January 2011, despite protests from organic groups, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
Tom Vilsack
Thomas James "Tom" Vilsack is an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and presently the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. He served as the 40th Governor of the state of Iowa. He was first elected in 1998 and re-elected to a second four-year term in 2002...
announced that the USDA had approved the unrestricted planting of genetically modified alfalfa. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack commented "After conducting a thorough and transparent examination of alfalfa ... APHIS [Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service] has determined that Roundup Ready alfalfa is as safe as traditionally bred alfalfa." About 20 million acres (8 million hectares) of alfalfa were grown in the US, the fourth-biggest crop by acreage, of which about 1% were organic. Some biotechnology officials forecast that half of the US alfalfa acreage could eventually be planted with GM alfalfa.
Christine Bushway, CEO of the Organic Trade Association
Organic Trade Association
The Organic Trade Association is a membership-based business association that focuses on the organic business community in North America. OTA's mission is to promote ethical consumerism, promoting and protecting the growth of organic trade to benefit the environment, farmers, the public and the...
said "A lot of people are shell shocked. While we feel Secretary Vilsack worked on this issue, which is progress, this decision puts our organic farmers at risk." The Organic Trade Association issued a press release in 2011 saying that the USDA recognized the impact that cross contamination could have on organic alfalfa and urged them to place restrictions to minimise any such contamination. Following the decision, organic farming groups, organic food outlets, and activists responded by publishing an open letter
Open letter
An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally....
saying that planting the "alfalfa without any restrictions flies in the face of the interests of conventional and organic farmers, preservation of the environment, and consumer choice." Commenting on the ruling, in a Joint Statement U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy
Patrick Leahy
Patrick Joseph Leahy is the senior United States Senator from Vermont and member of the Democratic Party. He is the first and only elected Democratic United States Senator in Vermont's history. He is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy is the second most senior U.S. Senator,...
and Representative Peter DeFazio
Peter DeFazio
Peter Anthony DeFazio is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1987. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes Eugene, Springfield, Roseburg and part of Corvallis. As Oregon's most senior member of Congress, he is the dean of Oregon's House of Representatives delegation...
said the USDA had the "opportunity to address the concerns of all farmers", but instead "surrender[ed] to business as usual for the biotech industry." The Center for Food Safety
Center for Food Safety
The Center for Food Safety is a U.S. non-profit organization, based in Washington, D.C., that also maintains an office in San Francisco, CA...
said they will be suing on the decision.
Sugar beets
There is also a somewhat similar case involving sugar beets before the same California Northern District CourtUnited States District Court for the Northern District of California
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California is the federal United States district court whose jurisdiction comprises following counties of California: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San...
. This is a case involving Monsanto's breed of pesticide-resistant sugar beets. While Judge Jeffrey S. White (issuing his ruling in the spring of 2010) allowed the planting of GM sugar beets to continue, he also warned that this may be blocked in the future while an environmental review is taking place.
On 13 August 2010, Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered the halt to the planting of the genetically modified sugar beets in the US. He indicated that "the Agriculture Department had not adequately assessed the environmental consequences before approving them for commercial cultivation."
In 2010, before the ruling, 95% of the sugar beet grown in the US was GM. About half the sugar supply in the US came from sugar beet.
In February 2011, a federal appeals court for the Northern district of California in San Francisco overturned a previous ruling by Judge Jeffrey S. White to destroy juvenile GM sugar beets, ruling in favor of Monsanto, the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and four seed companies. The court concluded that " The Plaintiffs have failed to show a likelihood of irreparable injury. Biology, geography, field experience, and permit restrictions make irreparable injury unlikely."
In February 2011, The USDA allowed commercial planting of GM sugar beet in the US under closely controlled conditions. Michael Gregoire from APHIS said "After conducting an environmental assessment, accepting and reviewing public comments and conducting a plant pest risk assessment, APHIS has determined that the Roundup Ready sugar beet root crop, when grown under APHIS imposed conditions, can be partially deregulated without posing a plant pest risk or having a significant effect on the environment." GM sugar beet opponents such as Earthjustice
Earthjustice
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm based in the United States that specializes in cases protecting natural resources, safeguarding public health, and promoting clean energy...
said the USDA action circumvents court orders, and vowed they would fight the USDA in court.
Control of the market
Patent holder companies use their control of their own GMO to corner the market and gain profit. However, other companies often compete for the little market share available to GM foods worldwide. Detractors such as Greenpeace say that patent rights give corporations a dangerous amount of control over their product while corporations claim that they need product control in order to prevent seed piracy, fulfill financial obligations to shareholders and invest in further GM development. Governments have also sought to protect their commercial interests through punitive measures against countries resisting GM foods on ethical or scientific grounds: after moves in France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety, the US embassy recommended that 'we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU'.Pusztai affair
The Pusztai affair is a controversy that began in 1998 after Arpad PusztaiÁrpád Pusztai
Árpád Pusztai is a Hungarian-born biochemist and nutritionist who spent 36 years at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland. He is a world expert on plant lectins, authoring 270 papers and three books on the subject...
, an expert on plant lectins, went public with research he was conducting with genetically modified potatoes. In a short interview in 1998 he reported that rats fed potatoes engineered to express lectin
Lectin
Lectins are sugar-binding proteins that are highly specific for their sugar moieties. They play a role in biological recognition phenomena involving cells and proteins. For example, some viruses use lectins to attach themselves to the cells of the host organism during infection...
, a natural insecticide in snowdrop
Snowdrop
Galanthus is a small genus of about 20 species of bulbous herbaceous plants in the Amaryllis family, subfamily Amaryllidoideae...
plants, had stunted growth and a repressed immune system. Confusion arose as to what gene had been inserted into the potato and Pusztai was suspended by the Rowett Institute's director, Philip James. A media frenzy resulted, Pusztai's contract was not renewed and he and his wife were banned from speaking publicly.
In October 1998 the Rowett Institute published an audit criticizing Pusztai's results, which, along with Pusztai's raw data, was sent to six anonymous reviewers who criticized Pusztai's results. Pusztai responded that the raw data was "never intended for publication under intense scrutiny". Pusztai sent the audit report and his rebuttal to scientists who requested it, and in February 1999, twenty-one European and American scientists released a memo supporting Pusztai. Stanley Ewen, who worked with Pusztai, conducted a followup study supporting Pusztai's work and presented the work to a lectin meeting in Sweden.
In October 1999 Pusztai's research was published in the journal The Lancet
The Lancet
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...
. Because of the controversial nature of his research the data in this paper, co-authored by Stanley Ewen, was seen by a total of six reviewers when presented for peer review; five of these reviewers judged the work acceptable, although one of the five "deemed the study flawed but favored publication to avoid suspicions of a conspiracy against Pusztai and to give colleagues a chance to see the data for themselves". The paper did not mention stunted growth or immunity issues, but reported that rats fed on potatoes genetically modified with the snowdrop lectin had "thickening in the mucosal lining of their colon and their jejunum" when compared with rats fed on non modified potatoes. Three Dutch scientists criticized the study on the grounds that the unmodified potatoes were not a fair control diet, and that any rats fed only on potatoes will suffer from a protein deficiency; Pusztai responded to these criticisms by stating that the protein and energy were comparable, and that "a sample size of six is perfectly normal in studies like this".
Bioequivalence study of a corn cultivar
A controversy arose around biotech company Monsanto's data on a 90-Day Rat Feeding Study on the MON863 strain of GM corn. In May 2005, critics of GM foods pointed to differences in kidney size and blood composition found in this study, suggesting that the observed differences raises questions about the regulatory concept of substantial equivalenceSubstantial equivalence
Substantial equivalence is a concept, developed by OECD in 1991, that maintains that a novel food should be considered the same as and as safe as a conventional food if it demonstrates the same characteristics and composition as the conventional food. Substantial equivalence is important from a...
. Anti-GM campaigner Jeffrey M. Smith, writing in Biophile Magazine, quoting comments from Pusztai and Seralini,has stated that nutritional studies typically use young, fast-growing animals with starting weights not varying by more than 2% from the average whereas Monsanto's research design used a mix of young and old animals with starting weights ranging from 198.4 to 259.8 grams. Seralini and two other authors published a study of these data, funded by Greenpeace, in 2007 making similar points.
The raising of this issue prompted the European Food Safety Authority
European Food Safety Authority
The European Food Safety Authority is an agency of the European Union that provides independent scientific advice and communication on existing and emerging risks associated with the food chain, created by European Regulation 178/2002....
(EFSA) to reexamine the safety data on this strain of corn. The EFSA concluded that the observed small numerical decrease in rat kidney weights were not biologically meaningful, and the weights were well within the normal range of kidney weights for control animals. There were no corresponding microscopic findings in the relevant organ systems, and they stated that all blood chemistry and organ weight values fell within the "normal range of historical control values" for rats. In addition the EFSA review stated that the statistical methods used by Séralini et al. in the analysis of the data were incorrect. The European Commission has approved the ΜΟΝ863 corn for animal and human consumption. Food Standards Australia New Zealand
Food Standards Australia New Zealand
Food Standards Australia New Zealand is the governmental body responsible for developing food standards for Australia and New Zealand .FSANZ develops food standards after consulting with other government agencies and stakeholders...
reviewed the 2007 Seralini et al. study and concluded that "...all of the statistical differences between rats fed MON 863 corn and control rats are attributable to normal biological variation."
Greenpeace stated in a 2007 press release that Séralini et al. had completed a similar analysis of the NK603 strain of corn and came to similar conclusions as they did in their previous study. Séralini et al. included this in a re-analysis of three existing rat feeding studies published in 2009.
The European Food Safety Authority reviewed the 2009 Seralini et al. paper and concluded that the author's claims were not supported by the data in their paper. They noted that many of their fundamental statistical criticisms of the 2007 paper also applied to the 2009 paper. There was no new information that would change the EFSA's conclusions that the three GM maize types were safe for human, animal health and the environment The French High Council of Biotechnologies Scientific Committee (HCB) also reviewed the 2009 study and concluded that it "..presents no admissible scientific element likely to ascribe any haematological, hepatic or renal toxicity to the three re-analysed GMOs." The HCB also questioned the author's independence. Food Standards Australia New Zealand concluded that the results from the 2009 Séralini et al. study were due to chance alone.
Contamination issues
In the 1990s genetically modified FlaxFlax
Flax is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent...
tolerant to herbicide residues in soil was developed by the Crop Development Centre (CDC) at the University of Saskatchewan
University of Saskatchewan
The University of Saskatchewan is a Canadian public research university, founded in 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. An "Act to establish and incorporate a University for the Province of Saskatchewan" was passed by the...
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Named Flax variety FP967, but commonly called CDC Triffid
Triffid
The triffid is a tall, mobile, carnivorous, prolific and highly venomous fictional plant species—the titular antagonist in John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids and Simon Clark's 2001 sequel The Night of the Triffids....
, research was controversially halted following protests from Canadian farmers who stood to lose up to 70% of their traditional export markets if it was introduced. GM Flax was deregistered, its sale was criminalized and in 2001 all modified seeds were destroyed. No modified crops had been planted and no seed had been sold but GM industry proponent Alan McHughen controversially passed out sample packets of seeds at presentations. In early September 2009, Flax imported into Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
was found to be contaminated with CDC Triffid causing the price of Canadian Flax to fall 32 percent. By mid November 35 countries reported contamination of imported Canadian Flax which has now been banned by the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
. Canadian farmers are expected to be responsible for the cost of the cleanup and testing of future crops.
In 2000, Aventis
Aventis
Aventis was a pharmaceutical and lab assay testing company. It was formed in 1999 when Rhône-Poulenc S.A. merged with Hoechst AG. The merged company was based in Strasbourg, France. With its headquarters in Strasbourg, Aventis was the product of the first transnational merger to combine large...
StarLink corn, which had been approved only as animal feed due to concerns about possible allergic reactions in humans, was found contaminating corn products in U.S. supermarkets. An episode involving Taco Bell
Taco Bell
Taco Bell is an American chain of fast-food restaurants based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc., which serves American-adapted Mexican food. Taco Bell serves tacos, burritos, quesadillas, nachos, other specialty items, and a variety of "Value Menu" items...
taco
Taco
A taco is a traditional Mexican dish composed of a corn or wheat tortilla folded or rolled around a filling. A taco can be made with a variety of fillings, including beef, chicken, seafood, vegetables and cheese, allowing for great versatility and variety...
shells was particularly well publicized which resulted in sales of StarLink seed being discontinued. The registration for the Starlink varieties was voluntarily withdrawn by Aventis in October 2000. Aid sent by the UN and the US to Central African nations was also found to be contaminated with StarLink corn and the aid was rejected. The US corn supply has been monitored for Starlink Bt proteins since 2001 and no positive samples have been found since 2004.
GeneWatch UK and Greepeace International set up the GM Contamination Register in 2005.
Public perception
Research by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology has shown that in 2005 Americans' knowledge of genetically modified foods and animals continues to remain low, and their opinions reflect that they are particularly uncomfortable with animal cloning. In one instance of consumer confusion, DNA Plant TechnologyDNA Plant Technology
DNA Plant Technology was an early pioneer in applying transgenic biotechnology to problems in agriculture. The company was founded in Cinnamonson, New Jersey. In 1994, their headquarters moved to Oakland, California...
's Fish tomato
Fish tomato
Informally referred to as the "fish tomato", DNA Plant Technology's transgenic tomato is genetically engineered with a gene from the winter flounder....
transgenic organism was conflated with Calgene's Flavr Savr transgenic food product. The Pew survey also showed that despite continuing concerns about GM foods, American consumers do not support banning new uses of the technology, but rather seek an active role from regulators to ensure that new products are safe.
Only 2% of Britons were said to be "happy to eat GM foods", and more than half of Britons were against GM foods being available to the public, according to a 2003 study. However a 2009 review article of European consumer polls concluded that opposition to GMOs in Europe has been gradually decreasing. Approximately half of European consumers accepted gene technology, particularly when benefits for consumers and for the environment could be linked to GMO products. 80 % of respondents did not cite the application of GMOs in agriculture as a significant environmental problem. Many consumers seem unafraid of health risks from GMO products and most European consumers did not actively avoid GMO products while shopping.
In Australia, GM foods that have novel DNA, novel protein, altered characteristics or has to be cooked or prepared in a different way compared to the conventional food have, since December 2001, had to be identified on food labels. However, multiple surveys have shown that while 45% of the public will accept GM foods, some 93% demand all genetically modified foods be labelled as such. A 2007 survey by the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand found that 27% of Australians looked at the label to see if it contained GM material when purchasing a grocery product for the first time. Labelling legislation has been introduced and rejected several times since 1996 on the grounds of "restraint of trade" due to the cost of labelling. The controversy erupted again in 2009 when Graincorp, the nations largest grain handler, announced it would mix GM Canola with its unmodified grain. Traditional growers, who largely rely on GM-free markets, had been told they would need to pay to have their produce certified GM free. Graincorp reversed its decision the same year. Critics such as Greenpeace and the Gene Ethics Network have renewed calls for more labelling.
Opponents of genetically modified food often refer to it as "Frankenfood", after Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
's character Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
and the monster
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The creature is often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name...
he creates, in her novel of the same name. The term was coined in 1992 by Paul Lewis
Paul Lewis (professor)
Paul Lewis is professor of English in Boston College, Massachusetts, USA, specializing in humor, American literature and Gothic fiction. He has an A.B...
, an English professor at Boston College
Boston College
Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...
who used the word in a letter he wrote to the New York Times in response to the decision of the US Food and Drug Administration to allow companies to market genetically modified food. The term "Frankenfood" has become a battle cry of the European side in the US-EU agricultural trade war.
Critics have protested in regards to the appointment of pro GM lobbyists to senior positions in the FDA. Michael R. Taylor
Michael R. Taylor
Michael R. Taylor is the Deputy Commissioner for Foods, at the United States Food and Drug Administration .He received a B.A. degree in political science from Davidson College and a law degree from the University of Virginia...
has been appointed as a senior adviser to the FDA on food safety and Dennis Wolff is expected to take up the position of Under-Secretary of the newly created Agriculture for Food Safety. Taylor is a former Monsanto lobbyist credited as being responsible for the implementation of "substantial equivalence" in place of food safety studies and for his advocacy that resulted in the Delaney clause
Delaney clause
The Delaney Clause is a 1958 amendment to the Food, Drugs, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, named after Congressman James Delaney of New York.It said:...
that prohibited the inclusion of "any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man.. or animals" in processed foods being amended in 1996 to allow the inclusion of pesticides in GMOs. Wolff is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture who successfully lobbied to ban organic farmers from labeling their products as being GM free and was a proponent of the "ACRE" initiative which gave the Pennsylvania state attorney general’s office the authority to sue municipalities that banned GMOs. Several anti-GMO organisations have organised petitions demanding Taylor's resignation and opposing Wolff's appointment and also conducted letter writing campaigns protesting the conflict of interest.
Religious issues
As of yet, no GM foods have been designated as unacceptable by religious authorities.See also
- International trade of genetically modified foodsInternational trade of genetically modified foodsThe European Union and the United States have strong disagreements over the EU's regulation of genetically modified food. The US claims these regulations violate free trade agreements, the EU counter-position is that free trade is not truly free without informed consent.In Europe, a series of...
- Environmental issues with agricultureEnvironmental issues with agricultureThe environmental impact of agriculture varies based on the wide variety of agricultural practices employed around the world.-Climate change:Climate change and agriculture are interrelated processes, both of which take place on a global scale...
- Ice-minus bacteriaIce-minus bacteriaIce-minus bacteria is a common name given to a variant of the common bacterium Pseudomonas syringae . This strain of P. syringae lacks the ability to produce a certain surface protein, usually found on wild-type P. syringae...
- CorngateCorngate"Corngate" was a political scandal which took place in New Zealand in 2002 and involved the suspected release of genetically modified corn seed in 2000. The possibility of the presence of a small percentage of GE corn in a seed shipment from the U.S. was raised publicly by Nicky Hager in his book...
- Arpad PusztaiÁrpád PusztaiÁrpád Pusztai is a Hungarian-born biochemist and nutritionist who spent 36 years at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland. He is a world expert on plant lectins, authoring 270 papers and three books on the subject...
- NayakrishiNayakrishiThe New Agriculture Movement is an agricultural movement in Bangladesh that opposes the use of Western pesticides and genetically altered seeds....
External links
OpponentsAdvocates
Governmental
- German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
- US Biotechnology Regulators
- UK Food Standards Agency
- European Food Safety Authority
- Government of Canada BioPortal
Medical and scientific