Kitchen Garden Forum

This is an extract from the latest Agbioview and it seem that GM is becoming less heinous as the months go by. As you will note the anti-GM doctors in Ireland have had their motion defeated for the second time.
I feel that it is time for the EU to reconsider their stance over GM. It is time that the people of Europe started listening to the Scientists instead of rooftop rhetoric which has been spread by the Organic Organizations for the last few years.
JB.
PS Ihave amended the second article to bring out the headings.

Irish Medical Association Rejects Anti-GM Motion

- Irish Medical Association, AGM meeting, April 12, 2007, http://www.imo.ie/agm_motions.php?year=16&catid=141

[motion no.] 28 - Environmental Issues

Date 12 Apr 2007

Proposer Dr Elizabeth Cullen

Seconder Dr Philip Michael

Description In the light of the growing evidence of adverse effects on laboratory animals of genetically engineered food, this AGM requests that a moratorium be placed on the sale and growing of genetically engineered crops in Ireland, and the uncontained release of live genetically engineered organisms until the impacts on human health, and on the biosphere, upon which we all depend, have been fully clarified.

Status Defeated

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Irish Medical Organisation refuses to call for GM food ban

- Shane Morris, GMOIreland, April 15, 2007, http://gmoireland.blogspot.com/

Silence can often tell you a lot. A deafening silence has beset the anti-genetically modified (GM) food lobby in Ireland. A silence that stems from the defeat of a motion at the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) AGM calling for a moratorium on the sale and growing of genetically engineered crops in Ireland. No where do we find journalists reporting that the professional body representing doctors in Ireland don't feel there is an issue with the safety of GM food. Also, those who have been trying to tell us that GM foods are unsafe are now mute on the IMO's position.

What deepens the silence is that this is the second time such a motion has been defeated in recent years as in 2001 a similar motion was defeated by the IMO medics. What makes this year's defeat yet more damning is that it was the only motion of the 70 IMO general motions that was flatly defended and no amended motion agreed upon.

Blanket statements on food safety, such that all GM food is bad or that all organic food is good, have no merit. Such approaches are fundamentally flawed as there is no perfect food production system; all have risks and benefits depending on the product grown. The fact that three deaths and over 200 illnesses have been linked to organic production of spinach in the US last autumn is testament to the flaws in such an approach ....can one imagine what the Greens would say if it had been GM food!

Maybe what is required now in Ireland on the debate regarding the safety of GM food can be summed up by the theme of this year's IMO AGM.....Realism, Not Rhetoric.

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Casting a cold eye on organics

- Con O'Rourke,* Irish Farmers Journal, April 14, 2007, http://www.farmersjournal.ie/2007/0414/ ... ture.shtml

Organic foods are treated in the 'lifestyle' features of the media with a respect bordering on reverence. Interest in such foods is driven by concerns about food safety and the environment, but perhaps also as a fashion statement by the chattering classes. Maybe it's time to 'cast a cold (scientific) eye' over the whole organic sector to see how its various claims and assumptions stand up. What is 'organic'?

Organic foods are those grown without the aid of manufactured fertilizers and pesticides. Unfortunately, the wholesome image of 'organic' has also been adopted by advertisers to sell many other products such as cosmetics and 'organic pure water' (go figure!). 'Organic' is becoming a debased clichÅ, rather like 'executive', 'designer' and 'de-tox' before it.

The nutrition of green (photosynthetic) plants is an entirely inorganic process. Plants use sunlight to synthesise living tissue from the simple raw materials carbon dioxide, water and a range of minerals. The term 'organically-grown' is a misnomer, since the plant roots can absorb soil nutrients only in their simplest (inorganic) form, e.g. as ions of the major nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK). 'Organic' should be replaced with a less ambiguous term, possibly adapted from the German or French equivalents of 'biologisch'/'Îkologisch' or 'bio'.

Since crops can absorb the identical NPK ions from the soil solution, from the breakdown of organic matter (both naturally-occurring and applied) or from commercial fertilizers, nutrient analyses cannot prove that a particular food has been 'organically-grown'. Thus the approval and inspection procedures for the provenance of organic produce are based more on trust than on science. Nutrition /taste

Organic foods are claimed to be more nutritious and to taste better, with Darina Allen of Ballymaloe going so far as to declare that they are essential for health. However, such claims would have to satisfy all of the following criteria: 1) Randomised, replicated field trials of the same variety, grown both organically and conventionally under otherwise identical conditions: 2) Laboratory analyses of the produce for all major nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fibre, minerals, vitamins, etc.): 3) Double-blind taste-panel evaluation (i.e. where neither the tasters nor the presenters know the origin of particular samples): and 4) Statistical analysis of the results and publication in peer-reviewed scientific or medical journals. Few organic claims satisfy even one of the above criteria.

The Soil Association (U.K.) had claimed for over 50 years that organic produce was more nutritious and tasted better. However, when recently challenged by the UK Advertising Standards Authority they were unable to provide creditable supporting evidence and had to cease making such claims. Pesticide residues

Analyses by the Department of Agriculture show that Irish staple foods (mainly dairy/meat products and vegetables) contain either no or negligible amounts of pesticides. The prescribed limits for pesticides (parts per million or per billion) are occasionally exceeded, mainly in imported tropical products, but such limits are set at about 1/100th or less of what might be considered harmful. Sir John Krebs (UK Food Standards Agency) has remarked that 'A single cup of coffee contains natural carcinogens equal to at least a year's worth of carcinogenic pesticides in the diet'.
The environment

Organic farming is promoted as being environmentally friendly. This is based mainly on using less (or no) pesticides and organic manures/composts instead of commercial fertilizers. In conventional farming, however, pesticides are increasingly restricted to more environmentally-friendly and biodegradable products. The rates and times of fertilizer application are also limited by the EU Nitrates Directive.

Dairying and beef dominate Irish farming. Both are mainly grass-based - a major marketing advantage for our 'green and clean' image. No pesticides are applied to Irish grassland, and strictly-supervised fertilizer inputs are confined mainly to nitrogen for spring growth and sufficient phosphorus and potassium to replace what is removed by the grass. This is as close as it gets to 'organic'.
Organic Island

The organic sector regularly calls for Ireland to become an 'organic island'. This might work if we had a completely self-contained agriculture, with no imports or exports, and complete recycling of all crop, animal and human wastes and remains. But we export more than 80% of our output, and with it some of the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium used in its production. Although some nitrogenous losses can be replaced by growing N-fixing leguminous crops, we have scant native deposits of phosphorus and potassium. Without imported fertilizers, yields would gradually decline to 19th-century levels, with serious losses of exports and jobs. A foretaste of this scenario occurred in Ireland during World War II; in the absence of imported fertilizers, phosphorus deficiency became widespread in both crops and animals.
GMOs

Genetically-modified (GM) crops have been around since the 1970s and now total 100 million hectares annually worldwide (about 15 times the entire farmed area of Ireland). They have been consumed regularly by some hundreds of millions of people and have been found to be no less safe than conventional foods. Predictions of environmental and ecological catastrophe have failed to materialise. Consumer resistance to GM foods in Europe is sustained by the tabloid press ('Frankenstein foods'), environmentalists, organic growers and by the EU restricting GM food and animal-feed imports (usually on dubious health and environmental grounds).

BASF is planning field trials of GM blight-resistant potatoes in Ireland. At present, organic potato growers have a special dispensation to spray against blight. However, their rules restrict them to traditional (19th-century) copper-based sprays.

Copper is a persistent and poisonous heavy metal, with long-term environmental effects, and is soon to be banned by the EU. GM potatoes would require no spraying and will not 'contaminate' adjacent conventional (and particularly organic) crops since, as every gardener knows, potatoes are propagated asexually by vegetative tubers rather than by pollination. It is ironic that current organic rules ban a GM variety which has such obvious benefits for the sector.
World population

Organic yields are significantly lower than for conventional crops and they are currently incapable of feeding the world's six billion people. To do so would require about a doubling of the area under cultivation, with consequent destruction of natural habitats. An organic world could, however, be achieved by eliminating half the population - but which half, and who decides?
Cost

Due to lower yields and higher labour inputs, organic foods cost up to 50% more. This may be of little concern to the virtuous suburban housewife on her weekly 50-km round-trip in an SUV to buy a few kilos of organic vegetables in a farmers' market. There is a certain paradox in that growth of the organic sector has coincided with increasingly strict regulations to ensure that our food is safe and that the environment is protected. Thus a consumer's decision to 'go organic' may be due more to a general lifestyle choice (and increased affluence) than to specific health or environmental threats.

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* Dr Con O'Rourke is a plant scientist.

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That is a very interesting article Alan. I suspect that when it comes to the GM argument, a lot of public reaction against it (and I include myself in this group) is that I don't really want my food "mucked about with" even if the results may be beneficial in terms of being disease resistant, etc. It is probably a valid argument that if I ate a loaf made from genetically modified wheat, or some cabbages which were genetically grown I wouldn't know the difference. I just feel uneasy, not knowing the long term consequences.
For the same reason, I don't like drinking tap water because I don't like the idea of everybodys' medication, including large doses of HRT, cancer drugs, etc. being peed down the drain, into the water system and being recirculated. Here again, I'm not sure that we all understand the longer term consequences of unwittingly taking all this stuff back into our bodies.

Johnboy

Let's just hope that the EU has more far-sighted sense than the Irish doctors.

Alan

Primrose - the long article's not from me.

Alan

Hi Primrose,
Apart from imagining Alans expression when you laid the article at his door rather than mine I have very little to add.
What must be considered is that the media saw that to condemn GM as a way to gather more attention.
The Daily Mail have repeatedly given a total pack of lies on GM. eg, Chicken Without Feathers. For longer than a week they went on about GM and the chicken was the latest of the GM scandals. I actually heard the hybridizer of that chicken explain on the farming report that GM was not involved but the chicken is naturally occurring in California and they had hybridized it to increase it's size.
There are many other instances.
An awful lot of the argument put up by the Organic Organizations is and always will be absolute nonsense.
I am sure that when next the EU look at GM it will be viewed in a different light.
JB.

Here's a frightening possibility:

Modified rape crosses with wild plant to create tough pesticide-resistant strain

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Monday July 25, 2005
The Guardian


Modified genes from crops in a GM crop trial have transferred into local wild plants, creating a form of herbicide-resistant "superweed", the Guardian can reveal.
The cross-fertilisation between GM oilseed rape, a brassica, and a distantly related plant, charlock, had been discounted as virtually impossible by scientists with the environment department. It was found during a follow up to the government's three-year trials of GM crops which ended two years ago.

The new form of charlock was growing among many others in a field which had been used to grow GM rape. When scientists treated it with lethal herbicide it showed no ill-effects.

Unlike the results of the original trials, which were the subject of large-scale press briefings from scientists, the discovery of hybrid plants that could cause a serious problem to farmers has not been announced.
The scientists also collected seeds from other weeds in the oilseed rape field and grew them in the laboratory. They found that two - both wild turnips - were herbicide resistant.

The five scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the government research station at Winfrith in Dorset, placed their findings on the department's website last week.

A reviewer of the paper has appended to its front page: "The frequency of such an event [the cross-fertilisation of charlock] in the field is likely to be very low, as highlighted by the fact it has never been detected in numerous previous assessments."

However, he adds: "This unusual occurrence merits further study in order to adequately assess any potential risk of gene transfer."

Brian Johnson, an ecological geneticist and member of the government's specialist scientific group which assessed the farm trials, has no doubt of the significance. "You only need one event in several million. As soon as it has taken place the new plant has a huge selective advantage. That plant will multiply rapidly."

Dr Johnson, who is head of the biotechnology advisory unit and head of the land management technologies group at English Nature, the government nature advisers, said: "Unlike the researchers I am not surprised by this. If you apply herbicide to plants which is lethal, eventually a resistant survivor will turn up."

The glufosinate-ammonium herbicide used in this case put "huge selective pressure likely to cause rapid evolution of resistance".

To assess the potential of herbicide-resistant weeds as a danger to crops, a French researcher placed a single triazine-resistant weed, known as fat hen, in maize fields where atrazine was being used to control weeds. After four years the plants had multiplied to an average of 103,000 plants, Dr Johnson said.

What is not clear in the English case is whether the charlock was fertile. Scientists collected eight seeds from the plant but they failed to germinate them and concluded the plant was "not viable".

But Dr Johnson points out that the plant was very large and produced many flowers.

He said: "There is every reason to suppose that the GM trait could be in the plant's pollen and thus be carried to other charlock in the neighbourhood, spreading the GM genes in that way. This is after all how the cross-fertilisation between the rape and charlock must have occurred in the first place."

Since charlock seeds can remain in the soil for 20 to 30 years before they germinate, once GM plants have produced seeds it would be almost impossible to eliminate them.

Although the government has never conceded that gene transfer was a problem, it was fear of this that led the French and Greek governments to seek to ban GM rape.

Emily Diamond, a Friends of the Earth GM researcher, said: "I was shocked when I saw this paper. This is what we were reassured could not happen - and yet now it has happened the finding has been hidden away. This is exactly what the French and Greeks were afraid of when they opposed the introduction of GM rape."

The findings will now have to be assessed by the government's Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (Acre). The question is whether it is safe to release GM crops into the UK environment when there are wild relatives that might become superweeds and pose a serious threat to farm productivity. This has already occurred in Canada.

The discovery that herbicide-resistant genes have transferred to farm weeds from GM crops is the second blow to the hopes of bio-tech companies to introduce their crops into Britain. Following farm scale trials there was already scientific evidence that herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape and GM sugar beet were bad for biodiversity because the herbicide used to kill the weeds around the crops wiped out more wildlife than with conventionally grown crops. Now this new research, a follow-up on the original trials, shows that a second undesirable potential result is a race of superweeds.

The findings mirror the Canadian experience with GM crops, which has seen farmers and the environment plagued with severe problems.

Farmers the world over are always troubled by what they call "volunteers" - crop plants which grow from seeds spilled from the previous harvest, of which oilseed rape is probably the greatest offender, Anyone familiar with the British countryside, or even the verges of motorways, will recognise thousands of oilseed rape plants growing uninvited amid crops of wheat or barley, and in great swaths by the roadside where the "small greasy ballbearings" of seeds have spilled from lorries.

Farmers in Canada soon found that these volunteers were resistant to at least one herbicide, and became impossible to kill with two or three applications of different weedkillers after a succession of various GM crops were grown.

The new plants were dubbed superweeds because they proved resistant to three herbicides while the crops they were growing among had been genetically engineered to be resistant to only one.

To stop their farm crops being overwhelmed with superweeds, farmers had to resort to using older, much stronger varieties of "dirty" herbicide long since outlawed as seriously damaging to biodiversity.

Q&A: What the discovery means for UK farmers

What's the GM situation in the UK?

No GM crops are currently grown commercially in the UK. Companies who wish to introduce them face a series of licensing hurdles in Britain and Europe and interest has waned in recent years amid public opposition.

Other firms have dropped applications in the wake of the government field scale trials that showed growing two GM varieties - oilseed rape and sugar beet - was bad for biodiversity.

The EU has approved several GM varieties and the UK government insists that applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Where are GM crops grown?

Extensively in the wide open spaces of the US, Canada and Argentina. In Europe, Portugal, France and Germany have all dabbled with GM insect-resistant maize. Spain plants about 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of it each year for animal feed.

What is a superweed?

Many GM crop varieties are given genes that allow them to resist a specific herbicide, which farmers can then apply to kill the weeds while allowing the GM crop to thrive.

Environmental campaigners have long feared that if pollen from the GM crop fertilised a related weed, it could transfer the resistance and create a superweed. This "gene transfer" is what appears to have happened at the field scale trial site. It raises the prospect of farmers who grow some GM crops being forced to use stronger herbicides on their fields to deal with the upstart weeds.

Is it a big problem?

Not yet. Farmers in the UK do not grow GM crops commercially. If they did, then the scale of possible superweed contamination depends on two things: whether the hybrid superweed can reproduce (many hybrids are sterile) and, if it could, how well its offspring could compete with other plants. Herbicide-resistant weeds could potentially grow very well in agricultural fields where the relevant herbicide is applied. Most experts say superweeds would be unlikely to sweep across the UK countryside as, without the herbicide being used to kill their competitors, their GM status offers no advantage.

Some GM crops, such as maize, have no wild relatives in the UK, making gene transfer and the creation of a superweed from them impossible.

Is it a surprise?

On one level no, gene flow and hybridisation are as old as plants themselves. Short of creating sterile male plants, it's simply impossible to stop crops releasing pollen to fertilise related neighbours. But government scientists had thought that GM oilseed rape and charlock were too distantly related for it to occur.

The dangers of hybridisation where it does happen are well documented - experts from the Dorset centre behind the latest research published a high-profile paper in 2003 in the US journal Science showing widespread gene flow from non-GM oilseed rape to wild flowers.

Have superweeds surfaced elsewhere?

Farmers in Canada and Argentina growing GM soya beans have large problems with herbicide-resistant weeds, though these have arisen through natural selection and not gene flow through hybridisation. Experiments in Germany have shown sugar beets genetically modified to resist one herbicide accidentally acquired the genes to resist another - so called "gene stacking", which has also been observed in oilseed rape grown in Canada.

· David Adam

Take heart Johnboy, many advances in science have been fiercely resisted by the ‘luddite’ mentality, but in time science will prevail over the deceptive claims and assertions from the shadowy organic entourage.

Barney

so if "luddite" refers to those of us sceptical of the claims of tunnel visioned "scientists" and their corporate paymasters, what term should we use for those who believe all the corporate outpourings and dismiss any sceptisism/counter argument out of hand?

Organic I guess

Barney

Never thought you'd be converted.

Alan

Hi Alan,
Released from Hospital this morning and typing one handed now for about a month.
Who is David Adam?
Do you know that the long screed that you have posted bears any truth?
We have heard about "super Weeds" but when you try to check up where and when you hit all manner of problem.
I have heard several reports by Canadian farmers and they have always shrugged and said that we have heard of them but we farm OSR and are always attacked by the 'alternatives' who spout about them but can give no details!
I do not want this thread to end up as a mud slinging session. I appreciate that Organics will eventually disappear commercially but home gardeners will be forever organic.
I feel that once again very many organic theories are being represented as facts and then that fact is used as part of a calculation which means that the product of any equation using a false premise is going to be totally wrong but again is represented as fact. This is how GM has managed to be totally misrepresented.
I feel that Richards posting causes me to think that his stance is more an anti capitalist stance than an anti GM one.
Primrose complains that she doesn't want to drink water that has passed through another body several times before reaching her. I can understand her dislike but has nothing to do with GM.
We have global warming looming on our doorstep and feel that there is nothing in the armoury of those who are anti GM to combat it. World Population is rising rapidly and there will be many more million mouths to feed but organics will not be able to rise to the occasion but GM will be able to cope with it.
Organics is fine for the individual but commercially it uses too much land to feed less people. It is beyond the pockets of the normally paid person so therefore is quite elitist.
The SA are adamant that they can control everything but at least 75% on shop sold organic material is imported and not grown to the same standards as UK grown produce which I feel rather unfair on UK growers.
What I am advocating is that the EU look at GM in the clear light of day and dismiss all the bullshit that has been flung by the antibrigade.
JB.
You will sigh with relief when I say that this has taken me over an hour to type one handed and will not post again for about a week or so!!!

Johnboy

Glad to hear you are up and about again. I posted the "long screed" merely for consideration. David Adam is environment correspondent of the Guardian.

Alan

Here's a question - if large scale farming is so successful why is it that the Islands of Britain produce less food now than they did 40 years ago?

The areas of the world that will have the largest populations to feed are currently poor and large scale farming may not be the answer to produce the food needed - people won't have the money to buy it. If the land taken by cash crops destined for the west is returned to small scale farming - farmers in poorer countries need to use open pollinated seed without the need to buy chemical fertilisers and insecticides.

Is that not simple logistics?

cevenol jardin wrote:Here's a question - if large scale farming is so successful why is it that the Islands of Britain produce less food now than they did 40 years ago?
.....

EU, CAP, Set-Aside policy.

Also.

Economics, labour is cheaper than food miles and seasonality is ignored to get year-round.

Maybe this is a useful contribution to the debate

http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm

It is very long, but it's worth reading the abstract at the beginning.