Contamination and Bio-Pollution: The Criminality of the GM Biotech Industry
There
is currently a battle waging across the planet over genetically
modified (GM) crops. It seems like not a month goes by when a new report
is released on the health, environmental or productivity aspects of GM
organisms. The GM biotech industry tries to assure governments and the
public about the safety and efficacy of their products, while study
after study calls into question its claims.
The industry has succeeded in getting its GM foods onto the commercial market in the US
largely due to its political leverage within government and regulatory
authorities (1). However, Europe and elsewhere have so far not been the
pushovers that the industry and the US State Department, which actively
promotes the US GM biotech sector courtesy of the taxpayer (2), thought
they would. The sector continues to push at the doors of Europe and India but is meeting stiff resistance.
And
there is good reason for this resistance; one reason (among many) being
that the introduction of GM crops leads to an increase in the use of
the herbicide gyphosate (3).
This is of concern because gylphosate could be linked to a range of
health problems and diseases, including Parkinson’s, infertility and
cancers, according to a peer-reviewed report from 2013, published in the
scientific journal Entropy. The study concluded that residues of
glyphosate have been found in food, and these residues enhance the
damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the
environment and disrupt normal body functions and induce disease (4). Other evidence from Argentina
shows that as GM crops have become more prevalent, the use of gyphosate
has spiraled as have cancer rates and birth defects (5).
The
GM debate may ultimately not be decided by scientific debate or on the
pages of journals, however. The battle could be lost for those opposing
GM crops by default, or to be more specific, by the flagrant
contamination of our food supply – and our air and water as well.
Contamination by all means necessary
Don
Westfall, biotech industry consultant and vice-president of Promar
International some 13 years ago, was quoted by the Toronto Star on 9 January 2001 as saying that the
hope of the GM industry is that over time the market is so flooded with
GM organisms that there’s nothing you can do about it; you just sort of
surrender. However, Westfall did not go far enough. It is not just a
vague hope. It’s a deliberate strategy by the industry.
Genetically engineered wheat is not approved to be grown for commercial use in the US or
anywhere else in the world. Yet last year the US Department of
Agriculture (USDA) announced that unapproved GE wheat had been found
growing in an Oregon wheat
field. Since 1994, Monsanto has conducted 279 field trials of RoundUp
Ready wheat over more than 4,000 acres of land in 16 US
states (6). The USDA has admitted that Monsanto’s GMO experiments from
1998 to 2005 were held in open wheat fields. The genetically engineered
wheat escaped and found its way into commercial wheat fields in Oregon (and possibly 15 other states), causing self-replicating genetic pollution that now taints the entire US wheat industry.
Prior
to this, in 2006 the USDA granted marketing approval of
genetically-engineered Liberty Link 601 of Bayer CropScience. (GE) rice
variety following its illegal contamination of the food supply and rice
exports (7). The USDA effectively sanctioned an
‘approval-by-contamination’ policy.
In India, back
in 2005, biologist Pushpa Bhargava alleged that there were reports that
unapproved varieties of several genetically modified crops were being
sold to farmers. And Arun Shrivasatava wrote in 2008 that illegal
genetically modified okra had been planted in India and that poor
farmers had been offered lucrative deals to plant ‘special seed’ of all
sorts of vegetables (7). He asked: who knows at how many places illegal
genetically engineered rice have been planted? It’s a valid concern
given that the story of open air trials of GM crops in India
is a story of blatant violations of biosafety norms, hasty approvals, a
lack of monitoring abilities, general apathy towards the hazards of
contamination and a lack of institutional oversight mechanisms (8). Concerns have also been expressed in Europe over the contamination of basmati rice exported by India (9).
Without doubt, though, the
most alarming findings associated with contamination pertaining to GM
crops come from new research. It shows that we do not have to eat GM
food in order to be adversely affected by it. The findings have been
released on the GreenMedInfo website, where it is argued that the GM
farming system has made exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide
(gylphosate) a daily fact of people’s existence in the US (10).
A new study from the US
Geological Survey, accepted for publication online ahead of print in the
journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, reveals that Roundup
and its toxic degradation byproduct AMPA were found in over 75% of the
air and rain samples tested from Mississippi in 2007.
This study highlights the
extent to which GM farming has altered daily exposure to chemicals –
even the rain and air people in the US now breath contains
physiologically relevant and potentially health damaging levels of
glyphosate ‘fall out’ from what Sayer Ji of GreenMedInfo calls “the war
against any plant not part of the monocultured, genetically engineered
system of production.”
Regardless of the
contamination of non-GM crops by GM crops, Ji argues that findings like
these reveal just how illusory the perception of choice and health
freedom is when it comes to the GM/non-GM debate and people’s right to
avoid harm from GM organisms by refusing to buy or consume them. Ji says
that the environment is becoming so saturated with the ‘fall out’ from
ever-expanding GM agricultural/agrichemical farming that even if we find
a way to avoid eating GM-contaminated food, we will still have to deal
with its adverse health effects.
If we are to believe Don Westfall,at this point we simply accept things and surrender.
But that depends on how much you value your live and health, your
children’s lives and health and the environment around you. Be informed
and take action:
In Europe: http://www.stopthecrop.org/ and http://corporateeurope.org/
In India: http://indiagminfo.org/
Notes
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