Here is a good excerpt:

Now, here we are at the crossroads with what looks like a monkey business, confronted with a choice as to whether to go east or west, as to whether to embrace or ignore plant genetic engineering and GMOs.

If you ask me what we should do, I may not be able to tell you. But what I can tell you for a fact is that in the midst of the raging debates on the safety or otherwise of genetically modified organisms, top scientists across many of the world’s developed countries are virtually locked up in sophisticated laboratories “doing their own thing” as though they are being motivated by some Mo Ibrahim Prize! Are you aware the Mo Ibrahim Prize is the most rewarding prize money our world has known in living memory, more rewarding than even the world-famous Nobel Prizes which crown the years of efforts of outstanding scholars who make “a significant breakthrough” in their areas of research?

So the developed world research scientists are vigorously pursuing research in plant molecular biology. They are genetically engineering some staple crops, giving rise to genetically modified foods with “desirable traits”.

But are these research scientists not aware of the raging controversies? Why are they so bent on sowing “the seeds of self-destruction”? Or are they simply finding answers to the “heavy questions” often posed by the opponents of genetic engineering?

Read the rest here.

I would like to take this moment to say that not all ag scientists are ‘locked up’ in their ivory-tower labs and field research stations, in fact, a lot of them would like to reach out and help in any way they can. Reaching out and finding answers to heavy questions is what this blog is about!

In order to understand this claim, you have to take into account the market and regulatory environment in the United Kingdom. As far as I know, the only GE crop that can currently be grown in the UK is Bt maize, although there is talk of more crops being approved in the near future. They also import most of the soybeans used in animal feed from South America, which is growing more and more GE soy each year. Although GE soy can be imported into the UK, it appears that there are still restrictions on these imports that make it difficult for much of this soy to get into the country.

Currently, also, foods derived from genetically engineered crops must be labeled as such in the UK, as noted here, some food manufacturers and fast food chains source their soy from non-GE farms. Although it appears that people in the EU don’t care or don’t even read the labels, there is a substantial market for non-GE soy for producers who do business in the UK. Meat from animals fed GE crops, however, do not have such labeling requirements, but they still must source most of their soy from imports, of the few that are available and legal to be imported.

This seems to present a market problem for those meat producers, as acreage of soybeans in Latin America increasingly switch to GE varieties, this reduces the availability of soy that can be imported into the UK, especially the non-GE soy. As supply reduces and demand stays the same… what happens to prices?

Now the article:

UK animal feed, which is made mainly from soya, could quadruple in price within two years if growers in Brazil and Argentina produce more genetically modified soya, which is banned in Europe, according to government research.

Non-GM soya would rocket in price, making animal and poultry feed more expensive and ramping up UK meat and poultry costs by around a fifth. Farmers are worried they face unfair competition from countries which allow GM crops.

The National Farmers’ Union director of policy Martin Haworth warned: “There is a very real danger that livestock producers, both here and across the EU, will be unable to compete.”

The GM Crops And Foods report has been published jointly by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs and the Food Standards Agency. It says Britain’s livestock farms rely on Brazil and Argentina for 90 per cent of imported soya used in feed for poultry, cattle and pigs.

Defra’s research outlines a worst-case scenario in which British farmers cannot buy soya from either Argentina or Brazil if they only grow GM crops – the use of which is banned here.

Feed costs would soar by 300 per cent, while UK pork and poultry production would plunge by up to 68 per cent. As a result, the report suggests, shop prices for meat and poultry would jump by up to 20 per cent.

Prices would go up. It is interesting to note that the meat producers are not in the non-GE soy market, per se, they would probably source their soy from whatever is available, including GE. However, restrictions on GE soy imports (and growing, to I suppose) are for the most part forcing meat producers to be in the non-GE soy market, competing against other non-GE soy buyers in the UK, driving the prices up. It is not surprising that meat producers have argued for reducing those restrictions.

So it is misleading to suggest that GE crops alone would be responsible for those rising prices, without giving the context of the importation restrictions that are setting up this market issue. There is also the context of labeling and perceived consumer attitudes to consider, which is helping to drive this trend. But there is one more thing that is odd about the way this story is being presented: why are only the food prices being mentioned?

If the price of non-GE soy skyrockets, then that means that two things happen: Food prices for non-GE food products made from them go up, but this is also matched by an increase in the price that farmers can get for non-GE soybeans. The latter would be considered by many anti-GE orgnizations to be a boon – a cause for celebration because it would ensure that some farmers will grow non-GE soybeans just to get that higher price, but why is only one aspect being reported in this case?

Similarly, for the hypothetical GE wheat discussed in the previous post, if the cost of wheat goes down, that also means that the price of foods containing wheat will also go down. It becomes very difficult for people to understand what the real effects genetically engineered crops will be on the economics of farming and of food if only one half of the equation is selectively reported – only the potential downsides to individual groups caused by changes in GE acreage. These two stories taken together might seem to suggest the absurd notion that genetic engineering will cause crop prices to plummet and put farmers out of business, while making food prices skyrocket beyond control!

THE introduction of a Genetically Modified (GM) wheat variety with frost tolerance could potentially flood the world wheat market and drastically lower its price and profitability, according to Network of Concerned Farmers WA spokesperson Julie Newman.

“Our competitors will actually fare much better if we bring in GM wheat, because we can grow frost-tolerant crops now but they can’t because of the cold snaps,” she said.

“If you invent a GM wheat variety that has frost tolerance, it will open up all of the rich farming area in Russia and the Ukraine, and there will be a major glut of wheat on the world market.

“It would almost double global production and that means our wheat would be worth a fraction of the price.”

She said a clear set of rules needed to be established to ensure non-GM farmers were protected and retained their right of choice to not grow it.

“The reason you grow a crop is because you want to sell it, but if you can’t sell it, why grow it?

“There’s not much point growing GM wheat if it can’t be sold, because you will make a loss.

“Now that wouldn’t be so bad if it only affected the growers who choose to grow it, but the losses will also be forced upon the other farmers who don’t want to grow it.

“Bringing in GM wheat will force losses on everyone who grows conventional wheat.”

Let me get this straight: Julie Newman is worried that if a variety of wheat is genetically engineered to resist frost, then previously wheat-free northern areas would be able to grow this staple. And this is bad?

According to Newman, an increase in wheat production worldwide is a bad thing not because it will lower the price of wheat – it is bad because it will lower the price of non-GE wheat. Lowering the price of GE wheat is ok, but if it so much as drops the price per bushel one penny – it’s infringing on our rights!

This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. I have read it no less than ten times, and I still cannot understand her reasoning. If you were to improve wheat to be more frost-tolerant through conventional breeding, that would also pose the same ‘threat’ of increased production and depressed prices. This would make it more difficult for other wheat farmers to economically choose wheat as a good crop to grow. It would not force farmers in non-frosty places to grow the frost-resistant wheat, any more or less than those farmers would be forced to grow a genetically engineered equivalent. There is no change in the ‘right’ not to grow the improved wheat whatsoever.

Faced with lower prices, wheat farmers may choose to grow something else to stay profitable. Note the key word: Choose. If a wheat farmer really wants to grow wheat when it is no longer profitable for them, they can do that, conventional or otherwise. But as the spokesperson for an anti-GE organization, the remedy for this future issue is to prop up local conventional wheat farmers as a special category to keep them afloat. No, not to prop up all local wheat farmers, only the conventional non-GE ones.

Take it out of context of the anti-GE argument, such as with the hypothetical conventionally-bred frost-tolerant wheat I mentioned above, and it is absurd. Or how about another thought-experiment: Let’s say someone finds a fertilizer or growing method that boosts yield – and some farmers don’t feel like using it. Should they be granted price supports to keep them in business while other farmers produce more? Or if a futuristic advanced organic production system produced twice as much yield as conventional farms, would it make any sense to subsidize farmers that just don’t feel like making the switch?

Under the surface of this plan there are several real issues at play. This is coming from an Australian organization, founded by 8 farmers, half of them who grow wheat. (I could find no information on total membership, if there are any more members than these 8.) And Newman is worried that farmers in Ukraine and Russia will start to produce a lot more wheat and drive Australian farmers to something else. (Or to GE wheat) It is difficult to tell what kind of rules Newman is talking about. She may be arguing for a government subsidy to elevate the price of Australia-grown wheat to combat increased production in other countries. This is pretty standard international politics when it comes to agriculture. Or it may instead be a suggestion for some sort of tariff, ban, or other way of blocking the slightly-more-than-hypothetical wheat from Asia from depressing the Australian market.

But this is coming from a group of farmers that is opposed to genetic engineering, so it takes two special twists in addition to the international issue. The first is that the support must be for non-GE wheat only. As the wheat farmers who founded the organization probably do not plan to grow GE wheat themselves, it is a self-serving advocacy in addition to promoting their cause. And in this case they would be using the potential for another nation to flood the market as an excuse to specifically benefit non-GE wheat farmers.

The second twist is of a form that I have begun to recognize in the international discussions over GE wheat – the tool of genetic engineering for crop improvement is being made a tool for international agricultural struggles that don’t necessarily have anything to do with genetic engineering per se. This is problematic because we need laws and regulations concerning GE crops to be based on scientific and ethical guidelines, not price protectionism. If it is necessary to support the price of local wheat in your country, do it and don’t drag this technology into that battle.

Cyndi Barmore authored a report for the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service titled The Unexplored Potential of Organic-Biotech Production. It was published on May 26, 2009, but I just heard about it now. Here’s the introduction:

The organic movement rejects biotechnology as inherently contradictory to its fundamental goal of promoting environmental protection in agriculture. European organic promoters in particular stress respect for nature over yield maximization, campaigning for a return to traditional production methods and inputs. [1] In reality, the divide between organics and biotechnology is an artificial construction maintained by ideology rather than science. A governmental decision to change organic regulations to permit the use of biotechnology could have far-reaching policy implications for global agriculture. Allowing producers to gain organic certification for biotech crops could encourage the development of a new type of environmentally sustainable agricultural production with greater benefits for the consumer.

The report talks about several biotech traits that could benefit organic growing systems, including salt and drought tolerance, insect and disease resistance, and other losses that biotechnology could address. Barmore also talks briefly about the history of the organic movement, and how many of its goals are in line with the goals of biotechnology. What does she conclude should be done about it?

Governments should change their regulations to allow producers to gain organic certification for biotech crops grown with organic methods. Such a system would better achieve the organic movement’s stated goals of environmental sustainability and the promotion of human health. At the very least, regulations should not include different standards for the unintentional addition of conventional and biotech ingredients in organic products. Doing so unnecessarily increases the stigma of biotechnology, stifling global technological development without scientific justification.

She argues that what is needed are governments to change organic to include biotech. The other option that is not mentioned is to incorporate organic growing methods into a new agricultural standard that also includes some genetically engineered crops. The best name I have heard for this is “Orgenic”.

Interestingly, the report makes no mention of Tomorrow’s Table by Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak, including in its references. Perhaps Barmore didn’t know about the book, but if so, it would have been good to include it so people who are curious could read about it in more depth.

Most Europeans don’t consider themselves to be anti-science or particularly technophobic. In fact, Europe’s full embrace of the scientific consensus on another environmental issue, global warming, has enabled the continent to take the clear lead on climate change, with the most ambitious emissions targets, the first carbon trading market, and the greenest urban infrastructure plans on the planet.

Europe’s scientific disconnect is more broadly true of eco-minded citizens worldwide: They laud the likes of James Hansen and Rajendra Pachauri but shrink in horror at the scientist who offers up a Bt corn plant (even though numerous studies indicate that Bt crops—by dramatically curbing pesticide use—conserve biodiversity on farms and reduce chemical-related sickness among farmers).

So why the disconnect? Why do many environmentalists trust science when it comes to climate change but not when it comes to genetic engineering? Is the fear really about the technology itself or is it a mistrust of big agribusiness?

Contributing their views (in order) are Pam Ronald, Raj Patel, Nina Fedoroff, and Noel Kingsbury. Read the article, I’ll offer a few opinions about it after the jump.

In my humble opinion, the opposition is chiefly due to anti-corporate sentiments, some of which are not entirely unfounded. The conflict of interest of making a product and simultaneously ensuring its safety does not go unnoticed – that is why we have government regulators at the EPA, FDA, and USDA. Other nations around the world have set up their own governmental oversight and have come to the same conclusions as in the U.S., and the article does not mention that the European Union has approved several GE crops, while individual nations are sketchy about them. Germany seems to be having a particularly harsh case of food fears, and have gone after public research into the technology as well.

My first complaint about a contribution to the article was when Raj Patel said,

This points to my concerns about the state of scientific debate. The direction of research priorities in agriculture is predominantly shaped not by the relative merit of different technologies, but rather the research priorities of the private sector. The largest publicly funded examination of genetically engineered agriculture—the UK government’s field trials—found GM crops inferior to conventional agriculture in most respects. But conventional and GM agriculture are not the only two comparison points.

First, it is frustrating when people do not give any specific details about when studies were conducted, by whom, and where they were published. It makes it difficult to look up the precise details to verify whether they are accurately reporting the results. Several anti-GE groups have put up position statements about these field trials, which seem to have been completed in 2002-03 and declared the GE crops to be a failure. The Naked Scientists podcast, however, tells more about the story:

After a three years of farm-scale trials looking at the environmental impact of GM crops the results are finally out this week. These were the biggest trials carried out anywhere in the world, showing just how concerned the government are that they get enough information to make a decision about whether Britain should adopt the new technology. The trials were looking at three different crops, sugar beet, maize and oilseed rape- all of which had been genetically modified to be resistant to particular herbicides (chemicals that kill weeds). The idea behind the crops is that farmers will be able to treat fields less frequently with weedkillers, as the treatments will be more effective and only target the weeds without damaging the crops. This would save time and money, as well as reducing the amount of chemicals farmers are using in total.

But the fields trials suggest that at least two out of the three GM crops, beet and oilseed rape, had a harmful impact on the environment in and around the fields where they were grown. This included a decrease in the number of bees and butterflies, as well as a reduction in the number of wild plant seeds available to feed animals like birds. But they did find more soil insects present in the fields sown with the GM beet and oilseed rape, which may be because herbicides were used less often. There was good news for fans of GM technology as well- GM maize was found to be better for wild plants, animals and insects than normal maize. It’s important to point out that these effects on the local wildlife are nothing to do with the actual genetic modification of the plants, but more to do with the levels and types of weedkillers used by the farmers, as well as how often they treated their fields. (emphasis added)

Reductions in insect life that depend upon weeds growing in your fields are going to be fewer when you are controlling the weeds. Interestingly, in the case of herbicide-tolerant beets, it was later discovered that if you strip-sprayed your field of GE beets, it actually provided MORE plants for insect life, without damaging the crop. This is one of the things that happens when you rely on older results. (Here is a link to another option for providing food for wildlife.)

It is good to note that biased reporting of results is going on here. In this field trial (assuming I have found the correct one), they also reported that soil insects were increased in the same fields. They also concluded that the GE Bt maize was better for the environment than the conventional counterpart, mostly because it reduced pesticide sprays.

Next, I would like to comment on Nina Fedoroff’s contribution. She co-wrote Mendel in the Kitchen, which is an excellent book that I highly recommend. In this article, she was straight to the point, accessible, and talked about the way people’s attention spans (including the media) cause facts to be ignored and trumpted stories to be preferred instead. But it may be that Fedoroff is committing a similar sort of error.

With a computer and bit of effort, almost anyone can extract the facts from the gloom and catastrophism. Fact: Modern genetic modification of crops is responsible for most of the crop yield increases of recent years. This means, of course, that the farmers who’ve adopted GM crops have benefited the most.

There have been yield gains in Bt cotton, Bt corn, and with soybean farmers elsewhere in the world that have been able to fit a second soy crop into the same year due to GE technology, however I take issue with her potential mis-statement that genetic modification is responsible for most of the yield increases in recent years. Breeding still provides a large part of yield improvements, which is ongoing, especially for those breeders utilizing marker-assisted or “precision” breeding. The reason why I characterize it as a potential mis-statement is that I know that Fedoroff calls breeding genetic modification. (It is) If she meant that genetic engineering contributed most of the yield gains I would probably disagree, but if she meant all forms of genetic modification then I think she could have been more clear in her statement.

Next, I would like to address a couple of Tom Philpott’s claims. He points out that the kind of consensus that has formed around climate science amongst climate scientists is stronger than the consensus that has formed around GE crops, and I agree with that for the most part. There is a good consensus amongst plant scientists on the subject and some environmentalists, but not all other branches of science fully agree.

The real question becomes: How can serious publications like Seed claim that skepticism toward GMOs reflects a “scientific flip-flop”? To be sure, the illusion of a broad consensus holds sway in the United States, and the IAASTD has clearly failed to correct it. The US media greeted its release with near-complete silence—in stark contrast to its reception in the European media.

The possibility that the IAASTD’s statements about genetic engineering might be symptomatic of this dissonance doesn’t seem to occur to him. There’s a lot of politics involved, for example, the US government was very resistant to climate change agreements under Bush’s presidency, which has quickly turned around now that Obama is in office. The U.S.’s position on GE crops seems not to have changed (and indeed, has been repeatedly emphasized). Could that not be more parsimoniously explained by political opposition to GE crops from people (and even scientists) outside the U.S.? I would like to note that the EU is moving toward growing GE crops steadily year by year.

Next, Philpott brings up a report written by Don Lotter, attempting to explain the pursuit of GE crops in terms of mere economics and politics without the strength of scientific evidence. I have already begun reading the report, and without going into too much detail at this time, its conclusions and analysis are problematic. For example, some major claims are made that do not correspond to the references cited. I will provide more details in another post, but I think referring to a paper with more scholarly rigor would bemore appropriate.

Philpott brings up the multi-generational Austrian feeding ‘study.’

When there have been long-term trials by independent researchers, the results have hardly been comforting.

For example, writes Lotter:

In a 2008 report (Velimirov et al., 2008) of research commissioned by the Austrian government, a long-term animal feeding experiment showed significant reproductive problems in transgenic corn-fed rats when all groups were subject to multiple birth cycles, a regimen that has not hitherto been examined in feeding studies comparing transgenic and non-transgenic foods.

Thus in the first-ever multi-generational study of the effects of GMO food, evidence of serious reproductive trouble comes to light: reduced birth weight and fertility.

As detailed here, this study was raising its mice under poor conditions. How do we know? They fed GE maize and non-GE maize to two groups, the experimental group and the control, and allowed them to breed for several generations. For a properly conducted feeding study, they should have had a very low mortality rate in the control group – about 1%. But as the study authors reported, they lost an average of 8% of their control mice. This means that the mice were living in poor conditions, and is seriously calls into question any conclusions that could be drawn from it. And if you take a look at the average pup losses per generation, you’ll notice something odd:

The curious incidence of silence about mistreated animals

Notice the high numbers of mouse pup losses in the control (ISO), and low losses in the transgenic? The GE-fed mice survived better, yet this is not mentioned anywhere. And the European media is silent on this… the argument goes both ways.

It is also exceedingly important to note that this study was not peer-reviewed – and I daresay it would not have survived even the most lax of scientific journal reviews. David Tribe has posted more about the study and its problems. We need to base our opinions on the best available evidence from reliable studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. As Nina Fedoroff said, anyone with a computer can find out this information. Why hasn’t Tom?

Curiously, after claiming that this study was independent, Tom Philpott then ‘flip-flops’ and supports the notion that no truly independent study exists.

A group of 23 US scientists signed a letter to the EPA declaring that, “No truly independent research [on GMOs] can be legally conducted on many critical questions.”

Which one is it?

I would like to note that intellectual property issues when it comes to public research are in issue that needs to be addressed.

Noel Kingsbury, whose book Hybrid, the history and science of plant breeding comes out later this year, closes the deal:

The fact is that the scientific case against GM is pretty threadbare. It is far more precise and predictable than some of the most important breeding technologies of the last 50 years. If you get hot under the collar about GM, why not the far more frightening “radiation breeding”? Mention that to most anti-GM activists and they look puzzled. Radiation breeding involves zapping seeds or cuttings with radiation, or treating plant material with gene-altering chemicals. Many countries in the 1960s invested in “radiation fields” where trees were grown behind big earthen dykes so that they would be permanently irradiated. The goal: obtaining mutations that might be useful, as one in several tens of thousands was. The first radiation-bred rice was sold as “Nuclear Rice” in Hungary in the mid-1950s. Imagine marketing that today! Radiation breeding is unpredictable, uncertain in its results, and causes widespread genome damage. But no one has ever suggested that it has ever done any harm! Much Italian pasta has been grown with an irradiated durum wheat. Nearly all Asian pears are the offspring of irradiated grafts. And—get this— much European organic beer is brewed from radiation-bred barley! No one complains or protests. Wake up! Be realistic! Why get so excited by GM?

GM crops must be looked at and judged variety by variety. The first generation Roundup^™ varieties are giving way to second generation crops with some highly valuable characteristics, like resistance to pests (thousands of deaths by pesticide poisoning have already been avoided by Chinese and Indian caterpillar-proof cotton) and drought-tolerance. Once we start to see soy with omega-3s or nutrient-enhanced tomatoes, attitudes will surely start to change.

World population is increasing, arable land availability is decreasing, and water resources are shrinking. We need every technology possible to increase yields, reduce toxic pesticide use, improve nutritional value, and feed the world. The European and Indian opposition to GM is rooted in a hopelessly romantic view of farming. Farming is not a romantic business—it is about feeding the human race, and we must listen to the overwhelming consensus of plant science—that GM is safe and desirable.

The important distinction being made here is that there is a consensus within plant science, but not necessarily one between disciplines. The key difference between how these two kinds of genetic changes are being treated politically and socially have more to do with the political and social climates in different hemispheres and less to do with the science that has been conducted around the world. In some cases, science is being ignored in the interest of societal issues, and in other cases, bad science is being wielded as a weapon to draw attention away from the good science that exists.

There were a couple slight problems, such as how the article was framed at the beginning – assuming that banning GE crops protects biodiversity. But this is partly addressed later in the article. This was my favorite passage:

When the Straight arrived on a hot day in February, María Mercedes Roca, a professor of biotechnology and an outspoken advocate for GM crops, immediately launched into a defence of GM crops with an attack on conventional farming practices.

“Managing diseases the way we have done for the last four or five decades with chemical pesticides doesn’t work because we are creating resistance to chemicals,” she argued. For Roca, GM crops are an environmentally friendly technology that humans can use to meet growing demands for food.

A former member of Greenpeace and now serving on Honduras’s National Committee for Biosafety, Roca said that Zamorano has conducted biosafety trials for Monsanto. She maintained that risks associated with GM crops have been greatly exaggerated. As an example, she showed the Straight a Honduran newspaper clipping that quoted a member of parliament who claimed that GM maize grown in Honduras was linked to the spread of HIV.

Walking Zamorano’s fields, Roca listed opponents’ concerns about GM crops and then quickly explained why she has concluded that each one is baseless.

The risk of cross-pollination is nothing new to agriculture and has been dealt with for hundreds of years, she explained. At Zamorano, crops are planted at different times, fields growing different crops are separated by a minimum of 20 metres, and four-metre-high walls of king grass separate fields to catch seeds travelling in the wind.

Health and environmental concerns related to Bt-modified crops are equally unfounded, Roca continued, making no effort to hide her frustration. After more than a decade of scientific research and commercial production in the U.S., “there is no evidence that suggests that transgenic crops are worse for the environment or worse for human health than their conventional counterparts,” she claimed.

Roca conceded that the relatively high cost of GM seeds is prohibitive for many poor farmers. But she noted that nobody is forcing anybody to grow GM crops.

For subsistence farmers who don’t have access to high-quality soil, fertilizer, and irrigation, GM crops often don’t make sense, Roca said. “On the other hand, if you even have the bare minimum, it pays. And if you are an industrial producer, it makes every sense.”

A former member of Greenpeace, too! Interesting.

By William Harvey:

Hello readers, I am William Harvey, the Director of Global GMO Policy at Greenpeace International. In exchange for support of this blog’s continued operations, I will be posting regularly at Biofortified, and my office staff will monitor and moderate the continued discussion. We have made a few minor changes to the look of the blog. Now for my first blog post.

Everyone knows that every Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are patented by corporations. There is not a single GMO that can be grown without the explicit permission through a signed contract. This puts the power in the hands of multinationals, taking it away from the indigenous people of Hawaii, Southeast Asia, Africa, and even farmers in the U.S. are having their right stripped away. The right to save seed is fundamental to growing food, and anything that removes this right is morally wrong.

This is why Greenpeace has a strong stance against genetic modification, because as a corporate technology it inherently requires that farmers be unable to save seed. We also seek to eliminate hybrid crops, because these are another method for maintaining the dominance of seed companies over farmers. Hybrids do not breed true – and so farmers have to keep re-buying seed. Recently, we have added seedless watermelons to our growing list of ‘farmer suicide’ foods, because the triploid seeds must be purchased every year.

As we have learned from cases such as Schmeiser v Monsanto, the biotech companies will stop at nothing to prevent farmers from saving their seeds. Indeed, they were violating his rights as a plant breeder to have control over his own homebrewed canola seeds. Farmers that breed crops have the right to control their seeds while biotech companies do not. These plant breeder protections are there for a reason – so farmers and breeders can maintain control of what they produce, because it is their intellectual property.

Before I go, there is one last issue that I would like to address: Golden Rice. This “biofortified” rice is nothing more than a PR effort by the biotech companies, and represents a Trojan Horse designed to slip through the opposition to GMOs by presenting us with a moral dilemma: either allow GMOs to be grown or people will suffer. In 2001, Michael Pollan saw through this attempt:

Unless I’m missing something, the aim of the biotechnology industry’s audacious new advertising campaign is to impale people like me—well-off first worlders dubious about genetically engineered food—on the horns of a moral dilemma.

(…)

Granted, it would be immoral for finicky Americans to thwart a technology that could rescue malnourished children. But wouldn’t it also be immoral for an industry to use those children’s suffering in order to rescue itself?

It is clear that the very attempt to address malnutrition in developing countries through genetic engineering is immoral precisely because it presents us with a moral dilemma. Our values are not up for debate.

Nor is it up to debate whether it is right to test this unsafe food on children. Before they have long-term studies proving the safety of this GMO in the diets of children, it is wrong to test it on anyone else’s children. Let these genetic engineers test it on their own kids before poisoning children in other countries. (If they did this, however, we should take their kids away for reckless endangerment.) Golden Rice is racist, classist, and is utilizing strategies that have not been seen since the Third Reich.

As soon as we allow a purportedly humanitarian GMO to be grown on Asian soil, the biotech companies will press hard for their for-profit GMOs to be allowed through local regulations. If Golden Rice can be grown, why not Roundup Ready soy or Liberty Link corn?

It is my firm belief that as soon as Golden Rice is grown and people are forced to be dependent upon it, that the rug will be pulled out from under them. Any one of the patents underlying the rice crop could be used to force them to pay for it down the road. With their own local varieties destroyed, the transnational colonialism would be complete, if there was any resistance left it will be finished.

In conclusion, it is clear that this rice must be stopped at all costs, because it may be a scheme intended to keep the people in developing countries underfoot.

William Harvey is the Director of Global GMO Policy at Greenpeace International. He makes his own Biodynamic Wine from the safety of Marin County, which is GE Free.