GE ONIONS
Enough to make you cry?
© Robert Anderson PhD
This article was first published in Organic NZ September/October 2003 Vol. 62 No 5
Dr Robert Anderson of Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics analyses the thinking behind moves to genetically engineer New Zealand onions.
To accommodate RoundupReady crops, regulatory authorities worldwide agreed to a 200-fold increase in acceptable residue levels of herbicide in our food.
If ever there was a misnomer, Crop and Food would probably fit the bill. The government-owned research institute wants consent to conduct field trials of genetically modified onions made resistant to herbicide. What could be more aggravating than the feeble excuse "we'll use fewer chemicals if we grow RoundupReady herbicide-resistant onions" - or any other RR-crops for that matter. The fact that we are growing excellent organic onions without any chemicals in Hawkes Bay and Canterbury seems to have escaped their notice. I also fail to see how an herbicide-resistant onion can give us "a more consistent product of higher quality.”
Well are these claims true? The original intention of herbicide-resistant transgenic crops was that one total-coverage application of chemical per crop per season would be enough, thus offering big savings on chemicals. But this proved false. In fact, US studies show that herbicide use is on the increase.1
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) itself says that, overall, herbicide usage has increased since the introduction of herbicide-resistant crops. In particular, it says that up to 30 percent more herbicide is being used on herbicide-resistant soyabeans.
Little wonder. The years of commercial experience in North America have found that lost yields after a single application are too heavy.2 Farmers growing GE crops are using multiple applications of herbicides like glyphosate and glufosinate.3 In the case of glufosinate-tolerant soy and corn, US farmers are also using older, more toxic chemicals because glufosinate performs so badly on its own.4 And weeds are developing resistance to the herbicides, becoming another expensive nightmare for farmers.5
Crop and Food’s application to the ERMA seems just another tactic of pushing this unwanted technology. Onions are New Zealand’s fourth largest horticultural export crop so why ruin it by gene-jiggering?
Deadly deal
To accommodate RoundupReady crops, regulatory authorities worldwide agreed to a 200-fold increase in acceptable residue levels of this herbicide in our food. Presumably we must await the inevitable increase in cancers with a dignified silence?6 The fathers who have been found to father children with birth defects after being exposed to glufosinate are seemingly neither here nor there.7
Swedish researchers have linked Roundup to non-Hodgkins Ivmphoma. The incidence has risen 73 percent in the US since 1973: about the time Roundup was introduced. And, of nine herbicides tested for their toxicity to soil micro-organisms, it was found to be the second most toxic to a range of soil bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes and yeasts.8 Roundup is just another dangerous agricultural chemical - contrary to claims made by the manufacturer, Monsanto, (they were later forced to withdraw).9 Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup. Glyphosate use has increased exponentially with the introduction of the RR-crops10 and the effects on the soil are just as dramatic. Glyphosate has been found to inhibit anaerobic nitrogen fixation in soil.11 Not a useful asset for an agricultural country so heavily dependent on its soil condition. Application of glyphosate also reduces the growth of earthworms.12
Added to this, French research has shown that bees exposed to transgenic crops lose their sense of direction and have a shorter life.
Three recent Colombian court rulings emphasised the health and environmental damage of the Roundup spraying programme to eradicate coca and poppy crops.13 The Colombian Ombudsman's office called the court decision “a victory for both public health and the environment of Colombia.” They added that, in applying the Precautionary Principle, "The court affirms that the significant and potentially irreparable risk posed by the spraying is reason enough to suspend the spray programme." Those risks have been demonstrated in numerous reports of illnesses from exposure to the herbicides including the death of two children, well-documented extensive losses of food crops, and reports of wildlife damage. As Dr Ivette Perfecto, the Associate Professor from the School of Natural Resources and Environment University of Michigan said, "The report ignores or dismisses a large body of scientific literature that shows significant negative effects of glyphosate formulations on mammals, soil macro and micro-organisms, amphibians and potentially beneficial insects.”14 A statement that sounds all too familiar.
So will ERMA allow the approval of this potentially dangerous crop? Almost certainly. ERMA accepts industry's claim of "robust science" while not overtly showing much regard for those offering an alternative point of view. Submissions from concerned scientists such as PSRG, doctors against GE and other NGO groups will, no doubt, end in the archive dustbin.
The real worry
For gardeners and growers the major concern should be horizontal gene transfer (HGT). This refers to the transfer of genetic material directly from one plant to another not necessarily related plant by a process similar to that of infection. Crop and Food comment in their application that, "The risk of other types of horizontal gene transfer are considered to be extremely remote as there are no reports of detrimental horizontal gene transfer in field experiments of this kind." This makes one ask, how many experiments involving onion plants have been investigated with HGT in mind? I have failed to find any.
Injecting genetically engineered viruses may reactivate dormant viruses in the transgenic onion plants, or create new viruses by horizontal gene transfer and recombination. These viruses could then be spread by sucking insects and pollinators that visit many other plant species. In all fairness, pollination dangers in this case may be circumvented by the removal of any flowers which, as they said in their application, "can easily be removed." Whether farmers growing such crops in the future on many hectares would feel the same way is a moot point.
The foreign genes which biotechnologists introduce into these plants have strong "genetic signals". These "dynamos" or promoters as they are known, come from plant viruses which are related to animal viruses. (See CaMV virus above.) They tend to drive the required gene, at well above its normal functioning level, often hundreds of times its normal rate of expression. This, together with all the other genetic elements pushed into the plant's cells, often causes the plant to become unstable and produce other effects or simply shut down the introduced gene completely.
This shutting down is known as "gene silencing". Thousands of hectares of GE cotton in the US malfunctioned and the bolls fell off. Bt cotton on the Indian continent has left village farmers devastated by its failure: hundreds have committed suicide after being crippled by the ensuing debts. As Dr Vandana Shiva so aptly put it, "For Monsanto, a crop failure means loss of profit; for the village farmer, it's life or death."
The fact that transgenic crops so far have been plagued by problems simply confirms the fact that it is indeed a seriously flawed and imprecise technology. If these onions are eventually grown commercially, almost certainly one or more unintended traits will surface ("pleiotropic effects" as they are known). Crop and Food claim that this field trial will allow them to safely assess, through extrapolation, many social questions arising from the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification (RCGM).
As far as my onions are concerned I don't fancy them spliced with bits of bacteria, viruses and other bits of man-made DNA, and topped off with lashings of Roundup herbicide residue. Thanks, but no thanks.
How this fulfils the government's biotechnology vision to benefit "wealth, health, and environment of New Zealanders, now and in the future15 I am at a complete loss to see. Perhaps we should remember what Dr Donella Meadows, Professor of Environmental Studies, said: "Next time you hear a scientist asserting that gene splicing is safe, remind yourself that there is no scientific evidence for that statement. We are profoundly ignorant about what we are doing to the code that generates all life. And unfortunately some scientists, including those entrusted with public safety, are willing to lie.”
Dicing with the deadly
To most of the public, including even well informed gardeners, built-in herbicide- or pest-resistance seems innocuous enough. Only when scientists start muttering about incorporating rat genes into lettuce or scorpion genes into our vegetables do we seem to get perturbed. So why are independent scientists concerned? Let's return to our humble onion. Genetic engineering biotechnology is highly imprecise and it is also dangerous. Generally the "cassette" of genetic material consists of bits of bacteria and/or viruses cobbled together to (a) get the required gene into the onion cells and (b) to get it switched on or functioning adequately in the plant. In most transgenic plants the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) is used. This virus is closely related to the HepB virus and less so to the AIDS virus. At this point, the GE protagonists wilt rush to point out that we eat this virus regularly with our broccoli. True. However, they omit to tell us that it is no longer the same animal they started with. The cauliflower mosaic virus - as the name suggests - is specific to the Brassica family. When the genetic engineer has finished with it, it is non-host specific. In other words, it has the possibility of recombining with other viruses and/or bits of DNA to become a pathogen of some danger. A chicken wearing lipstick is still a chicken. In the case of the RR-onion, scientists have spliced in the agrobacterium tumefaciens.16 This is a tumour or cancer-forming vector. It will have been specifically engineered to overcome host specificity. This means that the same vector used to carry the engineered genes can enter not just the target cell but cells of other species as well.17
Robert Anderson BSc (Hons), PhD
(4 February 1942 to 5 December 2008)
Robert Anderson was a Trustee of Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics (now Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility) www.psgr.org.nz. He authored The Final Pollution: Genetic Apocalypse, Exploding the Myth of Genetic Engineering and several other publications on environmental, health and social justice issues.
View Robert Anderson’s lectures on this site.
Address enquiries for Robert Anderson's publications to naturesstar@xtra.co.nz
For further information see:
GE Free New Zealand in food and environment www.gefree.org.nz/
GE Free Northland in food and environment http://web.gefreenorthland.org.nz/
Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility www.psgr.org.nz
Sustainability Council of New Zealand http://www.sustainabilitynz.org/
The Soil & Health Association / Organic New Zealand http://organicnz.org.nz/
References
1. Benbrook, C, "Do GE crops mean less pesticide use?" Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Centre at Sandpoint.
2. Benbrook C, "Do GE crops mean less pesticide use?" Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Centre at Sandpoint.
3. WSSA Abstracts, 1999, Ref: 112. WSSA Abstracts, 1998, Ref: 1.14. WSSA Abstracts,1998, Ref: 1.16.
4. Newsnight, UK 25 June 2002.
5. Weeds growing resistant to widely used crop herbicide, http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry.asp?recid=1297
6. Buffin, D and Jewell, T, July 2001, also May 2001 "Health and environmental impacts of glyphosate." FOE.
7. Garcia A, Benavides F, Fletcher T and Orts E. "Paternal exposure to pesticides and congenital malformations" Scand ,, Work Environ Health 24, 473-80,1998).
8. Carlisle, SM and Trevors JT, Glyphosate in the Environment, Water, Soil and Air Pollution, 1988, 39:409-420.
9. Monsanto made to recant their claims over Roundup http://www.naturescountrystore.
com/roundup/ New York State's Attorney General sued Monsanto for claiming that RoundUp is "safe" and "environmentally friendly." This suit ended in a settlement in which Monsanto agreed to stop using these terms in advertising Roundup. Monsanto, while not admitting any wrongdoing, paid the state of New York $250,000 in settlement of this suit.
10. British Agrochemicals Association, Annual Review and Handbook, 1996.
11. Carlisle, SM and Trevors ]T, Glyphosate in the Environment, Water, Soil and Air Pollution, 1988, 39:409-420. ALSO Esty Dinur, Roundup - is it good for you and your environment? Article posted on internet conference gn.en.pesticides, 23 December 1991.
12. Springer, JA, and Gray RAJ, 1992. Effect of repeated low doses of biocides on the earthworm Apoirectodea caliginosa in laboratory culture. Soil Bio. Biochem. 24(12):1739-1744.
13. Press Release: Scientists Challenge Claims of US State Department that Aerial Eradication in Colombia is Safe for Humans and Environment. http://www.amazonalliance.org /scientific/scientificl.htm
14. Perfecto I., Report on the U.S. EPA "Ecological Risk Assessment For the Use of Glyphosate Herbicide As Part of the U.S. Supported Aerial Eradication Program of Coca in Colombia" http://www.amazonalliance.org/ scientific/scientificl.htm
15. New Zealand Biotechnology Strategy public discussion paper 2002, www.morst.
govt.nz).
16. Barrett et al (1997). A risk assessment study of plant genetic transformation using
Agrobacterium and implications for analysis of transgenic plants. Plant Cell Tissue and Organ Culture 47:135-144.
17. McNicole et al (1997) The Possibility of Agrobacterium as a Vehicle for Gene Escape.
MAFF. R&D and Surveillance Report: 395.