The GMO Deception
Also edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Jeremy Gruber:
Biotechnology in Our Lives
Genetic Explanations: Sense and Nonsense
This book is dedicated to members of the Council for Responsible Genetics Board of Directors and Advisory Board who are no longer with us, but whose work and vision continue to inspire new generations of social and environmental justice activists: David Brower, Barry Commoner, Marc Lappe, Anthony Mazzocchi, Albert Meyerhoff, Bernard Rapoport, George Wald, and William Winpisinger.
Copyright © 2014 by Sheldon Krimsky and Jeremy Gruber
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-62873-660-1
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-020-9
Printed in the United States
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Ralph Nader
Introduction: The Science and Regulation behind the GMO Deception
by Sheldon Krimsky and Jeremy Gruber
What Is Genetic Engineering? An Introduction to the Science
by John Fagan, Michael Antoniou, and Claire Robinson
PART 1: SAFETY STUDIES: HUMAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
1. The State of the Science
by Stuart Newman
2. Antibiotics in Your Corn
by Sheldon Krimsky and Timo Assmuth
3. A Conversation with Dr. Árpád Pusztai
by Samuel W. Anderson
4. Glypho-Gate
by Sheldon Krimsky, with Gilles-Eric Séralini, Robin Mesnage, and Benoît Bernay
5. GM Alfalfa: An Uncalculated Risk
by Phil Bereano
6. The Next Generation of Biohazard? Engineering Plants to Manufacture Pharmaceuticals
by Brian Tokar
7. Busting the Big GMO Myths
by John Fagan, Michael Antoniou, and Claire Robinson
PART 2: LABELING AND CONSUMER ACTIVISM
8. Codex Food Labeling Committee Debates International Guidelines
by Diane McCrea
9. Consumers Call on FDA to Label GMO Foods
by Colin O’Neil
10. Genetically Engineered Foods: A Right to Know What You Eat
by Phil Bereano
11. Latina/o Farmers and Biotechnology
by Devon Peña
12. Labeling Genetically Engineered Food in California
by Pamm Larry and CRG staff
13. Lax Labeling Policies Betray Public Trust
by Joseph Mendelson
14. A Conversation with John Fagan
by Samuel W. Anderson for GeneWatch
PART 3: GMOS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD
15. The Agrarian Crisis in India
by Indrani Barpujari and Birenda Biru
16. Bill Gates’s Excellent African Adventure: A Tale of Technocratic AgroIndustrial Philanthrocapitalism
by Phil Bereano
17. Bt Brinjal in India: Why It Must Not Be Released
by Aruna Rodrigues
18. Hearts of Darkness: The Biotech Industry’s Exploration of Southern African Famine
by Doreen Stabinsky
19. Rooted Resistance: Indian Farmers Stand against Monsanto
by Mira Shiva
20. Why GM Crops Will Not Feed the World
by Bill Freese
PART 4: CORPORATE CONTROL OF AGRICULTURE
21. Patented Seeds vs. Free Inquiry
by Martha L. Crouch
22. BGH and Beyond: Consolidating Rural America
by Jack Doyle
23. Changing Seeds or Seeds of Change?
by Natalie DeGraaf
24. Food, Made from Scratch
by Eric Hoffman
25. Future Imperfect: Discussing the Industrialization of Agriculture with Deborah Koons Garcia
by Evan Lerner
26. Stealing Wisdom, Stealing Seeds: The Neem Tree of India Becomes a Symbol of Greed
by Vandana Shiva
PART 5: REGULATION, POLICY, AND LAW
27. AG Biotech Policy: 2012 in Review
by Colin O’Neil
28. EPA and Regulations
by Sheldon Krimsky
29. GM Food Legislation: Modified Foods in the Halls of Power
by Lara Freeman
30. Goliath vs. Schmeiser: Canadian Court Decision may leave Multinationals Vulnerable
by Phil Bereano and Martin Phillipson
31. Legal Challenge to Genetically Engineered Bt Crops Marches On
by Joseph Mendelson
32. A Primer on GMOs and International Law
by Phil Bereano
33. GMOs Stalled in Europe: The Strength of Citizens’ Involvement
by Arnaud Apoteker
PART 6: ECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY
34. Environmental Release of Genetically Engineered Organisms: Recasting the Debate
by the GeneWatch editors
35. The Role of GMOs in Sustainable Agriculture
by Doug Gurian-Sherman
36. Genetically Modified Crops and the Intensification of Agriculture
by Bill Freese
37. Science Interrupted: Understanding Transgenesis in Its Ecological Context
by Ignacio Chapela
38. Agricultural Technologies for a Warming World
by Lim Li Ching
39. Down on the Farm: Genetic Engineering Meets an Ecologist
by David Pimentel
40. Engineering Crops for Herbicide Resistance
by Sheldon Krimsky and Roger Wrubel
41. Genetic Engineering for Biological Control: Environmental Risks
by David Pimentel
42. GM Mosquitoes: Flying through the Regulatory Gaps?
by Lim Li Ching
43. Why Context Matters
by Craig Holdrege
PART 7: THE ETHICS OF GMOS
44. The Biopiracy of Wild Rice
by Brian Carlson
45. Conflicts of Interest Undermine Agricultural Biotechnology Research
by Susan Benson, Mark Arax, and Rachel Burstein
46. Genetically Engineered Foods Changing the Nature of Nature
by Martin Teitel and Kimberly Wilson
47. Lessons from the Green Revolution: Do We Need New Technology to End Hunger?
by Peter Rosset, Frances Moore Lappé, and Joseph Collins
48. Let Them Eat Promises: The Fight to Feed the World Is Being Betrayed from Within
by Devinder Sharma
PART 8: MODIFYING ANIMALS FOR FOOD
49. Ethical Limits to Bioengineering Animals
by Paul Root Wolpe
50. Back on “The Farm”
by Rob DeSalle
51. Biotechnology and Milk: Benefit or Threat?
by Michael Hansen
52. In the Bullpen: Livestock Cloning
by Jaydee Hanson
53. Canada Banned BGH!
/> by Kimberly Wilson
54. Food and Drug Amalgamation
by Eric Hoffman
55. Food Unchained
by Samuel W. Anderson
56. Just Say No to Milk Hormones
by John Stauber
57. Gene Technology in the Animal Kingdom
by Paul B. Thompson
Conclusion: The Future of GM Food
by Sheldon Krimsky
Resources: What You Can Do about GMOs
by Jeremy Gruber
Endnotes
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful for the public interest commitment and superb work of GeneWatch editors and editorial boards past and present: Sam Anderson, Philip Bereano, Kostia Bergman, Phil Brown, Sujatha Bvravan, Nancy Connell, Donna Cremans, Christopher Edwards, Leslie Fraser, Phyllis Freeman, Judith Glaubman, Terri Goldberg, Barbara Goldoftas, Colin Gracey, Susan Gracey, Daniel Grossman, Jeremy Gruber, Ruth Hubbard, Kit Johnson, Brandon Keim, Sophia Kolehmainen, Sheldon Krimsky, Herbert Lass, Evan Lerner, Gary Marchant, Wendy McGoodwin, Shelley Minden, Eva Ng, Rayna Rapp, Barbara Rosenberg, Peter Shorett, Seth Shulman, Christine Skwiot, Martin Teitel, Suzanne C. Theberge, Jonathan B. Tucker, Shawna Vogel, Nachama Wilker, Kimberly Wilson, and SusanWright.
Special thanks to Hector Carosso, for his consultation on the title.
We would like to thank Holly Rubino, senior editor for Skyhorse Publishing, who provided editorial guidance that helped the editors clarify the book’s goals and audience.
We also wish to acknowledge the substantial support of both the Cornerstone Campaign and the Safety Systems Foundation.
FOREWORD
“Science is science,” declared my college biology professor, alluding to its own rigorous standards, openness, and integrity. Today, my response would be “not quite.” For in the autocratic, commercially driven hands of multinational corporations, “science” becomes the instrument of an overall business plan that results in serious corruptions of scientific attitude, method, and peer-reviewed accountability. This confidential, proprietary “corporate science” closes off Alfred North Whitehead’s definition of science as “keeping options open for revision.” It becomes, in this book’s context, the central chattel in a comprehensive business strategy to corporatize global agriculture. This is accomplished through a remarkable matrix of controls and public subsidies that takes monopolizing corporate behavior and its wildcat offshoots to historically unforeseen depths of danger to people and planet.
To better absorb the significance of this wide-ranging anthology of articles by independent scientists and science writers,* a brief summary of the biotechnology industry’s emergence over time is in order.
Two events from the public realm were crucial initiators. In 1972, came the publication of scientific papers by Cohen & Boyer and associates of transgenic DNA splicing across phylogenetic species, including bacteria, viruses, and insects.1 The second event in 1980 was a US Supreme Court 5–4 decision allowing patents on life forms. Those two “assets” facilitated the start of a broadly conceived strategic planning process for genetically modified (GM) food by the fledging biotechnology industry led by Monsanto.
Corporations engage in strategic planning as the essence of their quest for more revenue and profits. More globalized than ever, they are continually expanding such planning to include, in their favor, our elections, government, environment, education, media, research and development, energy, tax and credit systems, trade agreements, transport, land use, food, and our genetic inheritance. They equate their planning with exercising the control and predictability necessary for their definition of stability. They do not always get their way, but no other institutions have been their match for more than half a century. As artificial entities, from the late nineteenth century onwards, courts have given them the status of “persons” for the purposes of constitutional rights. The world has never seen such an ingenious, power-concentrating machine as the modern, global corporation. Ideally, many of them would like to view themselves as both amoral and “anational” (meaning not domiciled in any particular country).
Their corporate lawyers have constructed a proliferating system of privileges and immunities which must be viewed as a remarkable intellectual achievement, apart from the purposes served. Because these corporate giants plan the subordination of civic values to the supremacy of commercialism, any resistance is to be countered, preempted, undermined, or destroyed.
Let us envision, for example, what Monsanto decided to do, once armed with the twin tools of transgenic capability and patentable life forms, to move toward domination of agricultural sub-economies in the US and around the world.
Monsanto had to create a narrative as to why its GMO patented seeds were needed and superior to traditional seeds in the first place. In a massive, relentless marketing campaign, genetically modified foods were touted as safe, cheaper, higher yielding, more nutritious, requiring lower chemical inputs, and resistant to drought and blight. Because these objectives were shared by federal agencies that funded the basic research, the Monsanto campaign, abetted by an uncritical mass media, made their hope spring eternal.
The prospect of alleviating world hunger through these measures of productivity was irresistible to the media, which tend to report scientific discoveries by establishment promoters who tout potential benefits without mentioning potential drawbacks. Outlets like the New York Times and Science Magazine have been prone to falling for this propaganda year after year. One has only to recall reports on how the starving masses would allegedly be saved by GMO rice (“Golden Rice”), or GMO cassava, or a GM virus-resistant sweet potato or edible vaccines, followed for years by no such realities in the fields, to see the successes of the biotech industry’s deception.
Jonathan Latham, crop geneticist and founder of the Bioscience Resource Project, calls “Golden Rice” the “Emperor of GMOs.” He cites food writer Michael Pollan, who called Golden Rice a “purely rhetorical technology.”2 Another way of describing unproven claims and benefits of genetically engineered foods is that the “engineering” on the ground has rushed far ahead, both in public relations and in misapplication, of the “science” that must be its ultimate discipline.
In his article “Imaginary Organisms: Media Tout Benefits of GMOs That Never Were” published by Extra! in March 2014, Mr. Latham concludes, “These misreports of biotechnology are endlessly useful to the industry. . . . The great value of ‘fakethroughs’ is to confirm, in the eyes of the world, the industry’s claim to be ethical, innovative and essential to a sustainable future.”
This manufactured credibility is connected with a Washington lobbying force that sways Congress, greased with campaign cash, which destroys through Congressional budget-making what should be balanced research priorities of the National Institutes of Health. The results are non-regulation, unenforceable guidelines, and a supine Department of Agriculture. In this corporate government, the Food and Drug Administration cedes Monsanto its demand not to label genetically-engineered food sold in the markets that the company is presumably proud to sell.
Thus fortified by its political engineering, Monsanto mutes or compromises academic science through joint ventures with university departments, lucrative consultancies, and a piece of the stock action. Independent academic scientists, who wish to replicate or test the industry’s claims, find a paucity of available grants, obstructed access to the products, and a litigiously backed refusal to disclose the basis of Monsanto’s claims that are cloaked in the alleged cover of trade secrecy.
In July 2009, Scientific American described the intolerable situation concisely:
Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised. That is because agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers. . . . Research on genetically modified seeds is still published, of course. But only studies that the seed companies have approved ever see the light of a peer-reviewed
journal. In a number of cases, experiments that had the implicit go-ahead from the seed company were later blocked from publication because the results were not flattering. . . . It would be chilling enough if any other type of company were able to prevent independent researchers from testing its wares and reporting what they find. . . . But when scientists are prevented from examining the raw ingredients in our nation’s food supply or from testing the plant material that covers a large portion of the country’s agricultural land, the restrictions on free inquiry become dangerous.
Research on the migration of GM pollen from farms to non-GMO-farms; the level of developing bacterial, viral, and insect resistance to GMO-linked herbicides; and longer-run studies of the consequences of GMO seeds and crops on the environment, or even the multiple effects at the cellular level from the newly inserted gene, are hampered and grossly underfunded, whether by government or foundations. But, as the articles in this book demonstrate, enough is known to require the Monsantos to bear their burdens of proof behind their many claims—before marketing their products.
In the concluding statement to this anthology, Sheldon Krimsky cites disturbing findings that counter the health and safety assertions of the industry and writes, “In the absence of evidence that genetically modified foods are cheaper, produce greater yields, or even work particularly well, lies one widely recognized conclusion: GMO foods provide no added nutritional or cost benefit to the consumer.”
Why then have farmers accepted much higher priced GM seeds, rooted in radically one-sided censorious contracts with Monsanto called “Technology/Stewardship Agreements”? These “agreements” shift responsibility to the growers, along with a government that does not advise farmers with independent extension research, nor moves under the antitrust laws to break up the ever tighter, more expensive seed oligopoly. The lure started with convenience and an innocent belief in the vendors’ other claims. More than a decade ago, an Iowa corn farmer told me he liked Bt corn primarily because it allowed him to spend more time with his wife—meaning less time needed for weeding. Now that weed resistance to Round Up Ready is emerging, these bad superweeds need more Round Up Ready or other herbicides.
The impact of GMO seed invasions in developing countries, such as India, is described here in brutal detail. There, an emerging large industrial monoculture disrupting traditional seed saving, sharing, and selling by seed monopolies and royalties, and leading to spiraling debt and displacement of small farmers, is assisted by the promotional support of US government agencies. Co-optation of local regulatory officials, along with campaign-like ad hominem attacks on the few independent scientists and agronomists who raise warnings, are further signs of corporate power abuses.