Information on
the Ballot Initiative in Humboldt County to Ban Genetically Modified Organisms
Mark S. Wilson, Humboldt State University, Department of Biology
Issues relating to GMOs
GMOs and
organic farmers
There are
several issues concerning organic farming and GMOs.
Particularly
for major cereal and grain crops, there has always been intermingling of
organic and non-organic crops prior to reaching the marketplace. This occurs because organic and
non-organic farmers share planting, harvesting, and transport equipment;
storage, milling, pressing and packaging facilities; and distribution systems.
If 1-5% of an organically-marketed grain is actually non-organic, this is
considered acceptable because it is generally not possible to detect these
levels of contamination anyway, and prevention measures would be prohibitively
expensive.
However, the
testing methods for the presence of GMOs are extremely sensitive, and an
exceedingly small amount of GMO contamination of an otherwise organic product
can be easily detected. Even GMO contamination that occurred by pollen drift or
seed mixing prior to planting could be detected by these methods. Because
consumers purchasing organic products may desire a 'zero-tolerance' policy
towards GMOs, intermingling can result in economic harm to the farmers who can
no longer market their crops as organic.
The National Organic Production Standards exclude GMOs from being
marketed as organic, but do not focus on a zero-tolerance policy. As long as organic farmers have made
reasonable efforts to eliminate GMO contamination, their products can still legally
be marketed as organic, even if a small portion of them contained DNA from GMOs.
Organic canola
farmers in Saskatchewan are currently suing Monsanto and Aventis, because they
are no longer able to have their canola oil certified as organic. Their lawsuit also seeks to prevent
Monsanto from introducing GMO wheat in Saskatchewan, to protect the organic
wheat farmers. Similarly, Japanese
exporters threatened to discontinue imports of U.S. wheat if Monsanto started
marketing RoundUp Ready wheat. In
response to these pressures, Monsanto has indefinitely delayed introducing this
product, which it spent several years developing.
A number of
other issues concerning organic farmers and GMOs are addressed in a 75-page
report prepared by British scientists at the John Innes Centre and the Elm
Farm Research Center.
Global vs
local control of economic/ecological/health issues
Ethical
issues
Spread of
antibiotic resistance
During construction
of a new transgenic plant, genes that confer resistance to the antibiotic
kanamycin are used as marker genes to select for plants that have taken up the introduced gene. Only a small number of plants will take
up the introduced gene, and they can be identified by growing the exposed
plants in a medium containing kanamycin.
Hence, some GMO plants also have the gene for kanamycin resistance in
them, and critics argue that planting the GMOs makes that resistance gene
widely available in the environment for transfer to pathogenic bacteria.
The many
problems with this argument include: so many pathogenic bacteria are resistant
to kanamycin that this antibiotic is not a frequently used or important
medication anyway; having the gene for kanamycin resistance does not make the
bactera resistant to antibiotics that are being used medically; the gene for kanamycin resistance is
widely spread among soil bacteria already; and the likelihood of a gene
transfer from a plant to a bacterium is extremely small.
Steps can be
taken to reduce the spread of antibiotic resistance. Primarily, people need to stop demanding
antibiotics from their doctors for treatment of viral infections, which do
not respond to antibiotics. Also, farmers should stop prophylactic feeding of
sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics to animals. The rise of drug-resistant
pathogens is a serious problem, but not one that appears to have anything to do
with GMOs.
Terminator
technology
Superweeds
Allergic
responses
Death by
transgenic sleep aids
The Percy
Schmeiser story
percy schmeiser
(Cornell University)
percy schmeiser -
comments by Rick Roush, Director, Integrated Pest Management Program at UC
Davis
Do RoundUp
Ready crops increase herbicide use?
Do Bt crops
reduce pesticide use?
European
response vs American response
GMOs and
world hunger
previous topic, Examples of GMOs
next topic, GMOs in the
marketplace