HOW GMOs ARE CONQUERING THE WORLD
COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 30 Jul 2009
Rejected by a majority of European citizens, transgenic crops have taken root only marginally in the Old Continent: 108,000 hectares in 2008 in seven EU countries, three-quarters of them in Spain. But they’ve made their way elsewhere.
Last year, transgenic crops occupied 125 millions hectares in 25 countries, representing close to 8 percent of the planet’s cultivated surface. And although the United States, Argentine and Brazil are far ahead in GMO cultivation, it is advancing rapidly in Asia and Africa.
Today, in practical terms, genetically modified organisms (GMO) amount to three crops: soy, corn and cotton. But those crops play a key role in the economy and, above all, in the planet’s food supply. Forty percent of the surface devoted to commodity crops (grains, oleaginous crops) is intended for animal feed stock. And the soy-corn pairing, which predominates in animal feed, is largely transgenic today: 70 percent of global soy production.
Why have GMO tended to become the global norm for crops … except in the EU? The weight of public opinion has been decisive. A rare international poll, conducted in 2002 by a Canadian institute in 34 countries on five continents (1) demonstrates levels of acceptance below 42 percent in European countries (but also in Japan and Russia) and above 65 percent in the United States, China and India.
Other big countries, such as Brazil, Canada, the Philippines and Mexico, seem to be favorable in the majority to GMO. Between the United States (50 percent of the GMO grown in the world) and the EU (0.1 percent), polls continue to confirm this huge gap in opinion, a reflection, among other things, of different attitudes concerning innovation and risk, eating and the values that are or are not attached to it.
Mobilization and Organizational Expertise
However, the European exception cannot be explained solely by the reticence of public opinion which, incidentally, may be quite favorable in some places (Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Bulgaria and Malta). Faced with seed company lobbying, anti-GMO organizations’ lobbying has been effective and pushed decision makers to adopt legislation far more restrictive than outside the EU.
Organized, endowed with genuine expertise, present in the media, perceived as legitimate by a great part of the population, these associations have weighed heavily in the public debate, calling on elected officials and mobilizing voters on the subject. In the end, there’s hardly anywhere but the EU where all these ingredients – public opinion that is overall quite reticent, powerful associations and quite democratic institutions – are found together and combine their efforts.
National Moratoria
The result? A single variety, Monsanto’s transgenic corn Mon810, is currently authorized for cultivation in the EU (2), whereas elsewhere farmers have an embarrassment of choice. That’s the result of a complex authorization procedure through which, ultimately, in the absence of a qualified majority of divided EU member states, the files are systematically blocked, unless the Commission takes it upon itself to decide, which it did in the case of Mon810.
But although the Commission may authorize, it cannot really impose: Since 2005, six countries, Austria, Hungary, Greece, joined by France, Luxembourg and, most recently, Germany (April 14) have unilaterally pronounced moratoria on that crop, which Brussels has had to swallow since it has been unable to obtain a condemnation of the violators from the other member states.
And even in the countries where the corn is authorized, the prudential rules of the 2001 directive, adopted thanks to the anti-GMO mobilization in Europe, impose environmental and administrative constraints on farmers which may limit the crop’s distribution.
On the other hand, there where GMO are authorized and regulations are not very restrictive, they spread out on a grand scale. In fact, farmers find a real interest in using them. Without the moratorium France adopted in 2008, corn growers, mainly in the Southwest, would have gladly continued their launch: The 500 hectares cultivated in the Hexagon in 2005 rose to 22,000 in 2007. However, in terms of yield per hectare, the studies emphasize the marginal contribution of GMO technology.
In the case of corn, average yields in the United States grew 28 percent between 1991-1995 and 2004-2008, but only 3 to 4 percent of that gain is imputable to transgenic corn seeds, indicate Union of Concerned Scientists researchers (3), with most of the increase attributable to other factors (progress in classic varietal selection, crop management techniques …). The comparative advantage of GMO is elsewhere: the simplification of the farmer’s work and the reduction in production costs.
In 99 percent of cases, a GMO plant presents one, the other, or both of these two characteristics: tolerance for glyphosate, a large-spectrum herbicide, or insect repellent power due to the incorporation of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a bacterial insecticide, gene. Tolerance for glyphosate allows applications over a longer period of the plant’s growth as well as permitting use of only that herbicide.
Another advantage: that avoids the need for mechanical weeding. As for Bt crops, they offer better resistance to insect attacks and generate savings on insecticides. In Spain, in the Aragon region, the final net gain, taking into account the extra cost of GMO seeds compared to conventional varieties, came to close to 120 Euros per hectare of corn … but tended towards zero in other regions where insect attacks were more moderate (4).
All that would be almost good, if these GMO that are the joy of seed firms were not the last avatar of a chemical and industrial agriculture that has become unsustainable. An energy-devouring agriculture unfit for feeding the planet tomorrow, especially if global meat consumption – which requires vast agricultural spaces – were to continue indefinitely. And an agriculture with serious environmental impact.
"We make the same mistakes and end up with the same problems," summarizes, INRA’s Jacques Gasquez. This researcher emphasizes the development of weeds now resistant to glyphosate – today a dozen species – linked to usage of that herbicide. The same problems occur with the insecticide plants where we are beginning to see harmful insects that have become impervious – so requiring new applications. These problems of resistance to toxic substances have developed with the excessive use of chemistry in agriculture and are not unique to GMO.
However, GMO support a phenomenon to which one continues to respond by hurtling full speed ahead. The seed companies, the INRA researcher explains, put the final touches today on varieties tolerant of a second herbicide, which one may add to glyphosate to master the rebellious weeds that will in their turn develop new resistances. That will eventually have to be vanquished with ever-stronger doses of chemicals …
Uncomfortable Industrial Secret
To this problem, which is taking on a worrying turn, are added many uncertainties, whether concerning the effects of GMO contamination on wild and cultivated species or even possible toxic impacts on people that are difficult to detect when the authorizations for human and animal consumption are based on tests on laboratory rats limited to … three months duration.
It’s the same for GMO as for any new technology: certitude does not exist. Yet, a democratic choice has to be based on a better risk evaluation. But that clashes with industrial secrecy. "The technical files and information supplied by the seed firms to the administrations and their scientific committees for authorization have not been made public," rages researcher Gilles-Eric S√©ralini, Director of Criigen’s scientific council (5). Which prohibits second opinions.
On February 10, 2009, American universities – favorable to GMO – registered a complaint with the American Environmental Protection Agency since the seed companies de facto interdicted their work by refusing them access to certain data or by purely and simply withdrawing authorization to study GMO plants on their own. A right that the firms in an oligopolistic position assert in all legality; the seven of them, beginning with Monsanto, DuPont (Pioneer) and Syngenta, that control 62 percent of the market, can do so because their products are patented and so protected for 20 years.
But their power goes much further: Dominant from their powerful research resources, these giant companies are multiplying their patents on the genetic constructions they elaborate from nature’s resources and that could serve to manufacture the possible GMOs of the future, such as drought-resistant grains. Not only do these firms anticipatively confiscate the potential profits, but they also block the ability of public or independent expertise to illuminate these necessarily political choices.
Getting Our Bearings: Citizens Don’t Really Have a Choice
The European directive of 2001 imposes labeling on food products that contain GMO, a victory for citizen mobilization in Europe. Unless one eats organic only (and pays the prices it commands) this labeling legislation – unique in all the world – nonetheless does not allow the consumer the free choice of eliminating GMO from his food.
In fact, animal products (meat, milk, eggs, cheese) that are fed GMO soy escape that regulation: They are not transgenic. Yet, that’s precisely the main issue: The GMO that Europe massively imports (and produces only very marginally) are almost exclusively intended for animal consumption.
Will the situation evolve? This past April 3 in France, the National Consumer Council pronounced in favor of a "Fed without GMO" labeling for meat and milk, which has already appeared in Germany. Serious battles with the Americans of both North and South may be expected if such regulations come to fruition.
NOTES:
(1) Environics International, cited in "How have opinions about GMOs changed over time? The situation in the EU and the USA", Sylvie Bonny, November 2008.
(2) With the anecdotal exception of two varieties of carnations.
(3) Failure to Yield. Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops, UCS, 2009.
(4)http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=1580
(5) Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (www.criigen.org).
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Translation: Truthout French Language Editor Leslie Thatcher.
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