Dr. Michael W. Fox
February 2009
The Life Science industry employs scientists to defend GM crops and the genetic engineering and cloning of farm animals, like oil companies employed scientists to say that global warming/climate change was a myth. They gave billions to Universities, setting up Chairs, Departments, Fellowships and lucrative consultative and patent sharing agreements, along with the US Chamber of Commerce.
Industrial agribusiness’ indifference and corpus of denial of toward the
suffering of intensively raised farm animals parallels the indifference
toward all the harmful agrichemical pesticides and fertilizers that are now
in our rain, food, drinking water, mothers’ milk, and even amniotic fluids,
and that have turned the countryside into a toxic chemical wasteland.
The infamy and hegemony of the multinational, ologopolistic ‘Life Science’
industry, pushing these agricultural inputs from seed and equipment to
chemical fertilizers and pesticides onto developing countries, after
decimating the once sustainable network of small farming and food processing
operations in the Americas and Europe, and much of the rest of the
industrial, ‘developed’ world, are a matter of public and historic record.
This multinational industry also ‘outsources’ agricultural production of
commodity crops that it imports to the U.S. on the cheap from countries
where poverty and corruption often rampant, and agricultural chemicals
banned in the U.S. are widely used.
A major, global venture of this Life Science industry has been to develop
varieties of high-yield hybrid seeds, and more recently, genetically
engineered seeds that are resistant to herbicides, produce their own
pesticides, nutrient supplements for livestock, ( like lysine that factory
farmed pigs need a lot of), and even pharmaceutical drugs. During the 1980’s
these monopoly players---the petrochemical, pharmaceutical and life science
conglomerates-- rushed to buy up all independent seed companies and their
seed stocks. Patented, high yield hybrid varieties are few in number, widely
planted, and genetically uniform. The uniformity means genetic vulnerability
to disease (same for the patented hybrid strains of commercially farmed
animals). It is these highly inbred, hybrid varieties that are now being
genetically engineered, and spreading world wide at the ever quickening pace
of global monopoly.
The seed stocks of conventional and heirloom varieties are not being
planted, are deteriorating in storage, and when planted are likely to be
come contaminated by the pollen of genetically engineered crops from
neighboring fields and counties. This accelerating decline in the genetic
diversity of our major food, feed and fiber (and biomass and green manure)
crops, coupled with the genetic disruption of plant genomes that the genetic
engineering process can cause (see below) call for a total moratorium on any
further plantings of GM seeds. As will be revealed below, there are enough
documented research studies to negate the government-industry response to
such a moratorium and community-linked GM-FREE Zones that would say that
there is no scientific evidence of harm to animals or to human consumers,
and that GM seeds are ‘substantially equivalent’ to conventional varieties.
The socially and politically disruptive and devastating human suffering soon
to come, according to some agronomists, including Nobel laureate Norman
Borlaug (whose crop ‘improvement’ genetic research has arguably caused more
harm than good in the hands of agribusiness oligopolies) is from the Ug99
strain of black stem rust fungus on the world’s wheat crop. This world wheat
crop has so little genetic diversity now that there are few varieties and
cultivars with any genetic resistance to this devastating disease that could
mean global famine. Putting all our eggs in the same basket is never a wise
investment.
This Life Science industry has convinced legislators that genetically
engineered crops are safe, and ‘substantially equivalent’ to conventional
varieties of food and animal feed crops. But the scientific evidence, and
documented animal safety tests, point in the opposite direction. The US
government even attempted to have genetically engineered seeds and foods
included under the National Organic Standards. Genetically engineered crops
of corn, soy and canola that are herbicide resistant, and corn that produces
its own insecticidal poison called Bt, get into the human food chain, and
are put into livestock feed and pet foods with the government’s blessing:
And they quite probably contribute to the demise of the honey bee and a
large agricultural sector of bee-pollination dependent orchard and field
crops.
Herbicide resistant crops actually absorb the herbicide that is repeatedly
sprayed to kill competing weeds which we and the animals subsequently
consume, along with whatever endogenous pesticides they have been
genetically engineered to produce and have been treated with from seed to
shelf.
As for the documented, peer-reviewed, published studies generally mandated
by good judgment before the government’s approving any novel food, such as a
genetically engineered one, there were virtually none made public before and
after the Life Science Industry developed and patented new GM foods and
animal feeds and put them on the market. In spite of world wide public
opposition, GM crops and seeds have respectively come to dominate and
contaminate both conventional and organic food and industrial commodity crop
markets.
The oil-shortage panic move in the U.S in 2007/8 to ill advised ethanol
production from corn meant more plantings of GM varieties, less land for
livestock feed, and for human food-crop production to stockpile for
humanitarian emergency relief food programs that are in more demand than
ever with climate change.
Arguably the worse case scenario of non-sustainable industrial agriculture
is the U.S. government’s commodity crop support program that subsidizes corn
and soybean production---crops, now predominantly GM, that result in serious
soil erosion and water pollution from agichemicals--- at an estimated $ 12.2
billion. Such subsidies are a disincentive to farmers to adopt more
ecologically sound farming practices.
This Life Science industry with its patented new seeds, rising from its
agribusiness commodity-crop, pet food, petrochemical fertilizer and
pharmaceutical roots, became a star of investor hope in the World Trade
Organization’s new world order, and with free trade blessings. But its
promises of better seeds and crops through genetic engineering that would
benefit all, in spite of its now almost global domination, have proven to be
false. In the face of climate change and food riots, these touted wonder
crops to feed the poor and to resist drought are still being touted twenty
years after their first patented appearance in the US. But they were
developed primarily to monopolize the corn/rice/soy/canola and cotton
commodity crop market and to boost sales of herbicides to which these new
crops had been made genetically resistant.
The humanitarian benefits proclaimed by the Life Science industry were a
sham, and served to emotionally blackmail legislators and hoodwink the
public into accepting GM crops that have caused far more harm to many than
any good. The indirect and unforeseen costs far outweigh the short term
benefits, which more and more governments and businesses are now beginning
to realize. Yet still the Life Science industry holds out the promise of
their seeds to solve Africa’s problems and those of other impoverished and
overpopulated countries, and to this end the US government and World Bank
have been working to gain acceptance of GM crops by foreign governments
through fair means and foul, bribes being the common currency of
multinational corporations and corrupt governments and politicians.
The Life Science industry employs scientists to defend GM crops and the
genetic engineering and cloning of farm animals, like oil companies employed
scientists to say that global warming/climate change was a myth. They gave
billions to Universities, setting up Chairs, Departments, Fellowships and
lucrative consultative and patent sharing agreements, along with the US
Chamber of Commerce.
One of the first government employed scientist to blow the whistle on the
health risks and unproven safety of GM foods was immediately fired. He
worked for the same British government laboratory that collaborated with
China to develop genetically engineered wheat.
This good scientist, Dr. Arapad Pusztai whose research findings he has now
shared with millions of concerned consumers around the world, were
suppressed and loudly discredited by the Life Science
government-industry-university complex. Their act of suppression gave Dr.
Pusztai his world forum, and he came to this as an objective scientist with
no bias pro or con GM foods. (More details to come below).
Since 85-90 percent of the US corn and soy crops are now GM, along with more
and more of our rice, and since more and more of these crop byproducts are
put into pet foods, and dogs and cats are getting more allergies, digestive
and other debilitating and costly health problems, consumers are beginning
to wake up.
We can all find information, direction and hope in many organizations that
are addressing the critical issues of human health, food security, safety
and quality from a variety of perspectives. The following reports, posted on
the internet by scientists and analysts include full reference citation to
support their assertions and conclusions.
Having read many scientific papers on the risks and benefits of GM crops,
the most disturbing review published in a highly credible, peer-reviewed
journal confirms what concerned analysts and others have feared for several
years. This is that GM seeds are genetically unstable because they are more
prone than normal to undergo spontaneous mutations. This can mean that GM
crops could produce novel, harmful proteins, excessive, even toxic amounts
of normal nutrients, or become extremely deficient in same (6).
Notes
(1) See Jeffrey M. Smith’s book ‘Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health
Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods’, and visit his website
www.seedsofdeception.com.
(2) For details see Eating With Conscience: The Bioethics of Food by Dr.
M.W.Fox New Sage Press, Troutdale,OR, 1997.
(3) See www.non-gmoreport.com for more details.
(4) See Daniel Imhoff, ‘Food Fight: A Citizen’s Guide to the Food and Farm
Bill’, Watershed Media Publ., 2007.
(5) For an in-depth review of the development of genetically engineered
crops, foods, and animals, see M.W. Fox, Killer Foods: What Scientists Do To
Make Better Is Not Always Best. The Lyons Press, Guilford, CT 2004
(6) A.K.Wilson, J.R.Latham, and R.A.Steinbrecher, ‘Transformation-induced
mutations in transgenic plants: Analysis and biosafety implications.’
Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews, vol 23, p 209-226, 2006.
For more articles by Dr. Fox, visit Two Bit Dog.
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