London (19.2.08)
– Every now and again, in their increasingly desperate efforts to stave
off the general acceptability of GM crops and foods, opponents attempt to
keep their campaigns alive by publishing “reports” which claim
to show how the technology is “not wanted”.
Last year it was the Soil Association which, in November, published a 60-page
report described as “an advertisement for their own products - an advertisement,
moreover, which is 60 pages long” (http://www.cropgen.org/article_159.html).
And which would cost you £10 to read! There was nothing in it not already
common knowledge.
Not to be outdone, Friends of the Earth have just released Who benefits
from GM crops? (1) – only 46 pages this time (and free) –
intended, no doubt, as a spoiler in advance of last week's annual release
by ISAAA of global progress in GM plantings (2).
Who benefits from GM crops is clear enough. For one thing, ask the farmers.
As of the end of 2007, some 114 million hectares were cultivated with GM crops
by about ten million farmers. Every year for a decade these numbers have risen
by 10-20%. Would the activists have us believe that all these farmers are
stupid fools, working at no benefit to themselves in order to enrich the biotech.
companies? And going on doing so year after year? Or are those same activists
whistling in the dark and hoping something will turn up to vindicate their
positions? But it hasn't yet and with every day that passes the likelihood
of the catastrophe for which they hope grows ever smaller.
And the consumers? For those lucky enough to live in countries that do not
recoil in horror from new ideas and new technologies, consumers have benefited
for years from higher quality crops and prices less than they would otherwise
have been. There are clear health implications, too. One of the endless problems
with agricultural products is the damage done by insects and other pests.
We know that corn borer larvae attacking maize plants leave them open to fungal
invasion with the subsequent generation of highly poisonous mycotoxins, some
causing cancer and other serious diseases. When insect attacks are poorly
controlled, as in organic farming, the end products can be sufficiently badly
contaminated with mycotoxins that they have to be withdrawn from sale (3).
We also know that the genetically modified insect-resistant crops (such as
Bt maize) minimise contamination compared with non-Bt isolines (4). Is that
not a benefit worth having? We know further that Golden Rice, designed specifically
to prevent thousands of cases annually of vitamin A-deficiency blindness largely
in children in poor countries, has been held up because of the sort of thinking
promulgated by activists. The result: hundreds of thousands of cases of blindness
annually and tens of thousands of deaths among people in poor countries, especially
those who subsist on a high rice diet and are unable to afford the varied
foods that would keep them healthy. They would benefit from Golden Rice –
and will do so eventually in spit of activist delaying tactics – but
think of the damage and suffering caused in the meantime by those people pursuing
their political objectives.
None of these considerations, of course, trouble activist organisations. Next
year or the year after they will produce another of their “reports”
and will go on doing so as long as they think it will gain them membership,
funding and influence. Meanwhile, even many of their former sympathisers can
see that they are becoming more and more irrelevant; eventually just an echo
of their cries will remain to remind us of how absurd and anti-social were
their erstwhile policies and claims.
Sources:
1. Juan Lopez Villar & Bill Frees (Jan. 2008). Who benefits from GM
crops? The rise in pesticide use. Friends of the Earth (http://www.foeeurope.org/GMOs/Who_Benefits/FULL_REPORT_FINAL_FEB08.pdf)
2. Biotech crops experience remarkable dozen years of double-digit growth;
Socio-economic benefits becoming evident among resource-poor farmers.
ISAAA Brief 37-2007: Press Release (13.2.08) (http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/37/pressrelease/default.html).
See also http://www.cropgen.org/article_170.html.
3. Contaminated maize meal withdrawn from sale. Food Standards Agency
(10.9.03) (http://www.foodstandards.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2003/sep/maize)
4. Felicia Wu (Feb. 2008). Bt corn and mycotoxin reduction. ISB News
Report (http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2008/news08.feb.htm)
– see also http://www.cropgen.org/article_174.html
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