5. The risk assessments of genetically engineered foods/crops, used by biotechnology companies to reassure the public, are flawed and misleading.
- Altered plant behaviour as a result of stress is not considered in risk assessments of releasing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In 1996, Monsanto's genetically engineered cotton, NuCOTN
Ò was grown commercially in vast regions of the southern U.S. The modified Bt toxin was to protect the crop from the cotton bollworm and the tobacco budworm but a especially hot and dry summer affected expected plant and pest behaviour. Plants that are stressed by heat and drought often alter their protein synthesis. This cotton also altered its Bt production producing less of the toxin then it would in 'normal' climatic conditions. The cotton bollworm thrives in hot and dry conditions and this combined with the lower Bt levels caused damage to nearly half of the 2 million acres of NuCOTNÒ . Monsanto ordered the affected fields to be sprayed with traditional chemical pesticides to save the crop (Steinbrecher, p. 277).
- The 'microcosm studies' on GMOs consisting of their release into contained, miniaturized ecosystems which are supposed to reflect the organism's behaviour in the wider environment can only show some of the more exaggerated ecological distortions possible; they are too simplified and short-term (some weeks at most) to show the longer-term risks of persistence, genetic transfer and ecological disruption (Steinbrecher, p. 227).
- Field trials or "monitored release", are less artificial but cannot reflect the risks involved in growing a crop on a commercial scale because test sites tend to be far removed from other crops and wild relatives which is not how the commercial growing environment is. The ecological conditions at the release site cannot reflect the far more diverse environments and climates that the GMO will encounter. Unfamiliar ecosystems, insects and soil microorganisms do not fit in the safety trials conducted and therefore they are incomplete in their conclusions at best (Steinbrecher, p. 227).
- In 1991, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Monsanto's materials on BGH
"go beyond the legitimate exchange of scientific information" and ordered Monsanto to stop making unsubstantiated claims about BGH. According to researcher Bill von Meyer, president of Fairview Industries, a genetics and chemistry research company in Middleton, Wisconsin, rodent toxicity tests on Monsanto's BGH were much too brief and didn't involve enough animals (Pinholster ).
- Professor Dennis Parke of University of Surrey School of Biological Sciences, a former chief advisor on food safety to Unilever Corporation and British advisor to the US FDA on safety aspects of
biotechnology writes: "In 1983, hundreds of people in Spain died after consuming adulterated rapeseed oil. This adulterated rapeseed oil was not toxic to rats". Dr Parke warns that current testing procedures for genetically altered foods including rodent tests are not proving safety for humans. He has suggested a moratorium on the release of genetically engineered organisms, foods, and medicines (Dyer).
- 190 farmers in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina are in a legal dispute with Monsanto and Delta Pine, the Monsanto subsidiary that originally developed Terminator technology with the U.S. government (USDA). The suit contends the companies rushed the seed to market without adequate testing and when they began receiving complaints in 1997 about deformed roots, they misled growers and agriculture officials about the extent of the problem. The seed in question is a brand known as Paymaster 1220, Bollgard and Roundup Ready (A platform for inducing chemical sales, RAFI).
- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) focuses its assessments of the amount of safety testing required for crops and other GE products on the characteristics of the final product. The philosophy of the regulatory framework is that genetically engineered organisms are not fundamentally different from traditionally bred organisms. CFIA compares long-stemmed roses to low-fat pork to illustrate that biotechnology is a very old agricultural practice. The official belief is that 'precise' nature of the new techniques of biotechnology may in fact allow us more knowledge about genetically engineered organisms than about those that occur naturally. The assumption that genetic engineering is not different from breeding is a fantastically wrong keystone upon which to base testing requirements. Genetic engineering recombines genetic material in the laboratory between species that do not interbreed in nature. And while conventional breeding methods shuffle different forms (alleles) of the same genes, genetic engineering enables completely new (exotic) genes to be introduced with unpredictable effects on the physiology and biochemistry of the resultant transgenic organism. This is very different from grafting rose cuttings in the interest of long stems. Yet if there is no obvious difference between the assessed product and its natural counterpart, Canada assumes that no thorough testing --no long term animal testing, no human or rigorous allergenicity testing--is necessary (The Canadian Food Inspection Agency; Ho, p. 155).
"We are assured that these new plants are vigorously tested and regulated, but the evaluation procedure seems to presume that unless a GM crop can be shown to be unsafe, there is no reason to stop its use."
--Prince Charles ("Seeds of disaster" The Prince of Wales, The Daily Telegraph, June 8, 1998)