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I am posting here this review of Ricarda's talk (given 13th Feb 2009) sent to me by Richard Twinch. Thanks, Richard!
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Food for Thought: To GM or not to GM?
At the Jupiter Trust series in Oxford on ‘Defending Essential Values: Life, Liberty & the Human Spirit” last night, genetically engineered food was on the menu – not food to eat, but food for thought.
Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher is an international advisor to many NGOs and was one of the advisors and advocates for the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety – part of the UN Convention on Biodiversity - which concluded in 2000. Her book ‘Hungry Corporations’ (first published in 2003 & written with Helena Paul) is no half-baked activist rant – but a detailed research report with numerous footnotes, laced with acronyms (for which there is an ample glossary) and a detailed index.
Steinbrecher’s background is as a biologist who was working on genetic research for blood clotting diseases up to 13 years ago. This offered the prospect of cures for such scourges as haemophilia – which has failed to materialise. Steinbrecher explained that molecular genetics is a very recent and complex science which takes time to understand. She said “the certainty of our knowledge betrayed us” - the quote of the evening for me – and one which also explains much of what is happening in the world of science and maybe also that of finance.
We were deprived of the Powerpoint presentation due to a technical glitch – but Steinbrecher’s illustration with words and gestures well made up the shortfall – and if anything focused attention on her subject.
Steinbrecher’s passion is for biodiversity which supplies ample variety. Diversity, she said, provides ‘a buffer’ to attacks and environmental strains on natural systems. She illustrated this with the example of an ecological agricultural system that has been developed in East Africa to protect crops against a particular infestation (maize stem borer) by surrounding them with Napier grass that attracts and ties in the pests. At the same time leguminous crops (Silverleaf or Desmodium –which are usually regarded as weeds) are planted within the main crop. These both repel the insects and fix nitrogen in the soil. This is described as a ‘push and pull’ system and according to Steinbrecher, it has shown great benefits in terms of yield as well as additional spin offs such as selling the grass, the discouragement of some invasive parasitic weeds and prevention of soil erosion. This works well at a small to medium scale which perfectly matches local farming techniques.
Steinbrecher also cited a similar multi-cropping system with yield increases of up to 70% as compared to conventional farming. She said “Such ‘agro-ecological’ (ag) systems, including organic, are increasingly recognised as the system of choice for sustainable food production, especially in the global South”
Proximity of the secondary and tertiary crops to the main crop is a requirement for these ‘ag’ systems which is why they do not suit big fields, huge farms and the ‘hungry corporations’ who own and manage the land and seek naturally to make a big profit on their investments. This is the world of GM food. It is a world dominated by monocultures. The big idea behind GM is the production of species that are resistant to specific chemical herbicides and which incorporate in-built genes to fight disease or pests, resist drought and salinity, increase yield and boost nutrition, So far only herbicide tolerant & limited pest resistant GM crops exist and even these, Steinbrecher points out, have negative impacts.
“This is the only way to feed the world’s hungry” is the message from the GM food producers to the guilt-laden westerner. Sounds great, and provided there is sufficient safety and testing then why not? Quite simply Steinbecher says it does not work, is not proven, and is largely based on a scientific outlook that is 20 years old and so is “unreliable, outdated and unsafe.”
We were treated to an exposition of genetics using a ball point pen as a visual tool to show how genes act on cells. Steinbrecher explained that all cells of an organism contain the same hereditary information, written down in the long strands of DNA. These are kept in the nucleus of the cell, a central compartment within the cell, acting as a sort of ‘high command’ centre. Different cells will use the genetic information differently. Genes (and regulatory sequences contained in the DNA) are switched on and off to make a tooth, grow hair , a bit of lung tissue or produce digestive enzymes depending on where they are, the stage of development or the momentary requirements/needs [place and time]. Basically, in front of the gene there is a regulatory sequence, an on/off switch, commonly called a ‘promoter’. If the information contained in a gene is required by the cell or organism, a messenger binds to its promoter and switches the system on. A painstakingly accurate mirror copy then gets made of the DNA in a process called ‘transcription’. This copy now gets ferried out of the nucleus into the body of the cell, where the information is used as an instruction to produce a particular protein. This process is called ‘translation’.
The idea that is popularly understood is that a suitable gene with special benefits (colour, resistance to drought, longevity) is taken from one living system (plant, animal, or bacteria) and inserted/transcribed to another – for instance to make a sort of wheat that is more drought resistant. Again sounds good in theory, but the model is just too simplistic. Steinbrecher said that there are only a handful of genes that are single function – most are involved in a number of processes and pathways and have different effects depending on the system within which they operate [place and time]. Also scientists have no precise way of inserting a gene in a particular location in the ‘host’ DNA – instead they use a number of techniques some of which involve a ‘shotgun’ approach of physically blasting genes at tissue, with all currently used techniques resulting in random integrations of genes and multiple mutations.
They have also discovered that extracts of DNA from viruses are particularly good at switching on inserted genes. These ‘viral promoters’ have the ability to override the cell’s normal regulatory functions and thus make the plants produce the gene product in all the cells all the time. This is very clever stuff, but is it safe? This is the question that Steinbrecher has been researching, questioning and challenging, with some success (as above). However, safety research & precaution are not a matter that is popular in a commercial environment where products are brought to market as soon as possible to realise a return on the investment - our ecological future may again be a reflection of our financial predicament where risk assessment was woefully abandoned for short term gain.
But what about the successes of GM? To this question Steinbrecher responded with a curt “what success?” Increased acreage of GM soya and maize in the US, Argentina, Brazil? Yes – but there has been no yield increase, no reduction in pesticide use. She firmly states that there simply haven’t been any successes to date and denounced what she argues are false claims made by a certain proponent of GM food, who claimed that the ‘push and pull’ system used in Africa (described earlier) is a result of GM, when it is not. We have the new purple GM tomato rich in anti-oxidants – but ‘so-what?’ such tomatoes are already found in Central Europe as a result of conventional breeding. She concedes that under heavy insect attack or under high pest infestation, the use of certain maize crops indeed was shown to reduce yield loss in some areas, but these are only short lived. On a longer time scale other factors come into play, such as the breaking down of the defence system or the emergence of secondary pests.
Steinbrecher comments further: “What I had referred to as an effect showing up 7 years after the introduction of bt cotton (insect resistant / pesticide producing) in China, was the infestation of bt cotton fields by secondary pests. By this time it had reached levels where farmers were spending more money on pesticides for the new pest than they were saving for the first pest through using bt cotton. Interestingly enough, the secondary pests in China seemed to prefer the GM crop to the conventional. India and Pakistan also were facing serious problems with secondary pests, with heavy losses and leaving farmers in despair – though different ones to the ones in China. In another case in India the GM cotton in itself gave such poor performances, that it left farmers seriously indebted.”
There is then a problem here in that the world is being ‘sold’ unproven and potentially unsafe food. In the UK we thought the argument had been resolved in the 1990s and that GM had beaten a hasty retreat from ‘this green and pleasant land’ – but it is encroaching on all around on the basis that if ‘an untruth is told often enough people come to believe it’.
Steinbrecher comments: “An example here is rather that people seem to believe that GM is necessary to feed – or will feed - the world. Nothing could be further from the truth, as it actually runs counter to that. Likewise: ‘GM is good for the environment and sustainable agriculture’ – again, nothing could be further from the truth.”
A further concern is the widespread use of GM food in animal feed which by-passes the usual ‘labelling’ regulations for consumers. There is growing evidence from feeding studies, according to Steinbrecher, that the presence of certain GM compounds may have a harmful effect on the liver, kidneys, gut and immune system in general of the animals fed a GM diet.
The most delightful part of Steinbrecher’s talk was the description of how soil works and how plants interact with the micro-bacterial organisms in the soil to create a matrix for nourishment based on interchange e.g. sugar for water or minerals. In this way the soil is much more than a sort of sponge for containing essential minerals and water for the plants - it is full of life. Recent research also points to the fact that GM crops tend to have a reduced interaction with the micro-organisms in the soil which may well be detrimental in the long term.
The risk of the monoculture future is that we open ourselves to famine since single species, however great they may be in certain respects, are prone to attack and cannot constitute a mutually supportive ecosystem. Steinbrecher cited the case of a small brown plant–hopper [see Chapter 1 of Hungry Corporations] carrying a disease that destroyed vast areas of monoculture rice in the Philippines and Indonesia.
Steinbrecher concluded that “Food security and sustainable food production will not come from high tech monoculture high input farming but from agro-ecological systems, that allow mutual support of all the various components and that make the most of the land and its capacity for growth. There are more and more reports coming out that clearly grab us by the shoulders, turn us around once or twice and point us towards sustainable ‘ag’ systems (agro-ecology systems). It is here where we all need to focus our research”
She returned to her passion for diversity and encouraged people not to support food systems based on intensive monocultures but rather to support such ventures as farmers’ markets and, if possible, to grow our own food. Steinbrecher herself cited the powers of dissemination of good information, persistence, enquiry (asking critical questions) and ‘making a noise’, qualities she herself demonstrates. These are simple remedies – but effective in lifting apathy and challenging blind belief.
More information:
http://www.econexus.info/
www.gmfreeze.org
Notes& Queries:
(1) Another much-debated issue is whether it is ethically proper to transcribe genes from one species to another at all – as the difference in location could generate mutations with wildly aberrant behaviour. Currently such practice has become accepted and legalised. What do others think?
(2) We have forgotten that we can be part of the process by which the earth and we feed ourselves – but we cannot take on the role as ‘feeder of the world’ – anymore than Solomon could feed all the creatures of the world despite his unparalleled powers. Are we then interfering in the process of creation in a way that should be left to the ‘creator’ – even if the ‘creator’, in an immanential sense, is the evolutionary process itself ?
(3) I have just been reminded that the great Charles Darwin himself, whose 200th anniversary we currently are celebrating, spent the last five years of his life studying earthworms, whose humble and largely unnoticed existence and constant activity, allows life to spring from the soil.
(4) Some people consider that assimilating food is one of the most essential activities of human beings - not only in terms of nourishment, pleasure and taste - but as a service to the food itself - which can through cooking and proper appreciation be raised to another level of consciousness. [see Notice to Cooks http://www.beshara.org/school/lectures/rauf_cooks.html ] As we know the best ingredients make the best food - so messing around with the ingredients may well be changing the balance of life in a way that we have absolutely no idea about.
Richard Twinch Oxford Valentines Day 2009
With additional comments by Ricarda Steinbrecher
footnotes:
[1] Keith Addison, ‘Nutrient Starved Soils Lead to Nutrient Starved People’, acres (US), June 1983; Asian Business, February 1983. http://journeytoforever.org/keith_phsoil.html
[2] Zhu, Y. et al. ‘Genetic Diversity and Disease Control in Rice’ Nature, 406 (2000): 718–22.
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A review of Ricarda Steinbrecher's talk (Read 3347 times)
