Article from the May 2013 issue of Noseweek Magazine.
The biotechnology industry ran a dirty tricks campaign against Dr Gilles-Eric Seralini, professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen in France, after his research pointed to harmful effects of genetically modified crops
The Biotech Industry has strenuously opposed the labelling of food as containing GM ingredients. It routinely refuses independent researchers access to its seed. And when scientists warn that GM foods may not be safe for human consumption, it goes to extreme lengths to shut them up. What could it possibly have to hide?
Considering the big food companies’ unbridled enthusiasm for genetically modified organisms, you’d think they would want to shout about the presence of these technological wonder-crops in their products. But they don’t even want to whisper it in the small print below the vitamin content.
The only reason they mention it at all is because, since October 2011, they have been obliged to do so, at least on products containing any ingredient of which 5% or more is genetically modified. And some still don’t.
Last year, the GM-cautious African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) tested at random four products unlabelled for Genetically Modified Organisms and found they contained little else.
GMO accounted for 90.36% of the maize and 71.42% of the soy in Premier’s Bokomo wheat-free ProNutro; 66.18% of the ingredients in its Impala maize meal; 77.65% of the maize in Nestle Cerelac Honey Infant Cereal.
The Consumer Goods Council, a national fellowship of producers and retailers (chaired, incidentally, by Nestle SA CEO Sullivan O’Carroll), defended its members on the fabricated grounds that the regulations do not apply to processed foods, only the raw mielie pit or intact soya bean.
Nevertheless, the requisite small-print has subsequently been added to Impala and FutureLife packaging and FutureLife says it is trying to source non-GM maize (no easy matter these days).
NOTE: As from the 1st July 2013, all products produced in the FUTURELIFE® factory have been made from NON-GMO raw materials. For more info please visit http://www.futurelife.co.za/gmo/
Nestle says it has already changed all its infant cereals to non-GM maize. Wheat-free ProNutro is still not labelled as GM, and Bokomo says it is in the process of changing its ProNutro packaging but the new labelled packs are not yet on the shelves.
The outcry from consumer activists also compelled the Department of Trade and Industry to re-draft the regulations, specifying that all food – imported, local, processed or raw – must be labelled if any of its ingredients are above the GM limit. The label needs to be displayed in “a conspicuous and easily legible manner and size”. It must state, without change: “Contains genetically modified ingredients or components”.
The draft was advertised for public comment in October, but the final version is yet to appear in the Government Gazette. (Noseweek has asked the DTI to explain the delay, but has received no response. The Centre for Biosafety has resorted to sending Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies a lawyer’s letter demanding a release date).
It took more than 10 years after the arrival of GMOs on our plates for mandatory labelling to be introduced, so this tardiness is not unprecedented.
Getting in the way as much as possible has been not just the local food industry and organised agriculture but the alarmingly powerful, foreign-owned GM companies for whom publicignorance is a state much to be desired.
Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow and Du-Pont have spent millions of dollars lobbying against labelling in the US and otherwise trying to persuade politicians and the media that GM is not only harmless, but the answer to world hunger.
Anyone who calls for caution is dismissed as a luddite who would rather Africa starve than embrace the miracle of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready maize.
And yet no research has ever been done on the effects of GMO on humans, unless you count the uncontrolled global experiment to which we are all currently being subjected without our informed consent, and in most cases, without our knowledge.
There have been studies on rats though. Most of them have been carried out by GM companies themselves so you can imagine how completely independent and objective they must be.
Moreover, since few of these trials last more than 90 days, they are not designed to establish the long-term effects of GM on a creature that has a natural lifespan of around two years. Unsurprisingly, none of these sweetheart studies has picked up any problems.
It is the independent research, patchy though it is, that has repeatedly sounded a warning. One of the most recent trials, reported last year in the respected peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicity, raised serious concerns about the safety of Monsanto’s herbicide-tolerant NK6 03 maize, which currently occupies more than 50% of South Africa’s mielie lands and is increasing its share every year.
Anyone who calls for caution is dismissed as a luddite who would rather Africa starve than embrace the miracle of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready maize
The trial, named after lead author Dr Gilles-Eric Seralini, professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen in France, is one of the most rigorous ever conducted on GMOs. It was also the first to study the lifelong effects on rats of NK603, as well as Roundup, the weedkiller with which the crop is liberally doused in the field.
The researchers found that rats fed NK603, or very dilute amounts of Roundup, or both, tended to develop bigger tumours faster and die younger than those in the control group. The GM-fed rats were also more likely to suffer from liver and kidney disease, which was also the prime cause of premature death among the test males.
Ghastly gagging
Here’s some scary news the land of the free. Tucked away in the short-term budget resolution signed in March by President Barack Obama is a section that should send shivers down the spines of everyone who believes in the rule of law.
Dubbed the Monsanto Protection Act by civil liberties organisations, the provision allows biotech companies to continue selling and planting government-approved GMOs while the safety or legality of those crops is being challenged in a federal court.
In other words, it is pointless trying to gain an interdict against Monsanto, even if you have compelling evidence of harm; even if your organic crops are being contaminated by GM pollen or Roundup herbicide.
This is a major blow for non-GM farmers because the courts have proved far more cautious about GM than the US Department of Agriculture, and far less friendly to the biotech giants.
It’s not just the contents of the provision that have caused outrage, but the way it was sneaked into the spending bill. It was introduced anonymously and without review by the judicial or agricultural committees.
In spite of a petition signed by 250,000 voters and a protest outside the White House, many members of the US Congress deny knowing that it was part of the budget.
The inclusion of the provision was only picked up by the mass media when it was too late.
Another one for the corporations, then.
The Seralini report concludes that “the significant biochemical disturbances and physiological failures documented in this work confirm the pathological effects of these GMO and (Roundup) treatments… We propose that agricultural edible GMOs and formulated pesticides must be evaluated very carefully by long-term studies to measure their potential toxic effects”.
The GM industry, true to form, went completely spare.
Before the final report had even been published, the industry’s lobbyists had launched an international campaign of disinformation and personal insult aimed at discrediting the trial and destroying Seralini’s reputation.
Crude arguments, repeatedly and loudly proclaimed by corporate lobbyists, tame regulators and GM-friendly scientists were amplified further by lazy or embedded journalists to cast a pall of doubt on the study’s findings.
The distinguished scientist was accused variously of publicity seeking, making a political point, scaremongering and possible professional misconduct. Critics demanded that the journal retract the paper.
But none of their concrete objections stand up to scrutiny.
They said the strain of rats Seralini’s team used are prone to tumours. (They are the same rats used by Monsanto for its own NK603 feeding trial).
They said the rats were allowed to feed at will, which promotes tumour development. (So were the rats in Monsanto’s trial).
They said the number of rats (200) was too low. (Monsanto’s own feeding trials for at least two of its herbicide-resistant maize strains used just 40 rats and lasted 90 days).
Hundreds of independent scientists around the world sprang to Seralini’s defence, expressing outrage at the interference of powerful corporations in legitimate research and warning of dire consequences for scientific credibility.
Seralini is by no means the first scientist to have his reputation trashed for daring to call for a precautionary approach to GM (see box).
GM companies have also been accused of refusing to provide seed for research, and for failing to release the raw data from their own studies to academic institutions.
The implications of GM for human health and food security are just one of the concerns raised by those urging better regulation and more research before these crops are let loose in the environment and the human food chain.
It has already been demonstrated that GMOs spread readily to non-GM crops and their wild relatives, with possibly devastating effects on biodiversity.
The Seralini study confirmed suspicions that Monsanto’s Roundup formula is more toxic than one can assume from examining only its active ingredient, Glyphosate. Yet Roundup is being sprayed in ever-greater volumes as GM crops spread and resistant superweeds take over from their more vulnerable ancestors.
Neither is the claim of plentiful, cheap food borne out by current evidence. According to the National Agricultural Marketing Council, the average price of South Africa’s cheapest maize meal increased by 26% from July 2011 to July 2012.
Last year’s figures from the Crop Estimates Committee indicated the lowest average maize yield since 2007, in spite of the wholesale adoption of GM.
One doesn’t have to be a luddite, or even anti-GM to be worried.
And one’s suspicions are not allayed by the secrecy, paranoia and bullying of the big companies or the supine attitude of national and international regulators (including South Africa’s opaque GMO Registrar and anonymous decisionmaking body, the Executive Council, on which the government and industry are represented, but not civil society).
Few of the people tucking into their GM mieliepap of a chilly morning in South Africa have read, would understand, or even care that their breakfast contains artificially inserted genetic material and herbicide that could damage their health, and have irreversible environmental consequences.
As Anita Burger, of the pro-GM lobby group Biosafety South Africa, boasted: “Over 90 percent of South Africans have no knowledge on the subject or are indifferent.”
And the GM industry would like to keep it that way.
Scientific opposition is vilified
From 1995 to 1998, Professor Arpad Pusztai, one of the UK’s top protein scientists, led the first-ever independent, peer-reviewed animal feeding trial on GM crops on behalf of Britain’s top nutritional research laboratory, The Rowett Research Institute.
His initial findings – that rats fed an experimental strain of GM potato exhibited stunted growth and suppressed immune systems — led to an international outcry from the media, the science establishment, politicians and the biotech industry.
Rowett, after intitially defending Pusztai’s work, subsequently suspended him and seized his data after accusing him of misconduct. His contract was not renewed.
According to Andrew Rowell’s book, Don’t worry, it’s safe to eat, pressure to sack Pusztai came from Monsanto.
In 2009, Dr Andres Carrasco, a leading embryologist at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School, published a study which linked Roundup herbicide with deformations in chicken embryos that were similar to the birth defects which had increased four-fold over the previous decade among people living in farming areas dominated by GM crops.
Carrasco has since been physically attacked, verbally threatened and harassed by what he and witnesses describe as representatives of agribusiness.
In 2001, Ignacio Chapela, a microbial ecologist from the University of California, Berkeley, discovered that Mexico’s indigenous maize varieties had become contaminated through cross-pollination with GM maize.
When his findings were published in the journal Nature, the Mexican government and the biotech industry hit back with threats and claims of misconduct and bias. Under huge pressure, Berkeley denied him tenure, a decision overturned only after Chapela sued.
Dr Irina Ermakova, a senior scientist at the Russian National Academy of Sciences, tested store-bought GM soy on pregnant rats. More than half the baby rats died within three weeks. When Ermakova reported her preliminary findings at a conference in 2005, she was vilified by her colleagues and her boss forbade her from doing any more GM food research.
And that’s just a taste of the pressure that independent scientists are under when it comes to testing the safety of GMOs.
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