Gene-manipulated Seeds: Are We losing Our Food Security Too?

By F. William Engdahl

Washington and London are united not only on policy in Iraq. Tony Blair and George W. Bush also agree that the world should be saturated with gene-manipulated (GM) or genetically-engineered crops and seeds. Its advocates, including major chemical giants Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Bayer, claim that GM crops are the answer to world hunger, and promise food security to growing populations. Astonishing enough, the claims are made in the absence of almost any serious independent scientific long-term study of the effects of GM crops on animal or human organisms.

If the spread of GM crops continues at the current pace, within perhaps seven to eight years, the essential food supply of mankind will pass to the corporate control of perhaps three to four giant multinationals. Such power over life and death has never before in history been so concentrated in so few hands. Most shocking is that such a profound policy change is being advanced with almost complete absence of truly independent scientific study, or analysis of long-term possible negative effects of genetically modified foods, sometimes called GMO’s, on either humans or animals.

Since April 18, 2004 the EU, under heavy pressure from Washington, has permitted gene-manipulated foods to be sold inside the EU for the first time since a ban was imposed in 1998. The new rule appears to be a control of GM products, as it imposes labelling, somewhat like that warning on cigarettes, that a product contains a certain percent GM substance. The EU Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, an open fan of GM food, hails it as “farmers’ right to choose.” However, with this step, the EU moratorium on GM plants has now been effectively destroyed. And the world’s second largest economic region now faces loss of its own control over the most vital commodity—its own food supply.

In June 2003, immediately following the US occupation of Baghdad, President George W. Bush launched an offensive against the EU moratorium on GM products. Bush blamed the EU for starving Africa by its ban, and threatened to go to the WTO to challenge the EU moratorium. “For the sake of a continent threatened by famine,” Bush then declared, “I urge European nations to end their opposition to biotechnology.”

Bush’s urgency about lifting Europe’s ban on GM products arguably had little to do with stopping starvation in Africa however. It had very much to do with future control of the world food supply by a power whose military already has developed the most awesome dominance of any military in history, and whose financial and economic weight dominates the world economy. If Washington and its corporate backers succeed in their GM push, it will be to the worse for mankind. How so?

In late January the EU Commission approved sale of canned GM Maize by the Swiss biotech firm, Syngenta, allowing it to sell the food as corn-on-the-cob in EU shops and restaurants. The EU argues that the new rules on GM labelling make it safe to approve such foods. The same day the Belgian government said it was planning to approve a variety of GM oilseed or raps, for cultivation.

In march, the EU Commission announced it was about to approve planting of an allegedly herbicide-resistant maize, NK603, owned by Monsanto, the world’s largest owner of GM plant patents. At the same time Swiss giant, Syngenta, applied to German officials to begin trials of GM wheat crops in Thuringia. If the US experience is a guide, within a few short years, the entire EU agriculture production from Poland to Hungary to Germany and France, will be dominated by GM crops. The Polish Parliament, under pressure from Monsanto and the US agribusiness GM lobby, recently opened the country to wide use of GM crops in one of the richest growing soils in Europe. The EU Commission has opened Pandora’s Box with its decisions to allow consumers a “choice.” Brussels European Food Safety Authority is reviewing applications from Monsanto and Syngenta for GM maize cultivation and feed use.

No independent research

Most shocking is the near total absence of fundamental independent research on the possible effects on humans and animals of introducing GM substances into the food chain, as the floodgates are opened for changes which could potentially alter the way we live and even who lives.

British Minister for Environment, Michael Meacher, was fired from his cabinet post by Tony Blair in June 2003. The reason, according to British sources, was Meacher’s refusal to back untested use of GM plants. Meacher, after leaving the Cabinet, accused the Blair government of “rushing to desired conclusions which cannot be scientifically supported.” The UK Soil Association backed Meacher’s charge, stating, “The decision whether or not to allow the commercial growing of GM crops is a momentous one, potentially one of the most far-reaching that any government has had to take in terms of environment and public health.”

The Soil Association went on to warn, “The only human GM trial so far found that GM DNA transferred to bacteria in the human gut, while animal trials have seen a doubling of death rates among chickens fed GM feed and the development of gut lesions in rats eating GM potatoes and tomatoes.” What they did not state was evidence as well that Britain’s BSE or mad-cow scare a few years ago may well have been the result of feeding cattle GM feed.1

In August 1998, the world’s leading GM research expert, Hungarian-born scientist, Dr. Arpad Pustzai, was fired from his job at the UK Rowett Institute research center. His career was ruined and he was blacklisted from finding further work. His crime was that he had the courage to go public with alarming research findings in a British ITV television interview. Pustzai revealed that his research on laboratory rats showed rats fed GM potatoes suffered stunted growth and immune system damage. Pusztai stated his data showed that the diet of GM potatoes led to smaller livers, hearts and even affected brain size. His research was embargoed, his research team disbanded and he was forbidden to talk with his colleagues about his former work.

Pustzai, an eminent scientist with more than 35 years published professional research, later found he was fired on the intervention of British Prime Minister Blair. It seems that then-President Bill Clinton phoned Blair, after himself being alerted by Monsanto of the danger were the Pustzai research to gain worldwide attention. At the time Monsanto, a US chemicals firm famous for the deadly Agent Orange used in Vietnam, produced 91% of the world’s GM seed. Clinton had reportedly been the one to convince Blair of the benefits of promoting GM foods as a major new field for UK industry.2

One year later, in the Scientific Conference of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements in 1999, delegates from 60 countries called on governments to ban use of GM food, citing possible threats to human health and risk to rights of choice for farmers. Dr. Michael Fox, a specialist in bioethics from Washington, cited evidence that with GM crops, foreign DNA can enter the human body; GM organisms can produce unanticipated toxins or allergens; that gene transfer can occur between transgenic plants and bacteria, “the ecological consequences of which can be catastrophic.” He also reported that milk from cows injected with a GM substance, r-BGH, creates an increased insulin-like growth implicated in human breast cancer. Fox called for a worldwide moratorium on GM spread until adequate scientific risk assessments could be done.

In March 2004, a report was released in the United States of tests by two independent laboratories who tested non-GM seeds, which make up the traditional seed supply for maize, soya and oilseed rape, the three most important animal feed sources. They found, according to a report in the UK Independent, that fully 67% of all conventional crops—corn, soya, rape oilseeds—had been contaminated with genetically modified material through wind, pollination and other causes. The study said farmers unwittingly planted billions of GM seeds a year believing they have normal or non-GM seed. This came only 8 years after GM crops were introduced in US farming. The report warned there could be “serious risks to health” if GM drugs or GM industrial chemicals from the next generation of GM products find their way into the human food chain.

In one well-publicized incident, genes from Starlink (Bayer AG), a GM crop approved only for animals, planted in only 0.4% of all US maize, showed up in food across the United States including in tacos from Taco Bell. The tacos contained insecticide proteins not digestable by humans.

GM seed pollution is at the heart of the GM issue. Once the door is open to any planting of GM seeds in a region, all seeds in that region are vulnerable to contamination, whether by wind carry or bees or other insects. There are little controls on large grain trading firms like Cargill or ADM, many of whom have been suspected of deliberately mixing GM with non-GM seeds. That contamination, or genetic pollution factor alone will spell the end of bio-farming, as well as of conventional agriculture within a few years at most as US experience shows.

In another silenced study, Dr. Terje Traavik, director of the Norwegian Institute for Gene Ecology, found alarming evidence of GM effects. In the case of BT-Maize from US seed producer, Dekalb, evidence suggested that during pollination, the GM (maize) corn triggered disease in Philippine people living near the GM field. A virus used in making most GM foods, CaMV, was found intact in rat tissues three days after it had been mixed into a single meal, and was also confirmed in human cells. Most alarming, GM pox viruses recombined with natural viruses to create new hybrid viruses with unpredictable and potentially dangerous characteristics.

Traavik urged immediate further investigation of the alarming findings. He said his research, “raises additional concerns that GM foods might encourage genetic instability and mutation, accidental expression of allergens or toxins from non-target genes, and even activation of dormant viruses … We must investigate whether Bt-crops contribute to the unexplained rise of allergies.” He was greeted with stony silence in major western media.

A three-year UK government study, originally done under the supervision of Michael Meacher, and published in October 2003, showed that farmland wildlife is harmed more severely by the extra-powerful herbicides used by GM crops than even by conventional chemical herbicides. One argument used by Monsanto and the GM lobby to silence green critics of GM seeds, is the allegation they require less chemical herbicides. The UK biotech industry denied the report was important, and the Blair government approved “limited” GM use. The Meacher study also found that GM crops had been engineered to be herbicide tolerant and unaffected by even the strongest deadly chemical weed-killers like Monsanto’s Roundup, a chemical so strong it kills everything in conventional crop fields including the crops, bees and butterflies.3

The Meacher UK study lasted 3 years, cost millions of euros, and found a 500% decrease in flora, a 25% fall in butterflies and fewer seeds in oilseed rape fields. The Blair government buried the results, and approved limited GM use this year.

Fraudulent GM cost-benefit claims

The spread of GM seeds to American farmers was made on the basis of fraudulent promises of major productivity gains and significantly lower chemical pesticide use. Reality does not support this; in fact the opposite seems the case. In 2001 Dr Charles Benbrook presented results of analysis of the economics of Bt Maize (corn). He found that over three years US farmers paid large price premiums for GM seeds and ended with a net loss of $92 million or $1.31 per acre from it. Benbrook also found that the “planting of 550 million acres of GE corn, soybeans and cotton in the United States since 1996 has increased pesticide use by about 50 million pounds.” So-called ‘herbicide tolerant’ crops, which require far more use of special herbicides than normal plants, have been specially GM developed to insure that farmers who grow the GM corn or other crops are forced to buy the GM herbicide from the same company, such as Monsanto’s Roundup.4

GM seeds were promoted aggressively to desperate US farmers in the late 1990’s on promises of big profits and higher yields, and less weed problems. As of 2002, more than 70% of all US soybeans were GM plants, over 61% of all cotton and 25% of all corn. Supermarket products from Ovaltine to baby foods from Nestle, to McDonald’s burgers contained GM food.

An Iowa State University study by Michael Duffy showed that HT-Soya, a GM crop, lost $8.87 per acre compared with normal soya. In 2001 the Canadian government Biotechnology Advisory Committee stated, “…there is no publicly available survey or data on how individual farmers have benefited from adoption of GM crops in Canada.”

Another hidden cost to farmers for GM seeds is what Monsanto and others term a “technology fee.” Monsanto charges an added “technology fee” on top of the already high seed price on the argument farmers will get the benefit of the GM technology. Including the fees, GM seeds typically cost farmers 24-40% more than non-GM seeds. For GM maize, costs run anywhere from 30% to 90% higher. In addition, when buying the seed, the farmer is forced to sign a “technology agreement” with Monsanto the supplier, legally forbidding the farmer from saving any seed for the next harvest. If he cheats, he risks legal action.

According to a report by Food First Institute for Food and Development Policy in California, GM seeds “may be responsible for a string of crop failures.” They report that herbicide-tolerant plants and weeds have emerged in the United States, and that glyphosate-tolerant weeds there are plaguing GM cotton and soya fields. Atrazine, one of the most toxic herbicides, has to be used with glufosinate-tolerant maize.

More alarming, Bt proteins, used in about 25% of all GM crops worldwide, have been found harmful to a range of non-target insects, and many scientists have warned against releasing Bt crops for human use. Increasingly, large pharmaceutical companies are using GM crops to produce drugs, including cytokines, which is known to suppress the human immune system, induce sickness and central nervous system toxicity, according to FoodFirst. GM plants have also been documented to have produced interferon alpha, reported to cause dementia, and a viral sequence such as the ‘spike’ protein gene of the pig coronavirus, which is in the same family as the SARS virus which recently swept across Asia. Glufosinate ammonium and glyphosate are used with herbicide-tolerant transgenic or GM crops, in some 75% of all GM crops worldwide. Glufosinate ammonium is tied to neurological, respiratory and gastrointestinal toxicities and birth defects in humans and animals. Children born to users of glyphosate had heightened neuro-behavioral defects.

Food First concludes, “The known effects of glufosinate and glyphosate are sufficiently serious for all further uses of the herbicides to be halted.” Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide has been found to cause cell dysfunction that may be linked to human cancers. But the most frightening danger of GM consumption is the inherent tendency of gene recombination and transfer, the main route to creating viruses and bacteria which cause epidemics. In 2001 an ‘accidental’ killer mouse virus was created in the course of an apparently innocent GM experiment.5

In February this year, Devinder Sharma, writing in the journal, BioSpectrum, reported alarming results of planting Monsanto Bt (GM) cotton. The Indian company, Mahyco-Monsanto, promoted the Bt cotton seeds claiming it had the built-in ability to kill pink bollworms, a major pest. Because of the claim, they were able to sell the GM seed at four times the existing seed price. In its first year of planting, the Bt cotton crop in India has failed, in some fields by 100%.

In China, some 7 million hectares were planted with Bt cotton in 1999. Today, pesticide use has returned to earlier pre-1999 levels as the Bt cotton loses resistance to pests. GM cotton in China accounts for 50% of its entire cotton. This year, the Beijing government issued import certificates for several US gene technologies including five from Monsanto. More than 70% of China’s soybean imports are GM. China is trying to develop its own GM rice and plant varieties, presumably hoping that might be safer.

GM food as a US geo-strategic weapon

The country which grows far the world’s largest acreage of GM crops, the United States, allows GM agriculture to go ahead essentially unregulated. Owing to a 1992 Executive decision by then-President, George H.W. Bush, the US Government has ruled ever since that GM-altered seeds or crops are “substantially equivalent” to normal seeds or plants, and so, do not require any special testing!

The term “substantially equivalent” was intended to be vague, giving GM companies full freedom in developing GM products. The ruling was entirely political, not scientific. Many of the US Food and Drug Administration scientists at the time disagreed. US courts have upheld the fact that GM foods are “unregulated.” In other words, the most far-ranging alteration to the human food chain in history, with potential consequences unimaginable, is officially treated as if it were a new brand of toothpaste. Children’s toys receive more regulatory control than GM foods.

In short, GM foods have entered the diets of most Americans with no significant pre-market testing by the FDA or even the US Department of Agriculture. In fact the USDA holds many patents on GM seeds and stands to gain significant revenue from its worldwide sale.

The 1992 decision not to regulate GM plants has been upheld by both Presidents Clinton and now by George W. Bush. The present Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, came from the board of directors of Calgene, a part of Monsanto, the world’s largest GM seed producer. Veneman also sat on the powerful agriculture industry trade group, International Policy Council on Agriculture, with Monsanto, World Bank, Syngenta, Cargill, Nestle, Kraft, ADM and other power food multinationals. This group, IPC, defines all key policy issues in world agriculture trade. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came from Chicago where his drugs company, G.D. Searle, was bought by Monsanto.

Other members of the Bush Cabinet are in one or another way financially tied to the GM bio-industry lobby. At the very least, this indicates what a strategic priority GM food domination has assumed for Washington. At a time when US foreign policy under George Bush and Dick Cheney is guided by the looming crisis of oil depletion worldwide, and US efforts to control remaining oil and natural gas, the US push to spread GM seeds to the entire world food production assumes alarming dimension.

There is an intimate link between the Washington government and the GM industry.

A bio-imperialism?

To counter the small number of truly independent research efforts, Monsanto and the biotech industry have funded their own partisan research, and aggressively slandered or attacked contrary studies. Monsanto and the USAID, the State Department agency which administers world food aid, along with the World Bank, finance the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute studies of Dr. Florence Wambugu. Her studies claim that GM crops could raise crop yields by 4-10 tons per hectare. Independent investigation by Aaron deGrassi of the Sussex Institute of Development Studies, revealed that the data used by Wambugu was fraudulent. “The transgenic sweet potato being used as the answer to Africa’s food security was no improvement at all,” Sharma charges.

In April 2002, the respected British science journal, Nature, printed its first ever declaration that it had been “wrong,” in printing a scientific paper. The paper was from University of California Berkeley scientists critical of GM, charging native Mexican maize had been contaminated by GM maize. Nature had come under enormous pressure from the GM industry. A media PR firm hired by Monsanto, Bivings Group, it later was revealed, ran the coordinated attack on Nature resulting in their repudiation of the research. Scientists at respected universities such as Berkeley, signed attacks of the Nature article. Some of the scientists were involved in a university GM research project that got $25 million from Monsanto.6

Given all the evidence, it is not beyond the pale to ask whether the Washington demand for worldwide use of GM crops and products is part of a more sinister agenda than mere corporate profit and greed of a few. In his historic and unexpected visit to West Africa in summer of 2003, President Bush offered food aid to several African countries. It had big strings tied to it.

The US food aid was in the form of US-grown GM plants and seeds, not the traditional financial grant allowing the country to buy food on the market. Africans were told by USAID, the State Department agency in charge, either take GM or starve. The UN Food Program and the EU give food aid in financial grants allowing the country to buy locally or regionally. UK Chief Scientist, Prof. David King, called Bush Administration efforts to force GM foods on Africa, “a massive human experiment.” When some African governments protested the US move, a US official replied, “beggars can’t be choosers.”

The official USAID role is explicitly to promote GM crops as part of its food aid in developing or poor countries. Its own website boasts, “The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of USAID contracts and grants go directly to American firms. Foreign assistance programs have helped create major markets for agricultural goods…”

USAID finances US corporations such as Monsanto to run GM research programs in Africa. A former Monsanto official is USAID consultant on use of GM in food aid. Recently USAID granted $100 million for a 10-year program, “Collaborative Agriculture Biotechnology Initiative or CABIO, to “help developing countries access and manage the tools of modern biotechnology.”

To help this along, USAID has pressured numerous developing governments in Africa and elsewhere to pass national laws on “intellectual property rights (IPR’s).” Given the fact that GM companies like Monsanto and Syngenta are filing patents on GM maize, rice, soya and other natural crops, the day is approaching where a Kenyan traditional farmer or Indian peasant must pay a “technology fee” to plant rice or corn grown by their ancestors for thousands of years simply because a DNA gene has been altered. The WTO is in charge of enforcing these IPR’s. Washington has the largest weight in WTO.

USAID also funds the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). The ISAAA promotes GM crops for the developing world, from Africa to Asia and Latin America, including GM bananas, sweet potatoes, maize and papaya. ISAAA is funded by USAID together with Monsanto, Bayer AG, Syngenta, Cargill, Dow AgroSciences, and the US Department of Agriculture.

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe recently refused GM food aid. In Malawi, the IMF demanded the government sell its emergency grain reserves to pay its debts. Then, with a famine that could have been prevented, USAID demanded Malawi accept GM food aid. The South African government, on US pressure, approved $18 million for research on GM maize. Developing country farmers increasingly will be forced to go to Monsanto and other US and multinational companies to buy seeds each year, and special GM pesticides.

The next likely step is likely to be introduction of the controversial “terminator seed” technology once the markets are dependent on GM crops. In 1999 Monsanto caved in to massive public pressure and announced it was not going to commercialize its Terminator Seed technology.

The name is a deliberate reference to the Hollywood movies made by the California Governor. Terminator or GURT seeds, use GM engineering to ensure that any GM seeds replanted by a farmer are sterile, courtesy of a built-in GM sterilizer. Monsanto argued it was part of its protection of its “intellectual property rights.” With Terminator seeds, a farmer cannot use a part of his seeds for the next harvest. He is totally dependent on Monsanto or his corporate seed source, and whatever price they decide to name. The vital right of a farmer to save and replant seeds will be gone. He will be a modern-era serf to seed company giants like Monsanto and Syngenta.

In April 2003, Monsanto scientists published a paper praising Terminator technology benefits. The technology will take an estimated four years more to be ready for commercial introduction. At that point, with the largest growing areas of Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America dominated by GM crops, the potential for Monsanto, Cargill and a handful of US-led agri-giants to “play God” with the human race becomes real and concrete.

In May 2003, Monsanto won a surprising decision before the European Patent Office in Munich. After a 9 year legal battle, the company was given monopoly rights, European Patent no. 301,749, to “all forms of genetically engineered soybean varieties and seeds, regardless of the genes used.” The patent has been attacked worldwide as immoral and illegitimate. In 2001 91% of all GM seeds in the world were from Monsanto. Syngenta holds the most patents on rice, including basmati rice grown for more than 2,500 years.

Kissinger’s NSSM200 and the GM revolution

It is but a short leap of the mind to imagine the temptation for some leading policy circles in the Anglo-American establishment to impose Malthusian population reduction using their power over GM crops. This is especially credible in the face of growing shortage of vital energy such as oil and natural gas.

In 1974 US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, proposed a Presidential security policy memorandum, NSSM 200, titled, “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests.” NSSM200, which was made policy by President Ford in 1975, made population control and birth reduction official US foreign policy. It stated, “World population growth is widely recognized within the (US) Government as a current danger of the highest magnitude calling for urgent measures.” The USAID, CIA, Agriculture Department and Defense Departments were all involved in formulation of the Kissinger policy.

NSSM200 was officially revoked as US policy in face of heavy Vatican pressure, at least as open policy. But it continues to this day unofficially, as US foreign policy, imposed via third agencies, such as the IMF and World Bank, and their “conditionalities” for emergency financial aid. In an April 2002 article in Australia’s The Age, Nobel Prize microbiologist, Sir Macfarlane Burnet, advocated biological warfare as a form of population control. Is the proliferation of GM seeds for every vital crop a part of such a strategy? For the sake of the human race we should make certain it is not.7

1 “Brussels clears GM maize to ‘Please US’ by Andrew Osborn, UK Guardian, January 29, 2004. “Meacher attacks GM crops,” in BBC News, 18 February 2003. news.bbc.co.uk.

2 “Soil Association backs Meacher’s stance on GM crops,” press release, 23 June 2003, www.soilassociation.org. “World’s top GE researcher was fired and persecuted by White House & Blair,” by Andrew Rowell, The Daily Mail, July 7 2003. www.organiconsumers.org.

3 “Revealed: Shocking new dangers of GM crops,” by Geoffrey Lean, Independent, 7 March 2004. “Proven: Environmental dangers that may halt GM revolution,” by Michael McCarthy, Independent, 17 October, 2003. “New health dangers of genetically modified foods (and vaccines) discovered,” by Institute for Responsible Technology, February 24, 2004 on www.organicconsumers.org. “Dangers of GE foods & crops,” Dr. Michael W. Fox, Humane Society of the United States, www.hsus.org or www.organicconsumers.org.

4 “Farmer Income: seeds of doubt” by Norfolk Genetic Information Network, 24 October 2002. members.tripod.com. or www.non-gm-farmers.com.

5 “The case for a GM-free sustainable world,” by Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. Available on www.foodfirst.org.

6 DevinderSharma, “GM crops: If it can’t work, fake it” in BioSpectrum, February 2004. in www.organicconsumers.org. “Monsanto’s World Wide Web of Deceit,” in The Big Issue, no. 484, 15-21 April 2002. reprinted in ngin.tripod.com.

7 “USAID and GM Food Aid,” in Norfolk Genetic Information Network, 8 October 2002. Terminator details in “Broken Promise? Monsanto Promotes Terminator Seed Technology,” ETC Group, 23 April 2003. Press release: www.etcgroup.org. and “Patently Wrong!” May 7, 2003, www.etcgroup.org. on Monsanto’s success in a Munich Patent Court to win patent monopoly rights to all forms of GM soybeans and seeds regardless of genes used. “World Population Control: US Strategy and UN Policy Program,” in www.fathersforlife.org.