“Try to make things better for someone / sometimes you end up making it a thousand times worse.”
From Bob Dylan’s “Sugar Baby”
The law of unintended consequences describes the situation we are facing with genetically modified foods.
Proponents claim that the motivation was and is to help farmers increase their crop yields and make it less expensive for them to get their product to market and to help grow more nutritious, drought-resistant food to feed the world’s starving masses. Considering how much we know, and don’t know, about the effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), it’s hard not to think that the decisions driving the commercial applications of this technology have been made mostly to help Monsanto, Bayer, Sygenta, Dow, Dupont and BASF.
As basic background here, GMOs are plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology. This technology merges DNA from different species, creating new combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that do not otherwise occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding.
Genetically-modified (GM) foods are developed and marketed because there is a perceived advantage to these foods, namely, the promise of greater yields at lower cost. The GM crops currently on the market aim for an increased level of crop protection through the introduction of genes that make the plants tolerant towards herbicides and resistant to diseases caused by insects or viruses.
To achieve herbicide tolerance, plants are given a gene from a bacterium that is resistant to the weed killer glyphosate (household name – Roundup). This allows the farmers to spray their fields with Roundup without harming the food plant. Insect resistance is achieved by incorporating a particular gene from the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bacteria, which produces a toxin that is currently used as a conventional insecticide in agriculture. In a sense, this turns the food plant into an insecticide by making the plant deadly for the insect to eat. Virus resistance is achieved through the introduction of a gene from certain viruses that cause disease in plants, thus making the plant less susceptible to diseases caused by such viruses.
In theory, these modifications are supposed to simplify weed and insect management, saving the farmers time and money, and increasing crop yield.
However, in many reported cases throughout the United States and eight other countries to date, 23 different weed species have already developed a resistance to Roundup, and 10 have developed resistance to several different herbicides. With the seeds from these herbicide-resistant weeds being spread around by the wind, it can lead to challenging, costly and, at times, unmanageable weed infestations.
In Arkansas, for instance, 61 percent of soybean fields are infested with glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth, costing farmers $71 million a year in lost yields; 80 percent of the state’s cotton is also infested, with losses now totaling $10.9 million.
Insects and other pests, too, are becoming resistant, such as in the case of the Western corn rootworm in Iowa. Researchers have found that this major Midwest scourge has developed resistance to the pesticide made by Monsanto’s corn plants. This is causing some farmers to switch to other seeds, and return to spraying harsher synthetic insecticides that persist in the soil, seep into the groundwater and are potentially harmful for grazing animals and humans that eat.
So what seemed like a time- and money-saver on the front end is costing time and money on the back end, and posing a serious threat to our health and to the environment.
At present, about 88 percent of the corn in the U.S. is genetically modified, as is 94 percent of the soy, 90 percent of the cotton, 95 percent of sugar beets, and 90 percent of the canola (rapeseed); 80 percent of processed foods in American supermarkets now contain genetically modified ingredients.
Recent polls conducted and released separately by ABC News, MSNBC, NPR, Consumer Reports and The Washington Post revealed that 90 to 95 percent of Americans believe genetically modified food should be labeled.
In California, there is a measure on the ballot in the upcoming election (Prop 37) calling for mandatory labeling of GMOs. To date, about $4 million in contributions have been spent in support of Prop 37 and $34 million has been spent to oppose it. The single largest financial donor supporting Prop 37 is Dr. Mercola (who runs a popular alternative health website), with $1.1 million in contributions, followed by The Organic Consumers Fund and Nature’s Path Natural Foods (both at about $600,000). The large financial donors opposing the measure include Monsanto ($7.2 million), Dupont ($4.9 million), and Dow, Bayer and BASF (all at $2 million each).
I’m always wary of these sorts of ballot measures because one never knows what the consequences and unintended consequences might turn out to be, but it seems clear, especially when considering the amount of money being spent, whose interests are at stake. FBN
Ron Colone is marketing director for New Frontiers Natural Marketplace in Flagstaff. He can be reached at ron.colone@gmail.com