By: Stephen Leahy

  Here's a list of the top ten fibs from the biotech promoters. They roll right off the tongue. Agri-business, government, and some farm organizations want you to swallow these lines. Straight Goods advises a dose of salt.
 

Superweeds are already being created

Fib # 5: GM foods have passed Canada's 'stringent' health and safety regulations.
  Canada has two watchdogs regulating GM crops and foods, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Health Protection Branch of Health Canada. Neither does any actual testing. Instead, they review results of testing done by companies wanting to sell their GM products. Aside from the suspicion they might only reveal their best data, once a GM food is considered "substantially equivalent" to unmodified food no further testing is required. And long term testing isn't even on the menu. Ann Clarke, a professor at the University of Guelph, in a review of this process concluded that Health Canada's approval of GM food safety is based "largely on assumptions and inference rather than on any sort of actual testing". (See web site reference below)
 

Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials knew that Monsanto's Bt corn killed butterflies but gave it the green light anyway. Why???

Fib # 6: GM crops do not pose any risk to the environment.
  Monarch butterflies can be killed by eating pollen from Bt corn. It also affects other kinds of butterflies and moths. This came as no surprise to officials at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Monsanto, the manufacturer of Bt corn, since they already knew it had a wide range of effects on butterflies and moths before it was given the green light for use in Canada. Last December, New York University scientists discovered the toxin in Bt corn leaks into soil and persists there. No one knows what the consequences of this will be and there is nearly no funding to find out. Companies are heavily promoting the use of these crops. And with the four or five years needed to do large-scale field research, relevant studies will not be done until well after crops are approved.

Fib # 7: GM crops won't create Superweeds.
  Superweeds are already being created. Pollen travels hundreds of meters on the wind and up to ten kilometers thanks to bees and other insects. In 1998 pollen from GM plants transferred their genes to some wild plants making them resistant to a common herbicide in northern Alberta. All that GM pollen floating around will inevitably add novel genes into wild plant populations threatening biodiversity. No one knows what the consequences of this will be in wild ecosystems.

Fib # 8: Farmers need GM crops to make more money.
  For one thing, GM seeds cost more, despite recent price cuts. Secondly, farmers often have to sign contracts saying they won't save any seed from the plants they grow. That forces them to buy new seed from the company next spring, which costs more. There is no question many farmers are deep financial trouble. When we buy a box of cereal for $3.95, farmers only get a few cents out of it. There is something sadly wrong with our food production system but GM crops aren't going to solve that problem - and may be making it worse.
 

Do we want our food produced like this?

Fib # 9: GM crops produce higher yields.
  Yields for GM crops were poor initially but recently are comparable and occasionally better. However, according to research by Charles Benbrook, former executive director of the US National Academy of Sciences' Board on Agriculture, yields of Round-up Ready soybeans were 6% lower in 1998 than non-GMO soybeans. Benbrook says when this "yield drag" is added to the extra costs of buying GM seeds reduces farmers' gross per-acre income as much as 12%.

Fib# 10: GM crops reduce pesticide use.
  Pesticides, especially insecticides are expensive. Crops with low value like corn are rarely sprayed. The millions of acres of Bt corn have reduced insecticide use by 1% or 2 % at most Charles Benbrook estimates. The other GM crops are mainly herbicide-resistant. This means they can be drenched in herbicides and still live. It's a stretch to see how this could lead to less pesticide use.

Copyright, Stephen Leahy, 2000. Any reproduction of this work, in whole or part, in any media is prohibited unless expressly granted by the author.

Stephen Leahy is a freelance journalist covering biotechnology for the past three years who has visited labs and farm fields, talked to molecular biologists, ecologists, farmers, government officials, industry spin doctors and activists.

Other articles in this series - 10 Great Big Fibs of Biotech
  Part One: Fibs 1-4

Get More/Do More
There are probably more websites on GMOs than any other single issue. Here are just a few:

Council of Canadians - Professor Clarke's findings are posted here - www.canadians.org

Dangers of Eating GMO - www.purefood.org/gelink.html

Genetic Engineering News Reports - www.natural-law.ca/genetic

Canadian Food Inspection Agency Plant Biotechnology Office - www.cfia-acia.agr.ca/english/ppc/biotec