Monarchs--One of the possible victims of Genetic Engineering
I can’t help but respond to my interview with Dr. Gerard Barry.
It’s hard to debate biotechnologists who claim that their main interest is to feed the starving. For example, an article on the Monsanto website responded to Patagonia’s recent alert to its customers. Patagonia, an ecologically minded clothing company, stated that genetic engineering was “a dark threat to all that is wild” and encouraged its customers to “go organic”.
In response, Monsanto released an article touting the many benefits of biotechnology, some of which I agree are very important, end then bombasted Patagonia and supporters of organic farming in general. The article ended with this comment: “Ask those who demagogue the issue of biotechnology: How many vitamin A-deficient, blind children will you allow to achieve your objective? How many iron-deficient women must die in childbirth so you can sell outdoor gear to the “environmentally conscious”? How many more lives will you sacrifice for your “cause”?”
It’s hard to have a discussion when someone throws that comment at you—if you take issue with bioengineered foods, do you inherently wish death upon millions of people? Of course not. In fact, many people who question or are against genetic engineering want to save lives as well—the consequences of allowing GE foods into our ecosystem and bodies are unknown. It’s possible that we could severely damage our ecosystem and our bodies as a result and kill more people and organisms than we can possibly imagine. Many people don’t understand the interconnectedness of the food web and the consequences of putting something deadly at the bottom of the food chain. We have no idea what will happen as it works its way up.
It’s interesting that Monsanto is so concerned with blind children and iron-deficient women in childbirth, when they have created numerous toxins whose health hazards are notorious around the world.
Let’s take one, Agent Orange—the highly controversial herbicide and defoliant used in the Vietnam War in the U.S. military’s herbicidal warfare program. Agent Orange was a mix of two herbicides created in England and used there and in the U.S. as herbicides as early as 1946. It only affected broad leafed plants, so planes could spray the herbicide over a field of wheat and it would kill the weeds, not the crop itself.
It was later discovered that a dioxin (2,4,5-T) was produced in the manufacturing of Agent Orange (and the other varieties also used during the way) that was later classified by the National Toxicology program as a human carcinogen. frequently associated with soft-tissue sarcoma, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). 2,4,5-T has since been banned for use in the US and many other countries. It is consistently under investigation as to whether or not Agent Orange causes significantly dangerous levels of dioxin in the affected areas.
As for pesticides (many of which are produced by Monsanto)—they don’t simply wash off in the kitchen sink. Again, that kind of thinking does not consider the interconnectedness of an ecosystem. Even if pesticides “just washed off” a vegetable and didn’t harm the consumer, that pesticide still came into contact with the soil, with groundwater, with insects and other animal and plant life. It was touched by the farm laborers who applied it or worked in the fields where it was applied.
Pesticides and fertilizers also contaminate our water—from ground water which we drink, to run off that eventually ends up in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Excessive nitrogen (from feces in fertilizers) and phosphorous have numerous side effects not only on water ecosystems but on humans too. Nitrogen has reportedly caused “blue babies” as low levels of nitrogen can cause sickness and death in babies under six months of age. In water ecosystems, increasing the phosphorus supply tends to encourage the growth of cyanobacteria (which can fix their own nitrogen). Such “algal blooms” can be toxic to fauna, farm animals and humans. In short, I disagree that pesticides have no side effects.
The genetic engineering debate is more complicated. I think Patagonia’s blanket statement that genetic engineering is a “dark threat to all that is wild” is a bit overdramatic. There are different breeding techniques that fall under “genetic engineering” and some are less questionable than others. According to an official at I.R.R.I., Greenpeace actually supports the interspecies breeding done at I.R.R.I.—it’s simply an acceleration of the breeding process where scientists apply a characteristic of one rice species to a more popular one. So, there might be a wild rice which is flood tolerant but doesn’t produce edible rice grains. The scientist might modify an existing edible variety and add the flood tolerant gene.
Transgenic modification is another matter. Golden Rice, a transgenic rice bred with a daffodil gene to get Vitamin A, has been touted as the rice for the poor. Many of the I.R.R.I. staff are very behind it.
However, there are also many claims against it. According several reports, children and women would have to consume extremely large quantities of the rice to make it at all viable—a woman would have to consume 16lbs., and a child about 12lbs. a day, which they could get the same vitamin A from two carrots and a mango, or some golden sweet potatoes.
Secondly, there are numerous concerns about the effects of transgenic crops in the ecosystem. For example, pesticide resistant engineer crops allow large amounts of pesticides to get sprayed without affecting the plant. That, however, does affect the plants around them.
For example, there have been reports that monarch butterfly colonies are decreasing.
According to an article in the Star Tribune: “...one factor in the decline in the number of egg-carrying plants [of monarch butterflies] could be the growing use of herbicide-tolerant soybeans, which are genetically engineered to permit larger amounts of weed-killing chemicals to be applied without hurting the crop. This method may have increased the spraying of herbicides and thereby the destruction of milkweed, which can be common in farm fields.” Milkweed is the plant that monarchs typically lay their eggs on.
The concerns are too numerous to go into here, but the point is that GE companies (not including I.R.R.I., a nonprofit) often act as if they have the moral high ground when it comes to debate about GE foods. They frequently attempt to push GE into countries without labeling (since they know consumers are less likely to buy their product if it’s labeled GE).
Monsanto even makes claims that it values corporate transparency. In fact, a new Monsanto pledge states that they: “commit to an ongoing dialogue with interested parties to understand the issues and concerns related to this technology.”
And yet their response to those who question and to those who ask for debate and dialogue to continue before seeds are haphazardly planted is to label their opponents as “fear mongers” and anti-human rights.
The fact is, we need to dialogue about these technologies. Corporations aren’t the only ones who have a say in this debate—we all need to take part in it. Corporations like Monsanto act as if their actions have no recourse on the rest of the planet, but they do. We have every right to demand that they honor our needs and concerns as consumers, and more importantly as a democratic population that has every right to exercise control over its corporations.
I acknowledge that the green revolution saved millions of lives. I also think technology is incredible and necessary, and I totally support its use in our lives. That said; we must be very careful. Messing with our food supply can have damaging effects that we can’t even comprehend right now. Acting out of desperation is never a good option.
Lastly, I’ve seen first hand what happens when Westerns come into a developing country with the belief that they know how to solve all of their problems. The best solutions allow dialogue and debate. It’s also essential that more money gets channeled into small scale, local projects like Yunus’ microfinance movement—solutions that respect the intelligence of the local people and empowers them to create solutions for themselves. That is an approach that gives dignity to people in developing country, though it may not provide the large financial rewards that many of these large GE corporations are after.
I can’t help but respond to my interview with Dr. Gerard Barry.
It’s hard to debate biotechnologists who claim that their main interest is to feed the starving. For example, an article on the Monsanto website responded to Patagonia’s recent alert to its customers. Patagonia, an ecologically minded clothing company, stated that genetic engineering was “a dark threat to all that is wild” and encouraged its customers to “go organic”.
In response, Monsanto released an article touting the many benefits of biotechnology, some of which I agree are very important, end then bombasted Patagonia and supporters of organic farming in general. The article ended with this comment: “Ask those who demagogue the issue of biotechnology: How many vitamin A-deficient, blind children will you allow to achieve your objective? How many iron-deficient women must die in childbirth so you can sell outdoor gear to the “environmentally conscious”? How many more lives will you sacrifice for your “cause”?”
It’s hard to have a discussion when someone throws that comment at you—if you take issue with bioengineered foods, do you inherently wish death upon millions of people? Of course not. In fact, many people who question or are against genetic engineering want to save lives as well—the consequences of allowing GE foods into our ecosystem and bodies are unknown. It’s possible that we could severely damage our ecosystem and our bodies as a result and kill more people and organisms than we can possibly imagine. Many people don’t understand the interconnectedness of the food web and the consequences of putting something deadly at the bottom of the food chain. We have no idea what will happen as it works its way up.
It’s interesting that Monsanto is so concerned with blind children and iron-deficient women in childbirth, when they have created numerous toxins whose health hazards are notorious around the world.
Let’s take one, Agent Orange—the highly controversial herbicide and defoliant used in the Vietnam War in the U.S. military’s herbicidal warfare program. Agent Orange was a mix of two herbicides created in England and used there and in the U.S. as herbicides as early as 1946. It only affected broad leafed plants, so planes could spray the herbicide over a field of wheat and it would kill the weeds, not the crop itself.
It was later discovered that a dioxin (2,4,5-T) was produced in the manufacturing of Agent Orange (and the other varieties also used during the way) that was later classified by the National Toxicology program as a human carcinogen. frequently associated with soft-tissue sarcoma, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). 2,4,5-T has since been banned for use in the US and many other countries. It is consistently under investigation as to whether or not Agent Orange causes significantly dangerous levels of dioxin in the affected areas.
As for pesticides (many of which are produced by Monsanto)—they don’t simply wash off in the kitchen sink. Again, that kind of thinking does not consider the interconnectedness of an ecosystem. Even if pesticides “just washed off” a vegetable and didn’t harm the consumer, that pesticide still came into contact with the soil, with groundwater, with insects and other animal and plant life. It was touched by the farm laborers who applied it or worked in the fields where it was applied.
Pesticides and fertilizers also contaminate our water—from ground water which we drink, to run off that eventually ends up in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Excessive nitrogen (from feces in fertilizers) and phosphorous have numerous side effects not only on water ecosystems but on humans too. Nitrogen has reportedly caused “blue babies” as low levels of nitrogen can cause sickness and death in babies under six months of age. In water ecosystems, increasing the phosphorus supply tends to encourage the growth of cyanobacteria (which can fix their own nitrogen). Such “algal blooms” can be toxic to fauna, farm animals and humans. In short, I disagree that pesticides have no side effects.
The genetic engineering debate is more complicated. I think Patagonia’s blanket statement that genetic engineering is a “dark threat to all that is wild” is a bit overdramatic. There are different breeding techniques that fall under “genetic engineering” and some are less questionable than others. According to an official at I.R.R.I., Greenpeace actually supports the interspecies breeding done at I.R.R.I.—it’s simply an acceleration of the breeding process where scientists apply a characteristic of one rice species to a more popular one. So, there might be a wild rice which is flood tolerant but doesn’t produce edible rice grains. The scientist might modify an existing edible variety and add the flood tolerant gene.
Transgenic modification is another matter. Golden Rice, a transgenic rice bred with a daffodil gene to get Vitamin A, has been touted as the rice for the poor. Many of the I.R.R.I. staff are very behind it.
However, there are also many claims against it. According several reports, children and women would have to consume extremely large quantities of the rice to make it at all viable—a woman would have to consume 16lbs., and a child about 12lbs. a day, which they could get the same vitamin A from two carrots and a mango, or some golden sweet potatoes.
Secondly, there are numerous concerns about the effects of transgenic crops in the ecosystem. For example, pesticide resistant engineer crops allow large amounts of pesticides to get sprayed without affecting the plant. That, however, does affect the plants around them.
For example, there have been reports that monarch butterfly colonies are decreasing.
According to an article in the Star Tribune: “...one factor in the decline in the number of egg-carrying plants [of monarch butterflies] could be the growing use of herbicide-tolerant soybeans, which are genetically engineered to permit larger amounts of weed-killing chemicals to be applied without hurting the crop. This method may have increased the spraying of herbicides and thereby the destruction of milkweed, which can be common in farm fields.” Milkweed is the plant that monarchs typically lay their eggs on.
The concerns are too numerous to go into here, but the point is that GE companies (not including I.R.R.I., a nonprofit) often act as if they have the moral high ground when it comes to debate about GE foods. They frequently attempt to push GE into countries without labeling (since they know consumers are less likely to buy their product if it’s labeled GE).
Monsanto even makes claims that it values corporate transparency. In fact, a new Monsanto pledge states that they: “commit to an ongoing dialogue with interested parties to understand the issues and concerns related to this technology.”
And yet their response to those who question and to those who ask for debate and dialogue to continue before seeds are haphazardly planted is to label their opponents as “fear mongers” and anti-human rights.
The fact is, we need to dialogue about these technologies. Corporations aren’t the only ones who have a say in this debate—we all need to take part in it. Corporations like Monsanto act as if their actions have no recourse on the rest of the planet, but they do. We have every right to demand that they honor our needs and concerns as consumers, and more importantly as a democratic population that has every right to exercise control over its corporations.
I acknowledge that the green revolution saved millions of lives. I also think technology is incredible and necessary, and I totally support its use in our lives. That said; we must be very careful. Messing with our food supply can have damaging effects that we can’t even comprehend right now. Acting out of desperation is never a good option.
Lastly, I’ve seen first hand what happens when Westerns come into a developing country with the belief that they know how to solve all of their problems. The best solutions allow dialogue and debate. It’s also essential that more money gets channeled into small scale, local projects like Yunus’ microfinance movement—solutions that respect the intelligence of the local people and empowers them to create solutions for themselves. That is an approach that gives dignity to people in developing country, though it may not provide the large financial rewards that many of these large GE corporations are after.
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