Transgenic Eggplant, Wheat - Are We Losing The Food War?
In India, Monsanto partner Mahyco is experimenting with Brinjal - we call it eggplant - which has been genetically modified to insert a toxin. This is the first time the toxic BT (bacillus thuringiensis) gene has been incorporated into an actual food plant. Although BT has been reported safe for mammals and even for humans, there has been an incident of mass death of sheep grazing on BT cotton.
Last year, Aruna Rodrigues, together with others, filed a public interest petition before the Indian Supreme Court to ask a moratorium on the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment in India. She has recently applied for an urgent injunction in this same legal proceeding to halt all open field testing of genetically modified plants, including brinjal.
Her request is motivated by a hazardous potential of the new vegetable for human health. The safety for human consumption of genetically modified foods, especially of BT laced vegetables, has never been established, she says, by direct feeding tests. In the few tests that were conducted, problems appeared. Contamination of traditional varieties of the staple food crop is another argument, as well as the likelihood that the toxin will be killing beneficial insects and birds or will cause insects to mutate so as to adapt to the toxin. Setbacks for organic agriculture are envisioned as a result of the spread of the BT gene to traditional varieties of eggplant by cross-pollination.
Meanwhile, in Germany, transgenic wheat is to be planted in field trials in a very special location: Gatersleben, home to the heritage seed bank for traditional seed stocks, where hundreds of traditional wheat varieties are kept and some are sowed out each year to propagate them. Although wheat does not seem to cross-contaminate, it appears strange that such a unique locale with an important role in preventing crop plants and their wild relatives from dying out, has been selected for GM wheat trials.
William Engdahl argues in a recent article titled Seeds of Destruction:
The Geopolitics of GM Food that genetic modification of our foods could be part of an agenda of forcefully reducing the population of this planet, proposed by globalists who feel that we are too many. Of course, no one is saying openly that GM might be used for population control, but the Engdahl article comes quite close:
Washington US-AID food assistance for Africa in recent months has been linked to willingness of a country to accept US GM crops. US assistance to combat AIDS in Africa has similar strings. GM has clearly become a strategic, geopolitical tool for Washington.Defenders of GM technology argue that no one in their right mind would consider such a drastic use of GM crops as to control entire areas of world food supply. "We're tempted to say that nobody in their right mind would ever use these things." Stanford biology professor Steven Block stated in another context. Block hastened to add, "But not everybody is in their right mind!" Block, a leading consultant to the US Government, went on to warn, "Any technology that can be used to insert genes into DNA can be used for either good or bad." Genetic engineering can create rice with enhanced vitamin A, but can just as well create seeds containing highly toxic bacteria. US researchers first did this in 1986. Genetic engineering of more toxic and harder to detect bioweapons was a major motivation for nations to call for a stronger convention on bioweapons...
No safety testing
Ignoring dangers to the health of the population, the Indian authorities are proceeding with the introduction of a potentially disastrous GM crop without any safety testing. USAID is pushing and the FDA helps by alleging that genetically modified crops are "substantially equivalent" to the natural varieties. A PDF of the full text of the application is available here.
The court filing to India's Supreme tribunal is supported by several scientists critical of the deployment of this technology in food production. One of them is Robert Mann, a former senior lecturer in biochemistry at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He says:
"The science upon which GM technology is founded is under strenuous criticism from scientific thinkers. Genes are not Lego modules which can be blithely slotted into very different organisms free from unintended effects. Rogue diseases are a genuine concern arising from detailed, sceptical appraisal of some GM projects by highly qualified scientists. But global ecological damage is the gravest threat."Mann goes on to say that the science on which genetic modification is based is wrong in a big way and he lists three examples:
1. It is routinely assumed that there are only 4 letters in the 'alphabet' of DNA (called for short G, C, T, and A). But it has been known for several decades that other 'letters' exist in DNA. The functions of the 'odd' bases - methyl-C, methyl-G, and others - are largely unknown, but that does not mean they're equivalent to 'The Big Four'. They are often ignored by genetic engineers sequencing DNA "copied" by systems that can produce only 'Big 4' polymers. The synthetic genes inserted by GM are, on this basis, all made with just 'The Big Four' bases. This is a glaring fallacy.2. Synthetic genes are routinely inserted which are deliberately different from actual genes. An example in the present case is the 'Bt' genes that have been inserted into GM-Brinjal; the 'Bt' toxin gene must be different from that for any actual toxin produced in the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, in order for the plant to make the novel protein to any useful extent.
3. It is routinely assumed that the effects of genes inserted by radically unnatural methods are predictable, when in fact they are known to be extremely variable (frequently lethal). It is pretended that a cell surviving such genes-insertion processes, and then selected on just one property - resistance to an antibiotic - and then grown into a whole organism, e.g. an eggplant, will have all properties at least as good as those of a normal organism. On the contrary, insertional mutation damages the target genome in unpredictable ways, rendering literally unforeseeable the many properties of any surviving GM-cells. The unforeseeability is compounded by somaclonal variation in theGM-progeny: plants grown from single cells, taking advantage of what is called the 'totipotence' of some plant cells, are known to exhibit much more variability than plants grown from normal seed.
The text of Mann's submission is available here.
See also:Monsanto Whistleblower Says Genetically Engineered Crops May Cause Disease
October 2006: India Halts Field Trials of Genetically Engineered Crops
An exciting development has taken place in India, where the Supreme Court has ordered the Genetic Engineering Approvals Council (GEAC) to stop all further approvals of GM field trials until further notice.This follows a challenge by citizens to the proposed field trials of Bt
Brinjal (also known as aubergine or eggplant). Although the court has not yet ruled for the GEAC to stop the Bt Brinjal trials, or the Bt cotton which is already grown commercially, they did order a stay on further applications for GM trials.April 2008: Mass Protests against GM Crops in India
As India edges closer to what is probably the last year of field trials for Bt Brinjal (eggplant, aubergine) before commercial approval may be granted, large scale resistance has been building up all over the country.Bt Brinjal, if allowed in India, would be the first food crop in the world with the Bt gene inserted into it that is to be directly consumed by human beings. Indians feel that they are about to be made guinea pigs by USAID, and by Monsanto and Cornell University that have developed this crop.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday August 20 2006
updated on Saturday December 4 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/08/20/transgenic_eggplant_wheat_are_we_losing_the_food_war.htm
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