ISP Lecture Summary

Summarised by Lim Li Ching

Gundula Azeez explained that the Soil Association is trying to move agriculture towards making food production more sustainable and healthy, and that GM crops are seen as reversing this. The
key question is, if GM crops are introduced, will they benignly co-exist with non-GM crops, or will they threaten and undermine non-GM production?

She noted that co-existence is now a central question in Europe. The single main challenge to co-existence is the likelihood of widespread GM contamination of non-GM crops. Current EU proposals for labelling regulations are discussing thresholds for authorised GMOs at 0.9-1.0 %.  She stressed that these thresholds are not good enough.  If there is to be co-existence of GM and non-GM crops, there needs to be very robust and sophisticated means to deal with these.

The issues that co-existence has to address include consumer choice to eat non-GM food, the future of organic food and farming, agricultural trade, legal issues, and control and safety. Consumers have been eating non-GM food all this while, and surveys show that the public does not want to consume GM food. Their preference must be respected, particularly so for those consumers who choose to buy organic food as they pay price premiums for it. Even government policy recognises that agriculture should, among other things, meet the demands of consumers. However, contamination would undermine consumer choice for non-GM food.

Azeez raised the concern that GM contamination would threaten the future of organic food and farming, as it threatens the principles and viability of organic production. Organic farming brings a wide range of environmental, health and animal welfare benefits. In the last few years it has been one of the fastest growing agricultural sectors. It is based on principles, including the use of natural processes, a precautionary approach and view of the agricultural system as a holistic system. All this is threatened by GM, which fundamentally contradicts these principles. The organic movement and its members agree that GMOs have no place in organic farming.

Compared with other contaminants such as pesticides and additives, GM is probably far worse, as the levels of unknowns associated with GM crops are greater, there are ethical issues to consider and contamination will pass on from generation to generation. Once GM crops are introduced the effects might be irreversible.

The viability of organic farming may also be threatened by GM crops; one of the reasons consumers choose organic food is to actively avoid GMOs, and GM contamination may seriously undermine the integrity and attraction of organic food. Due to this market loss, organic farming may decline in the UK.

Safety issues must be considered. If unforseen health and environmental impacts occurred, we would need to be able to stop the spread and recall all transgenic material. If unlabelled contaminated non-GM food enters the food supply, we will not be able to prevent people�s exposure to GMOs. Furthermore, we are told that we should be prepared to accept 1% contamination, but Azeez stressed that this is not a small amount of genetic material. For example, the Newcastle study on horizontal gene transfer showed that a single GM meal had 3 000 billion transgenes. If we were eating non-GM food with up to 1% contamination, that could have up to 30 billion transgenes in each meal. How can consumer choice be delivered in these conditions?

Complex legal issues must also be considered. This is illustrated by Percy Schmeiser's case in Canada, where Monsanto successfully sued him for patent infringement despite his claim that his
oilseed rape crop was contaminated by GM genes. [Editor�s note: Percy has not given up the fight after 5 years, and has just won his right to be heard in Canada�s supreme court.] Furthermore, if contamination were to rise above labelling thresholds, then all farmers would have to label their products as GM, even if they hadn�t knowingly used any GM crops. For organic farmers, European organic rules prohibit any use of GMOs. Legal advice indicates that GM contaminated seeds, crops or feed used in the production of organic food would breach these rules.

Azeez therefore emphasised that co-existence should mean co-existence of GM and uncontaminated non-GM crops, not of GM and contaminated non-GM crops.

To examine the question of what would happen if GM crops are released with little control, Azeez discussed the Soil Association's Seeds of Doubt report, of which she was co-author. This report reviewed the agronomic, economic and legal impacts of GM crops in North America. She noted that since the report has been published, they hadn�t received much if any criticism of it from the pro-GM lobby.

The report found that there are very real issues of co-existence and contamination. In North America, contamination occurred within a few years in the whole supply chain - seed, crops on the
farm, processing and trading of bulk commodities - leading to major difficulties. Contamination of non-GM crops by GM crops, including of crops with unapproved genes, and of crops with pharmaceutical genes, has led to major practical, economic and legal difficulties.

For example, soya, maize and rape seed are nearly all contaminated and few companies can provide guaranteed GM-free seed. At the farm level, isolation distances were not used or
enforced. Consequently cross-pollination occurred, contaminating non-GM crops. Farmers are finding that what they can grow is increasingly determined by what their neighbours grow.

Contamination spreads in many ways, not just through cross-pollination, but also through machinery and flooding. This has led to some major problems.

Non-GM farmers have been losing sales: it is now difficult to source GM-free seed and to grow GM-free crops to supply the substantial GM-free market. Furthermore the supply chain doesn�t segregate GM and non-GM crops. Farmers who try to supply the GM-free market are taking risks and are losing higher-priced GM-free contracts because of contamination.

There has been major disruption to the organic sector, which is bearing the burden of dealing with contamination. Organic farmers are juggling rotations, planting crops that flower at different times, trying to find out what their neighbours are planting and introducing physical barriers and separation distances. Despite all these measures, there is still a regular risk of contamination and consequent rejection of the product and loss of sales. Organic oilseed rape has had to be completely abandoned in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada because of contamination. The organic sector is currently suing the biotech industry for compensation.

Contamination has resulted in costly food product recalls, for example the Starlink contamination incident cost an estimated $1 billion. (Starlink was a variety of GM maize approved only for animal feed, because of fears of potential allerginicity. It however found its way into the human food supply and had to be recalled). While Starlink was only a small proportion of the national harvest, less than 1%, there was a disproportionately high cost in product recalls.

Azeez also highlighted the health risks to consumers, saying that Starlink was believed to have caused allergic reactions in over 50 people. Despite the biotech industry�s claims that this was
never confirmed, a US government science committee set up to advice on this case found that there was medium probability of Starlink causing allergic reactions

There has been a major loss of agricultural export trade for North American farmers. For example, US farmers lost maize exports to the EU market, worth $300 million annually, and Canada
also lost its $300 million annual oilseed rape exports to the EU. As a result of these products staying in the domestic market, farm prices have been reduced, which could possibly account for
the increase in US subsidies to the sector. If this happened here, where the EU is the domestic market of farmers, the consequences could be great. Azeez warned that all European supermarkets and practically all food manufacturers currently have GM-free policies and it is a risk to think that this would change.

Finally, North American farmers are being accused of infringing a company's patents when GM crops are found on their land. Farmers are liable even if their crops have been contaminated by a neighbour's GM crops.

Azeez cited the separation distance recommended by the National Pollen Research Unit to prevent GM contamination for different crops. These are 3 km for maize, 1 km for sugar beet, 6 km for
oilseed rape, and 500 m for wheat and potato. (The distances used in the farm-scale trials were 200 m for maize, 600 m for sugar beet and 200 m for oilseed rape, which probably means that GMOs have already entered the food supply in the UK). But, with these sorts of distances, it would be difficult to imagine a workable co-existence regime.

She stressed that the requirements of a co-existence regime should include the option of GM-free produce or control of contamination to under a 0.1% threshold.  It should cover assessment of contamination risks at the approval stage; separation distances, pollen barriers, segregation and other industry practices; and a strict liability regime for all costs and losses to the non-GM sectors. Whatever co-existence regime there is, there needs to be some method of compensating for losses when contamination occurs, and the biotech industry should be held strictly liable for this.

Azeez concluded that the Soil Association believes in most, if not all, cases that co-existence between GM and non-GM crops is impossible.