GM crops in the media

Now is an interesting time to be looking round the world at the present condition and future prospects for GM-technology.

For years the politicians of the European Union have struggled with the issue of authorizing the use and cultivation of GM-foods and GM-crops. The regulatory rules seemed clear enough: if the European Food Standards Authority (EFSA) approved on safety grounds, Member States governments were not supposed to vote against unless they had good scientific reasons for doing so. If such a vote were inconclusive, without a majority in the either direction, the European Commission was supposed to decide along the lines recommended by EFSA. It did not happen.

There was almost never a majority for or against, and Member States repeatedly issued banning orders without scientific justification. The Commission prevaricated so that some dossiers submitted for approval were held up for years (Approvals of GM Crops, 2014). The situation became more and more fractious with some countries wishing to go forward only to be blocked by voters which did not.

After various initiatives, in 2012 the Danish government (which at the time held the presidency of the EU's Council of Ministers) proposed that a Member State could ask biotechnology firms in advance to exclude that country from their applications for GM authorization and, if the firm refused to do so, then that member state could file an objection with the Commission (Food Navigator, 2012). In effect this was intended to leave the decision, particularly about whether or not to plant, in the hands of national governments so long as EFSA had approved on scientific grounds. The Danish proposal was initially rejected but, after years of argument, was indeed approved at government level and came up for endorsement in the European Parliament. A change in procedure was strongly urged by the scientific community (Europe's leading plant scientists, 2014) and others.

The Parliament recently decided in favor (Commissioner Andriukaitis, 2014; Keating, 2014). Everybody and his wife offered comments and we refer here to a few of the more interesting ones (GMO Authorisation, 2014; New EU law grants countries, 2014; Barnes, 2014; Williams, 2015; Shukman, 2015; Briggs, 2015; Shropshire, 2015; Cressey, Compromise blooms, 2014), including one very informative paper on the economic consequences of regulation (Phillips, 2014). But these examples are indeed just a few: we actually have links to dozens and dozens of media articles but they tend for the most part to be repetitive and there a limits to reading the same thing over and over again.

But we are not quite out of the woods yet because formal legislation has to be enacted by all 28 Member States and who knows what might happen during the course of all that (Neslen, 2015; Cressey, EU GM Crops, 2014)?

Nor was the agricultural biotechnology industry necessarily happy with the outcome (Non cultivation agreement, 2014). EuropaBio noted that “This is a non-cultivation agreement. It enables Member States to formally reject safe products which are approved at European level. Rejecting modern technologies on non-scientific grounds sets a dangerous precedent for the internal market and sends a negative signal for innovative industries worldwide considering whether or not to invest and operate in Europe. European farmers have lost their freedom to choose.” An article in a Romanian newspaper (Vârlan, 2015) observed that “Europe avoids cultivating GMOs that the market needs, but imports them. In the meantime, several EU Member States have been struggling for a few years now to ban them completely from their national territories.” “This causes a very bad precedent for the internal market, but also for the other sectors' regulations which are based on scientific arguments,” explained Beat Spaeth, director for agricultural biotechnology at EuropaBio. The future of GM crops in Europe "depends now on the political will of the EU decision makers," he added. The Economist wondered whether Europeans are becoming more hostile to science and technology (The battle of the scientists, 2014). Concerns have also been raised about the regulation of genome editing (Jones Huw, 2015).

Nevertheless, comments from UK sources are particularly interesting because the UK government has expressed powerful support for the principle of cultivating GM-crops and the country is indeed the leading positive advocate in the EU. And what the UK may decide to do will have influence far beyond their shores: in the rest of Europe and particularly in Africa.

For more than 10 years, UK governments dithered about whether or not to favor GM technology in agriculture and, if so, how to go about it. Finally, in 2012, they came out with a message loud and clear delivered by Owen Patterson, the then Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, reinforced by further statements by him and his colleagues (The 2013 Oxford Farming Conference, 2013; GMOs and the Secretary of State, 2013; A gale of fresh air, 2013; The UK government and GM technology, 2014). But Mr. Paterson was replaced in the summer of 2014 by Lynn Truss from whom, until very recently, we had heard nothing very definitive as regards GM.

Early in January she spoke at the Oxford Farming Conference (Environment Secretary speech, 2015). Her message was clear and similar to that of her predecessor: the UK will go ahead with a view of cultivating GM-crops (Spencer, 2015). But readers should understand that she speaks only for England: the devolved governments in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are separately responsible for their own areas as regards GM, with Wales and Scotland clearly against (Mackenzie, 2015) (to their disadvantage, some feel; Fears Scots could miss out over GM crops, 2015). However, some 85% of the UK population resides in England which contains about 53% of the total land area and about 60% of the arable acres.

Ms. Truss's speech was widely reported (even by RT = Russia Today; Food 2.0, 2015). It was warmly welcomed by The Times (Seeds of change, 2015) which commented inter alia: “The scientific consensus is firm. A review of 147 studies, published 2 months ago in the journal PLOS ONE, found that GM reduced pesticide use by 37 per cent and raised crop yields by 21 per cent. The economies of the third world stand to benefit most. Farmers’ profits increased 69 per cent across the studies, but by an even greater margin in developing countries. Yet time has stood still for decades in Europe. While in the rest of the world the use of GM crops has risen more than a hundredfold since 1996, the European Union has devised a regulatory system of stultifying sluggishness… . An end is now in sight. On Tuesday the European parliament will vote on an ingenious compromise that would allow individual member states to ban or license GM crops.” There was wide support in the scientific community as in a website article from by The Scientific Alliance (A Happy New Year for GM crops, 2015). Spokesmen from both the Labour Party and the UK Independence Party have spoken out in favor of the technology (Scottish Government sounds warning, 2015) so that a possible change of government following the general election due on May 7th may not result in significant change on the part of the UK government.

Others, represented by the views of Peter Melchett, an organic farmer and Policy Director of the Soil Association (Melchett, 2015), and by Mary Mead, another organic farmer (Pushing GM farming, 2015), were, not surprisingly and as usual, less happy.

On November 12th, 2014, The Times (and perhaps also other papers) in their main news section carried a full page advertisement about the supposed hazards of genetically modified crops. There were about 120 signatures, a few from individuals whose names we recognized but most were from organizations (a version of the letter without the signatures can be seen at Living with GMOs, n.d.). No doubt the letter was read with approval by those who regularly fulminate against GM and all its works – and with raised eyebrows by people with a more balanced and sensible view. Now, 2 months later, the letter seems to have disappeared without trace; we have seen no reference to it anywhere. The Times charges £27,195 for a full page color display in the main news section and £16.645 (both plus VAT at 20%) for black-and-white (Display Advertising Rate Card, n.d.). The display in question had some color but was mostly black and white. So far we have spotted no reactions: the letter seems to have disappeared without trace. Perhaps another £20,000 or so will be forthcoming at some time in the future. An appreciation of the UK position as seen from the US has been offered by the Genetic Literacy Project (Rebecca, 2015).

So much for the UK government but, as they are supposed to represent the people, what in fact is the people's attitude to GM? A decade ago, a small proportion of the populace was vigorously against GM, an equally small proportion enthusiastically in favor and the remainder variously indifferent and uninterested. One could argue that apart from the few serious objectors, most people did not much care one way or the other. That situation seems to have prevailed for more than a decade, with a slow but perceptible fall in concern. The Food Standards Agency in their periodic surveys have tracked consumers’ food concerns, including those they may have about GM. Their latest report (Biannual Public Attitudes Tracker, 2014) notes that when asked “What food issues, if any, are you concerned about?," only 4% of respondents expressed spontaneous concerns about GM foods (declining from a high of about 18% in 2004), compared with 6% for eating out and 7% about the use of additives. As with all other concerns, when respondents were prompted (“And which of these food issues are you concerned about, if any? Genetically Modified (GM) foods”), 21% identified GM as an issue (declining from about 43% in 2001) but then so did 36% for eating out and 28% for additives.

A recent article in The Economist (Frankenfine, 2014) noted that “On a damp Sunday afternoon shoppers at Tesco, a supermarket, in south London seem uninterested in discussing genetically modified (GM) food. Several shrug at the idea, or profess ignorance. One insists she only buys organic stuff, but only if it is not too expensive. Their apparent indifference is striking.” According to Sir Mark Walport, the chief scientific adviser to the government, one explanation might be that scientists have become better at explaining the topic in public. Certainly there was no public protest at the latest experimental planting of GM-crops in the UK compared with at least some sort of opponent turnout on earlier occasions.

Using a media tracking program to look at social media, Ipsos MORI (Public Attitudes to Science, 2014) analyzed who is talking about science online, what they are talking about, and when: GM was one of the topics studied with most attention to paid to the Environment Secretary saying that GM is even safer than conventional food and to a study into the interbreeding of GM and natural salmon released. They concluded that:

1. Genetic modification is a controversial subject and other stories about GM led to later upticks in online conversation. Smaller peaks were caused by: GM salmon interbreeding, a dog that was bred to glow in the dark in South Korea and David Cameron's support for GM;

2. The subject is one where there is a lot of latent opposition which is easily activated by government announcements, but does not draw in the wider public;

3. People talking online about GM often cited scientific sources, but usually only to support their pre-determined opinions. Debate over the reliability of studies or content was limited;

4. Much of the GM online conversation on the 20th of June revolved not around science per se, but around trust and scientific authority. Particularly on Twitter, the debate focused on who had the scientific authority to recommend GM.

Indeed, following the recent speech by the Environment Minister at the Oxford Farming Conference (2013), some observers regard the argument as being over (Ridley 2015; Donald, 2015) although such a view, not surprisingly, is contested (Melchett, 2015).

Two recent papers are of interest here. A North American study (Kuzma and Shipman, 2014) shows that the majority of consumers will accept the presence of nanotechnology or GM technology in foods but only if the technology enhances the nutrition or improves safety: “In general, people are willing to pay more to avoid GM or nanotech in foods, and people were more averse to GM tech than to nanotech,” said Dr. Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering in Society Center at North Carolina State. “However, it's not really that simple. There were some qualifiers, indicating that many people would be willing to buy GM or nanotech in foods if there were health or safety benefits.”

This conclusion appears to refer to a more averse population than that in the UK generally. For example, GM-soya cooking oil has been on sale in the UK for at least 15 years. Before EU regulations made it mandatory in 2004, the product was not labeled as being of GM-origin. When that label became legally required, there were no effects on sales: did consumers did not notice or did they not care? The oil is still on sale (for instance, it is on the shelves in a local branch of Sainsbury's in London). Another example: when all the major UK supermarket chains except for Waitrose announced after years of refusing to do so that henceforth they would reverse their previous policies and sell poultry products raised on GM-feed (Ford, 2013), there was again no consumer reaction.

In another paper, European consumers’ attitudes in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom were explored with respect to a cisgenic rice: consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) was estimated for rice labeled as GM, as cisgenic, as with environmental benefits or as any combination of these attributes (Delwaide, 2013-2014). There were significant attitude differences between the countries toward and between cisgenic and transgenic rice: in all of them, consumers were willing-to-pay a premium to avoid consuming rice labeled as GM. In all the countries except Spain, consumers showed a significantly different and lower WTP to avoid consuming rice labeled as cisgenic compared with GM. Consumers differentiate cisgenic and transgenic products, showing a more positive attitude toward the former.

However, the UK is not the whole of Europe. While Hungary is arguing for a GM-free Europe (Hungarian farm minister advocates, 2015), Ireland is testing GM-potatoes resistant to late blight (Halleron, 2014), the Swiss are retaining their current labeling regulations (Gentechnik-Kennzeichnung, 2014) and EFSA, having evaluated the concerns raised by Bulgaria in support of its request to prohibit the cultivation of the GM-maize MON 810 in the European Union, concluded that neither the arguments put forward by Bulgaria nor the documentation reveal new scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human and animal health or the environment, that would support the adoption of an emergency measure (Statement on a request, 2014).

Africa, like most regions, continues to show mixed responses to GM. Ghana, on the one hand, is developing GM-cowpeas as the country's first GM-crop (Ghana develops its first GM crop, 2014). On the other hand (there is in this field always another hand), the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), a Pan African platform comprising civil society networks and farmer organizations working toward food sovereignty in Africa, has submitted an Open Letter (AFSA, 2014) to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Wendy White from Iowa State University and the Human Institutional Review Board of Iowa State University expressing their objections: we are “vehemently opposed to GM crops. Africa and Africans should not be used as justification for promoting the interest of companies and their cohorts. We do not need GM crops in this changing climate” and so on. Their letter has the support of a number of signatories who often support such initiatives. An interesting summary of agribiotechnology is Africa is offered by IFPRI (GM agricultural technologies, 2014).

India appears slowly to be moving forward. Scientists at the 102nd Indian Science Congress called for removal of policy hurdles to facilitate widespread use of genetically modified (GM) crops technology (Press Trust of India, 2015). Former Director General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research Rajendra Singh Paroda chaired the symposium on ‘GM crops–The Use of Modern Biotechnology in Agriculture', where participants spoke of a burgeoning population and the need for GM crops to ensure food security. A little earlier, the former Vice Chancellor of Karnataka State Universities and Association of Biotechnology-Led Enterprises-Agricultural Group published a book (Book Aiming, 2014) seeking to allay and dismiss popular misconceptions about the use of biotechnology in agriculture and food. Nearby, in Vietnam, the agriculture ministry said that it could not allow the implementation of the project intended to raise spider silkworms in cooperation with spider silk technology firm Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. (KBL) to produce silks; the reason given, according to the ministry, is that no legal framework is available to evaluate the impact of GM creatures on the environment and biodiversity so it is difficult to manage the farming of cross-bred creatures like spider silkworms (Agriculture ministry halts, 2014).

China is reported to have approved the import of Syngenta's Viptera maize (China approves, 2014) and of Bayer and DuPont soybeans (China officially approves, 2014; Polansek, 2014). The Chinese agriculture ministry has renewed the safety certificates for their own Chinese GM-rice (China renews, 2015). And then come the contradictions: the Chinese government has renewed permits allowing scientists to grow 3 varieties of genetically modified rice and corn on the mainland, more than 3 months after they expired, suggesting the technology has the continued backing of the authorities (Chen, 2015). Some scientists had feared that the Ministry of Agriculture might stop research on the projects. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some members of the public are wary about the safety of GM crops amid a succession of food safety scandals on the mainland. GM rice cannot yet be sold as food–the government says it has to be sure that new strains are safe. Moreover, while Reuters reported that the US and China were making progress in biotech talks (U.S., China making progress, 2014), the Financial Times (Hornby, 2014) discusses a “bureaucratic stalemate that has stalled development of the crops by the world's largest food consumer. After waves of state funding, researchers have developed a number of crops and are now just waiting for the green light to commercialize them. But approval will be slow in coming as long as public opinion—and more importantly, officialdom—remains firmly anti-GM." Indeed, Huang Dafang, the former director of the country's Biotechnology Research Institute—and a strong GMO advocate—says that the government is going about it the wrong way. China's government has too many rules restricting the adoption of genetically modified food, and that's ultimately hurting its long-term competitiveness in the sector (China's Rules Smother GMOs, 2015). And not only in China: 11.6 million hectares are sown with GM-cotton in India, equivalent to the area given over the GM-cultivation in the whole of Canada (Haq, 2015), with maybe more not too far into the future (Maharashtra gives nod, 2015).

The media reports about developments down under are mixed. While having assured consumers that food derived from a genetically modified corn strain poses no health concerns, the antipodean food regulator is now calling on the public and industry to voice their opinions on whether it should be permitted for consumption in Australia and New Zealand.

Steve McCutcheon, chief executive of Food Safety Australia New Zealand (Fsanz), said that a strain of maize, genetically modified to be tolerant to the herbicide glyphosate and also formulated to offer protection against western corn rootworm, poses no public health and safety concern. He said that Fsanz had done a safety assessment on the application and no concerns have been identified. The regulator is now calling on the public and industry to voice their opinions on whether it should be permitted for consumption in Australia and New Zealand (Whitehead, 2014) On the other hand (again an other hand), a bid by the West Australian government to allow a certain amount of genetically modified material in certified organic food has failed (WA government's GM food bid fails, 2014): the organic certifier has rejected an application by the Western Australian Agriculture Department to allow a tolerance to genetically modified (GM) material in organic products. “Marg Will, from the Organic Industry Standards and Certification Council, says the application wasn't consistent with international food standards. All countries that adhere to the WTO actually base their food safety, of food standards, around the world on the Codex Alimentarius guidelines, and the guidelines state that all materials from GMO are not compatible with the principles of organic production and are not accepted under these guidelines," she said (McAloon, 2014).

Across the Pacific in South America, the possible introduction of genetically modified potato in the Andean region has raised concerns about the unintentional introduction of transgenes into the native potato germplasm because it is perceived to convey negative impacts on biodiversity. This was investigated by an ex-post analysis of existing landraces resulting from natural hybridization between an unknown landrace and the fertile commercial variety ‘Yungay’. The results demonstrate that the unintentional introduction of a transgene, not under farmers’ selection, from a widely grown transgenic variety over a long period of time is unlikely to happen at a detectable scale. Farmers play a prominent role in the selection and maintenance of landraces which, unlike hybrids, have specific characteristics that farmers appreciate (Ghislain et al., 2014).

To complete our global perspective of the world of GM at the turn of the year, we go north to the United States and Canada; as usual, those vibrant countries are hives of activity. Canada first, where Stuart J. Smyth has reviewed 20 years of GM-crop regulation. He points out that the development of voluntary labeling standards for the products of biotechnology have been in place now for a decade and are clearly meeting the needs of consumers as the demands for mandatory labeling of GM products have been increasingly muted (Smyth, 2014). As we note, this is rather different from public discussion south of the border where demands for labeling are popping up in one place after another although also significantly defeated when put to a vote.

In the US much discussion still turns on regulation and the possible mandatory labeling of foods containing GM ingredients. Lawmakers are said to be wary of GM-food labels: Republicans and Democrats on a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee questioned whether requiring a label on any packaged food including genetically modified organisms — or foods grown from seeds engineered in labs — would be misleading to consumers since there is little scientific evidence that such foods are unsafe. The food industry has made a similar argument (Jalonick, 2014; Bailey, 2014). That hearing also confirmed the safety of biotech foods (Fatka, 2014).

In Vermont, where legislation has already been passed to that effect, a federal judge is weighing whether to halt that state's first-in-the-nation genetically modified organism labeling law even before it goes into effect; she had questions for both sides in the lawsuit that the Grocery Manufacturers Association filed against the state. Arguments were heard from the state concerning its motion to dismiss the lawsuit and from the association regarding its request for the court to suspend the labeling law while considering whether the measure is constitutional (D’Ambrosio, 2015).

There is also one report that the first lobbying firm has been engaged to push for labeling (Parti, 2014) and another from the Snack Food Association on the hidden costs of such labeling, including investing in separate storage and production lines in order to process non-GMOs, or pulling their products out of that particular state altogether, to say nothing of the paper trails which would have to be kept (Don't “Just Label It”, 2014).

Further on the question of labeling, the New York Times (Strom, 2015) looks at the variety and lack of clarity over rules on “GM-free” labels. The whole question of GM-free, including issues of sources and costs, has been explored by Moses & Brookes (2013). And labeling is not the only issue: some areas attempt bans of GM-crop cultivation. Los Angeles is one such location, not the most likely (one might have thought) for the large-scale production of GM-crops. Nevertheless, it seems that having indeed proposed such a measure (which would ban selling and planting genetically modified crop seeds, fruit trees and plants within city limits) Los Angeles lawmakers wisely reversed course on the proposed ban on the growth of genetically modified crops that had previously faced nearly zero resistance within City Hall. The Los Angeles Times very properly asked why the City Council is doing that, especially as no one grows GM-crops in L.A. and, as near as anyone knows, no one has any plan to do so (The Times Editorial Board, 2014). Not enough to do in City Hall (Karlamangla, 2014)?

There are, of course, many clearly positive developments, particularly with regard to American chestnut trees threatened by an Asian fungus which for the past 100 years has been killing billions of American chestnut trees, is still plaguing the trees and keeping them from reasserting their dominance; once inside the tree the fungus releases oxalic acid which kills nearby tree tissue. The mold colonizes the dead tissue which eventually form cankers, strangling the tree and killing it down to the ground. While the roots may survive for a few years, sending up new shoots every spring, chestnut blight has kept most of America's chestnut trees stunted. William Powell and his colleagues at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York have been using GM methods to try to beat the problem: a gene from wheat that codes for an enzyme which breaks down oxalic is transferred to the chestnut (Haspel, 2014; Fecht, 2014). Of course (“and on the other hand”), it goes without saying that some people object… (GMO, 2014). In addition to developments with chestnut trees, another GM-potato with reduced bruising and browning has been officially approved (Waltz, 2015) and a heat-tolerant wheat is under development (Anderson, 2015).

The American Farm Bureau Federation asks whether perhaps consumers are not tiring of anti-GMO rhetoric and want facts. “GMO opponents," they say, “have used misinformation for too long to muddle the conversation. And the push for mandatory labeling has only confused things more… . Fortunately, this charged rhetoric isn't enough to convince most voters….Consumers are more and more interested in the story of their food… . GM crops will play a big role here” (American Farm Bureau Federation, 2015). Good to hear that and we await further evidence with interest although many Americans are said to deny and reject widely accepted scientific reality, finding GM food unsafe (Sample, 2015). In that context, consumers are presumably interested in costs so a farmer's report of production costs of GM versus non-GM crops is enlightening: “even when there is a premium involved with growing a non-GM grain, due to better yields, GM has out-performed non-GM on our farm every year. We have experienced higher yields in all of our GM crops in the nearly 17 years we have been using the seeds… . these are our costs and our production figures. Don't assume they are the same for all farmers. They are not” (Schmidt, 2014). But all evidence is relevant, all to be weighed in the balance.

One recent and notable event of public interest was the TV debate on GM-food mounted by Intelligence Squared US Debates. Robert Rosenkranz was in the chair, with Robert Fraley of Monsanto and Alison Van Eenennaam from UC Davis in favor of GM-food, and Margaret Mellon (Union of Concerned Scientists) and Charles Benbrook (and Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, Washington State University) against (Should we genetically modify food, 2014). The audience voted twice on the motion “Should we genetically modified food," once before the presentations and again afterwards. Beforehand 32% voted in favor, 30% against and 38% were undecided. After the presentation it was 60% in favor, 31% against and just 9% undecided. It did not take long for comments on the debate to appear on websites (Entine, 2014; Thank God It's On the Internet, 2014).

Just as we reached here in drafting this report, news came from ISAAA of the latest global GM statistics, a convenient final topic. In 2014, some 18 million farmers, 90% of them poor and cultivating small plots, planted a record 181 million hectares of GM crops in 28 countries, some 3-4% more than in 2013. All the details are available in the annual reports from ISAAA (James, 2015; ISAAA, 2015).