http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/danger-lies-on-the-gm-food-road-20110209-1amy1.html

Danger lies on the GM food road

Elizabeth Farrelly

Feb 10, 2011

Illustration: Harry Afentoglou 

The West Australian Minister for Agriculture, Terry Redman, wants to redefine “organic” to accommodate genetic engineering. Well he might wish it, since the legal battle brewing there over contamination of organic crops by genetically modified ones could easily blow right back onto his turf. Far scarier, though, is the environmental blowback, which could knock all these little old floods and cyclones into a cocked hat.

Steve Marsh is an organic farmer in Kojonup, four hours south-east of Perth. Or that’s what he thought he was. So did the certifiers. Then, last December, the nightmare came true. Marsh’s wheat and oats began testing 70 per cent positive for novel DNA and he was stripped of certification. A year earlier, following approval by the Gene Technology Regulator, the WA government approved commercialisation of GM, or ”Roundup Ready”, canola – although their own fact sheet at the time cited a United Nations report that “since the advent of GM canola in Canada farmers can no longer grow organic canola in western Canada.”

They also admitted that GM canola can cross-pollinate with a number of other species, and eating such resulting crops would decertify organic livestock as well. Yet they broke their promise to publish a list of GM farmers so that non-GM growers could take evasive action. Their official advice? That “farmers discuss . . . this remote possibility [of contamination] with their neighbours”.

With a loss of up to $800 per tonne and a minimum five-year wait before Marsh’s crops can be recertified ”organic”, compensation could be big. Except that the defendant will be bankrolled by that shady agro-giant, that food-world Voldemort, Monsanto.

Morally, if not legally, the case draws on the 1990s precedent of a Saskatchewan farmer, Percy Schmeiser. Schmeiser had spent 40 years perfecting his own canola hybrids when Monsanto genes were detected through 80 per cent of his crop. Far from compensating Schmeiser for the loss of a life’s work, Monsanto decided aggression was the best form of defence and sued him, as it had hundreds of others, for unlicensed gene-use.

Immaterial, argued Monsanto, that the genes might have been wind or bee-propagated. They were illegally in his plants, and he should pay; $400,000, to be exact. This patentability of subsistence crops is a real evil; not just because individuals get screwed, but because it privatises a commons.

Twenty years ago GM, aka GE or transgenics, was sold much as nuclear power is sold today, as an evil necessary to meet demand. I learnt in school how high-yield transgenic soy and sorghum would feed the starving millions. Never mind that more people now are overfed than underfed (suggesting that it is more about distribution than quantity). Even measured against its own promises of food security and equity, transgenics has failed to deliver. Indeed its effect, if anything, has been the opposite.

Dr Vandana Shiva, physicist, philosopher, activist and winner of last year’s Sydney Peace Prize, links more than 200,000 Indian farmer suicides to Monsanto’s introduction of GM cottonseed in the early 1990s. With 90 per cent of India’s cotton now transgenic, it is a phenomenon that campaigners, including the Prince of Wales, have branded the “GM genocide”.

There is a typical pattern. Farmers stricken by drought and poverty are so entranced by Monsanto’s promises of wealth that they take on debt, at local moneylenders’ extortionate rates, to buy the GM seed. Hundreds of times more expensive than traditional seed, it has two ”novel” characteristics; resistance to Roundup, enabling fields to be soaked in the herbicide, and a terminator gene that renders them sterile.

This in effect emplaces a loyalty contract whereby the farmer is perennially bound to repurchase both glyphosate (Roundup) and seed from Monsanto. Thus does an ”heirloom seed” economy – where seed is both product and means-of-production and even a bad harvest is offset by seed saved for the next – become a spiral of debt and dependency, where recovery from a failed harvest requires yet more debt, just for the hope of escape.

After even a couple of consecutive failures, all the more likely because the GM seeds are thirsty, the debt is insurmountable. One day, rather than spray pesticide on the soil, the farmer swallows a cupful himself, leaving his family landless, foodless, destitute. Sometimes the wife takes over the farm, only to kill herself as well, reports the Daily Mail in Britain. At 1000 suicides a month on official figures, it is like the Highland clearances and the potato famine, all at once.

There are some techno-upsides. In the past five years, drought-resistant varieties have been engineered, with insecticidal genes as well as herbicide-resistance, requiring less chemical intervention. But whether GM has improved yield at all, anywhere, is still controversial. And what it has not improved are nutrition, ecosystems or equity. Equity issues may perhaps be resolved by recent reports that, in classic Indian style, Monsanto’s genes are being bootlegged.

As to ecology, on the question of soil-culture damage science is split, but much of the research (even in our trusted CSIRO) is Monsanto-funded and several studies show serious damage to earthworms and soil microbes from glyphosate at even nominal levels. With 90 per cent of America’s sugar beet, canola, cotton, corn and soy already transgenic, moreover, and alfalfa newly approved, the burning issues are not just biodiversity and herbicide resistant weeds but, crucially, the reversibility principle.

And food? Many argue all GM foods are refined to remove DNA. It’s not quite true. China’s first commercial GM rice is expected next year, a special ”Bt eggplant” has been developed for (but rejected by) India (both using a Bacillus thuringiensis gene, which will be directly human-ingested), and most of the world’s soy is GM.

Sure, there’s no proof of harm. But in this great, global experiment there’s no proof, either, of safety. Proof takes time, but science takes industry cash and the US has already led us into epidemic obesity, diabetes, allergy and cancer. Pretty soon, if we docilely wear the GM blindfold, ”organic” will no longer be a refuge. Why? Because organic won’t exist. That’s why labelling matters.

What’s up with Vegemite?  Surely Kraft are not stupid enough to use Genetically Engineered ingredients?

Check out the latest GM-Free food guide

http://www.truefood.org.au/truefoodguide/

Good news about Kellogg’s….

Kellogg’s have agreed to produce foods without genetically modified ingredients, following encouragement from Greenpeace.

The company was found by Greenpeace to be producing a bar with an ingredient that was suspected to have been genetically modified.

The Kellogg’s K-Time twist bar has fructose sourced from the US as a listed ingredient.

“Fructose sourced from the US almost always comes from corn and is genetically modified,” said Nathaniel Pelle a Greenpeace campaigner and the producer of Greenpeace’s Truefood Guide.

Mr Pelle oversaw the production of the guide which conducts surveys into Australian companies’ inclusion of genetically modified (GM) products and campaigns against their use.

“The Truefood Guide aims to fill the gap left by Australia’s poor labelling laws, which mean we don’t know whether our food contains GM. We are in the dark when it comes to feeding our family,” said Greenpeace GM campaigner, Laura Kelly in a statement.

Mr Pelle told AAP that Kellogg’s had a green rating in the last Truefood Guide, meaning they didn’t use any GM products.

However Mr Pelle told AAP that on reviewing their GM policy this year he discovered that it had been reworded.

“Last year, Kellogg’s policy stated that they wouldn’t use GM ingredients or their derivatives in their products. This year they had removed the words ‘or their derivatives’,” he said.

Greenpeace say that Kellogg’s admitted to its campaigners that the fructose in their K-Time twist bar had been sourced in the US.

Kellogg’s have since written to Greenpeace to say that they will agree to source non-GM fructose and were endeavouring to do so within Australia, Greenpeace say.

Mr Pelle said that the company have agreed to start using a non-GM fructose at the expiration date of the latest batch of the bars – which is January 2012 – and they will return to a green rating then. They are currently rated orange by the guide.

“It was always Kellogg’s approach to source non-GM ingredients.Nothing has changed.

“We were rated green last year in the True Food Guide and worked through sourcing of a particular ingredient to ensure that we stayed green.

“We were working through achieving this prior to the release of the true food guide,” a Kellogg’s spokeswoman told AAP. on Tuesday.

Greenpeace claim that their guide has caused “shock waves” in the genetically modified food industry.

The True Food Guide is available from Wednesday.

- AAP

Here is a story about the launch of the latest True Food Guide in Australia, March 2011. It was originally posted on the Sydney Morning Herald website.

The link is here.

Here is a comment on the situation in New Zealand.

Food authorities are keeping a few secrets, writes Carli Ratcliff.

Unlike most households, Vegemite toast is no longer a staple at chef Jared Ingersoll’s place. The jar has gone to the back of the cupboard. Owned by the US company Kraft, the nation’s favourite spread may contain genetically modified (GM) ingredients. Likewise, Australia’s favourite chocolate treat, the Caramello Koala.

Both have been given a ”red light” by the Truefood Guide, an annual consumer guide by Greenpeace to be published on Tuesday. The Guide earmarks commonplace foods that either contain GM ingredients or whose manufacturers refuse to provide transparent information regarding the origin of ingredients. Other ”red lights” include Smith’s Crisps, Kellogg’s K-Time Twists, Baker’s Delight breads, Naytura cereals, Birds Eye fish fingers and Ingham’s chicken nuggets.

”Green lights” have been awarded to companies including Sanitarium, the makers of Weet-Bix, Schweppes Cottee’s Cordial, Heinz baby food, and Goodman Fielder, the bakers of Wonder White and Mighty Soft breads.

Ian Greenshields, director of corporate affairs at Goodman Fielder, says the company implemented a non-GM policy in reaction to consumer concern. “Across all of our brands we’ve found that consumers are mistrustful of GM ingredients in their food,” he says.

Consumer interest was also the impetus for the Truefood Guide’s focus on foods marketed at children, after they were inundated with enquiries from concerned parents following Truefood Australia’s detection of GM ingredients in S-26 soy infant formula last September.

Laura Kelly, the genetic engineering team leader at Truefood Australia, says the Guide gives parents information that labels don’t. “In the absence of mandatory labelling, the Guide helps parents make informed choices.”

Ingersoll will launch the guide with fellow chef Peter Gilmore of Quay and the Wiggles’ Murray Field. All are concerned about the lack of transparency in food labelling, opinions they made known to the recent Independent Review of Food Labelling Law and Policy. “The refusal to label all foods that contain GM ingredients means our options are removed,” Ingersoll says. “We need to have the opportunity to make informed choices for our kids.”

His concerns have fallen on deaf ears. The review received 6486 submissions from consumers. Chaired by the former health minister Neal Blewett, it did not recommend mandatory labelling of foods that contain GM ingredients, a requirement already mandatory in Britain, France and Germany.

The approval and labelling requirements of foods containing GM ingredients is the responsibility of Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). In November last year Senator Nick Xenophon and the Greens senator Rachel Siewert introduced a bill to Parliament that would require FSANZ to implement mandatory labelling of food containing GM material.

“This is an area where consumers are being deliberately left in the dark,” Mr Xenophon says. “The labelling requirements for GM need to be completely overhauled and tough new standards need to be enforced.”

FSANZ relies on information provided by the applicant to assess the safety of a food product. It says that manufacturer self-regulation of this nature is in line with international standards, namely the principles of the United Nations’ food regulatory arm, the Codex Alimentarius Commission (the Codex), of which Australia is a member.

However, like the US government’s food regulatory authorities, FSANZ seemingly overlooks the Codex’s standards for labelling prepackaged foods, which clearly state that labelling should include “any special requirements to ensure that the consumer is not deceived or misled about the nature of the food”.

A recent Auditor-General’s report found FSANZ’s analysis of data supplied by manufacturing companies lacking. The FSANZ chief scientist, Dr Paul Brent, when asked if FSANZ undertakes scientific testing of products, replied: “No, in order to get an approval the applicant supplies us with information from which we make an assessment.”

Ms Kelly at Truefood Australia says the system is not good enough. “Relying on data supplied by the manufacturer is hardly robust regulation.”

On Thursday Forbes writer Glenn Lammi called individuals concerned about GM ingredients “foodie elite” and “Luddite activists”.

Mr Xenophon disagrees. “This is an issue that transcends ideological fault lines. Many consumers would prefer not to eat GM products, but right now they don’t have a choice.”

Ms Kelly agrees. “All we ask is to prove that it is safe, and label it,” she said.