GM crops

This month the US National Family Farm Coalition, in conjunction with Greenpeace, held public meetings to which farmers were invited to hear about the experience of US growers and other farmers regarding the impacts of the commercial introduction of GM crops. Following a number of requests for more information from those who were unable to attend, here's a summary of the meetings and other subsequent developments.

Today's agriculture industry is more like mining than farming.Its system compromises the very earth on which all our future food needs depend. Only about 16%of the world 's farmland remains free of problems such as chemical pollution.

In spring 1999, following widespread calls for a halt to the development of genetically modified (GM) crops in the UK, the Government launched a four-year programme of farm scale trials (see glossary). The trials have been designed primarily to answer criticisms from English Nature and others concerned about the environmental impact of GM crops, particularly the secondary effects on biodiversity.

Developing a new variety of rice would not tackle the key cause of vitamin A deficiency. The real causes of hunger and malnutrition are poverty, poor food distribution, lack of land and resources to grow food, and a failure of political will. Experience with 'green revolution' crop varieties suggests that their introduction often results in the use of expensive external inputs - fertilisers and chemical pesticides, without which the crops fail.

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Current intensive farming practices rely on the use of artificial chemicals and, unlike organic farming methods, inflict significant environmental damage. Genetic engineering represents an escalation of these intensive farming practices. It threatens the environment and potentially human health and will contaminate non-GM and organic crops.

Of the 40 million hectares of genetically engineered (GE) crops grown throughout the world in 1998, 22% (8.8 million hectares) were varieties developed to be resistant to insects 1 . Most such crops are created by inserting a synthetic version of a gene from the naturally occurring soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), so that the plants produce their own Bt toxins to destroy pests. Insect resistant Bt maize, cotton and potatoes have already been grown extensively on a commercial scale, particularly in the USA, and many other Bt crops are under development (e.g.

Any of the genetically engineered (GE) crops which are already being grown on a commercial scale contain genes which are resistant to antibiotics used for the treatment of diseases in both humans and animals. These genes are unnecessary to the development of the GE plants themselves and could severely undermine the effective treatment of diseases if the antibiotic resistance is transferred to bacteria which are harmful to human and animal health.