PRESENTATION BY HANS LOMBARD, INDEPENDENT AGRICULTURAL ANALYST

GM FOOD SAFER THAN WATER

Safety issues concerning humans and the environment as attributed to GMOs (genetically modified crops and food) are the subject of this public hearing under the auspices of the portfolio committee on Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

This is not a new subject. Anti-GMO activists like Biowatch, SAFeAGE, Greenpeace, etc., etc., have for the past 12 years raised the same issues year after year of so-called “risks” and “dangers” to human health, animals and the environment supposedly threatened by GMOs.

The latest, most outrageous claim was a Biowatch report in the Sunday Argus, March 18 2007 “SA’s GM maize crop linked to cancer”. (Attachment A) Like all similar claims in the past, this one also turned out to be a false alarm.

To show how ignorant the activists are: this report was linked to a maize event MON 863 not grown commercially in South Africa and not available here. It became a hot topic in Europe where it has been approved for importation as food and feed. The maize had been subjected to a 90-day rat feed study in 2003. After a comprehensive risk assessment, EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority) in 2004 concluded than “MON 863 is unlikely to have any adverse effects on human and animal health or the environment”.

In March 2007, Greenpeace hired Professor Gilles Séralini of the CRIIGEN group (Committee for Independent Research and Genetic Engineering) in France to reassess the 2003 rat study. He claimed there were alarming signs of toxicity and liver damage. Greenpeace went berserk and issued a press release worldwide to this effect.

However EFSA’s panel of scientist again reassessed the 2003 rat study and emphatically rejected Séralini’s claims as rubbish as it “does not raise any new safety concerns in addition to the original opinion of April 2004”. (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press_room/press_release/pr_efsa_maize_Mon863.html)

The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) and the French Sanitary and Food Safety Agency (AFSSA) fully endorsed EFSA’s opinion and MON 863 is being happily consumed by humans and animals in the EU.

Greenpeace and Biowatch have yet to apologize to the public for grossly misleading them with such ghastly fearmongering humbug.

None of the activists from Greenpeace, Biowatch, SAFeAGE etc., are scientists, agriculturalists, agronomists or nutritionists and therefore not qualified to tell farmers what to plant and people what to eat, nor to express an opinion about environmental matters.

Why is it that the South African Medical Council, the CSIR, the Department of Science and Technology, the Agricultural Research Council, AGRI SA and numerous farming cooperatives who market GM food, have never raised questions over GMO “risks”, “dangers” and “environmental contamination”?

The false fears raised by activists over GM foods during the past 12 years have not provided a shred of substantiated scientific or medical evidence of adverse effects to humans, animals or the environment anywhere in the world. Their fearmongering opinions must be weighed up against the findings of the world’s leading scientists, academies of science and medicine such as, to quote a few:

Prof Klaus Ammann

Emeritus of the University of Bern, Switzerland and guest professor at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands.

He is an independent scientist who was a member of a panel of 11 scientists who in 2001 examined the safety of GM crops on behalf of the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, an autonomous biotech research institute based in Belgium.

“We unanimously came to the conclusion that GM crops currently on the market are as safe as their conventional counterparts. Furthermore, to date, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no scientifically substantiated report of negative reactions to human or animal health anywhere in the world.” (Attachment B)

Professor Jennifer Thomson

Department of Molecular and Cell Biotechnology, University of Cape Town, an independent scientist who, together with several others, was a member of the SAGENE committee in 1990 that set up the guidelines for GMO use in this country before the GMO Act was passed by Parliament.

“To date there is no peer reviewed substantiated scientific evidence whatsoever available anywhere in the world to prove that GM food poses a health risk to man or animals or that it could contaminate the environment, nor of any negative reactions to human health anywhere in the world as a result of GM food.” (Attachment C)

Prof C.S. Prakash

Eminent American research scientist, Tuskegee University, USA.

“GM food is safer that water. Less dangerous than stairs, bicycles or medicine. More than two billion people have eaten genetically modified food in the first five years of being produced commercially. Seven national academies of science have endorsed this approach and 16 Nobel laureates along with 3200 scientists support this view.” ([email protected])

The Royal Society of London

“There is no consensus as to the seriousness, or even existence of any potential harm from GM technology. Biotech crops may even be safer than regular food.” This was endorsed by the following eight academies of science: Brazil, China, India, Mexico, the Third World Academy, the National Academy of Science of the USA, Germany, and France.

The British Medical Association (BMA)

“There is very little potential for GM foods to cause harmful health effects. Any of the concerns expressed apply with equal vigour to conventionally derived foods. GM foods have enormous potential to benefit both the developing and developed world.”

European Union

The European Commission funded 81 scientific research projects on GMOs over a period of 15 years, costing R460 million, and came to the conclusion that “GM food is both safe for humans and the environment.”

With this concrete and scientifically undisputed proof of the safety of GM food and the fact that it does not differ from the conventional, the question of labelling or a precautionary stance becomes irrelevant.

Despite the activists’ fearmongering campaign, GM production worldwide is expanding at an unprecedented rate. Last year South Africa planted 1.4 million ha GM crops – up 180% over the previous year – with 44% of our maize being GM. This year it is nearly 50%, cotton 92% and soya 75%.

Two extra countries in Europe, six last year, have adopted GM. The most significant expansion is in France where GM plantings increased from 5000 ha last year to 30 000 ha this year.

The activists are driving their anti-GM campaign on false emotional grounds to enrich themselves, with no patriotic concerns for our country. They are financed from outside sources to line their pockets.

In 2005 Biowatch received donations in excess of R2.2 million from the GAIA Foundation, London, HIVOS Netherlands and Heinrich Boell, Germany. Nearly R1.2 million went to salaries. That money can buy enough maize to feed more than 18 000 starving children in sub-Saharan Africa for one year.

Despite this convincing and undeniable substantiated scientific evidence confirming the safety of GM crops and absolving it from all risks, activists can seemingly not interpret scientific data and continue to raise fearmongering myths such as:

GMOs will contaminate the environment become invasive and develop superweeds.

One of the main advantages of GM crops, specifically cotton and maize with a built in toxin targeting specific pests like the maize stalk borer and the cotton bollworm, is that conventional spraying of pesticides is considerably reduced, benefiting harmless insects like ladybirds, spiders, moths and many more.

According to the US National Centre for Food and Agriculture Policy (NCFAP), in the five years after the introduction of GM crops eight biotech crops grown in the USA increased crop yields by two million tons and saved growers US$1.5 billion by reducing pesticide use by 23 000 tons.

The Canola Council of Canada reported a reduction of 6 million tons of herbicide product. The Chinese Academy of Science reported cotton farmers reduced pesticide applications by 70%, the equivalent of 78 000 tons.

In South Africa GM cotton farmers have reduced pesticide sprayings from ten times to twice. Maize farmers have eliminated heavy aerial sprayings, which could some times drift up to eight kilometres, killing all harmless insects over a wide area.

To date no conventional or GM crop has shown any tendency to invade the environment. Neither can a Bt crop become a superweed. After 12 years of GM farming no superweeds have been detected anywhere.

Activists will tell you that rat studies done by Dr Arpad Pusztai in Scotland in 1998 and the Russian scientist Dr Irina Ermakova in 2005 “showed damaging effects” that could have the same results in humans.

Pusztai’s study was with ordinary potatoes that he injected with a lectin. It was not a GM potato. They were never intended as a food crop for humans. (The Lancet July 3 1999)

The Royal Society of London conducted a thorough peer review of all Pusztai’s data and concluded: “His experiments were badly designed, poorly carried out and inaccurately interpreted and that no conclusion could be drawn from them. They were flawed.”

Pusztai was fired from the Scottish Scientific Institute, where he was working, for lying to the public. No other scientist has ever replicated his study.

Ermakova did her experiments with mice fed GM soybeans and claimed they died.

Her study was never peer reviewed. The British Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNP), responsible for GMO safety evaluation in Great Britain, analysed Ermakova’s experiments and reported: “Her finding lacks detail essential to meaningful assessment of the results. The results were not quality controlled through the normal peer review process preceding scientific publication.” (ACNFP report Ermakova Dec 2005) Her study was likewise flawed. Nobody has repeated it.

You will also be told that farmers cannot save GM seed.

There is no law in South Africa stopping a farmer from replanting saved seed on his own farm. According to the South African National Seed Organisation (SANSOR), 88% of all soya seed and 70% of wheat seed is farm saved.

Planting saved seed is an outdated practice in modern agriculture. Replanted seed loses its hybrid vigour, leading to yield reductions of up to 30%.