Incisive stuff from Chuck Benbrook, former Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture for the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), on the much publicised white paper published last summer on "Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture", which was organised by the US NAS among seven science academies around the world, including the UK's Royal Society.
Benbrook sees this paper as differing in several important respects "substantially from earlier NAS reports on this subject" and he provides a very useful (and highly readable) analysis of the paper's strengths and weaknesses.
Particularly acute are his comments on how this technology is, on the one hand, promoted as seemingly near-miraculous while, on the other, we are instructed that it cannot be rejected if it cannot be proven to be significantly more harmful than the worst of current agricultural practice:
"In the current report and many like it, people are first told of the great power and precision of the technology. Then, as in this report, a few typically shallow and dismissive pages are devoted to potential risks. And last, the suggestion is made that GM technology should be accepted if it is at least marginally better than the worst of conventional technology. No wonder people are confused and wary..."
and
"Indeed, if the best GM technology can do is only marginally better than the worst of conventional technology, the biotechnology revolution may go down in history as one of the greatest technological duds of all time. "
Benbrook also notes:
"The failure of GM technologies to deliver on past promises is especially likely when compared to other elegant systems- and management-based solutions. Such solutions will surely emerge when supported by investments of R+D funding and institutional and policy changes on the scale now devoted to GM technologies."
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"Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture"
Report by a Working Group
Representing Seven Science Academies Released July 11, 2000
by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
Remarks By: Dr. Charles M. Benbrook Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Center http://www.biotech-info.net/sevenNAS.html
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) organized an effort by representatives of seven science academies to prepare a white paper on the prospective benefits and risks associated with applications of biotechnology in food production. The report led to July 12, 2000 press reports in major papers around the world. In step with the NAS press release, most stories delivered two messages - first, that GM technology will substantially help alleviate global food problems, and second, concerns raised about the risks accompanying GM technologies are unwarranted and overblown.
The cursory press coverage of this report could lead GM proponents to miss important messages and recommendations. In many respects this report differs substantially from earlier NAS reports on this subject. Likewise, GM opponents should not dismiss this report as yet another whitewash by scientists and institutions with a vested interest in GM technology. Indeed, just about everyone involved with the GM debate will smile as they read some passages and grimace through others.
Shallow Treatment of Human Health Risks
In general, the discussion of human health risks is the weakest and least informative. The short section entitled "Transgenic Plants and Human Health and Safety" (pages 15 to 17) contains the familiar argument that GM technology is precise and involves movement of -- "....at most, a few well-defined genes - rather than the introduction of whole genomes or parts of chromosomes as in traditional plant breeding. This makes toxicity testing for transgenic plants more straightforward than it is for conventionally produced plants."
What the report does not mention, even in passing, is the growing evidence of transgene silencing and instability and the unexpected patterns of gene expression that have now been observed in many GM plants and experiments. Ironically, dozens of the most germane research reports documenting transgene instability have appeared in the Proceedings of the [U.S.] National Academy of Sciences.
The working group that authored the report must have been uneasy about such an unequivocal statement. A seemingly out-of-place final sentence was added to the paragraph containing the above passage -
"On the other hand, GM technology can introduce genes from diverse organisms, some of which have little history in the food supply."
Such a statement begs the question - So what might this mean? Rather than provide an answer, which would require discussion of the core concerns of scientists who remain skeptical of the science supporting blanket GM-food safety assurances, the report jumps directly in the next paragraph to another familiar refrain -
"Decisions regarding safety should be based on the nature of the product, rather than on the method by which it is modified."
Here the working group displays its bias and passes up a chance to advance the debate. It is true that the allergenicity of a protein whose expression is enhanced in a GM crop variety needs to be assessed and regulated using the same scientific methods and principles as an allergen impacted through conventional breeding. The same could be said relative to potential toxins and changes in nutritional profile.
That's not the point. The process of genetic transformation is known to heighten the risk of certain abnormalities in gene expression that can affect the stability of genomes and the performance of transgenic crops. Some of these abnormalities can alter gene expression and protein levels under certain circumstances in ways that impact physiological parameters, crop development, and plant defense mechanisms. Some of these changes, in turn, can lead to food safety risks. Maybe such risks will arise rarely and hopefully only with modest impact, but such optimistic judgements rest upon far too much guesswork and far too little solid, replicated and published risk assessment science.
Given the extent of ignorance about how genetically transformed plants will behave and react over time to changes in their environment, it is incumbent on scientists to use all knowledge and available tools to explore potential human health risks. But by asserting "it is the product, not the process" that matters in assessing risks, the authors of this report have apparently chosen not to use all the information available to sharpen the search for potential food safety risks. It is time for the NAS to acknowledge that the process through which a novel plant variety is developed can influence the potential risks such a new food might pose and therefore is relevant in food safety risk assessment.
On the topic of antibiotic marker genes, the report states that -
"No definitive evidence exists that these antibiotic resistance genes cause harm to humans”¦"
Yet it still calls upon industry to "move rapidly to remove all such markers from transgenic plants." This is the first time an NAS report has called for such decisive action to rid GM plants of antibiotic marker genes. This clear statement suggests that there is ample reason for concern and precautionary action, despite the lack of "definitive" evidence of harm. This is essentially what knowledgeable and levelheaded GM technology skeptics have been saying for several years now.
Setting GM Technology Performance Standards
The report's section "Transgenic Plants and the Environment" (pages 19 to 22) presents a simple premise set up by a provocative opening sentence -
"Modern agriculture is intrinsically destructive to the environment."
The premise follows a few paragraphs later -
"It must be shown that the potential impact of a transgenic plant has been carefully analyzed and that if it is not neutral or innocuous, it is preferable to the impact of conventional agricultural technologies that it is designed to replace."
So, if a GM technology poses risks but appears less damaging than current technologies, then it should be approved by regulators and embraced by the public. Some people may beg to differ. Indeed, if the best GM technology can do is only marginally better than the worst of conventional technology, the biotechnology revolution may go down in history as one of the greatest technological duds of all time.
If GM technology fails, it won't be for lack of effort. In both the public and private sectors, enormous moral and financial support for agricultural biotechnology has been and still is predicated on the promise of a series of near-miraculous benefits this technology is supposed to be uniquely able to deliver. The section "Examples of GM Technology That Would Benefit World Agriculture" (pages 7 to 14) covers many often-cited examples. No space in the report is allotted to the well-known technical and economic constraints that stand in the way of GM technologies.
Nor does the report discuss why GM technologies are likely, in the end, to be the most cost-effective and sustainable solution to a given problem. This is a serious shortcoming, given that so many of agriculture's problems arise from the mismanagement of natural resources and plant-pest ecological interactions. Such problems are not largely genetic in origin and rarely will genetic manipulation, however achieved, prove the decisive system innovation.
In the current report and many like it, people are first told of the great power and precision of the technology. Then, as in this report, a few typically shallow and dismissive pages are devoted to potential risks. And last, the suggestion is made that GM technology should be accepted if it is at least marginally better than the worst of conventional technology. No wonder people are confused and wary of GM technology.
Despite the report's awkward handling of risk issues, much of the report is forceful and on target. It contains the strongest passages yet in any NAS report on intellectual property rights issues. Given current intellectual property right laws, the authors admit that -
"....the potential applications of GM technologies described previously are unlikely to benefit the less developed nations of the world for a long time..."
The report states that the concentration of control in a few multinational companies over seeds and GM technologies is likely to keep the focus on solving problems of intensive agriculture in the North, not the needs of poor and small farmers in developing countries. The authors acknowledge that "Transgenic plants have intensified the dilemma [of addressing the needs of the poor] because a high level of skill and infrastructure is needed to develop them." A number of generally useful recommendations are offered to preserve farmers rights to save and re-use seed, narrow the scope of plant patents, and increase the role and power of public sector institutions. In theory all these changes should contribute to solutions to the intellectual property problems identified.
But what is missing in this section, and indeed throughout the report, is an honest assessment of what stands between theory and practice. The theoretical benefits of GM technologies are highlighted without mention of the practical reasons why the actual impacts of a given technology might prove to be more limited or short-lived than first imagined. The failure of GM technologies to deliver on past promises is especially likely when compared to other elegant systems- and management-based solutions. Such solutions will surely emerge when supported by investments of R+D funding and institutional and policy changes on the scale now devoted to GM technologies.
Problems with corporate power, intellectual property rights, and capacity building are noted and lofty recommendations offered with little critical assessment of the likelihood of their adoption nor their probable effectiveness.
Also missing is a candid appraisal of what the real problems actually are. For the most part this report addresses the problem now faced by advocates of GM technology as they try to gain public, farmer, and consumer support. Unlike the typical NAS project committee, this working group did not step back and independently assess whether this is the real problem that deserves attention. If it had done so, the report would likely provide a more useful -- and focused -- appraisal of the possible contributions of GM technology. It would also highlight more prominently the importance of badly neglected areas of research and technology development and the need for farming system, trade, social and policy changes that do not depend on moving genes across species barriers using GM techniques.
A sharper definition of the problem and a more open-ended assessment of solutions may well have led the working group to a more convincing road map for applying the modern tools of biotechnology in the production of food. This sort of highly visible report has both a chance and obligation to advance the debate, a chance largely bypassed in this current effort.
These remarks are posted on Ag BioTech InfoNet at - http://www.biotech-info.net/sevenNAS.html
For further information and a detailed list of references, see the February 19, 2000 paper "Who Controls and Who Will Benefit from Plant Genomics?" by Dr. Charles Benbrook. This paper was delivered at the AAAS Annual Meeting as part of the "The 2000 Genome Seminar: Genomic Revolution in the Fields: Facing the Needs of the New Millennium," Washington, D.C. An electronically enhanced version of the paper is accessible at - http://www.biotech-info.net/AAASgen.html