Focus on the Americas

8 years after the introduction of GM crops into US agriculture, some debate is starting to take place!

1.GM foods debate captures student interest
2.Rick Roush - a GM watch profile
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1.GM foods debate captures student interest
Participants spar over genetically modified foods
JESSICA KNOX
The California Aggie, Monday October 11, 2004
http://www.californiaaggie.com/article/?id=5652

There was standing room only in King Hall's Moot Court Room at a debate covering the legal and scientific issues of genetically modified foods on Friday.

The debate marked the end of a weeklong series of events put on by the Agricultural Law Society, a student organization interested in agricultural legal issues.

Professor Rick Roush, director of the statewide Integrated Pest Management Program, presented evidence for the safety and value of GM foods. Steven Drucker, director of the Alliance for Bio-Integrity, presented legal and scientific concerns associated with GM foods.

Roush argued that GM foods involve "tested technology," and are safe for human consumption. Roush said GM foods will reduce pesticide use, thus reducing risks to farm workers and the impact on the environment.

"The benefits have been enormous," Roush said. He claimed that pesticide use has been reduced in eight GM crops by a total of 46 million pounds in the U.S. alone since 2001. Incidences of human pesticide poisonings in China have also been reduced by 75 percent due to the use of insect-resistant cotton.

Drucker countered these arguments, saying that while Roush seemed to make a strong case, there is another side.

"Many of these benefits are still hypothetical," Drucker said. He claimed that the main beneficiaries of GM foods are bio-technical companies, not farmers. Drucker argued that this was evident in his home state of Iowa. He said that even though 40 percent of all crops planted are genetically engineered, there has not been a significant increase in profits for farmers.

"There needs to be a positive demonstration of safety," said Drucker, who contends that this has yet to occur. Drucker expressed concern for the safety of the public and the environment, arguing that new substances in GM foods could be poisonous, allergenic, and generally harmful.

Both spectators and participants called the debate a success. While an average of 50 people attended each event earlier in the week, the debate attracted well over 90 people.

"This is obviously an issue that strikes a lot of people," said Chris Butcher, co-chair of the Agricultural Law Society. Butcher said that there is a substantial amount of genetic research taking place at UC Davis, but the campus offers no class on agricultural ethics. He hopes that by making students more aware and interested in the issues, the UCD School of Law will be able to offer a class covering agricultural law.

Jessica Knox can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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2.Rick Roush - a GM watch profile

American entomologist, Professor Rick Roush, is currently Director of the Statewide IPM Programme at Davis, University of California. He was formerly former chief executive officer of the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Australian Weed Management in Adelaide. He is a former member of Australia's Genetic Manipulation Advisory Committee.

Roush is also a pro-GM activist who has left his mark on many e-mail lists, from several of which he has been banned or has 'retired' in the face of complaint.

In 2002 a study by Roush and his CRC colleagues was published in the American journal Science. The team had studied GM canola (oilseed rape) pollen drift on trial fields in southern Australia and claimed to have found that unwanted gene transfer occurred in such minute quantities that they believed non-GM crops were 'not in any danger' ( (M. A. Rieger, M. Lamond, C. Preston, S. B. Powles and R. T. Roush, Science 296, 2386-2388; 2002).

However, as the journal Nature has noted, Roush and his co-authors failed to 'mention that two biotech corporations - Monsanto and Aventis Crop Sciences (now owned by Bayer) - paid nearly 20% of the costs of the trials. Science requires contributors to declare financial ties that might be construed as influencing the outcome of their research.'

As a result of this incident Science has now revised its disclosure policy so that all funding sources must be revealed in the paper's reference section. The scientific evidence shows that any financial relationship with a relevant industry is likely to be associated with the expression of a more positive attitude towards the safety of that industry's products. For instance, a January 1998 study in The New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 338, no.2) showed a strong association between authors' published positions on product safety and their financial relationships with the relevant industry. More recently a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (J. E. Bekelman, Y. Li & C. P. Gross, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 289, 454-465; 2003) concluded that industry-sponsored studies are nearly four times more likely to reach pro-industry conclusions than are studies that are not industry-sponsored. (see Nature 424, 369 (24 July 2003); doi:10.1038/424369c)