NOTE: There are a lot of comments under the Guardian's poll on the question: "Are you convinced that GM food is both safe and beneficial?" This one by "rightbiotech" seemed particularly good.

If you want to take part in the poll, it closes in the next few hours:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2013/jan/03/is-gm-food-safe-and-beneficial
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COMMENTS
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2013/jan/03/is-gm-food-safe-and-beneficial?fb=native&commentpage=4

05 January 2013 12:43 AM

rightbiotech: 

[quote from a previous poster] "I may be one of the few respondents who has actually made a transgenic plant so I am not as ignorant (or just plain scared) of the technology as are many of the respondents."

I make fire. That qualification alone doesn't make me an expert fireman.

Research on plants using genetic engineering adds great value to science. However, this debate is largely on the value of releasing into the environment, food supply and national farming systems those crop plants that have been genetically engineered.
  
[quote from a previous poster] "It is all possible if we just open our minds to the future!"

To the claim of perpetual possibilities if we only dream, I think it is time to review the promises and to order an account of lost opportunities and attendant costs.

In the 1970s and 1980s the promise was that genetic engineering would increase nitrogen fixation in plants. None forthcoming in 30 years. From the 1990s onward GE was going to increase drought tolerance. More than one thousand field trials in the US alone (by 2005) have produced only a single commercial plant, a GE corn. 

That single commercial contribution to stress tolerance was described by the United States Department of Agriculture this way: “When grown in water-limited field and greenhouse conditions, MON 87460 corn exhibits classic drought sensitivity symptoms, including reductions in yield, plant height, ear height, seedling vigor, and expected changes in plant height, chlorophyll content, and leaf roll. The magnitude of these changes in MON 87460 under drought conditions is similar to that of water-limited conventional corn, with increasing water deficit producing increasingly severe growth and developmental symptoms. Taken in total, these data demonstrate that the negative effects of drought stress in MON 87460 are not alleviated…It is prudent to acknowledge, however, that the reduced yield phenotype of [MON 87460] does not exceed the natural variation observed in regionally-adapted varieties of conventional corn (representing different genetic backgrounds)". 

In other words, it doesn't do any better but the good news is that it doesn't do any worse under drought! Meanwhile, conventional breeding is producing non-GM drought tolerant varieties as reported by the World Bank and other biotechnology companies, such as Syngenta. 

The myth of how rapid genetic engineering is when compared to breeding is not even believed by the largest genetic engineering company in the world. Dr Robert Reiter, a molecular biologist and VP Biotechnology at Monsanto said in New Zealand recently that: "Conventional crop breeding requires a 7 – 8 year cycle, compared to 10 – 15 years from inception to development for genetically modified crops..."  http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2012/09/04/gm-biotech-players-outline-their-science-roadmaps/

Emerging non-GE biotechnologies are outpacing and out performing GE. For example, Syngenta released its drought tolerant corn line Agrisure Artesian in 2010. This corn was made using marker assisted selection, not GE. The Australian CSIRO is claiming imminent release of wheat varieties that yield up to 25% more under salt stress. Again, wheat produced by breeding and marker selection, not genetic engineering.

While we pour enormous resources (both private and public) into the development, testing, regulation, lobbying of politicians, marketing, segregation and amelioration of unintended or unexpected effects of using this particular class of product, into GM crops, we take from the resources available to develop sustainable agricultural options that are also sufficiently high yield to meet global demand.

As others posting here have rightly noted, worldwide post harvest waste of food should be a high research and policy priority because it at once provides an option for technology to contribute to sustainability and because it reduces pressure on agriculture to respond to population growth and disasters. As the IAASTD concluded (a report mentioned by other commentators), GM has a role but mainly in those countries already committed to it, and only until they can transition out of it through addressing the combination of social choices at the root of many of these problems and creation of alternative sustainable biotechnologies that don't exacerbate the problems they were invented to solve.