GM POTATOES – FACTS AND FICTIONS

In August 2006, German chemicals company BASF applied to start GM potato field trials in Cambridge and Derbyshire as early as next spring. The GM industry is making many claims about this product, but are these based on the truth? Andy Rees investigates

Date:22/09/2006 Author:Andy Rees

ARGUMENT NO. 1: WE NEED THIS PRODUCT

Late blight (Phytophthora infestans) costs UK
farmers around £50m each year, even with
regular application of fungicides. BASF claims that
its GM potato would reduce fungicide spraying
from around 15 times a year to just two.

This sounds impressive, until you realise
that just 1,300 of the 12,000 tonnes of
agrochemicals used on UK potatoes are
fungicides – meaning that, at most, pesticide
usage would be reduced by only 10 per cent.

As far as actually reducing pesticide usage
is concerned, Robert Vint of Genetix Food
Alert observes that “such claims ... usually
[soon] prove to be extreme exaggerations”.
The biotech industry has a long track record of
first exaggerating a problem, then offering an
unproven and oversold GM solution. A classic
example of this was Monsanto’s showcase project
in Africa, the GM sweet potato. It was claimed
that the GM potato would be virus resistant, that
it would increase yields from four to 10 tonnes
per hectare, and that it would lift the poor of
Africa out of poverty. However, this crop not only
wasn’t virus-resistant, but yielded much less than
its non-GM counterpart. Moreover, the virus it
targeted was not a major factor affecting yield in
Africa. The claims were made without any peerreviewed
data to back them up. And the assertion
that yields would increase from four to 10 tonnes
per hectare relied upon a lie – according to FAO
statistics, non-GM potatoes typically yield not four
but 10 tonnes. Furthermore, a poorly resourced
Ugandan virus-resistant sweet potato, that really
was roughly doubling yields, was studiously
ignored by the biotech lobby.

Also conveniently overlooked are any
non-GM solutions to blight. Many conventional
potato varieties are naturally blight-resistant,
some of which the organic sector are currently
trialling. Another non-GM control, used by
organic farmers against late blight in potatoes,
is the use of copper sprays in low doses. This is
applied to the foliage of the plant and does not
contaminate the tuber.

ARGUMENT NO. 2: MINIMAL CONTAMINATION

An article in The Guardian, which reads more like
a BASF press release (the corporate takeover of
the media is a subject covered in my forthcoming
book), reports that “Andy Beadle, an expert
in fungal resistance at BASF, said the risks of
contamination from GM crops are minimal
because potatoes reproduce through the
production of tubers, unlike other crops such
as oil seed rape [canola], which produces pollen
that can be carried for miles on the wind.”

Not only is this remark economical with the
facts, it seems a little brazen given the biotech
industry’s rather prolific history on contamination
issues, which has resulted in at least 105
contamination incidents (some of them major),
over 10 years, and in as many as 39 countries.

Amongst many other things, Mr Beadle
forgot to mention that there is less direct risk of
contamination by cross-pollination, not no risk.
Furthermore, cross-pollination is much higher
when the GM and non-GM potato varieties
are different; one study showed that, even at
plot-scale, 31 per cent of plants had become
hybrids as far as 1km from a GM variety. Crosspollination
also increases greatly when the chief
pollinator is the ‘very common’ pollen beetle,
which travels considerably further than another
potato pollinator, the bumble bee. Years later,
cross-pollination is still possible through potato
volunteers (plants from a previous year’s dropped
tubers or seed); Defra itself has acknowledged
this problem. And similarly, ‘relic’ plants can
persist in fields or waste ground. What is more,
blight-resistant varieties create a far greater risk
of GM contamination because the flowering tops
are more likely to be left on than with non-blightresistant
varieties. This is because tops are usually
removed from non-blight-resistant varieties
to reduce disease incidence. Also, a number
of modern strains can produce considerable
numbers of berries, each producing 400 seeds;
these can lay dormant for seven years, before
becoming mature tuber-producing plants.

And if all that isn’t enough to suggest
that ‘minimal’ contamination is the figment
of the corporate imagination, then it is well
worth checking out the March 2006 GM
Contamination Register, set up by Greenpeace
and GeneWatch UK, and available at www.
gmcontaminationregister.org. This includes some
of the worst contamination incidents to date,
including the following three.

In October 2000, in the US, GM StarLink
corn, approved only as animal feed, ended up
in taco shells and other food products. It led to
a massive recall of more than 300 food brands
and cost Aventis an immense $1 billion to clear
up. StarLink corn was just one per cent of the
total crop, but it tainted 50 per cent of the harvest. In March 2005, Syngenta admitted that
it had accidentally produced and disseminated
– between 2001 and 2004 – ‘several hundred
tonnes’ of an unapproved corn called Bt10 and
sold the seed as approved corn, Bt11. In the US,
150,000 tonnes of Bt10 were harvested and
went into the food chain. And in April 2005,
unauthorised GM Bt rice was discovered to have
been sold and grown unlawfully for the past
two years in the Chinese province of Hubei. An
estimated 950 to 1200 tons of the rice entered
the food chain after the 2004 harvest, with the
risk of up to 13,500 tons entering the food chain
in 2005. The rice may also have contaminated
China’s rice exports. And now, in 2006, BASF’s
application comes amidst the latest biotech
scandal, that of US rice contamination by an
unauthorised, experimental GM strain, Bayer’s
LLRice 601.

ARGUMENT NO. 3: SEPARATION DISTANCES

The GM lobby have proposed a buffer zone of
2-5m of fallow land around the GM potato crop,
together with a 20m separation with non-GM
potato crops.

The National Pollen Research Unit (NPRU),
on the other hand, has recommended separation
distances of 500m. Interestingly, pro-industry
sources have always claimed that only very small
separation distances are necessary, with buffer
zones for rape set at a derisory 200m in the UK
crop trials. Judith Jordan (later Rylott) of AgrEvo
(now Bayer) gave evidence under oath that the
chances of cross-pollination beyond 50m were
as likely as getting pregnant from a lavatory seat.
Well, you have been warned. But oilseed rape
pollen has been found to travel 26km, maize
pollen 5km, and GM grass pollen 21km.

Meanwhile, good ol’ Defra is once again
paving the way for the biotech industry, with its
so-called ‘co-existence’ paper of August 2006.
This will determine the rules for commercial GM
crop growing in England – yet astonishingly,
it proposes no separation distances. GM
contamination prevention measures will be left
in the slippery hands of the GM industry in the
form of a voluntary code of practice.

ARGUMENT NO. 4: THIS PRODUCT IS SAFE

The biotech industry has from the very beginning
assured us that their products are entirely safe.
This is because, they claim, they are so similar
to conventional crops as to be ‘Substantially
Equivalent’, a discredited concept that led to GM
crop approval in the US (and thence the EU).

The truth is that, as far as human health
goes, the biotech industry cannot know that
their products are safe, because there has only
been one published human health study – the
Newcastle Study, which was published in 2004.
And although this research project was very
limited in scope, studying the effects of just one
GM meal taken by seven individuals, it
nonetheless found GM DNA transferring to gut
bacteria in the human subjects.

As for tests of the effects of GM crops on
animals, there are only around 20 published
studies that look at the health effects of GM
food (not hundreds, as claimed by the biotech
lobby), as well as some unpublished ones. The
findings of many of these are quite alarming.
The unpublished study on the FlavrSavr tomato
fed to rats, resulted in lesions and gastritis in
these animals. Monsanto’s unpublished 90-day
study of rats fed MON863 maize resulted in
smaller kidney sizes and a raised white blood
cell count. And when it comes to GM potatoes,
Dr Ewen and Dr Pusztai’s 1999 10-day study
on male rats fed GM potatoes, published
in the highly respected medical journal The
Lancet, showed that feeding GM potatoes
to rats led to many abnormalities, including:
gut lesions; damaged immune systems; less
developed brains, livers, and testicles; enlarged
tissues, including the pancreas and intestines;
a proliferation of cells in the stomach and
intestines, which may have signalled an increased
potential for cancer; and the partial atrophy of
the liver in some animals. And this is in an animal
that is virtually indestructible.

ARGUMENT NO. 5: INCREASING CHOICE

The proposed UK trials would follow those
being carried out in Germany, Sweden and the
Netherlands. Barry Stickings of BASF explains:
“We need to conduct these [in the UK] to see
how the crop grows in different conditions. I
hope that society, including the NGOs, realise
that all we are doing is increasing choice.”

So, how much choice has GM crops given
farmers? Well, in Canada, within a few years,
the organic canola industry was pretty much
wiped out by GM contamination. And in the US,
a 2004 study showed that, after just eight years
of commercial growing, at least 50 per cent of
conventional maize and soy and 83 per cent of
conventional canola were GM-contaminated
– again dooming non-GM agriculture.

ARGUMENT NO. 6: PUBLIC OPINION

Regarding BASF’s application to trial GM potatoes,
the Financial Times reported that “Barry Stickings
of BASF said he did not expect too much
opposition to the application”. What had clearly
slipped Stickings’ mind was that BASF had already
faced protests with this product in Sweden, where
it is in its second year of production.

In Ireland, where one may have expected
more enthusiasm for the project, given the
history of blight during the 1840s famine, BASF
was given the go-ahead earlier this year for trials
of its GM blight-resistant potato, only to face
stiff public resistance and rigorous conditions
enforced by the Irish Environmental Protection
Agency. BASF later discontinued the trials.

In the UK and Europe, as Friends of the Earth
points out: “Consumers ... have made it clear
that they do not want ... GM food.” In fact,
the British Retail Consortium, which represents
British supermarkets, has already stated that
they ‘won’t be stocking GM potatoes for the
conceivable future’ because ‘people remain
suspicious of GM.’ My forthcoming book goes
into the rejection of GM crops in more depth.

And even more surprisingly, in the US, where
55 per cent of the world’s GM crops are grown,
GM potatoes were taken off the market back in
2000 when McDonald’s, Burger King, McCain’s
and Pringles all refused to use them, for fear of
losing customers.

So, having reviewed the claims made about
BASF’s GM potatoes, and having found them,
well, somewhat lacking, there is only one course
of action open to the government, and that is,
as Friends of the Earth’s GM Campaigner
Liz Wright recently said, to “...reject this
application and prevent any GM crops from
being grown in the UK until it can guarantee
that they won’t contaminate our food, farming
and environment.”

Genetically Modified Food – A Short Guide
For The Confused by Andy Rees (Pluto Press,
£12.99) will be published on October 20.
Ecologist readers can purchase copies of the
book for only £10 by calling 01264 342932 or
emailing your order to tps.pluto@thomson.
com and quoting PLUREES1.

Defra consultation on GM
potato trials closes on October 20. To have your
say, visit www.defra.gov.uk