The Toxic World of GMO Crops

Many people still have not caught on to the danger of genetically modified organisms and the threat they post to not only organic farmers but to people and animals that consume them.  One such instance of the dangers to farmers was put on the big screen in a film titled Percy Vs Goliath starring Christopher Walken, which was based on the true story of a Canadian farmer who took on Monsanto’s thugs regarding his seeds.

Rhoda Wilson of The Daily Expose has the story on the toxic world of GMO crops.

The biotech industry promised genetically engineered foods would reduce pesticide use, increase the nutritional content of food, boost farmers’ profits, and feed the world by increasing yields.

In reality, GM crops have turned glyphosate into one of the most widely and recklessly used herbicides in history and monoculture has led to a loss of biodiversity.

GM crops have also failed to live up to expected increases in crop yields and, nutritionally, GMOs primarily provide cheap, unhealthy ingredients for ultra-processed ready meals, pre-packaged foods, and fast-food restaurants.

More than 40,000 people in the US have filed lawsuits alleging exposure to Roundup is the cause of their cancer. Once a rare cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma is now the seventh most common cancer in US men and women.

The agricultural biotech industry continues to advance with a new suite of genetic engineering technologies known as gene editing, which includes techniques such as CRISPR as well as synthetic biology and gene drives.

Judgment Day

Agrichemical companies continue to claim that glyphosate is safe. But juries across the US say otherwise. Currently, more than 40,000 people in the US have filed lawsuits²⁸ alleging exposure to Roundup is the cause of their cancer and in particular, lymphomas. Once a rare cancer, the most common type of lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, is now the seventh most common cancer in US men and women.^29,30

The first three cases to go to trial resulted in a combined $2.424 billion in jury verdicts³¹ (though this was subsequently reduced by judges). The science supports these verdicts.

A recent study showed convincing evidence³² of a link between glyphosate-based herbicides and endocrine disruption and genetic alterations commonly associated with the development of lymphomas.

One shocking fallout from the first glyphosate case to go to trial, that of Dewayne Johnson,³³ was the unsealing of several previously classified documents.³⁴ The documents detailed Monsanto’s efforts to collude with the US Environmental Protection Agency to cover up glyphosate’s cancer risks.

Out of 14 glyphosate studies reviewed by the EPA, which looked specifically at cancer in animals, eight found elevated cancer rates in at least one organ or tissue. Yet the EPA chose to dismiss these findings, and conclude that glyphosate is “unlikely to cause cancer.”

Most recently another Monsanto legacy pesticide, dicamba, has hit the headlines. In 2017-18, “dicamba drift” was responsible for damage to an estimated 5 million acres of non-GM soybeans³⁵ in 24 states, and numerous specialty crops and wild plants.

In February 2020, in the first US dicamba trial, a Missouri jury awarded $265 million in damages³⁶ to peach producers Bader Farms when drift from a nearby GM soybean field killed their trees. All these trials point to a health and environmental emergency and, yet, action at the federal level to curb the use of these toxic chemicals is sorely lacking.

Taking matters into their own hands, some states and local communities are beginning to ban or restrict the use of chemicals like glyphosate. In 2018, both Portland³⁷ and the city of Austin³⁸ banned it. In 2019 Miami³⁹ and Los Angeles County⁴⁰ approved their own bans on city property, while Seattle⁴¹ agreed to restrict its use.

Beyond US borders, more than two dozen countries⁴² including Canada, Argentina, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the UK have put bans and/or restrictions in place.

Consumer Awareness Rising

Ever since the first genetically modified (“GMO”) foods and animal drugs, the Flavr Savr tomato⁴³ and recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), came onto the US market in 1994, the biotech industry has been waging a public relations war to get the public to accept genetically engineered food.

But studies continue to show that the public doesn’t buy it, and doesn’t want to eat it. Most are concerned about health,⁴⁴ and rightly so. Others are worried about the damage these crops cause to the environment. These are legitimate concerns, as are those about corporate control of our food.

In fact, in the past few years, some big and consequential mergers have taken place in the agri-biotech sector. With these mergers, the “Big Six” (Monsanto, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, Dow, and DuPont) became the Big Four⁴⁵ (Bayer-Monsanto, DowDuPont/Corteva, ChemChina-Syngenta, BASF) further concentrating the majority of the power and profits of the seed and GM technology market into even fewer hands.

Media response to the proposed mergers has turned up a few surprises. For instance, the normally ultraconservative and financially focused Bloomberg online news channel focused more on the dubious histories of Bayer and Monsanto,⁴⁶ than on any benefits of the deal.

A more sober article in the Wall Street Journal⁴⁷ suggested this might be a good time to reconsider the path we are on, agriculturally speaking. In the face of superweeds, higher seed prices, and dropping yields, it argued, the GMO crop “boom” could well be over.

But the boom isn’t over yet and independent testing reveals how much glyphosate is in our bodies and our foods has become widespread. Likewise, the Non-GMO Verified⁴⁸ label is now as important as the organic label for consumers wanting to avoid GMOs in their foods. It’s a testimony to the vehemence of public rejection, and the shameful inaction of the government, that the importance of these independent backstops has grown.

The Lie That Won’t Die

Despite all this, the agricultural biotech industry continues to advance with a new suite of genetic engineering technologies known as gene editing, which includes techniques such as CRISPR as well as synthetic biology and gene drives.

What makes these GMO 2.0⁴⁹ technologies different is they can create genetically engineered organisms more cheaply and more quickly than ever before.

Fronting up to critics and the farmers who are abandoning the GMO lie,⁵⁰ proponents of synthetic biology claim we no longer need farmers to produce food.⁵¹ By creating novel food products, including meat substitutes, from genetically engineered microbes in big vats in anonymous warehouses, we can improve the efficiency and sustainability of food production.

For anyone who believes that food should come from a living and connected ecosystem, this is the grimmest of grim promises – a world without farmers and without farm animals, where the land is used for … what, exactly?

This grim vision of food production has been given the nickname, the “dark food chain,”⁵² because it doesn’t need sunlight. Further alarm bells are ringing as the biotech industry moves into other areas of the natural world.

A recent and alarming report⁵³ from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (“IUCN”) suggests that gene drives and synthetic biology could be used to revive declining or even extinct species,⁵⁴ eradicate invasive species, improve soil⁵⁵ by re-engineering soil microbes and therefore improve plant health and biodiversity.

It could engineer trees to absorb more carbon⁵⁶ or to be resistant to diseases, such as the invasive fungus that plagues the American chestnut tree,⁵⁷ and re-engineer insects⁵⁸ for pest management.

Farming is part of the much larger, connected web of nature. What happens “out there” directly and indirectly affects what happens on the farm, which is why we need to challenge this troubling direction of travel for GMOs.

Regulatory Apathy

Strong regulation is there to protect us all – or it should be. But new methods and proposed uses for GMOs have brought greater complexity to the regulatory sphere.

In some cases, as with the new gene-edited Calyno soybean oil,⁵⁹ which can be sold without labeling, regulators have given in. In others, such as with proposed gene-edited farm animals, regulators really don’t know what to do.⁶⁰ USDA’s vague and confusing ‘bioengineered’ labeling scheme⁶¹ is yet another case in point.

Biotech companies argue there is no point in regulating GMO 2.0 anyway since its products are so close to “natural” they no longer need to be tested or labeled as GMO.⁶²

This new “naturalness,” they claim, makes it impossible to tell gene-edited products from conventionally produced ones anyway. This is absolutely not true.⁶³ When genetic engineers create new GMOs, they must also create the processes to identify them – if only to monitor and verify their work.

Anyone can use these processes. That’s just what happened in a US Food and Drug Administration study,⁶⁴ originally published in 2016 and republished in February 2020, which found numerous off-target effects in gene-edited “hornless” cattle, including a strand of bacterial DNA that could pass on antibiotic resistance.

It concluded that “both scientists and regulators need to be alert to the potential for such unintended alterations to take place.” A frank accompanying editorial⁶⁵ explained further why regulation was important.

Following on from this, Belinda Martineau, Ph.D., developer of the Flavr Savr tomato, noted⁶⁶ that the GMO cow developers had the tools to find these mistakes for themselves, but incompetently failed to use them.

“Such big mistakes made during the development of these ‘poster children’ GMOs,” she wrote, “make one wonder how carefully other, more run-of-the-mill GMOs have been developed over the last 25 years as well.”

Marteau went on to say that the data justify, in her mind, “FDA’s intention to carry out a mandatory premarket review of all gene-edited livestock and thereby regulate these GE products based on the fact that they were created using genetic engineering,” adding “I also think FDA should require premarket review of all GE crops as well.”

Regenerative Agriculture – Action, Not Promises

If, to coin a phrase, “a promise is a debt unpaid” then the biotech companies are racking up some serious ethical, moral, and environmental IOUs to society.

Out of their failure, however, has emerged the regenerative organic agriculture movement, a response to the growing awareness of the connection between agriculture and health, environmental destruction, and climate change. Regenerative agriculture⁶⁷ refers to farming and grazing practices such as:

• Reduction/elimination of tillage and use of synthetic chemicals
• The use of cover crops, crop rotations, compost, and animal manure
• Integrating animals with perennial and annual plants to create a biologically diverse ecosystem on the farm
• Grazing and pasturing animals on grass and, more specifically, using a planned multi-paddock rotation system
• Raising animals in conditions that mimic their natural habitat

It’s what every diligent farmer should be doing anyway and, formalized into a growing movement, these practices can improve biodiversity on the farm, enhance productivity, and even help tackle climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and improving both carbon drawdown and improved water infiltration and storage in soils.

The truth is that conventional (i.e., chemical and GMO-based) farming needs to change. The problems farmers face now – failing soils, lower yields, toxic working environments – can’t be “magicked” away with genetic engineering. In fact, GMOs just drive farming deeper into a failing, exploitative, chemically-dependent, industrial model.

In contrast, many see regenerative organic farming as the next evolving stage of organic farming, free-range livestock grazing, and ecosystem restoration. Rather than promising future benefits, regenerative farming can be put into practice and deliver measurable benefits right now. For the future’s sake, this is the path we need to take.

 Sources and References

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