Focus 580; Arguments Against Genetically Engineered Food

In this hour of our show. We will revisit a topic that we have discussed before and I expect will continue to discuss. We're trying to do that from a variety of perspectives and the topic is genetically engineered food. And our guest this morning for this show is Peter Rossett. He's co director of Food First the Institute for food and development policy. It is a think tank and Education Center interested in the idea that food is a human right. They're also interested in reshaping the global food system to make it socially just and also environmentally sustainable. And his academic background he is an agora college ist and roll development specialist he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He has published a number of books. Reading the book world hunger 12 myths which we have discussed on this show also other sorts of things. He's also written widely on hunger on biotechnology and agriculture on sustainable agriculture. He's published in academic journals as well as other

publications including The New York Times International Herald Tribune San Francisco Chronicle and others. And we're talking this morning about some of the arguments that have been made by his group and others against genetically engineered food. The questions of course are welcome whether you agree or disagree. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have toll free line. That one's good. Anywhere that you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 so if you like to call in. We ask callers as people just try to be brief so that we can accommodate as many different callers as possible and try and keep our conversation moving along but anyone is welcome. Three three three W I L L and toll free 800 1:58 wy LOL Those are the numbers. Well Dr. Ross I it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Well we're sure glad to have you on the burger.

You've been on our show before have you no I think I've been on a couple of times or and really enjoyed it. Well let's maybe the place that we can start in on this topic is to talk about the StarLink story. That's the thing that has certainly got a lot of people's attention. And as as people will recall what happened was this is the long and short of it and you can get more detail but a particular kind of genetically engineered corn which was not approved for human consumption showed up in some taco shells and found and then it was found to be in some other products as well which raised a number of important questions maybe the the big question was if we tell ourselves that we can segregate GM crops and if we say that something like this we don't want to get into the food system so people are eating it directly. Can we really do that. How easy is it going to be if we are going to have these these soybeans and corn and other things that are genetically engineered if we decide we want to keep them separate

Can we really do it. That's right. We wrote a report about this called Anatomy of a gene spill because we think that the analogy is quite interesting between an oil spill and a gene spill obviously both have environmental consequences. One significant difference though is if you have a tanker rupture is an oil is spilled onto the ocean there's the possibility of throwing a boom around the spill and containing how far it goes. However if you plant genetically modified crops in the environment it's very different because crops pollinated both other varieties of the same crops the other corn varieties planted elsewhere or closely related wild plants can hybridize with them so that the pollen containing the modified genetic material can begin to move through natural populations through the ecosystem. And there's no way that you can put a boom around genes once we build them into the environment. So we think that there's a real difference and if we're going to be taken seriously considered

seriously take into account the health and environmental consequences of these kinds of spills. We need to think about the difficulty of containing them once they occur and obviously that would put a lot of burden on pre testing before anything is released. Unfortunately that's not really being done. And so this really highlights that issue. And certainly here you know we have seen problems with farmers planting crops that they thought were clean as far as the GM content goes and then taking them down to the grain elevator and having them look at them and come back to the farm and says look you got some GM here. And if it exceeds a certain level then it doesn't mean that the farmer can't sell it but it means that they may get less for that crop than they had anticipated. That's right it's terrible it started first for a gannet farmers because if you want to export certified organic to Europe they test your product to make sure it's G.E. free genetically engineered free and organic farmers were finding problems where they would

detect genetically modified material in their crops because of cross pollination from neighbor's fields. That was the first step. The second step now is farmers who are just trying to sell regular corn not even certified organic but because this particular genetic material is not approved for human consumption. Basically all the grain elevators now are testing for the presence of it and farmer after Farmer after farmer who are planting a completely different variety are coming up with these positive tests which of course are negative for the farmer because then instead of getting the high price they would get for corn for human consumption. They get the very low price that farmers get for corn for animal feed. And there are quite a few lawsuits now springing up from different farmers and farmers groups trying to. Placing the responsibility for this onto the companies that release these or these organisms of course there is no legal framework in place that says where liability lies and so it's this kind of a case by case situation where the courts will have to decide.

Why has StarLink not been approved for human consumption. Well it's quite interesting because the larger picture is that our regulatory agencies whether we're talking about the Environmental Protection Agency the EPA the Food and Drug Administration which is the FDA or the Department of Agriculture which is the USDA they have largely been asleep at the wheel and they have largely not lifted a finger to require any mandatory testing. The only exception the only exception where they've momentarily woken up is in the case of very likely food allergens and their definition of a food of a potential food allergen is any protein any novel protein that is not destroyed by the digestive juices and therefore passes and the whole through the system and that means it could become a food allergen. This therefore the only variety of genetically engineered corn that has not been approved for human consumption was the particular one that is now shown up all over the place and it's because it contains a gene which codes for an insecticide which is produced inside

inside the crop itself inside the corn it's called the C.R. the crying 9 protein which is an insecticide all protein and it turns out is not broken down by the human digestive process. Therefore it's a likely food allergen. So despite the fact that the regulatory agencies have been asleep they did actually prohibit one particular variety and ironic as it is that's the variety now that's turned up everywhere where it shouldn't be. Bacillus the Thuringian says this insecticide that the plants have been engineered to produce so that the plants essentially will protect themselves against insects as the insects will eat the plant. Then they'll ingest the insecticide in the end I think about. A lot of people like about BT is that they think that it's a more natural substance and a lot of gardeners use this and also the thing about BT that's apparently good is that it's fairly narrowly tailored if you have a particular past that you

want to get rid of you've got to make sure that you have the right kind of BT to work on it. So having said all that do we do is there really good evidence to show that that bacillus Gensis particularly this kind would would be at all harmful to humans. Well that's a very interesting question. As you said there is another form of facility there in Gensis or BT as it's called. This is this is a bacteria bacillus the engines of a naturally occurring soil bacteria which produces a natural toxin which is an insecticide for certain insects but very luckily it's not toxic to mammals and so organic farmers will apply a formulation containing either the bacteria itself or the toxin that the natural bacteria produces to kill pests on their fields without any fear that this would be toxic for people. So the idea I guess that the biotechnology companies had was to take the gene from the bacteria that makes the bacteria

produce this toxin and put it into the plant and have the plant produce a supposedly non toxic. Insecticide there is a problem and this is a problem that they're very reluctant to talk about. If you actually examine the molecule that's produced by the same gene when it's in the plant and compare it to the molecule that that gene produces when it's in a bacteria it's a very different molecule. It's only two thirds the size of the one produced by the bacteria. And the first and only time that people have tested to see if it's as selective as the bacteria one meaning that it would only kill a narrow range of organisms and not others therefore be done toxic for others. The Swiss Federal Institute in Switzerland did a test and found out that it had a completely different range of toxicities they did not test it for people or for mammals. But whereas the bacteria produced insecticide will only kill one or two kinds of insects. It turns out that the one produced by the plant will kill all the insects they tested it on. Very alarming. As I said no one tested to

see if this would affect human beings because our wonderful regulatory agencies decided that since the bacterial version was already tested that the version produced by plants wouldn't have to be tested. So basically we're guinea pigs. For wide range of crops containing BT proteins because many other varieties of BT corn or BT tomatoes and other crops containing the BT gene are approved in our food supply this particular variant of the cry 9 variant of BT is the only one that was not approved. But there is reason to be concerned about all of them. Yeah I think that this gets at a point where that shows just how perhaps difficult it is to talk about this or how people can be confused because it's it seems as if people who are arguing in favor of the technology are saying we at this point we have no evidence to show that these genetically modified foods pose any risk to human health.

And with that it seems that that's true. Yet at the same time various groups like yours and other environments have said would have to say yes that's true. At the same time we would also have to say we have no evidence to show that it's not harmful. The fact. It is that one way or another we have no evidence we simply don't know the policy of our regulatory agencies can be summed up as. Don't look don't find essentially they have not been doing the studies and they have not been mandating that others do the studies and so we're basically operating in a vacuum. We the organizations and movements that express a concern are basing our concern on what I would call preliminary and suggestive evidence. It's not conclusive evidence. I would be lying if I said that I know that these products are bad for you or I know these products will cause X damage to the environment. I don't know and I don't say that I know I say that I'm concerned that they might. Now an industry and their supporters say there is no evidence that they're safe.

If you say there are no other not that they're dangerous as you say they are manipulating the truth in the sense that because the studies haven't been done there's no evidence but that doesn't mean that once the studies were actually done were they to be done there would still be no evidence. Our guest this morning is Dr. Peter Ross and he's co director of food first. It is a both a think tank and an educational organization that's interested in food issues particularly the issue of sustainability but also other sorts of issues including whether or not. People around the world have access to food and also very sorts of environmental issues it's a rather broad range of things that they're interested and have many publications they have a website by the way if you're interested in finding out more about them at w w w dot food first dot o r g so if you have access to the Web you can go there and find out about them and some of their publications and questions are

welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 have color in urban talk with line number 1. Hello I'm interested in the mechanics of the transfer. I want an arc in the past. I've heard that there is evidence of gene transfer in want to help not simply between related order or even unrelated species but different genre. When we were viruses a couple she and I really. Transfer it to another plant. Is there evidence. Yeah that's of that's a very good point and this is a whole area that is basically being glossed over especially by supporters of the technology unless they want to use it as eventually to mislead us. There is in nature there are viruses and other very small microbial organisms that do

remove pieces of DNA from one organism and move them into another. This is a fairly common occurrence. However most organisms whether they're plants are human beings or other animals have a natural protection against that. If you look at the particular gene for example in our chromosome. On our chromosomes they don't work very well by themselves. They have a variety of other genes that are called that are called regulatory genes or regulator genes that manipulate their behavior. That for example make sure that they don't go wild and produce too much of a substance so that they don't turn off when they're not supposed to turn off. So these regulator genes and other genes called modifier genes operate on the genes that we already have the same regulatory regulator and modifier genes make sure that any foreign DNA that's inserted into our chromosome is essentially turned off because this happens all the time by viruses moving small bits of DNA into us.

We need to have this failsafe mechanism that will turn off any gene that comes in without its modifiers or its regulators. So there's a built in protection that nature has given us and all other organisms and plants against this kind of natural gene transfer. The difference when they do the transfer in. Genetic engineering they have the same they have this problem. They just put in the DNA by itself the gene. It won't function because it doesn't have the moderate the modifiers or the regulators. So what they discovered is a something called a promoter gene comes from a virus called the cauliflower mosaic virus and if you put that gene in with another gene it magnifies the response of the gene you're putting in by several hundred or thousand fold and it basically allows the new gene to break any self defense mechanism that normally would not allow the new genetic material to function. They create what's called a set and it's several genes together the gene of interest plus the promoter gene. And plus other genes that make it easier for this

genetic material to be taken out of one chromosome and put into another. So when they insert when they insert a gene they break the natural defense so that the new gene will actually function or express itself. Nothing there in that what is there is of an iris from transferring say that again. Having done this what if. Prevent a virus from current frame both the promoter and some other gene precisely that's the concern that in the story of glossing over. Not only do they have the promoter gene with this new gene but they also have what's called a re Tomba nation hotspot gene which means that it breaks off more easily and can more easily be picked up by a virus. This is one of the largest risks that is least discussed. These genes genes that they are inserting are many orders of magnitude more likely to be taken picked up by a virus because of the recombination hotspots inserted into another organism maybe not even another plant maybe an animal maybe you in your stomach with the promoter gene that will break all of your self defense mechanisms against

this gene this foreign gene expressing itself so it's actually highly dangerous and this particular kind of risk which is called horizontal transfer vertical transfer is from parent to child horizontal transfer is by viruses from organism to organism. This may be an enormous risk but it's a potential risk because nobody studying it may have going to say something a while back. David had another guest who was in favor of genetic modification. He absolutely did that this was the agency's poor. Transferring genes although I have done enough reading I knew it was a virus was used quite often with animals. Well sometimes they use viruses. Sometimes they use they use a gene gun where they basically shoot it in by by physical mechanical force but they're still suiting it in with the promoter and with the recombination hotspot so even if they didn't actually use the virus to insert it it still could be taken out and moved around by a virus in nature.

Well his assertion was he couldn't do it with a virus and it was never done with a virus and I was very skeptical about how much he knew or truthful he was. Well when you win when you get down to that level of biology the distinction between a virus and if age and various other very small organisms some which are merely a little piece of RNA is not entirely clear to a layman or even to myself who has a Ph.D. in a different area of biology so it may be technically correct to say that this is not a virus but in terms of a layman's understanding the closest thing it's the closest thing to a virus in terms of something that we would understand what it is. So it's like a virus let's put it that way. We've made it much clearer to me. Thank you sir with your thanks for the call. We have Next someone on a cell phone so we'll talk with them. On line 2. Hello good morning. Yes I'm a local farmer and I've had a concern that horn may put on more and more

concentrated and maybe First of all you're going to have them in my photo and that would be detrimental for organ have you. Yes. Once again this is a potential risk and that is very little studied however some preliminary work was done by some independent scientists under contract to the to the EPA. And they found that if you plow under the corn stubble after the harvest of BT corn stocks that the BT that that that produced by exuded by those plants will remain biologically active in the soil for up to two hundred forty days and maybe a lot longer because they stopped the study after two hundred forty days. Now this is quite important because as a farmer you will know that the fertility of your soil has a lot to do with the life of the soil the various kinds of small insects like Columbia that break down organic matter and recycle it in the microbes then they play a role in the fungi. So when you're releasing it infect the side over and over hundreds of days into that

soil ecosystem it's very likely that that ecosystem will be dramatically changed that for example some of the very small insects like Columbia that are key and soil fertility maintenance may be killed. We only know because the only study that was done. We only know that this insecticide will persist a long time in the soil we do not know the impact on full fertility. We can a speculation that the impact will be very negative. But once again this is an area that has not been studied should be studied and it's and it's a major risk from the farmers point of view. Thank you and again to line number three this is Urbana. Hello. Yeah I have this order and two things one is. If you had any comments about the news that came out this month about a discovery in Australia where they were working with a modifier which is which is very much like smallpox which is you know as you know being held in.

You know biological warfare. Banks in both the United States and Russia. And they they were working with a mouse virus and tried to get them off of viruses to produce. And they're looking for and when they did they stumbled on it. A method of making this particular mall fire is lethal and it killed all the boys. And there's the immediate thought was that if they took smallpox and did the same thing it could it could be a really potent biological war for this with an unexpected and it was totally just stumbled on. If you've heard about that I have not heard of that particular case. However it does it's very suggestive of another kind of risk that's associated with these crops one kind of genetically modified crops that is that it will be coming onto the market in fact has in some cases already are virus resistant crops and what these crops have

genetically engineered into them is an actual piece of the code protein of the viruses themselves. This code protein now instead of being produced by the virus this piece of it is now produced by the plant. And well turns out on a virus the code protein is what determines what organisms that can attack and how very ill and it is when it attacks them. Well preliminary research and once again this is in the potential risk area shows that when the natural virus attacks the plant that has part of the code protein in it it can actually take up part of that code protein and mix it together with the CO protein that it already has and create a completely new molecular configuration conferring upon that virus a new range of hosts that it can attack in a new degree of variance on them in effect creating a completely new virus with unknown hosts that it can attack unknown to human beings and unknown effects on them once it attacks them. So similar to them in your case which I'm not familiar with but accidentally almost creating a new virus with a new

kind of effect. This could happen all the time in nature. Once they start releasing these virus resistant crops with a viral code protein in them and into normal ecosystems implanting them in fields once again I can tell you that this would happen a lot or what the magnitude of the risk is but it's certainly something I think they should be studying and they aren't. Yeah that's really the key. I mean when you draw to an inside straight in the Hoke or you can you can figure out what all the different possibilities of your drop by the. But the thing that they keep. You now are denying that there's so much of certainty about what will happen I mean there's so much know about this entire area that you know it's really just a crapshoot. Well you've hit the nail on the head. They would like us to believe that this is a new step a new scientific step towards greater precision and they use the word engineering like as as though an engineer knows precisely where the bolt is supposed to be put on the bridge so that the

bridge doesn't fall down. In fact what the caller said is more is much closer to the truth that the unknown is far greater than any aspect of human scientific endeavor really ever before in human history we're playing with new things that have never happened before that couldn't happen in nature where we really don't know the outcome. And that's why many many many many organizations around the world are calling for a moratorium on the commercial use the planting in commercial fields of these crops until these risks have been seriously studied with a serious proportion of the research funds because right now less than 1 percent of the research funds are being devoted towards analyzing any of the risks while meanwhile the products are being rushed to market. Yeah thanks for having the courage of speaking out. Thank you. Well I will again let me introduce our guest which I would Dr. Peter Ross that co director of food first. It's a think tank in educate. Nation center they're interested in the global food system making it more just environmentally

sustainable. He is a food rights activist an agro ecologist and a roll development specialist and has done a lot of writing his own written a number of books dealing with these various subjects and also his pieces have appeared in places like the New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle Seattle Post-Intelligencer other newspapers. Questions are welcome the number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line that's good anywhere you're listening to us around Illinois Indiana any place a signable travel 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We've been talking about the fact that the question of the impact on human health of GM crops is isn't. It has not been settled and I'm curious as to why it is that because there are organizations like yours in that there are others around the world have have raised these issues. Why. Why isn't anybody doing this work. I would think that for those people who would want to make the argument against GM crops it would strengthen your argument if you could produce some studies that

would say we believe that it's not good and here's a study that's been conducted that shows that is not good. Why aren't those studies being done. Well I think the question the basic the answer that question comes down to money. Molecular biology is the most expensive field of scientific endeavor to even begin to do serious molecular biological research. You need to have a research facility that will that cost millions and millions of dollars to construct and you need to have research funds to the tune of several million dollars a year and you need to have a laboratory with 10 or 15 Ph.D. molecular biologists. Now the only money really that's available for that comes largely from the private sector from private industry and you'll see that they're taking over our universities through through various kinds of research alliances. Or from the government and so we would hope that our tax dollars those tax dollars that were being spent on genetic engineering research would be spent in the public interest by evaluating the risks. Unfortunately that's not the case because of the public funds being spent in the United States by the U.S. government.

Ninety nine percent is being spent to develop new products that can be marketed by industry and less than 1 percent of our of our public money that's being spent in this area is being spent on risk evaluation so let's say I had a Ph.D. in molecular biology which I don't I do a Ph.D. in biology but not this very in biology. In order for me to to seriously evaluate one of these particular risks we'd be talking about 10 to 20 million dollars just to get started. And unfortunately that kind of money isn't available if the private sector and the government aren't willing to pony up and that's where we're kind of stuck so we have to rely on some of their accidental results that have leaked out because they don't generally publish the negative ones in order to say that there is suggestive evidence but what we really want is for the government to do its job and to say stop do not market these until we seriously evaluate the risks and let's spend most of the public funds on doing that risk evaluation. And let's force the companies a lot of market this stuff to pony up some money for that kind of risk evaluation as well.

Another caller here someone from the campus. Lie number one. And hello. Hi. Thank you very much for the program. I missed a bit of it so I hope these things haven't been covered. My first question is my for when I first heard of clipping BT in to plant I thought it was being done in potatoes. Are we all eating BT potatoes right now and we just don't know it. There are BT potatoes but to my knowledge they're not on the market yet in the United States. Well it's possible. I do hear I did hear rumor that they might be in chipping potatoes but I'm but I'm really I can't answer that for 100 percent for sure. OK my next question I'll make it quick. Organic farmers use BT quite judiciously because insects become resistant to it. It seems to me like if it's in every cell of every plant it's being grown in a whole field it would very quickly lose any possible efficacy. You're right you're absolutely right. It's very clear that if you that if you overuse bt the infected become resistant to it very quickly and no end. Just

people who study insects seriously believe that. Nor the companies themselves seriously believe that the BT crops will work for more than about two to five years before the insects overcome it. Now when a representative from Monsanto spoke at the National Conference of entomologist here in the United States in Las Vegas that I attended a few years ago basically all of the entomologists agreed this will only work for a few years if it works at all. And the Monsanto person's response was very honest he said. I work in industry where we have something called the product cycle and it's the same whether it's the automobile industry the television industry the seed industry the pesticide in the story you expect a new product to have a product life of a few years before you develop another product and your whole marketing strategy and your pricing strategy is designed to recover your investment and make your profit in a few years. Meanwhile you're developing the next generation of products. So hey you tell me this product only work for two to five years. I tell you that's a normal product cycle what's the problem. Problem is of course organic farmers and many other farmers

rely on the natural form of BT as a natural pesticide and if all the insects become resistant to it because of overuse and BT crops then organic farmers will lose one of the most important tools that they have. Exactly. Quickly. If these things aren't safe for people to eat directly or there's a question about it what makes somebody think it's safe to feed it to the animals that we didn't eat. Well good question. I mean I don't have the answer but I sear your doubt. OK thanks. Thank you for the call. We have some next here in Munster Indiana. It's a line for Hello. Hi how are you. I was just wondering what effect do you think that the appointment of and then a man as secretary of agriculture will have done. Pushing forward of GM foods. Well I don't know her specific position on GM foods but I knew know that she is well

known for being a very close friend of industry in general. And so I would say that it bodes very ill in terms of those of us who have concerns about the safety of these products I suspect her to use her office to promote the interests of the private sector rather than the public interest. OK thank you very much. Thank you. There has been some discussion in this country about labeling that is but if if a product or a food is genetically modified if a product has some GM content some people think there should be a label on there that that says that. Do you think that it's possible that any time in the near future that here in this cunt. We would have a labeling requirement like that I think it I think it's quite possible that two things that people are fighting for are one labeling based on the principle that the consumer has the right to know and the right to choose. And the other thing is a moratorium on commercial use until safety testing can be conducted. I really think we need to push for both. If we only get labeling and don't do the safety testing then we'll

be running tremendous risk because we won't be able to buy just the G5 labeled free food and still be out there in the environment. On the other hand we do have the right to know. So our position is that we need to have both. We need to have a commercial market Taria and we need to have labeling. And I think that it's possible that as the pressure from the public rise of that industry and the government will be willing at some point to concede the labeling but we'll have to fight a lot harder but we need to fight to get the moratorium. Another caller here next it's Urbana line too. Hello hello. There is another problem it isn't exactly related to what you are discussing but the BT and the other genetically modified crops are patented. And therefore the where were a gene comes into the gene pool and it's bred into a number of different

alive and in normal production. It seems to me that this would tend to concentrate the or restrict the diversity of the gene pool within a crop that because only one product producer would control all of the seed output there would be very. Restricted number of varieties on the market. Is this a danger. If a very large danger this is one visit This is another one of the very large and sort of hidden dangers but because unfortunately the US Supreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 decision that life could be patented they basically opened the door for big time money to go into the seed in this tree in the Start patenting genes one after another and for the little seed companies to get swallowed up by the seed. The big seed companies and the big seed companies to get swallowed up by the pesticide companies are now trying to market their pesticides through the seeds. Their whole goal is by patenting this this this this genetic material to charge a lot higher price and therefore get a much larger

profit at the expense of farmers production costs at the same time as you point out there are fewer and fewer companies and they're trying to get more and more market domination and market share for one or two or three seed varieties where maybe there were several hundred before and so it's a very rapidly reducing the genetic diversity of crops that's planted in the field. And that poses enormous risks I mean the Potato Famine happened in Ireland because Ireland was basically planting only. One variety of potatoes with regard to resistance to this particular potato disease and so when the disease came it wiped out the whole thing. The less genetic diversity we have in our crops the more susceptible they will be when a new disease variant comes along and with the potential to wipe all of them out and so this is a tremendous risk. Not to mention the fact that they're basically using patents to get windfall profits by extorting farmers much higher prices for the seeds that they use. That's certainly not good news for the American farmer who's already being squeezed into bankruptcy pretty much across the board.

Does that get at your question precisely John. Well thank you. About 10 minutes left again. Other questions are welcome here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 W I L L toll free 800 to 2 2 W I love Again our guest is Peter Ross and he's co director of food. First question certainly are welcome. Farmers certainly are are in a bind and I think some time. They become impatient with environmentalists particularly around this issue because they say on the one hand and yron Mills don't like farmers spraying a lot of chemicals. So then along comes say for example a product like BT corn which produces its own insecticide and that means that the farmer Well then to get rid of the bugs won't have to go out and spray which would seem on the face of it. As far as environmentalist were concerned a good thing because the spring less insecticide but now the environmentalists are are saying you know we like this crop for a variety of reasons that we've cited and farmers seem to feel like they they're they're in trouble no matter what they do.

Well I think it's unfortunate that the way the issue is is presented both to farmers and to the general public is that there are only two choices. The one choice is to use. Half the fight and the other choice is the use of medically engineered crops and that's misleading on a couple of levels. On one level the fact that they're mutually exclusive in fact more than 80 percent of the genetically engineered crops plant that I contain herbicide tolerance genes that are actually designed to get farmers to use more pesticides not less. So by and large the pesticides in the crops go hand in hand and of course they're made by the same companies. The only exception would be in the case of the BT crops which are less than 20 percent of the ones out there where in theory the BT crop would replace pesticides however. Hey we've got all these safety questions about it. Be in the best of cases it will only work for two to three or maybe five years before they fail in the pest and folks maybe back to the pesticides again but most importantly it's not just two choices. There are quite a lot of other choices and in fact before. The

GA crop maniac came along. We were quite a ways towards reducing pesticide use and demonstrating that integrated pest management and biological pest control and even organic farming all offered very viable ways to dramatically reduce pesticide use 50 percent in some cases 100 percent in others. And it seemed like we've found the path and we were beginning to follow it and all of a sudden we got distracted by this red herring of genetic engineering. In fact what we need to do is to continue down that path and get to say farming practices that don't rely on either pesticides or genetically engineered crops. And that's absolutely feasible and viable and that's the direction we should be heading down. There also has been some question people raised about the. The plants that are bred genetically engineered to be herbicide tolerant like a Roundup Ready soybeans for example the idea there is that you can spray the herbicide to get rid of your weeds and if you get some of it on soybeans it's no big deal because the. It means don't care. There

has been some questions raised about whether in fact that has has led to would lead to or has led to greater herbicide use rather than less is there any is there any information available to settle that question one way or another. Well it does lead to greater herbicide use and the whole point of it is to lead to greater herbicide use. The reason why companies that manufacture herbicides want to create herbicide resistant crops is so that people can and will use more herbicides on them. That's the whole point there's no other reason why a company who manufactures herbicides like Monsanto in the case of Roundup would pursue that particular line of research. And so that is the goal and that is the outcome. There's really you know that's what was designed to do. That's what it does and it's and it shouldn't surprise anybody. And that's as I said just said of the 80 more than 80 percent of the crops that are planted out there are the herbicide tolerant ones and so in fact overall on the average Genetic engineering will lead to greater pesticide use not less pesticide use and because that's essentially the goal that the companies have in

developing these particular technologies. We have several callers. About five minutes we'll get as many as we. Starting with Chicago line for Hello. Thank you for a wonderful program. I just start a program on Pacifica Radio relating to are still going to chair that spoke to the hormonal havoc and endocrine disruptors of occurring as a result of the chemicals that are on the stench of the environment worldwide and producing ramifications in regions far from the points of origin. And your problem is amplifying the scope of everything. Focusing on genetically modified food but the chemical disruption that's occurring as illustrated by the speaker of about the book our stolen future to the point where animals in this country say the odds are in the Columbia River having their sexual identity. So altered that if a census was taken among them and they were to check off the box are you male or female they would

say none of the above and other ramifications are occurring where the chemical messengers are disrupting the regular messages that are occurring in a body of communication that work to the point where it's really getting so scrambled. A horrific scenario for the future. Yeah that's right it's an excellent book article in future it talks about how certain pesticides and some other chemicals are released into our environment can have these kinds of effects perhaps even implications in the worldwide decline in sperm count among human beings. And I think it's a it's a cautionary tale that we would be do well to heed when we think about genetic engineering. In the case of pesticides we were assured that they were safe. By the same companies that are now assuring us that the genetically engineered crops are safe. At the time the same kinds of people in organizations who doubted their claims of safety about pesticides were dismissed as being environmental kooks much as people are dismissed today as for being kooks if they're concerned about genetic engineering. But as the truth

emerges and now it's only 30 40 50 years after the introduction of pesticides that we're finding out that the environmentalists were right all along that pesticide use may be tied in with the epidemic of breast cancer around the world with declining sperm count with premature to bethen amongst teenagers with a whole variety of different things with with confused sexual identity amongst animals. This is all stuff that was only suspected before and it took 30 or 40 years because the research wasn't being done I say let's learn the lesson and let's say with this new generation of technology. Let's not repeat the errors of the past. Let's stop take a time out and say let's do the research before rather than finding out after the damage is already done. Let's talk with someone. Champagne lined one. Hello. Hi I tuned in late so you may have already touched on this but related to the to the sort of themes of more pesticide U.S. companies with with very very deep pockets and you nearing plant seeds too to be used with their brand of pesticides and then even more not allowing the farmers to keep track portions of

their seeds for the next year it seems. And with this administration I fear it's going to get worse. So the whole trend toward that was sort of ticking off toward organic farming which is fairly strong in California and we're starting to see we were starting to see some of that here I think is a real risk from from these companies who aren't really interested in doing that because it's not in their fiscal interest to promote organic farming because they won't sell their seeds or their pesticides and also the sort of the sort of marketisation for lack of better word of trends in food like fat free and now are Gannicus may lead to sort of dilution of the strict standards that California the sort of California organic. Movement has it here too which most organic producers are here today. I was wondering if you could say whether you think this administration. Would dilute that caucus even. Well well luckily the the outgoing administration managed to get pretty pretty acceptable National

Organic Standards set up so hopefully the new administration will roll that back I mean I can't guarantee that but hopefully that will give some protection to organic. Personally I think organic is going to continue to grow quite quickly despite the fact that it's not in the interests of a lot of agribusiness companies who are dominating agriculture in promoting genetically engineered crops. Precisely because the public is concerned and the public increasingly would like to eat safer food and the public increasingly correctly perceive organic food as being safer. So I suspect that the two trends are going to continue and we're going to we're going to be moving for a while now into a sort of bi modal food system where we'll have the corporate. Poisoned food system on one hand growing very quickly and on the other hand they say food small farmer local production and even urban agriculture food system growing very quickly as well. And I'm hoping that that concerned consumers will exert exert their power in the marketplace to gradually swing things towards the safer healthier more environmentally and socially sound

food system that's going to be developing alongside this corporate poison food system. We are going to have to stop there with our thanks to our guest Peter Rossett. He's co director of food first. And again if you're interested in exploring what their organization is about and you can get on to the Web you can look for them at w w w dot food first dot orgy. They have information on this and other issues. Dr. Austin thank you very much. It's been a pleasure thank you. Take care. All right.