Importing A Banned Product & Denying Drought Tolerance
Posted by jennifer, October 15th, 2006 - under Uncategorized.
Tags: Biotechnology
There is much concern in Australia about the current drought. The forecast for this year’s wheat crop has been cut by 8.5 million tons to just 11million. This is less than half last year’s production of 24 million tons.
The forecast for the canola crop is also down and there is talk about local crushers importing oil seed from Canada.
The imported canola would presumably be crushed to make vegetable oil and margarine.
If the imports go ahead, we will be importing seed from GM varieties of canola because that is what farmers grow in Canada. Farmers are banned from growing these GM varieties in Australia.
Indeed the current bans on genetically modified (GM) food crops in place in Australia, were forced by Greenpeace in particular to block the commercial planting of GM varieties of canola.
How hypocritical will that be, importing a product that Australian farmers are banned from growing.
And with all the focus on the drought, and predicted low wheat crop, it is interesting that there has been no public comment about the research effort in South Australia to develop GM drought tolerant wheat varieties; despite the bans.
Rather than rational discussion, a rural newspaper has published a letter denying the potential benefits of biotechnology for breeding drought tolerance. David Tribe explains, and explains the science:
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/hyperbole-and-misinformation-versus.html
David also has an interesting blog post on how much natural ‘genetic modification’ occurs within plant species:
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/natural-gmos-part-26-nature-inserts.html
‘With a harpoon and a stun grenade…’ – Dr. Kalla
RAOTFLMAO! my my Dr Kalla who’d have thought you could be so macho and from the safety of another continent too, I am soooooo impressed.
‘Zimbabwe’ -
How exactly are your GM crops going to oust Mugabe from power?
Where exactly did I claim this Nasus. I used Zimbabwe as an illustration that dopey thinking and bad politics can do harm. Why the red herring?
“biochemical corporations in the developed world from selling patented products”
The point Nasus is (that like Mobile phones for instance) some technology benefit’s those who are free to use it – why should your distaste for corporations veto the choices of people who could benefit from GM seeds even if they pay for them and are more profitable because of that (as the African now do with mobile phones even tho Vodaphone in Africa is making a profit from their poularity in the villages that never got a simple landline telephone).
In India the last few yeards the commecial cotton seed industry has expanded massively. The rsults has been a massive increase in profits and crop output for farmers. Your argument would have prevented this because it also gave seecos profits.
gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/07/truth-about-bt-gm-crops-in-india-and.html
gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/indian-farmers-profit-from-gm-cotton.html
If there is an overall welfare benefit is there anthing wrong with ALL parties benefiting financially. Additionally the profits draw in private investment in bebeficial technology, which can only prosper year after year if it does provide a real net benefit for the usr.
Every year now for 10 years GM crop have expanded in use. Most users are farmers in the third world. $15 billion extra income (and rising rapidly) has gone to these farmers because of the technology, according to ISAA and PG Economics. Do you have special qualifications to speak on their behalf (presumably in the UK you have become an African farming expert.)
“continually ‘forget’ to mention the non GM alternatives which are also being researched and made available”
We have limited time and space Nasus, and the topic of this post is on GM issues; if you read my OLO piece for example and even my blog you will see that there is a full gamut of discussion..
You will notice for instance I’m very enthiusiastic about imidozolium herbicide tolerant maize available this which is not GM but it potentially the solution to striga pararistic weed that causes massive losses of crops in Africa.
See
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/02/imi-herbicide-tolerant-maize-for.html
Roger Kalla mentions you call me a GM lobbyist on your blog, implying I am a paid actisvist.
Where did you get the evidence from this statement, why didnt you check it with me, and why do you need to bring this personal ad hominem approach to this discussion? Can I assume it is you have nothing of substance to offer?
(I note also you didn’t, to my knowledge, answer the last question I asked you about evidence you use for making derogatory statements about me. Have you ever me me or talked with me? Why dont you adopt the journalistic practice of checking for accuracy?)
‘I’m very enthiusiastic about imidozolium herbicide tolerant maize available this which is not GM but it potentially the solution to striga pararistic weed that causes massive losses of crops in Africa.’ – Detribe
Can’t argue with the potential benefits of that product, but with all due respect, having to go back to February 2006 to find one article on non-GM is not what I would describe as a balanced and non partisan ‘pundit’.
Well Nasus, I didn’t “have to go back to February, but only a few hours ago.
Here’s two recent GMO Pundit Posts, one, just a few hours before you made my posts. I dindn’t “have to go back to Feb” , only a few hours, and the second, a day or so ago. I can in fact retrieve date and time stamps on my posts to prove these.
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/track-and-save-that-water-to-survive.html
gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/peaceful-coexistence-among-growers-of.html
It would help if you actually check the blog before you make erroneous conjectures like like that.
I’m not claiming GMO Pundit to be totally free from bias in favour of mentioning GM technology, but there’s a fair swag of other technology stuff , and a bias towards any new and interesting technologies (including one on a crazy water purificaion method Vivifier. GMO Pundit covers biofuels quite heavily, and has a lot on general water issues.
BTW last time you mocked me for self advertising by linking to my blog.
The point I was actually making was THAT I’D ALREADY CONSIDERED THE OBJECTIONS YOU MADE previously, and my blog linked proved that I had written so before you raised the issue.
Do you now want a long lisk of non-GM links to GMO Pumdit . How about salinity control? Is That non GM enough for you?
Or something basic like hunger?
gmopundit2.blogspot.com/2005/11/do-you-know-what-hunger-really-is.html
Something ecological like Land Use ?
gmopundit2.blogspot.com/2006/03/full-monty-on-global-land-use.html
I’m even quite happy to talk about evolution and biology in general.
I’m glad though that you see the potential in a solution to striga.
*Would you like to supply us with some of the figures for pesticide poisoning of agricultural workers from third world countries?*
Specific to glyphosate, the acute toxicity of glyphosate is very low, almost zero, the WHO list the oral LD50 in the rat of pure glyphosate is 4,230 mg/kg. If someone weighed 50kg they would have to ingest a metric cup of the stuff for a sub lethal dose, using the LD50 as a guide coffee (or caffeine) having a rating of 192 mg/kg is far more toxic to rats by a factor of 22.
Hi Dr Tribe,
You posted a link to your blog entry in Feb. 2006, don’t have a pop at me because I dont spend my entire spare time reading your blog.
I notice two of your latest links are not exactly hot off the press either, November 2005 and March 2006. The amount of pro-GM opinion you post here, let alone your own blog fails the non-partisan test.
Seems you forgot to mention surfactants and formulation when you cut that glyphosphate toxicity description a tad short.
Acute toxicity
The acute toxicity of glyphosate itself is very low. According to the World Health Organisation, the oral LD50 in the rat of pure glyphosate is 4,230 mg/kg, or 5,600 mg/kg according to Monsanto(6). The low acute toxicity of glyphosate can be attributed to its biochemical mode of action on a metabolic pathway in plants (called the shikimic acid pathway) which does not exist in animals(7). However, glyphosate can also disrupt functions of enzymes in animals. In rats it was found to decrease the activity of some detoxification enzymes when injected into the abdomen(8). In general, controlled toxicity tests report adverse symptoms from exposure to glyphosate only at extremely high doses, ie several grammes per kg body weight.
While glyphosate itself may be relatively harmless, some of the products with which it is formulated have a rather less benign reputation. Marketed formulations of glyphosate generally contain a surfactant. The purpose of this is to prevent the chemical from forming into droplets and rolling off leaves which are sprayed. Some of these surfactants are serious irritants, toxic to fish, and can themselves contain contaminants which are carcinogenic to humans.
The most widely used type of surfactants in glyphosate formulations are known as ethylated amines. POEA (polyoxy-ethyleneamine) has been frequently mentioned as a surfactant, but in fact it refers to a group of ethylated amine products used in glyphosate formulations. Members of this group of surfactants are significantly more toxic than glyphosate. They are serious irritants of eyes, the respiratory tract and skin, and have been found to contain dioxane (not dioxin) contaminants which are suspected of being carcinogenic. Accordingly, the UN FAO has set standards of 1ppm for levels of the contaminant 1,4 dioxane which may be present in POEA surfactants.
Monsanto states that all surfactants used in its glyphosate formulations fall well within the FAO standard. However, being aware of the irritant and toxic potential of the surfactants in general, the company has now developed new surfactants which have none of these toxic effects. Products containing the new formulants are sold in the UK and elsewhere and are recognised by approval authorities as being non-irritant(9). Currently in the UK, all garden products contain the new surfactant, and most local authorities are using it. However, the new formulations are more expensive and as long as there is demand for the cheaper, old formulations they will continue to be sold. Currently these are available in UK agriculture and horticulture and for professional amenity use(10).
In the UK, a local authority was prosecuted after a child was accidentally sprayed with a glyphosate formulation and suffered allergic reactions. Recently there have also been claims from residents of St. Just in Cornwall that they have suffered severe reactions following application of glyphosate for weed control(11).
In the UK, glyphosate is the most frequent cause of complaints and poisoning incidents recorded by the Health and Safety Executive’s Pesticides Incidents Appraisal Panel (PIAP). Between 1990 and 1995, 33 complaints were received and 34 poisonings recorded including a single death by suicide in 1990(12,13). In California, glyphosate is one of the most commonly reported causes of illness or injury to workers from pesticides. The most common complaints are eye and skin irritation(14). The US authorities have recommended a no re-entry period of 12 hours where glyphosate is used in agricultural or industrial situations.
- Pesticides News
Yes, we can all read PAN Lamna, they are committed to a pesticide free environment.
I liked this piece of double speak ” it is extremely unlikely that human users or members of the public would be exposed to doses as high as those used in the trials, but extrapolating toxicity data from rats, mice and rabbits on which trials are run, to humans can be inaccurate and misleading.”
They are denying the evidence.
Nasus,
Why are you then going on about dates in the first place then?. Why are you making all sorts of gruatuitous assertions about my memory (with sly jibes like ‘forgot’), implying I’m deliberately leaving out relevant facts based on things that arnt in my website. Absence from my website doesnt mean I ‘forgot’ as you ‘graciously’ put it.
Believe it or not, I have taken the trouble to read the standard comprehensive text on glyphosate toxicology as part of my efforts to ensure I’m fully aware of its hazards. I won’t bore you with the details, but the detergency aspect is not something I have ‘forgotten’.
One of the reason my usually fallible memory is so good on this is that it happens that I have actually been personally involved in experimental studies of the target enzyme of glyphosate action inside cells during my doctoral studies, namely the enzyme enolpyruvylshikimate phosphate synthase which is in the aromatic biosynthesis pathway, present in plants and bacteria BUT ABSENT FROM HUMANS, anaimals ans SHARKS) and I have published one modest scientific article about it in the 1970s, and I first became away of glyphosate biochemistry during that period.
To wit
Constitutive and repressible enzymes of the common pathway of aromatic biosynthesis in Escherichia coli K-12: regulation of enzyme synthesis at different growth rates.Tribe DE,Camakaris H, Pittard J. J Bacteriol. 1976 Sep;127(3):1085-97.
I have thus emphatically not ‘forgotten’ that glyphosate is a structural analogue of phosphoenolpyruvate which is condensed with shikimate phosphate by that enyme. And certainly I have not ‘forgotten’ that animals dont have this target enzyme because we lack the aromatic biosyntheisis pathway which it is the second last step, but you for some reason don’t mention this salient feature of glyphosate toxicology in your own remarks.
My memory of that material is so good I even remember who it was who first told me of its mode of action and when:(now Dr) Graeme Baldwin, a biochemistry Ph.D. student at the University of Melbournce in 1973 whose Ph.d. topic you can verify is anothe enyme in this part of metabolism.
I have also not ‘forgotten’ why I was so interested in glyphosate’s mode of action in 1972-80, and strange as it may seem, I will neever forget.
It was because I was interested in chemicals that could enable me to select mutant bacteria that over produce the nutrient tryptophane which was potentially useful (and still is) as a way of the improving nutritional quality of maize as a stock feed or food..
At that time there was great interest in improving human nutrition using genetic technology, and I retain that interest today.
*Would you like to supply us with some of the figures for pesticide poisoning of agricultural workers from third world countries?*
Don’t forget that GM insect protected contton’s reduce farmers deaths from synthetic insecticide poisening and save the lives of cotton farmers in China and Africa where they spray insecticide with backpacks.
detribe, what you say about glyphosate, that the pathway is absent in humans and animals, is something that even greens cannot deny
“Glyphosate is a broad spectrum, non-selective systemic herbicide. It is effective in killing all plant types including grasses, perennials and woody plants…… This pathway exists in higher plants and microorganisms but not in animals.”
http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/actives/glyphosa.htm
I mean, what sense is there in invoking the hallowed “precautionary principle” to a situation that cannot exist?
Chemical campaigns ‘misleading’
By Rebecca Morelle
Health reporter, BBC News
Leading toxicologists have warned green groups are “misleading” the public with chemical contamination campaigns.
They said they are deliberately and unfairly scaring the public.
In particular, they criticised a WWF campaign that has highlighted the presence of certain chemicals in blood, food and in babies’ umbilical cords.
The scientists said the minute levels detected did not warrant the group’s focus on health dangers, but WWF has denied it was scare-mongering.
“The message they are putting across is misleading, and deliberately so” Professor David Coggon
The tests have formed part of WWF’s campaign to strengthen proposed EU legislation, called REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals), on the testing and phasing out of chemicals.
They argue the presence of chemicals, such as musks (found in perfumes), brominated flame retardants, and dioxins (a by-product of heating processes), in the environment pose a danger to health in humans and wildlife, and more stringent protective measures are needed.
But while many scientists believe monitoring levels of chemicals and the phasing out of dangerous ones are vital, as is REACH, they say WWF and other green groups have been playing on the public’s fears to highlight their campaigns.
Dose-response
Alistair Hay, professor of environmental toxicology from the University of Leeds, said: “The presence of these things is a warning that we are exposed to chemicals in the environment and we have to try and understand what this means – but it is wrong to frighten people.”
While David Coggon, professor of occupational and environmental health from Southampton University, added: “The message they are putting across is misleading, and deliberately so.”
According to Dr Andrew Smith, of the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit, University of Leicester, it is the amount of a chemical present that is key when considering toxicity.
“We are weighing up the difference between alarm and ignorance – we are not looking to scare-monger”
Elizabeth Salter Green, WWF
And the researchers said the levels of the chemicals found in some of the tests were extremely low – measured in parts per billion or parts per trillion.
Although some of the chemicals were dangerous at high doses, they said, one could not go on to assume that because a trace amount was detected it posed a danger.
Dr Smith said: “Any toxicologist will tell you that dose – the amount – is the important thing.
“I would rather we didn’t find these chemicals present, but trying to ascribe toxicity to them is a different matter.”
Professor Coggon agreed: “One of the most important things in toxicology is to look at how a person is exposed and how much of a substance they are exposed to.
“The fact that you can detect something at all does not imply a material risk to health.”
The researchers said the chemicals were being found in trace amounts because of advances in detection techniques that could uncover substances at ever smaller concentrations.
The researchers admitted there was uncertainty surrounding the effects of some of the chemicals, but said just because it couldn’t be confirmed something was 100% safe this did not mean it was 100% dangerous.
Professor Richard Sharpe, an expert in endocrine disrupters from the Medical Research Council Human Reproductive Sciences Unit, in Edinburgh, said: “By and large, I think people shouldn’t be worried. Most chemicals will not do any great harm at these very low levels. You have to put this into perspective.”
Chemiphobia
Dr John Emsley, a visiting professor at Manchester University, said the word “chemical” had become a synonym for “toxic”, and that the public was growing increasingly fearful of contamination, something he called “chemiphobia”.
“I think the public are afraid because it is all about the unseen danger – it is presented as something malevolent lurking below the surface. You don’t know what it is and you don’t know what it does. It is a risk they do not feel in control of.”
Elizabeth Salter Green, director of the WWF’s toxic campaign, said: “I think WWF’s raison d’etre is to protect biodiversity. We feel that there are certain drivers such as chemicals undermining future generations’ viability.
“We are keen that the core aim of REACH is maintained – to protect future generations of humans and wildlife while not undermining the competitiveness of the chemicals industry.”
She said she was concerned with possible health risks associated the lifestyle exposure to different combinations of low-level chemicals, and pointed to studies which revealed the chemicals were working together.
“We are weighing up the difference between alarm and ignorance – we are not looking to scare-monger – we are looking to highlight an issue such that the UK population are aware of exposures and to call for better regulation.”
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/6040146.stm
Published: 2006/10/16 01:01:51 GMT
“The fact that you can detect something at all does not imply a material risk to health.”
This argument is equally valid in the detection of genetically modified ingredients in our foods.
The very sensitive methods for detecting minuscle amount of genetically modified DNA in a sea of ‘normal’ DNA doesn’t automatically tell us that the product is ‘contaminated’ or even ‘dangerous’ to consume.
The levels of unintended presence of herbicide resistant GM canola, that had received regultory clearance from the OGTR and considered to be harmless , was in the order of 1 seed per 100,000 or 1 seed per 10,000 of ‘naturally’ herbicide resistant conventional canola.
Marketing of Australias commodity exports is not a science it’s a perception and in this case it was certainly not a health issue.
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