Brian Sandle wrote:
A Biological Apocalypse Barely Averted. What About Next Time?

A Biological Apocalypse Averted
Book Excerpt: The Food Revolution
by John Robbins

These [genetically engineered] products are absolutely safe. For the most
part you wouldn't know [if you were eating them] but the point being that
you wouldn't need to know.


- Bryan Hurley, Monsanto spokesperson

There is a great deal of controversy about the safety of genetically
engineered foods. Advocates of biotechnology often say that the risks are
overblown. "There have been 25,000 trials of genetically modified crops in
the world, now, and not a single incident, or anything dangerous in these
releases," said a spokesman for Adventa Holdings, a UK biotech firm.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, then-candidate George W. Bush
said that "study after study has shown no evidence of danger." And Clinton
Administration Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said that "test after
rigorous scientific test" had proven the safety of genetically engineered
products.

Is this the case? Unfortunately not, according to a senior researcher
from the Union of Concerned Scientists, Dr. Jane Rissler. With a Ph.D. in
plant pathology, four years of shaping biotechnology regulations at the EPA,
she is one of the nation's leading authorities on the environmental risks of
genetically engineered foods. Dr. Rissler has been closely monitoring the
trials and studies.

"The observations that 'nothing happened' in these... tests do not say
much," she and her colleague Dr. Margaret Mellon (a member of the USDA
Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology) write. "The field tests do
not provide a track record of safety, but a case of 'don't look, don't
find.'"

When scientists actually look, what they see can be terrifying. A few
years ago, a German biotech company engineered a common soil bacterium,
Klebsiella planticola, to help break down wood chips, corn stalks, wastes
from lumber businesses and agriculture, and to produce ethanol in the
process. It seemed like a great achievement. The genetically engineered
Klebsiella bacterium could help break down rotting organic material and in
the process produce a fuel that could be used instead of gasoline, thus
lessening the production of greenhouse gases.

Our city council sells EM Bokashi bacterial mix for in-kitchen composting
of kitchen wastes in a closed bucket. A week or several later you dig the
waste into the garden. And the liquid produced in the in-kithcen stage can
be used as a fertiliser.

It was assumed that the post-process waste could be added to soil as an
amendment, like compost. Everybody would win. With the approval of the EPA,
the company field tested the bacterium at Oregon State University.

As far as the intended goals were concerned - eliminating rotting
organic waste and producing ethanol - the genetically engineered bacterium
was a success. But when a doctoral student named Michael Holmes decided to
add the post-processed waste to actual living soil, something happened that
no one expected. The seeds that were planted in soil mixed with the
engineered Klebsiella sprouted, but then every single one of them died.

What killed them? The genetically engineered Klebsiella turned out to
be highly competitive with native soil micro-organisms. Plants are only able
to take nitrogen and other nourishment from the soil with the help of fungi
called mycorrhizae. These fungi live in the soil and help make nutrients
available to plant roots. But when the genetically engineered Klebsiella was
introduced into living soils, it greatly reduced the population of
mycorrhizal fungi in the soil. And without healthy mycorrhizal fungi in
soils, no plants can survive.

EM Bokashi, I suppose has strong bacterial populators. Does it hamper any
garden organisms that we want/may want but are not sure of in ecosystems?

It is testimony to the amazing powers of science that researchers were
able to track the mechanism by which the genetically engineered Klebsiella
prevented plants from growing. There are thousands of different species of
microorganisms in every teaspoon of fertile soil, and they interact in
trillions of ways.

But the scientists discovered something else in these experiments,
something that sent chills down their spines. They found that the
genetically modified bacteria were able to persist in the soil, raising the
possibility that, had it been released, the genetically engineered
Klebsiella could have become established - and virtually impossible to
eradicate.

"When the data first started coming in," says Elaine Ingham, the soil
pathologist at Oregon State University who directed Michael Holmes' research
on Klebsiella, "the EPA charged that we couldn't have per-formed the
research correctly. They went through everything with a fine tooth comb, and
they couldn't find anything wrong with the experimental design - but they
tried as hard as they could... If we hadn't done this research, the
Klebsiella would have passed the approval process for commercial release."

Geneticist David Suzuki understands that what took place was truly
ominous. "The genetically engineered Klebsiella," he says, "could have ended
all plant life on this continent. The implications of this single case are
nothing short of terrifying."

Meanwhile Monsanto and the other biotech companies are eagerly
developing all kinds of genetically modified organisms, hoping to bring them
to market. How do we know if they're safe? According to Suzuki: "We don't,
and won't for years after they are being widely used.''

It's not a prospect that helps calm the nerves and restore confidence
in our collective future. Surely, I've wanted to believe, when the chips are
down, scientists and researchers would never do anything that would
jeopardize life on Earth. Surely, the people who run these companies - and
the government officials who oversee them - would never allow something that
dangerous to occur.

But then again, this wouldn't be the first time that corporations like
Monsanto have brought us new products they promised would make life better
for everybody and that turned out to do something very different. This is
the same company, after all, that brought us PCBs and Agent Orange. Even the
product the company was originally formed to produce, the artificial
sweetener saccharin, was later found to be carcinogenic.

Of course, Monsanto tells us that this time we don't have to worry.

GE Crops Can't Be Contained
A test conducted by the Wall Street Journal found that 16 of 20 vegetarian
foods labeled as being "free" of genetically engineered products actually
contained GE soybeans. As Arran Stephens, president of Nature's Path Foods,
noted: "You cannot build a wall high enough" to prevent genetic pollution of
wild and organic crops.

In August, a team of Belgian researchers were surprised to discover
that Monsanto's GE soybeans contained "a DNA segment... for which no
sequence homology could be detected." "No one knows what this extra gene
sequence is [or]... what its effects will be," said Greenpeace-UK's Doug
Parr. "If Monsanto did not even get this most basic information right, what
should we think about the validity of all their safety tests?"

John Robbins is the author of Diet for a New America and founder of
EarthSave International. Excerpted with permission from Food Revolution: How
Your Diet Can Save your Life and the World [Conari Press, 2550 Ninth St.,
Suite 101, Berkeley, CA 94710, (510) 649-7175]. http://www.earthisland.org