FYI - Joanne Jacobs of the San Jose Mercury News recently sent around an
editorial in support of GMOs that may have appeared in your home town
newspaper. Below is a response to her editorial that may be of interest to
you.
-----Original Message-----
From: John Shannonhouse
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 9:34 PM
To: wisc-eco@igc.apc.org
Subject: WSJ guest editorial on GM crops
Hi y'all,
If you saw the editorial section of Monday's Wisconsin State Journal, you
saw a truely awful piece of propaganda promoting transgenic crops. I cannot
describe that piece in nicer terms. I decided I needed to be a flak when I
read that (I have calmed down nicely, but I'm still PO'ed about it). I sent
a brief letter to the WSJ stating that I felt the article was highly
misleading (I did use the word propaganda). I sent the following message to
the author of the article (Joanne Jacobs of the San Jose Mercury News):
Hello,
An editorial you wrote on GM crops recently appeared in the Wisconsin State
Journal. I want to make some critical comments on it. I have an MS in
genetics and have worked in a laboratory researching an application of
transgenic plants before and I am familiar with the recent report of
pesticide-engineered plants from the National Academy of Sciences. I have
more than a layman's knowledge of this subject.
The first two paragraphs comparing miracle herbal remedies and GM corn was
irrelevent and prejudicial. Belief in the ridiculous claims of "miracle"
herbal remedies has little or no relevance to the safety of transgenic
crops. The only purpose those paragraphs served was to prejudice readers.
The third paragraph claimed that the report from the National Academy
Sciences said "there's nothing to fear from foods produced by gene-splicing
techniques." The report made no such conclusion. It says there is no
conclusive evidence of a health risk posed by eating any of the transgenic
foods currently on the market. At least one strain of transgenic corn has
been produced that could not be released on the market because it caused
allergic reactions in people allergic to Brazil nuts.
The fourth paragraph said the report claimed there is "no evidence
transgenic plants create any more health risks than plants produced by the
cross-breeding techniques used for centuries." Again, the report made no
such statement. It said "no strict distinction exists between the health
and environmental risks posed by plants genetically engineered through
modern molecular techniques and those modified by conventional breeding
practices," quoting the press release (which your article quoted). That
statement was important because the writers of the report wanted to
emphasize that transgenic plants need to be individually evaluated. The
fact that a plant is transgenic is not important in and of itself. A
particular transgenic plant may or may not be dangerous and must be
studied. You made this point in the fifth paragraph, therefore the fourth
paragraph served only to mislead readers about the implications of the
fifth paragraph.
The sixth paragraph brings up a point that should have appeared in the
beginning of the article. The NAS strongly emphasized that the report dealt
with pesticide and viral coat protein engineered plants, and not others
such as herbicide resistant plants. This is a critically important point.
Although I do not doubt the report's integrity, I am not sure who was
responsible for limiting its scope to pesticide-engineered plants. A long
time ploy of industries engaged in risky endeavors is to push only the
research most likely to give favorable results. Considering the enormous
harm caused by chemical pesticides and the fact that Bt toxin (the
insecticide) has been extensively studied and shown to be harmless to
humans, Bt was guaranteed to compare favorably to chemical pesticides. The
existing research on herbicide resistant plants, which the report
specifically stated it did not address, has not been favorable: the plants
nutritional composition has changed, there is evidence of toxin buildup,
increased herbicide use has polluted the groundwater and soil, yields are
reduced without excessive herbicide compared to normal crops, etc. An NAS
report on herbicide resistant plants would have been much less favorable.
I have already addressed why the seventh paragraph can be seen as
misleading (the allergenic corn).
Your comment about the butterflies was misleading. The report used Bt
pollen danger to monarch butterflies that as an example of why more
research is needed than is being done. The problem is that the issue had
not been resolved before the crops release on the market and would have
never been addressed if it were not for concerned researchers working on
their own. The field experiment should not be taken to mean that
Bt-engineered crops pose no risk to non-target species, as your article
implied.
"The panel called for more research on long-term health and environmental
issues and management strategies. Unfortunately, research is being hampered
by "activists" who've destroyed transgenic crops ... in university fields."
Although such vandalism is reprehensible, this paragraph only serves to
confuse the issue. Vandalism has not, to my knowledge, hampered efforts to
study the long-term effects of transgenic crops. It is precisely because
such research was not being done before the crops' release on the market
that has motivated many activists to take actions, legal and otherwise,
against transgenic crops.
Your paragraph saying that the report concluded regulatory agencies have
"done a good job" can be considered misleading. The report was critical of
the agencies, not just for not educating the public, but for not doing
adequate research on the environmental effects. It is worth noting that
recent federal regulations took the consumer education recommendation
seriously, but did not come anywhere close to the NAS recommendations of
environmental research. The federal government basically formalized the
informal process that the transgenic crops were already going through,
anyway. The report criticized that process as inadequate for studying
environmental consequences. Therefore, the federal government and the
biotech companies have not addressed the concerns the report did raise.
Your statement "there is nothing to fear but fear itself" is not accurate.
The report did raise concerns and criticisms of the current process.
You statements concerning using biotech crops to feed the Third World are
misleading, to say the least. Biotech companies have recently acknowledged
that much of the promotion of using transgenic crops to "feed the world" is
misleading since very little of the research is geared towards those ends.
Furthermore, much of the food problems and environmental damage you
mentioned have not been caused by backward agricultural techniques, as you
imply. They have been cause largely by shifting the best farmland in these
areas from food production to export-geared cash crop production and large
international financial loans geared towards opening wilderness and
indigenous homelands to cash crop farming. The very companies producing
transgenic crops have played an important role in engineering that shift
and have stood in the away of local efforts to reverse the shift. It would
not be unfair to say that these companies have been part of the problem,
not part of the solution.
As I'm sure you know, several biotech/agribusiness firms have launched a
massive PR campaign to sell transgenic food to the American public. Often
such campaigns are riddled with misleading statements and dishonest
tactics. It is important for the journalists of this country to be
hard-nosed skeptics about the claims being made. The public is counting on
you to be fair and not mislead them. Please make an effort to educate
yourself and talk to some of the more informed critics of GM foods (e.g.,
Jeremy Rifkin) if you wish to write about this subject. Biotechnology and
genetic engineering have a great potential for agriculture. However, it is
our moral duty to the world to be honest, open and, above all, careful as
we proceed with transgenic crops in agriculture.
Thank you for you time,
John Shannonhouse
john_l_shannonhouse@yahoo.com
608-250-3029 (home)
608-274-4330 ex 1475
840 S Brooks St Apt 2
Madison WI 53715
=====
John Shannonhouse
Research and Development
Promega Corporation
Fitchburg, Wisconsin
john_l_shannonhouse@yahoo.com
jshannon@promega.com
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@cals.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@cals.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 11 2000 - 22:02:15 EDT