Itch Magazine | 1 Mar 2005

Once Genetically Modified, Always Genetically Modified

KRISTIN PALITZA explains the cons and cons of Genetically Modified (GM) foodstuffs in the context of third world famine and agricultural development.

“My name is Mulima Taguma. I am a farmer from Munsaka, a small farming village in Zambia’s southern district of Kalomo. Times have been tough for me lately, as for my fellow farmers in the country. Our yields have decreased each year. My family lives just above subsistence level. As if our lives are not already difficult enough, I had to read in the newspaper that Zambia has been denied humanitarian aid from the United States (US) because our president rejects genetically modified (GM) food.

“Initially, I was very upset about this decision. My people are starving and the US proposed to help, but our politicians declined the offer. How irresponsible it is to deny millions of people food for some scientific reason, I thought, especially since Zambia’s agriculture has been challenged by depleted soil, drought and insect plagues.

“Food is food. What’s all the fuss about? I asked myself. I also heard that GM food often contains more nutritional elements than non-GM food. There was talk about ‘golden rice’ – a grain enriched with beta-carotene, which apparently helps the body to produce Vitamin A. Millions of malnourished people in the world need extra Vitamin A to prevent blindness and death, nutritionists say.

“It all sounded so good… until I started to read more about this strange new phenomenon – GM food – and it turned out that one had to eat an entire truckload of golden rice to take in the necessary quantity of Vitamin A. I think that it makes more sense to stick to good old farming methods and grow a variety of vitamin-rich vegetables. Especially because nutritionists say that very homogenous diets are the reason for Vitamin A deficiencies and that our bodies can only take up beta-carotene in combination with fat or oil.

“I also came to realise that there is a lot of naturally grown food available in Southern Africa that the US could have bought for the starving people in Zambia and its neighbours. More than one million tonnes of cereal are on hand in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa. But no, the US didn’t want to buy food from other countries – that wouldn’t support the US economy or involve loans from the World Bank. The US wanted to provide GM food produced by American farmers to boost their own agriculture and biotech industry. And since it is unable to export their GM crops to Europe, which has strict GM food regulations, they try to dump domestic food surpluses on Southern Africa.

“Politicians claim that there are no tests that show that GM food is dangerous, but I think that absence of evidence doesn’t make those ‘Frankenfoods’ automatically safe. Some of my friends even suspect that Southern Africa is supposed to become a huge, uncontrolled GM experiment, although that thought seems mind-boggling to me.

“Even though my country is economically weak and many Zambians are in need, my people still have the right to make their own decisions, independently from the requirements of rich donors. We are not obliged to obey the terms of benefactors without choosing what’s best for our country in the long term.

“Scientists say that each new GM crop has to be tested to make sure it does not produce allergenic proteins or has changed in any other way that could make it dangerous to eat. To guarantee that his really happens, we would need national and international biosafety regulations and reliable risk assessments. In Zambia, we certainly lack those. And apart from that, what seems to be safe in an isolated test environment is not necessarily safe when interacting with nature.

“I got more and more interested in the subject and came upon some frightening statistics. Scientists found that a certain GM bacteria used in the production of the food supplement tryptophan produced toxins that killed 37 people and permanently disabled 1500 others in the UK. They also said that human gut bacteria can absorb antibiotic resistant DNA from GM food, which would mean that people will become resistant to antibiotics. What’s more, researchers found that rats feeding on GM potatoes suffered stomach and intestine damage. Other scientists stated that allergies to soy, a now widely consumed GM food, have risen by 5% over the last year. Now, I am only a farmer and not a doctor, but these findings do scare me.

“From a farming point of view, I thought that, despite all dangers, the promise that GM crops will bring higher yields but need less pesticides and fertilizer was quite attractive – until I came upon a study that found that GM soy yielded up to 11% less than normal soy and needed five times more herbicide. I also found out that GM seeds are more expensive than conventional seeds, and because they are patented, farmers cannot save the new seeds for planting in the next season because the seeds are owned by biotech companies. The more I inquired about GM food, the less sense it made to me.

“I have been a farmer for many years. I know that problems like pest or weed control, drought and poor yield can be taken on with natural means, without using genetic ruses. Unfortunately, those farming methods hardly find financial support from developed countries because their economies don’t benefit from such aid. If they really wanted to help Southern Africa to improve our living conditions in the long run, First World countries would invest in sustainable agriculture, land reform, education and basic health care.

“The main cause for famine in Zambia is poverty. People starve because they are poor, powerless and don’t have land to grow food on. The world is not short of food, but many people are too poor to pay for it. This is not a problem that GM food can solve. In addition, structural adjustment policies in 1991 have led to falls in agricultural incomes in my country, while input prices have risen. Today, I have to pay twice as much for seeds and fertilizer than only a decade ago.

“Some of our neighbouring countries didn’t completely reject GM food like Zambia did. They requested to mill those GM grains to ensure that farmers wouldn’t plant them in their fields – but the US didn’t like that idea, either. In my opinion, these countries had a valuable point. Starving people want to eat. Yes, that’s right. But they also think about the months to come. They know that what they have eaten is gone forever but what they plant will give their families a future – and by sowing GM crops they would have contaminated native harvest. I also hear that the US only offered to provide maize, ignoring crops like yams, cassava and millet that are far more important to us African farmers.

“As I understand, a huge danger when dealing with GM crops is cross-pollination. Pollen is easily spread by wind and insects, and when this happens, the grain produced in those fields is genetically altered, too, scientists say. Once part of the food chain, genetic modification is irreversible. But how will farmers be able to keep GM crops absolutely separate from non-GM crops during harvesting?

“Studies show that zero contamination is next to impossible. Once GM food, always GM food. Zambia relies heavily on exports to Europe, but those could be jeopardised because European consumers don’t want to eat genetically altered food. Although the European Union recently lifted its ban on GM food in favour of strict labelling, this doesn’t mean that consumers will buy it. Actually, nowhere in the world do people seem to want GM food. Only huge biotech firms, politicians and some scientists, do.

“GM crops have often been inserted with broad-spectrum herbicides that wipe out everything with leaves except the crop. As a farmer, I rely on weeds, and I am afraid that those herbicides will destroy wildlife and biodiversity. Many insects won’t have enough to feed on, which will diminish the number of insects, which in turn will influence the number of animals feeding on bugs. And this will manipulate our entire natural cycle. I am also worried that pest-resistant GM crops might accidentally poison insects or that pests might quickly become resistant to the toxins in the GM crops.

“I became a farmer because my father was a farmer as his father was and his father. But I also became a farmer because I love nature, which has provided the human species for thousands of centuries with everything it needs to live. That’s why I think that food should be natural and stay that way. Chicken genes inserted in apples or fish genes in strawberries just don’t make sense to me. And how can it possibly be good for people to eat corn whose genes have been manipulated to kill insects?

“A few months ago, my family received a letter from my nephew who studies in London. He wrote to us about a restaurant visit where he was served a tomato salad that tasted strangely fishy to him. When he told the waiter about his observation, the waiter nodded and confirmed that those tomatoes were genetically modified with fish genes.

“After thinking about the pros and cons of GM food over the past weeks, it dawned on me that genetic alterations rather improve the US economy than stop starvation. It seems to be the goal of huge US agricultural and biotech conglomerates, which hold most of the patents for genetic modification, to quickly flood the world with GM products until everything becomes GM. And the rest of the world has to watch helplessly.

“I am just a little farmer and there is nothing much I can do about world politics. But I would like to plead to those big corporations to let us consumers choose what we want to eat and to let us smallholders live. I was petrified when I heard about a farmer who has been sued by Canadian biotech giant Monsanto because its patented GM seeds blew into the farmer’s field and took roots. The farmer was found guilty of stealing Monsanto’s property and fined $20,000 plus legal costs. Since then, Monsanto has threatened 400 more farmers with legal action.

“I am just a little farmer, but I can read and write, and my son knows how to use this thing called the internet – so now I know what’s going on in the world. And I will fight for my rights.”