One of the primary concerns with transgenic (aka genetically modified) crops is the risk of genetic contamination, i.e. the transfer of engineered genes to wild versions of the same plant. The corporations involved in genetic engineering, such as Monsanto and Bayer CropScience, have time and again assured regulators and the public that this risk is minimal. Still, the government mandates “buffer zones” around such crops’ plantings and the corporations who sell the seeds have created their own protocols to ensure this kind of thing never happens.

Well, surprise! It’s happened. Big time.

Scientists from the University of Arkansas announced at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting the results of a study that showed genetically engineered pesticide-resistant canola growing like a weed in North Dakota. They found that up to 80 percent of wild canola in their sample from various North Dakota roadsides contained genes that conferred resistance to either glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready pesticide) or gluphosinate (from Bayer’s LibertyLink seeds).

But it gets better, er, worse. The scientists also found wild canola with both properties. And as lead scientist Cynthia Sagers observed in an accompanying news report, “these feral populations of canola have been part of the landscape for several generations” — plant generations, mind you, not human generations. Still, this is not a new phenomenon. It’s true that biotech companies do sell seeds with multiple forms of pesticide resistance, so-called “stacked trait” seeds. But these wild canola plants managed this interbreeding feat all by their lonesome.

So, these genetically engineered plants — which, when out in the wild, are considered weeds — are cross-pollinating and transferring “alien” genes that confer pesticide resistance. The next step in the chain is for the canola to interbreed with other related weeds. Suddenly, the prospect of our nation’s bread basket infested with superweeds becomes very, very real.

Monsanto issued a statement that didn’t exactly address the issue at hand:

Tom Nickson, head of environmental policy at Monsanto in St Louis, Missouri, told Nature, “Those familiar with canola know that these plants are readily found on roadsides and in areas near farmers’ fields. This was true prior to the introduction of GM canola, and a common source is seed that has scattered during harvest and fallen off a truck during transport.”

Okay. No one is accusing Monsanto of culpability in the scourge of roadside canola. It’s the utter failure of the company’s safety protocols that’s the issue. Time and time again, Monsanto and its ilk have promised that this sort of thing would never happen; that the systems in place to prevent it are foolproof. Well, I think we know now who the fools are …

A report last year suggested that farmers routinely ignore planting requirements and buffer zones when it comes to genetically engineered crops. And now we see the result. Perhaps this news will give the USDA pause as it considers whether to allow Monsanto’s GM alfalfa to be planted this spring, which was recently halted by a federal judge for insufficient protections against exactly this kind of phenomenon.

Either way, what we’re seeing is what some would have considered a worst-case scenario a few years ago — transgenic plants growing in the wild and creating versions that don’t currently exist, even in a lab. Scared yet?

cross-posted from Grist with permission

Photo: Aerial Photography

One thing we know for sure is that we just don’t know enough about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and biotechnology to know that in planting their seeds, we aren’t affecting future generations’ ability to feed themselves. For many people, the fact that they’re corporately controlled and thus make for bad social policy, or that they genetically contaminate other species and as such increase claims against farmers, while undermining a farmer’s ability to save seed and be self sufficient, are enough of an argument against their propagation. But in Claire Hope Cummings’ excellent book, Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds, she weaves in the stories of the people and places behind a phenomenon that’s gotten a few rich, while farmers struggle with shrinking margins.

Almost all of the foods we eat — including rice, corn, wheat, soy, potatoes, cassava, taro, sugar, coffee, canola, sunflowers and many other fruits and vegetables — have been patented or genetically modified. The genetic modification of which Cummings writes is a novel act, and one that could never be replicated in nature. This is because while traditional breeding has crossed similar species to find the hardiest plants, genetically engineered foods today are jumping the species barrier, so that you might have fish genes in a tomatoes, for example. Unfortunately, this means that there is no precedent for how these novel species could act in our ecosystem in the long term. Cummings explains it this way:

In itself, gene flow is not necessarily harmful. What matters is the kind of molecule that is moving around, where it goes, and how it behaves once it gets there. When transgenes [or genetically modified genes] used to modifying one plant move into another plant, they can become unstable and behave unpredictably. When natural genes do this, they are governed by biological rules that organisms have developed over millennia to deal with gene flow and to keep species separate. When artificially engineered genes do this, however, different rules come into play. Genetic engineering by definition overcomes these rules in order to create new genes and organisms. Genetic engineering is the very essence of invasiveness, by design.

Cummings also looks at how GMOs came to be in regulatory purgatory, where a risk assessment — a concept which requires proof of harm, and was meant to be used for chemical pollution and devised long before the concept of genetic pollution  — has been used for a practice that involved a lot of uncertainty. A risk assessment is used in place of the “precautionary principle,” which argues that where there is uncertainty, government must act first to protect the public. This is the standard in most other countries. Meanwhile the FDA, USDA and EPA do not coordinate their oversight, and these agencies haven’t been taking into account newer science that questions the efficacy and long-term viability of biotechnology in agriculture. Case in point, no new laws regulating GMOs have been put in place since these seeds were given the green light for mass planting in the US. Cummings writes:

The regulatory system we have today is the same one, with some minor exceptions, that was adopted in the early 1990s. It effectively exempted this one industry from our most important environmental and consumer protection laws, which guarantee our right to know what is in the products we consume and our right to sue manufacturers when the government fails to protect our safety.

Increasingly, people want more information about the food they eat. While 80% of processed foods at the supermarket in the US contain GMOs, they are not required to be labeled. Yet public opinion polls regularly show that around 90% of Americans want these products labeled. Meanwhile, in Europe and Japan all GMOs are labeled, and companies have no issues with compliance. GMOs can only either produce pesticides, or express immunity to herbicide. In other words, they have so far had less luck fulfilling promises to add value for consumers, which might mean that adding these traits is harder to pull off than the corporations would like us to believe. Cummings summed up our regulatory failures this way:

The problem is, GMO manufacturers are a chemical industry posing as agriculture. They say they are about creating life. Their ads always show happy faces and healthy plants. But what they are really about is death, the poisoning of weeds and insects. Transgenic plants are created by agrochemical companies and used in the same way that those companies’ chemicals are used: as pest controls. If these plants were treated as chemicals, they might be handled more carefully.

To me, this chapter, “Trespass,” is the most compelling part of the book. Cummings discusses here how contamination is one of the biggest risks we take with the planting of GMOs. Contamination occurs through cross-pollination, but also when GMO seeds are mixed in with conventional seeds — and the wind, animals and human activity are all involved, adding a level of unpredictability. Co-existence of GMO and conventional species is a myth the industry is happy to propagate. This is because they know very well that as they hold patents to their seeds, and those seeds cross-pollinate, they also own the new contaminated seeds — thus it makes good business sense. But does it make ecological sense?

Uncertain Peril is a muckraking journalist’s take on biotechnology written like a thriller. It is also a look at seed-saving historically, along with the agro-ecological solutions arising to combat the so-called inevitability of genetically modified food. While many people have black and white opinions about GMOs, Cummings gives fuel to the fire of those who believe that perhaps this is just a flawed technology, and that there are better ways to combat hunger and to be food secure. Sustainable agriculture has been proven the antidote to corporately dominated and risk-laden food. Here is Cummings again:

It is essential that our solutions be place-based. The issue of place is often neglected in the search for sustainability. Placeless solutions become too focused on the technology and not enough on locality. Place is essential to the sustainability equasion because our solutions have to be locally adapted and locally accepted.

Too often we think the solutions to our problems can always come through technology. Hopefully this book, published in 2008, will be widely read and we can begin to have a more nuanced discussion about the technologies that truly benefit us as a species and those to which we should say “enough.”