The Lid Is Off Pandora’s Box

by Jason Mark – August 23, 2010Follow Jason Mark on Twitter

Genetically Modified Canola Is Loose in the Environment

Since the advent of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), critics have warned about the dangers of manipulating plants’ inherent makeup. Ecologists cautioned that genetically engineered (GE) crops could spread throughout the environment, creating new organisms that scientists never designed, forming “superweeds” that would be hard to eliminate, and threatening biodiversity — the cornerstone of any healthy ecosystem.

Biotech companies like Monstanto poo-pooed such concerns. Well, turns out the Cassandras were right.

According to a study by a team of researchers from the University of Arkansas, GE canola has gone feral across much of North Dakota. The researchers traveled 3,000 miles across the back roads of North Dakota taking canola samples outside of farm fields. They found thick populations of GM canola across the state, including plants “that were honestly in the middle of nowhere. And there’s a lot of nowhere in North Dakota,” in the words of researcher Cindy Sagers.

Bottom line: The GMOs have gone far beyond where they were originally planted.

This was bound to happen. Here in the United States, more than 90 percent of commercially grown canola has been genetically modified to be herbicide-resistant. Also known as rapeseed, canola is a mustard-like, multi-flowered plant primarily grown for its abundant seeds that are used to make edible oils and livestock feeds. The abundant seeds, of course, also mean that canola is the perfect plant to spread itself. According to the recent study, 80 percent of wild canola in North Dakota has at least one of two herbicide-resistant genes.

Why is this a problem? Because as the GE genes spread to wild species they risk reducing the diversity of naturally occurring canola strains. And as biodiversity shrinks so does the resilience of the entire canola population. Monocultures are simply more susceptible to being wiped out by a single pest or disease. Just remember the Irish Potato Famine.

Professor Sagers’ team discovered another problem: The cross breeding of GE strains, creating varieties of GMOs that the lab technicians never thought of. At least two samples showed that canola varieties manufactured by Bayer and Monsanto had crossed to produce a plant resistant to both glyphosate and gluphosinate,  commonly used commercial herbicides. This is exactly the “Frankenfood” scenario that environmentalists have long warned about — a human creation that gets out of control. Or, in the words of a Fox News reporter who recently blogged about the study: It’s “like Frankenstein shambling over the countryside.”

The appearance of a cross-bred GMO raises another specter — the birth of “superweeds” that, once out in the environment, will be hard eliminate or contain. Since the engineered genes appear to be highly mobile they could potentially be transferred to pernicious weeds, making farmers’ jobs more difficult. Canola has few weedy relatives — but then one farmer’s crop is another’s weeds, and a corn farmer a few hundred miles southeast of the Dakotas wouldn’t be too happy about canola that wouldn’t respond to herbicides. In the end, conventional farmers end up on an herbicide treadmill, and find themselves spending more time trying to reduce weeds with the other methods. Testifying in July before the House of Representatives, corn grower Tony Roush complained: “The advent of glyphosate-tolerant weeds necessitated the return to using tillage for weed control, eliminating the time savings that was initially afforded by using biotech crops.”

“Despite well documented proof that glyphosate tolerant weeds were becoming a significant problem, the Monsanto scientist denied that resistance existed and instructed me to increase my application rates,” the Indiana farmer reported, according to a story in Western Farm Press.

Monsanto’s resistance to engaging with critics reveals one more problem with GMO technology — a lack of transparency. It’s difficult for scientists like the University of Arkansas’ Sagers to understand how exactly feral GM varieties are interacting with wild relatives because biotech patents prevent anyone except the patent-holder from doing experiments on the organisms.

“Existing US Department of Agriculture policy states that if the transgenic form behaves no differently to the non-transgenic form, then there isn’t any special concern,” she told the agriculture website Stock & Land.  “But of course the only ones at liberty to do the experiments on the GM forms are the biotech companies themselves.”

So the only ones who can legally find out what we should be worrying about when it comes to GMOs are the very same people who have a profit-incentive not to tell us anything. Which likely means more trouble to come from the Pandora's Box of GMO technology.

Jason Mark, Editor, Earth Island Journal
Jason Mark is a writer-farmer with a deep background in environmental politics.  In addition to his work in the Earth Island Journal, his writings have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The Progressive, Utne Reader, Orion, Gastronomica, Grist.org, Alternet.org, E magazine, and Yes!  He is a co-author of Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots and also co-author with Kevin Danaher of Insurrection: Citizen Challenges to Corporate Power. When not writing and editing, he co-manages Alemany Farm, San Francisco’s largest food production site.

Email this post to a friend.

Write to the editor about this post.

View Posts by Date View Posts by Author