GM Watch
  • Main Menu
    • Home
    • News
      • Newsletter subscription
      • Daily Digest
      • News Reviews
      • News Languages
    • Articles
      • GM Myth Makers
      • GM Reports
      • GM Quotes
      • GM Myths
      • Non-GM successes
      • GM Firms
        • Monsanto: a history
        • Monsanto: resources
        • Bayer: a history
        • Bayer: resources
    • Videos
      • Latest Videos
      • Must see videos
      • Cornell videos
      • Agriculture videos
      • Labeling videos
      • Animals videos
      • Corporations videos
      • Corporate takeover videos
      • Contamination videos
      • Latin America videos
      • India videos
      • Asia videos
      • Food safety videos
      • Songs videos
      • Protests videos
      • Biofuel myths videos
      • Index of GM crops and foods
      • Index of speakers
      • Health Effects
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donations
    • How donations will help us
News and comment on genetically modified foods and their associated pesticides    
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Newsletter subscription
    • News Reviews
    • News Languages
      • Notícias em Português
      • Nieuws in het Nederlands
      • Nachrichten in Deutsch
    • Archive
      • 2021 articles
      • 2020 articles
      • 2019 articles
      • 2018 articles
      • 2017 articles
      • 2016 articles
      • 2015 articles
      • 2014 articles
      • 2013 articles
      • 2012 articles
      • 2011 articles
      • 2010 articles
      • 2009 articles
      • 2008 articles
      • 2007 articles
      • 2006 articles
      • 2005 articles
      • 2004 articles
      • 2003 articles
      • 2002 articles
      • 2001 articles
      • 2000 articles
  • Articles
    • GM Myth Makers
    • GM Reports
    • How donations will help us
    • GM Quotes
    • GM Myths
    • Non-GM successes
    • GM Firms
      • Monsanto: a history
      • Monsanto: resources
      • Bayer: a history
      • Bayer: resources
  • Videos
    • Index of speakers
    • Glyphosate Videos
    • Latest Videos
    • Must see videos
    • Health Effects
    • Cornell videos
    • Agriculture videos
    • Labeling videos
    • Animals videos
    • Corporations videos
    • Corporate takeover videos
    • Contamination videos
    • Latin America videos
    • India videos
    • Asia videos
    • Food safety videos
    • Songs videos
    • Protests videos
    • Biofuel myths videos
    • Index of GM crops and foods
  • Contact
  • About
  • Donations

LATEST NEWS

  • Farmers and rights groups boycott food summit over big business links

  • EU Commission breaking own rules to give green light for new GMOs?

  • Australia: New South Wales ag minister sacrifices GMO discretion

  • The Monsanto Papers: Deadly secrets, corporate corruption, and one man's search for justice

  • Researchers want GMO transparency

GMWatch Facebook cornfield banner

SCIENCE SUPPORTS REGULATION OF GENE EDITING

Plant tissue cultures

GENE EDITING: UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES AND RISKS

Damaged DNA on fire

GENE-EDITED CROPS & FOODS

Help stop the new threat

GM Fed pig

LATEST VIDEOS

  • Seed keepers and truth tellers: From the frontlines of GM agriculture
  • Myths and Truths of Gene-Edited Foods
  • Dangers of gene-edited foods

News Menu

  • Latest News
  • News Reviews
  • Archive
  • Languages

Please support GMWatch

Donations

You can donate via Paypal or credit/debit card.

Some of you have opted to give a regular donation. This is greatly appreciated as it helps place us on a more stable financial basis. Thank you for your support!

Gene-edited and other GM crops "highly unlikely" to make food system more sustainable

Details
Published: 16 November 2020
Twitter

Wheat field at sunset

New review details failures of first-generation GM crops, points to unintended effects of new GM. Report by Claire Robinson

Will genetically modified gene-edited crops, foods and animals improve the sustainability of food and farming? A comprehensive new scientific review addresses this question by investigating the record of old-style transgenic GM crops and the potential and reality of newer gene-edited crops and animals.

The review, by Dr Allison Wilson of the Bioscience Resource Project in the US, is titled, "Will gene-edited and other GM crops fail sustainable food systems?" and forms part of a forthcoming Elsevier book, Rethinking Food and Agriculture. It takes in GM golden rice, GM herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops, and GM Bt insecticidal crops, and looks at the unintended effects of both old-style GM crops and new gene-edited crops.

It finds that "the widespread use of Bt and HT crops has led to the problematic development of pest resistance, superweeds, and secondary pests. In response to these problems, "farmers increased both insecticide and herbicide use. Some also increased tillage and other mechanical methods of weed control."

The review notes that attempts to develop GM golden rice have been plagued with technical difficulties. These include unintended effects such as defective growth and performance and low levels of beta-carotene, the substance that is intended to be converted to vitamin A in the bodies of the malnourished people targeted for the rice.

Other GM crops show a wide variety of unintended traits. Research on large populations of transformants – cells or organisms, such as plants, into which foreign DNA has been introduced – reveal frequent "defects in basic agronomic traits such as yield, height, stem, and leaf morphology" (structure).

Contrary to claims by the GMO lobby that plants with unintended traits are screened out before they are brought to market, Dr Wilson points out that even commercialised GM crops contain many unintended traits, many of which have implications for sustainability. MON810 maize, for example, has numerous compositional differences compared with the non-GM parent crop, including increased lignin (which makes cell walls more rigid), the presence of an allergen, and increased moisture content. MON810 also has negative impacts on beneficial soil organisms. A table in the review (Table 13.1) lists examples of some of the many unintended traits that have been identified in commercial GM crops.

Gene editing

Will gene editing increase the precision and thus effectiveness of genetic engineering technologies? Dr Wilson writes that the evidence thus far shows that gene editing is "also prone" to introducing unintended effects. This is partly because virtually all gene editing protocols utilize standard GM techniques and also because "new evidence from both animals and plants indicates that gene editing itself can result in unintended mutations at or near the target site". Numerous studies cited in the review "support the conclusion that plant gene editing outcomes are imprecise and unpredictable, and that, depending on the combination of techniques used, gene editing can be highly mutagenic" (causing DNA damage).

As with older-style GM, Dr Wilson notes, the number and type of unintended effects introduced using gene editing will depend in part on the new trait being introduced and in part on the unintended effects wrought on the genome by the techniques themselves. So contrary to the messaging of pro-GMO lobby groups and organisations, Dr Wilson says that there can be no shortcuts when it comes to regulating these techniques: "All benefits, hazards, and risks must therefore be assessed experimentally on a case-by-case basis for each independently derived nGM trait and crop... This should include whole genome sequencing comparisons with an isogenic line and -omic [molecular profiling] analyses."

Dr Wilson concludes, "While in theory it might someday be possible to create a GM crop that meets the broad requirements of sustainable agriculture, in practice this seems highly unlikely to ever happen."

European Commission should take note

The findings of the new review are timely for the European Union. The European Commission's Farm to Fork Strategy of May 2020 plans to improve the sustainability of the food and agriculture chain – and the Commission thinks new GM techniques such as gene editing might play a part.

By 2030 Farm to Fork plans to reduce the use of fertilisers by at least 20% and chemical pesticides by 50% and turn 25% of agricultural land over to organic farming. But the Farm to Fork report also contains a highly contentious statement that the Commission is "carrying out a study which will look at the potential of new genomic techniques to improve sustainability along the food supply chain".

The Commission says, "new innovative techniques, including biotechnology and the development of bio-based products, may play a role in increasing sustainability, provided they are safe for consumers and the environment while bringing benefits for society as a whole". According to the Commission, new GM techniques can "accelerate the process of reducing dependency on pesticides".

EU agriculture ministers gave their stamp of approval to Farm to Fork and were quick to seize the opportunity to push new GM, telling the media that the EU should make use of "new innovative" breeding techniques, including gene editing, to boost sustainability of food production.

Both the agriculture ministers and the Commission need to carefully examine the findings of Dr Wilson's review, which offers crucial information for policymakers considering how to regulate new GM techniques. And the Commission must address all the points made in the review in its study on new GM and sustainability.

Menu

Home

News

News Archive

News Reviews

Videos

Articles

GM Myth Makers

GM Reports

GM Myths

GM Quotes

How Donations Will Help Us

Contacts

Contact Us

About

Facebook

Twitter

RSS

Content 1999 - 2021 GMWatch.
Web Development By SCS Web Design