"Dear Editor,
As a mother and grandmother, entrusted with feeding and nourishing my family, I can understand the fear of GMO foods. But as a farmer who uses GMO seeds to grow soybeans, corn and other crops, I don’t believe there’s any reason to be afraid of this technology.I believe the fear stems from the fact that most people are multiple generations removed from the farm and do not understand the function of GMOs in agriculture.For thousands of years, our ancestors have been genetically modifying plants and seeds through plant breeding. Today, through biotechnology, scientists can make those natural processes happen much faster.GMO stands for genetically modified organism. To create one, a scientist alters a seed’s DNA to achieve a desired outcome, such as making it more tolerant to drought or decreasing the need for pesticides. These changes help farmers become more productive and produce a better crop.On our family farm, for instance, we use varieties of biotech-enhanced corn that are resistant to a common Alabama pest called the southwestern corn borer. Similar varieties help farmers manage pests, diseases and environmental stresses in soybeans, corn and many other crops. These varieties help us increase our yields and provide an abundant supply of food, feed, fuel and fiber to the world.The use of GMO crops has also reduced the number of chemical applications needed to produce the crop. This is beneficial for the environment because we’re conserving fuel, reducing emissions from our tractors as well as reducing the amount of actual chemicals being applied. Overall, our carbon footprint is being reduced because of GMOs.There are numerous reasons for using GMOs, but the final one I’ll mention is because I know the seeds went through a rigorous safety-approval process. Not one, not two, but three government entities — the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency — work together to inspect and approve each and every genetically altered seed variety and plant brought to the market. This process is thorough and time-intensive, lasting between 10-15 years. What is really reassuring is that in the 12-plus years modern biotech crops have been commercially grown, there has not been a single ecosystem disrupted or person made ill.As Americans, we are lucky to have so many food choices. You have the choice to consume foods that use GMO ingredients or not, but my hope is for you to understand the benefits of each choice. With that said, I will leave you with this final thought: If you have questions about how food is grown or raised, I encourage you to ask the people who have the answers: farmers.
Sincerely,
Annie Dee
Aliceville, AL
Dear Editor:
My family has been farmers since time immemorial, and I am completely against genetically modified organisms (GMOs), so I felt rather patronized by Mrs. Dee’s letter to the Editor last week. I understand that she is a farmer of some note and merit who has chosen to champion the standard of big-business agriculture and who believes the public relations machine of Monsanto and companies like it. That’s her prerogative. She seems to think that the technology of agribusiness GMOs will provide the world with an overwhelming abundance of food, feed, fuel, and fiber –I think it’s the job of the indomitable family farm. I can’t let America’s farms become minions of profiting international agri-business corporations.
Essentially, there are four things I would like to point out about GMOs: 1) There is a big difference between hybridization and genetic engineering, 2) Genetic engineering has already caused damaging ecological effects, and could cause irreversible damage, 3) GMOs have not been absolutely proven safe for humans, and 4) When it comes to choice of consumption we don’t have that choice --it’s forced upon us.
There is a difference between hybridization, which farmers have been doing for thousands of years, and genetic engineering, which is a relatively new technology. They are two totally different farming technologies. Hybridization has been used since the beginning of agriculture - it has given us specific breeds with specific traits within a species. Farmers would breed one type of cattle with another type of cattle to create a hybrid that had the best characteristics of both types. Farmers would also improve grain harvests through hybridizing one variety of corn with another type of corn.
The problem with modern genetic engineering is that lab-created GMOs combine genes between barriers that cannot occur naturally. Deliberately combining genetic material of one genus with genetic material from a different taxonomic genus is a far cry from the combining of genes within a species by hybridization. For example, Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria DNA is inserted into corn DNA to create genetically modified BT corn. This corn was created to produce the bacterial Bt toxin that is poisonous to certain insect pests, such as the southwestern corn borer. So far, bacillus thuringiensis DNA has been added to corn, potatoes, sugar beets, soy, canola, and cotton. Besides adding DNA from different creatures, scientists also change natural gene sequences; thus creating organisms with characteristics that could never occur in nature or even through hybridization. There is also the problem of irreversible genetic pollution in the environment caused by GMOs.
Theoretically, if a genetically modified salmon bred with wild salmon, unnatural genes would be introduced into the wild population that will remain forever. The same problem of genetic pollution could be seen in corn, wheat, rice or any other crop that has been modified. A hybrid tomato cross-pollinating with a non-hybrid tomato isn't going to radically change the tomato, while a GMO tomato could introduce genetic material from fish or another organism into other tomatoes and totally change what a tomato is. Cross-pollination could totally wipe out open-pollinated heirloom varieties of corn and other crops and make organically grown crops obsolete. A 2004 study showed that GMO creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera) transmitted its genes by wind pollination to different Agrostis species almost nine miles away.
Do GMOs really help the environment by reducing pesticide use consequently conserving fuel and reducing carbon emissions? Not really. Washington State University agronomist Charles Benbrook notes that “genetically engineered (GE) crops have been responsible for an increase of 383 million pounds of herbicide use in the US over the first 13 years of commercial use of GE crops (1996–2008). This dramatic increase in the volume of herbicides applied swamps the decrease in insecticide use attributable to GE corn and cotton, making the overall chemical footprint of today’s GE crops decidedly negative… The primary cause of the increase [is] the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds.”
Resistance occurs naturally when a pest is subjected to intense repeated use of a single pesticide or herbicide. This has already occurred with Bollworm resistance to BT cotton in the Australia, China, Spain and the United States. Armyworms have already become resistant to genetically modified corn created by Dupont-Dow and grown in Florida and Puerto Rico. (And here I’d like to make a side note that Field Crops Research (2005) wrote that field tests of Bt corn showed that they took longer to reach maturity and produced up to 12% lower yields than their non-GMO counterparts. The International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability (2013) just published a study that reports conventional plant breeding, not genetic engineering, is responsible for yield increases in major U.S. crops and that GMO crops can’t even take credit for reductions in pesticide use.)
There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the claim that GMOs have never made a person ill. However, a 2011 Canadian study looked at the presence of the BT toxin in non-pregnant women, pregnant women and fetal blood. All groups had detectable levels of the BT toxin in their blood, including 93% of pregnant women and 80% of fetuses. The truth is that we don’t really know what effect GMOs could have on the human body or what the effect of transference of genetic material to might be. One German study showed that when bees released into a field of BT canola fed the canola pollen to younger bees, the bacteria in the gut of the young bees took on the traits of the canola’s modified genes, proving that genetically modified DNA in pollen can be transferred to bees though their digestive system. In 1999, Andrew Chesson of the University of Aberdeen warned that testing of GMOs might be flawed and might allow harmful substances into the human food supply. You have to remember that the FDA approved commercial production of GMOs is based on studies conducted by the companies who created them and profit from their sale; there seems to be a lack of hard independent scientific data on the safety of consuming GMOs. There are thirty countries around the world that restrict or ban GMOs because they haven’t actually been proven to be safe for human consumption.
Do you have a choice of whether to consume genetically modified organisms or not? Not in the United States of America you don’t. Even if you could directly remove it from your diet, it is still fed to meat animals here in the United States. According to the USDA, 93% of soy, 93% of cotton, and 86% of corn grown in the U.S. are GMO. It is estimated that over 90% of canola grown is GMO. There are also commercially produced GMO varieties of sugar beets, squash and Hawaiian Papaya. Currently, there were no genetically modified animals approved for use as food, but a genetically modified salmon is close to being approved. It is estimated that GMOs are now present in more than 80% of packaged products in the average U.S. grocery store. In Europe any products containing more than .09% (point zero nine percent) genetically modified ingredients are labeled; however the United States has no such labeling requirement. You really have no freedom of choice in what you consume. Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio says it best: “Its’ not about taste. For me, it’s not even about the science. It's about freedom. We call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave, we export freedom around the globe, we try to anyway, we fight wars in the name of freedom, and yet I don't have the freedom to know what’s in my food.”
Respectfully yours,
Tom Clardy
Reform, AL 35481
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