The Food Issue
2015
grainswest.com
49
It’s toorisky
BY LUCY SHARRATT
EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
GMOs—genetically modified organisms.
But what are they? And why does it
matter?
The amazing bounty of all the varieties
of fruits, vegetables and grains we eat is
thanks to farmers selecting and breeding
plants for hundreds of years. All of that
hard work relied on the reproductive
systems of organisms—until now. For the
first time in human history, we can put
genes from a fish into a tomato. This is
very new and di erent. And it comes with
new risks.
Genetic modification (GM) is also
called genetic engineering (GE), and it
means that scientists can make new plants
and animals, using genetic material from
totally di erent species. It’s a powerful
technology that, in theory, means we can
change foods to have any new properties
we imagine.
But theory is di erent from reality.
The reality is that organisms are highly
complex, and they also live in a complex
environment that can change how they
behave. This tremendous complexity of
nature means that, even though we can
actually move genes from one organism
directly into another, we still don’t know
all of the impacts—inside the organism
and in the wider environment.
When scientists move genes around in
the lab, they often see changes they didn’t
expect and couldn’t have predicted. This
is the fundamental risk and concern about
using this new technology. Do we know
enough to be releasing GMOs into our
environment and food system?
The risks get even more complicated
because there’s a lot of money to be made
from creating and owning new gene
sequences. A critical problem is that our
government doesn’t do any of its own
safety testing, but relies on data from
the companies who own the GM foods
and want to get them to market. Most of
the science behind the GM foods on our
shelves is actually classified as “confiden-
tial business information.”
But we often accept risks when there
are important benefits, so what are the
benefits of GM foods?
Four GM crops are grown in Canada:
corn, canola, soy and white sugar beet (for
sugar processing). These crops are mod-
ified for two reasons. First, most of them
are herbicide-tolerant so that the plants
can survive sprayings of certain herbi-
cides, while all the weeds around them
die. Second, crop plants are genetically
modified to be toxic to certain insects.
Herbicide sales in Canada went up 130
per cent between 1994 and 2011. Instead
of reducing chemical herbicides, herbicide
use has gone up with GM crops. One con-
sequence is a 90 per cent decline in the
Monarch butterfly. Intensive glyphosate
use on GM glyphosate-tolerant corn in the
U.S.- has virtually destroyed the milkweed
habitat for Monarchs.
Crops that kill insects might reduce the
use of other insecticides, but only until
the insects become resistant to the toxin
in the plants. This is happening across the
United States. More importantly, the plant
itself functions as a pesticide, and the
toxin it produces can harm soil organisms
and other insects.
What does this all mean in the grocery
store? Up to 70 per cent of all processed
foods could contain GMO ingredients
because most of our corn, canola and soy
crops are now GMO. But none of these
ingredients are labelled as being genetical-
ly modified.
Without mandatory labelling of GM
foods, how do you know what’s on the
shelves? Right now, the only GM fruit is
a papaya from Hawaii. And the only GM
vegetables are certain squash varieties
grown in the United States and a small
amount of sweet corn. The latest GM food
to be approved is an apple that doesn’t
turn brown after it’s sliced—for 15 to
18 days. This is the first GM fruit to be
grown in Canada, and it might be on the
market at the end of next year.
Genetic modification has, so far, o ered
little benefit, but it brings great risk. In the
meantime, Mother Nature and traditional
plant breeding have been very successful at
bringing us the foods we need.
Lucy Sharratt works in Ottawa as the
co-ordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology
Action Network (
cban.ca
), a campaign co-
alition of 16 organizations including farmer
associations, environmental groups and
international development organizations, all
of which have various concerns about genetic
engineering.
WE DON’T YET KNOWENOUGHABOUT GMOs TOBRING
THEM INTOOUR FOOD SYSTEMAND ENVIRONMENT
