Bayer, the German pesticide and seed company, has agreed to establish a $10 billion fund that aims to resolve current litigation and address potential future litigation over its Roundup-branded glyphosate weedkiller. The company simultaneously states that "it is important to emphasize that these resolutions contain no admission of liability or wrongdoing." And it adds that "the extensive body of science indicates that Roundup does not cause cancer, and therefore, is not responsible for the illnesses alleged in this litigation." In other words, the company is giving in to trial-lawyer extortion.
The company is merely stating scientific facts that decades of research have shown that glyphosate is not a carcinogen when used as directed. This is the scientific conclusion of every safety and regulatory agency that has evaluated the compound over the past 30 years, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, and the Food and Agriculture Organization.
So what is going on? The trial lawyers are the willing (and highly compensated) instruments of the longstanding activist campaign against modern biotech crops spearheaded by groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. These activists hate the fact that the popular herbicide is used by millions of farmers around the world to clear weeds out of their fields planted in commodity crops genetically enhanced to resist it.
Scandalously, an activist scientist working with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) managed to get the agency to classify glyphosate as a "probable human carcinogen." Two weeks after publication of the IARC report, the scientist Christopher Portier cashed in on his activism by signing a lucrative contract to act as a litigation consultant with law firms engaged in bringing lawsuits first against Monsanto and later Bayer alleging that exposure to Roundup had caused their clients' cancers.
Using bogusly generated claims about glyphosate's carcinogenicity, trial lawyers have managed to bamboozle sympathetic juries into awarding hundreds of millions of dollars to their clients.
"All that this settlement shows is that the relevant science is no match for the combination of sensationalist tort cases, which exploit victims with a rare cancer, and the propaganda of a cynical agency, which appears to have engaged in fraud to find glyphosate a 'probable carcinogen'," observes former Stony Brook University School of Medicine cancer epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat in an email. "Over a dozen national and international agencies (including the U.S. EPA, Health Canada, and the European Food Safety Authority) have concluded that glyphosate is not a carcinogen and is safe when used as directed. Nevertheless, Bayer has clearly decided that reasoned examination of the facts cannot overcome the power of a narrative that reinforces well-worn fears, rewards greedy lawyers, and only harms farmers and the poor."
Bottom line: Activist-generated scientifically bogus extortion worked.
The post Bayer Surrenders to Trial-Lawyer Extortion Over Bogus Glyphosate Weedkiller Cancer Claims appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Last week, a California state court handed down a $289-million verdict against Monsanto, the St. Louis-based agribusiness titan. The massive jury award to plaintiff Dewayne Johnson, a former school groundskeeper, comes after Johnson and his attorneys argued successfully that his repeated on-the-job use of Monsanto pesticides caused him to develop a terminal case of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer.
Monsanto, now part of Bayer after a recent merger, has vowed to appeal the ruling. But Johnson's suit may be the first of thousands of similar lawsuits the company could face.
Johnson's case centered on his use of two of Monsanto's glyphosate-containing pesticides, Ranger Pro and Roundup, the latter the most popular pesticide in this country. Johnson's attorneys argued Monsanto failed to warn their client about the potential risks of using their products, namely that such use could cause harm, if not cancer.
Monsanto markets its glyphosate products as effective weed-killing pesticide for homeowners and other non-agricultural users. Roundup in particular is also commonly marketed to farmers raising Monsanto's GMO "Roundup-ready" seeds, which the company has modified to ensure they are resistant to glyphosate. It's also being used by farmers increasingly on non-GMO crops as a tool to kill and dry out crops in order to facilitate harvesting.
Does glyphosate cause cancer? The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization, concluded in 2015 that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans." That conclusion appears to have been sufficient to sway jurors.
Indeed, if it's true that Monsanto's products caused Johnson's cancer and the company failed to warn him of the potential for its products to do so, then I am very confident the court was right to rule in Johnson's favor. (Reasonable people may quibble over whether the award of nearly $300 million is too high or, I suppose, not high enough.)
But that if is a big one. Indeed, critics of the ruling are sounding the alarm over the science that formed the backbone of the jury's ruling, noting the IARC conclusions are a controversial outlier when it comes to glyphosate research.
"Monsanto's attorneys disputed that study and said the product has been regulated for 40 years and is not listed as a carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency," notes a Bloomberg Environment report on the California ruling.
But it's not just Monsanto that disputes the science. Earlier this year, Dr. Guy-André Pelouze, a medical doctor and surgeon who's done cancer research, wrote a lengthy piece defending glyphosate and lamenting that despite numerous studies' "failure to find any evidence of glyphosate's carcinogenicity," the media's "irrational and even hysterical" reporting about glyphosate has served to poison the well of public opinion.
Reason's Ron Bailey this week called the California jury's ruling "an injustice" because, he writes, it was based on faulty science.
"Given the overwhelming scientific evidence that glyphosate is not carcinogenic, it is well beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury has been badly misled into getting its verdict wrong in this case," Bailey concludes.
Just how overwhelming is the evidence?
"Today's decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews—and conclusions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the world—support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer," said Monsanto vice president Scott Partridge in a statement issued after last week's ruling that also expressed sympathy for Johnson.
The mountains of studies Partridge cites place the scientific consensus about the lack of a link between glyphosate and cancer on par with the vast evidence demonstrating the safety of GMOs generally and with the overwhelming consensus that manmade factors cause climate change.
I have no idea if Monsanto products cause cancer generally or, specifically, whether they caused Johnson's cancer. Johnson's cancer is a tragedy, whatever its cause. If it's Monsanto's fault, then it's a tragedy for which Monsanto should be held responsible. But the scientific consensus around glyphosate seems to point overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. That makes it much more likely that this month's ruling against Monsanto is itself a tragedy—perhaps the first in a long line of others to come—and one that a California appeals court should reverse.
The post Rounding Up the Science Behind the Monsanto Glyphosate Ruling appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>I am truly sorry that DeWayne Johnson is suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), but years of scientific research has determined that it is exceedingly unlikely, despite the outrageous verdict of a California jury on Friday, that he contracted NHL from using the herbicide glyphosate. Applying the relatively low standard of proof required in California civil courts that a claim is "more likely to be true than not true," the jury awarded Johnson a $289 million judgment including $250 million in punitive damages against Monsanto, the maker of the herbicide.
This is an injustice. So far every regulatory agency that has assessed the safety of glyphosate has concluded that it is unlikely to be a human carcinogen at doses at which people encounter the herbicide. For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's December, 2017, draft human health risk assessment concluded that "glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans." The agency's assessment additionally found "no other meaningful risks to human health when the product is used according to the pesticide label."
Similarly, a 2015 evaluation of the herbicide by the highly precautionary European Food Safety Authority concluded that "glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans." Another EFSA review in May covering all crops treated with glyphosate included "a risk assessment which shows that current exposure levels are not expected to pose a risk to human health."
Specifically relevant to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a long run study of more than 50,000 licensed agricultural pesticide applicators in North Carolina and Iowa published in May reported that "in this large, prospective cohort study, no association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including NHL and its subtypes."
So given the reams of solid scientific evidence for the safety of glyphosate, how did the jury get their verdict so wrong? Among other things, the court allowed Environmental Defense Fund activist Christopher Portier to mislead them by permitting him to serve as an expert witness for the plaintiff Johnson.
As I reported earlier, Portier chaired the Advisory Group to Recommend Priorities for the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) which recommended that the agency evaluate glyphosate. He subsequently served as an invited specialist to the IARC group that evaluated studies related to glyphosate and the risk of cancer. In 2015, the IARC issued, partly as a result of Portier's influence, a scientifically flawed monograph that classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.
After he retired from National Center for Environmental Health, Portier began working in 2013 as a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an activist group that has long opposed many aspects of crop biotechnology and the use of glyphosate. In a 2014 letter to the journal Environmental Health Perspectives defending a scientifically discredited study on biotech corn, Portier listed only his affiliation with the IARC. The IARC did later disclose Portier's affiliation with EDF, but the agency apparently failed to consider the possibility that his work with anti-pesticide activist group might amount to a conflict of interest.
Just after the IARC issued its glyphosate monograph, Portier signed lucrative contracts with a couple of big civil litigation law firms to work as an expert witness asserting that glyphosate likely caused specific cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. These same law firms have now lined up thousands of clients claiming that glyphosate caused their cancers.
Jurors see the sympathetic plaintiffs before them and understandably want to help them and punish those who putatively caused them harm; thus a verdict of $289 million. But the jurors do not see the substantial harms caused by the possible removal of a safe herbicide from the market including lower crop productivity, increased soil erosion, additional deforestation, lower farm incomes, increased food prices, and the deployment of more dangerous herbicides.
Given the overwhelming scientific evidence that glyphosate is not carcinogenic, it is well beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury has been badly misled into getting its verdict wrong in this case.
Disclosure: The 100 shares of Monsanto that I bought with my own money have now been sold to Bayer.
The post The $289 Million Verdict Against Monsanto Is Scientifically Outrageous appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Regulation killed biotech crop innovation. In the 1980s, at the dawn of the crop biotechnology era, scores of startups eagerly applied new bioengineering techniques to modify and enhance crop varieties. They have all vanished. Now the good news: The new CRISPR gene-editing technology may revive and restore competition and variety to the seed market. But only if activists and regulators stay out of the way.
Today activists argue that the big four crop biotech companies—Monsanto, DuPont/Pioneer, Syngenta and Dow AgroSciences—have monopolized the world's seed markets, commanding more than half the world's commercial seed supply. In the U.S. they sell 80 percent of seed corn and 70 percent of soybeans planted. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an antitrust investigation of Monsanto, but it ultimately decided not to take action.
Long gone are the myriad early agbiotech startups—DNA Plant Technology, Agracetus, Crop Genetics International, Advanced Genetic Sciences, Biotechnica Agriculture, United Agriseeds, Molecular Genetics, Agrigenetics, and so on. Researchers at Calgene, founded in 1980, predicted that the first commercial biotech crops would be in the field by 1988. Instead, the first successful commercial biotech crops were not deployed until 1996. By the mid-1990s, most of the independent agbioech startups were no more; many of them had been bought up by the big chemical companies that now dominate commercial crop biotechnology.
Consequently, the seed market for most commercial crops is highly concentrated. This is largely the result of regulation. Thanks to anti-biotech agitation, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Department of Agriculture cobbled together a system for regulating biotech crops in the 1980s. Over time, the rules have become ever more rococo. As a result, according to one recent industry estimate, it costs $136 million to get a new crop variety from discovery through the regulatory approval process. These costs pose a huge barrier to entry for any startups that might want to introduce a new genetically enhanced tomato, spinach, artichoke, or apple, much less extensively planted field crops like corn, soybean, and canola.
Enter CRISPR, a new genome editing technique that enables bioengineers to essentially change and rearrange bits of DNA sequence in an organism's genome wherever they want. The chief factor fueling the strict regulation of agricultural biotechnology is the fear that genes transferred among microorganisms, animals, and plants would somehow get out of control. Yet CRISPR does not necessarily involve moving DNA from one organism to another.
For example, the Pennsylvania State plant pathologist Yinong Yang has used the technique to engineer the common white button mushroom to resist browning. He did that by using CRISPR to delete a few base pairs from a gene. In October, Yang asked the USDA if his edited mushroom requires the agency's approval to grow and market. In April, the agency replied that since the mushroom contained no foreign DNA, it did not fall under its regulations.
Some researchers in Israel have used CRISPR to create cucumbers that resist several plant disease viruses. Again, since no foreign genes or DNA was introduced into the pickle precursors, they should not fall under the purview of current U.S. biotech regulations. Similarly, British researchers have used CRISPR to change how seeds develop in barley and broccoli. Chinese researchers have used gene-editing to create a wheat variety that resists powdery mildew.
Sadly, some activists are calling crop varieties created by CRISPR "hidden GMOs" and are demanding that they be regulated. Why "hidden"? Because there is no easy way to tell a crop variety modified using CRISPR from one that has not been modified, except that one does not, say, die of viral infections. In other words, "hidden" amounts to "virtually indistinguishable." Nevertheless, Friends of the Earth has called for a ban on the commercialization and release of all such CRISPR-enhanced crops.
Since there is no safety or environmental difference between the gene-edited and conventional versions of these foods, there should be no difference in how they are regulated. If activists really want to break up Big Seed, they should support rather than oppose the use of CRISPR to create new crop varieties.
The post Break Up Big Seed! appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Because of Hawaii's favorable climate, plant breeders and food companies do huge amounts of research and seed development there, including modifying and transforming crops via all sorts of biotechnology. In 2013, two islands in the Aloha State passed legislation restricting GMO use and local and international activists are pushing for broader bans across the rest of the state. Anti-GMO activists say that the crops are potentially harmful and can contaminate the rest of Hawaii's agriculture.
Legislators are currently considering a bill that would mandate labeling on all foods with genetically engineered material, a move that critics claim would increase the cost of food in Hawaii even more (according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Hawaii already pays about 40 percent more for food than other states). Other states are also proposing GMO-labeling schemes because of the fears associated with such products. Connecticut and Maine, for instance, have already passed labeling laws, but they won't go into effect until after other states follow suit.
The battle over GMOs will likely turn on questions of safety and property rights: Are GMO foods safe for human consumption? And who gets to decide how cropland is used—voters or landowners?
Reason TV traveled to Hawaii and reports on both issues.
For more on the situation in Hawaii—and the scientific consensus that GMO foods are absolutely safe to eat—read Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey's story, "The Fable of Hawaiian Frankencorn." For Reason's coverage of GMOs, go here.
About 9 minutes.
Produced by Sharif Matar.
Scroll below for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel to get automatic notifications when new material goes live.
The post Is Hawaii's Anti-GMO Movement Really Just Anti-Science? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>It was the second time the top US court has sided with the American agro-giant in its running fight with farmers over seed patent rights, after a ruling in its favor in a May 2013 case involving an Indiana farmer.
In the latest case, the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association had asked that Monsanto agree not to sue farmers if they inadvertently grew plants containing traits of patented genetically engineered seed.
The post Supreme Court Declines to Hear Monsanto Seed Patent Lawsuit Case appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Anti-biotech signs and literature are festooned across the Hawaiian Islands. The Crystals and Gems Gallery in Hanalei, for example, displayed several protest posters and offered fliers urging a ban on biotech crops. The Gallery is the sort of place where, when my wife asked a clerk what an attractive stone was, the reply was, "Do you mean, 'What does it do?'" Apparently, that particular rock can dispel negativity.
After being advised on the therapeutic properties of various crystals, we asked the clerk what all the anti-biotech literature around the shop was about. She informed us that biotech crops cause cancer, stating emphatically the Kauai's cancer rates were exceptionally high, especially among people who live close to the seed company fields where biotech crop varieties are being grown. She added that eating foods containing biotech ingredients disrupts satiety signals to the brain, causing people to eat too much food, resulting in the obesity epidemic. Don't ask me to explain.
Why are the seed companies in Hawaii in the first place? Three words: perpetual growing season. Plant breeders here can produce three crops per year instead of just one. This speeds up the development of new crop varieties from seven years to just four years. The carefully selected seeds can then be transferred to mainland seed production farms, where bulk quantities of the new, improved seeds can be grown to supply farmers around the world.
Standing in that Maui field, looking at the tens of thousands of inbred corn plants that will be crossbred to produce seed, underlined the enormous benefits of hybridization. The inbred parents of future hybrid corn stand a spindly four or so feet tall. Their high-yielding hybrid offspring will grow as high as 16 feet.
Stoltzfus, a lanky plant breeder from Iowa, explained: "Primarily what we are doing here is just farming. We have no labs. We grow corn, capture seed, and develop a product that can be sold to farmers somewhere in the world." All of the lab work that goes into making modern pest- and herbicide-resistant crop varieties takes place on the mainland.
Hawaii was the site of one of the first great successes of crop biotechnology. In the 1990s, the Hawaiian papaya industry was saved by the creation of a genetically enhanced variety modified to resist the ringspot virus that was devastating growers. Today, about 80 percent of the papayas grown in Hawaii come from these biotech varieties. Instead of celebrating this triumph of human ingenuity, anti-biotech activists are now actually calling for the Hawaiian state government to force growers to cut down and burn all of the disease-resistant papaya trees. Some of them aren't waiting: In September, a hundred of the trees were macheted down during the night.
The anti-biotech campaign has succeeded in so frightening residents that both state and local politicians are proposing and passing legislation that could end up pushing seed companies off the islands. The county council on the Big Island, for example, just passed a bill that would prohibit the open air cultivation, propagation, development, or testing of genetically engineered crops and plants. The bill justifies the ban on the grounds that it aims "to protect Hawaii Island's unique and vulnerable ecosystem" by "'preventing the transfer and uncontrolled spread of genetically engineered organisms on to private property, public lands, and waterways." Violators of the ordinance will be fined $1,000 per day. Amusingly, the bill exempts genetically modified papaya. During my visit to Hawaii, I ate as much papaya as I could.
That measure may be harsh but it is ultimately symbolic: None of the seed companies operate on the Big Island. The center of the opposition to agricultural biotech is on the island of Kauai. After a raucous public meeting last week, the Kauai county council passed a bill that puts a number of restrictions on the growing of biotech crops and the use of pesticides by seed companies. The bill justifies its restrictions by citing concerns about commercial crop cultivation and pesticide use "on the natural environment, and on human health." The bill further finds that "genetically modified plants could potentially disperse into the environment of the County of Kauai through pollen drift, seed commingling, and inadvertent transfer of seeds by humans, animals, weather events, and other means. This could have environmental and economic impacts."
Among other requirements, the bill mandates 500-foot buffer zones around seed company fields, disclosure of what types of seeds are being grown, and notices to neighboring properties within 1,500 feet of a commercial agricultural entity when planning to spray pesticides. Violations will be punished with civil fines of $10,000 to $25,000 per day and/or criminal penalties of $2,000 and up to year in jail.
The justifications for these laws don't withstand much scrutiny. Local cancer rates are not in fact up: The state Health Department reported earlier this year that "Overall cancer incidence rates (all cancers combined) were significantly lower on Kauai compared to the entire state of Hawaii." Nor did the department find higher rates of cancer in those districts where the seed company farms are located.
Both the Hawaii County and Kauai County bills claim that they are intended to protect Hawaii's environment from contamination by biotech crops. Some 90 percent of the biotech crops grown in Hawaii is seed corn; the rest is seed soybeans and canola. None of these crops can commingle with nor pollinate any native Hawaiian species. Fears about the "uncontrolled spread of genetically engineered organisms" are overblown. After all, no forests, swamps, or prairies anywhere have been overrun with domesticated corn, soy, or canola plants that have gone wild.
And when worrying about keeping Hawaii's ecosystems pristine, keep in mind that half of the plant species now living on the islands are non-native, including such iconic but fading agricultural staples as taro, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, pineapples, and coffee. Driving off the seed companies would certainly produce some "economic impacts," since what the companies produce is about 34 percent of the value of all Hawaiian agricultural crops and they employ around 2,000 workers, more than 20 percent of Islands' agricultural workforce.
The numerous local anti-biotech activist groups include GMO-Free Hawaii, Stop Poisoning Paradise, the Hawaii GMO Justice Coalition, Occupy Monsanto, and Hawaii Seed. The Genetic Literacy Project at the Statistical Assessment Service reports that many of these groups are being funded by off-island opponents of crop biotechnology. The chief goal of these campaigners is to disrupt the progress of the technology they superstitiously abhor by spreading disinformation to frighten the citizens of Hawaii. Sadly, they are succeeding.
The post In Search of Frankencorn in Hawaii appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Anti-biotech signs and literature are festooned across the Hawaiian Islands. The islands are the epicenter of a ferocious anti-biotech campaign funded, in part, by mainland money that aims to shut down thousands of acres of biotech seed production farms. The activists have succeeded in frightening a couple of county councils into banning the growing of commercial biotech crops. Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey went to visit Monsanto's Piilani farm on Maui to see for himself the Frankencorn that haunts the activists' choleric imaginations.
The post Ronald Bailey Goes In Search of Frankencorn in Hawaii appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Reporting and commenting at the intersection of science and public policy garners one some amusing emails. Today, I received one with the subject line: GMO Failure. My email correspondent (whom I will spare naming) wrote:
Mr. Barton,
Since you are employed by the Monsanto propaganda department, how exactly are you going to spin this latest finding?
Sincerely,
Barton/Bailey? Same difference. Employed by the Monsanto propaganda department? Really?
For some people, employment suggests a transfer of funds. However, I just checked with the fundraising folks at the non-profit Reason Foundation that publishes this website and Reason magazine, and they tell me that Monsanto has never given us a dime.
In any case, I clicked on the link so helpfully provided to find a strategically redacted St. Louis Post-Dispatch article at the website Truth Alliance. The Truth Alliance appears to be dedicated to "bringing down the power structures of the New World Order (N.W.O.)"
But let's set that aside, and focus on the redactions and added commentary. The original August 28 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article notes that a couple of entomologists have apparently encountered an infestation of rootworms in fields of biotech corn created by Monsanto to resist those pests. This is, of course, bad news for farmers.
By citing the Truth Alliance blog version, my correspondent seems to be implying that pests evolving resistance to biotech crops is somehow an indictment of the whole enterprise. What he does not realize is that researchers have documented for decades the evolution of pests resistant to conventional and organic insecticides and herbicides. It's basic natural selection at work.
Consider, for example, the 1984 article, "History, evolution, and consequences of insecticide resistance," in the journal Pesticide Biochemistry and Physiology. I will point out that first commercial biotech corn was planted in 1996, that is, 12 years after this article appeared. From the abstract:
The first inkling of what the future held with respect to pesticide resistance of arthropods may be found in 1897 writings concerning control difficulties with San Jose Scale (Quadraspidiotus perniciosus (Comstock)) and codling moth (Laspeyresia pomonella (L.)). Eighty-three years later, the ever-growing list of resistant species involved 14 orders and 83 families, and numbered 428 different insects and acarines, of which 61% are of agricultural importance and the remainder of medical/veterinary concern. The impact of this has been felt throughout the world, wherever insecticides are used, in terms of increased vector-borne disease, increased pesticide hazards in the environment, crop losses and poorer quality of products, increased production costs, pest resurgences and rise of secondary pests, and various socioeconomic repercussions.
So what to do to address the emerging pesticide resistance problem? The St.Louis Post-Dispatch article notes that the two entomologists…
…say that growers will have to switch to a product that has "multiple modes of action" against corn rootworm — such as Monsanto's Genuity SmartStax (link added) line, which kills the worms with an additional protein.
In other words, continue to use scientific discoveries and human ingenuity to address the perpetual problem of crop destroying insects evolving pesticide resistance.
The Truth Alliance glosses the observation that farmers may have to switch pest resistant crop varieties as "farmers will have to switch to a less natural, more heavily genetically modified product." "Less natural" = evil?
In fact, researchers well before the advent of the biotech crop era had devised various strategies for slowing down the evolution of pesticide resistance in insects. For example, a 1989 article, "The Evolution of Insecticide Resistance: Have the Insects Won?," in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution noted:
A mixture of insecticides … can delay the evolution of resistance by several orders of magnitude compared with a rotation. Mixtures work because insects that receive a lethal dose of one insecticide are simultaneously dosed with the other insecticide as well. Only extremely rare individual pests, which have resistance mechanisms against both chemicals, will survive. With a reservoir of untreated insects or immigration, random mating and recombination tend to break up the doubly resistant genotypes, leading to very slow evolution of resistance.
This is precisely the strategy that Monsanto plant breeders have used to create Genuity SmartStax crop varieties. The new Monsanto Genuity corn variety incorporates six different genes aimed at controlling insect pests plus two for herbicide resistance. In addition, the company is developing Geunity varieties that are drought resistant and use less fertilizer.
So that's how I "spin" it—I use scientific data, not lies and disinformation.
The post Accused of Being a Monsanto Propagandist, I Am Asked to Explain Evolving Pesticide Resistance appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The news is a major blow to the nascent British GM industry which ministers have been championing this year as fears grow about food security.
Monsanto, whose name is synonymous with GM crops, confirmed that it is withdrawing all of its EU applications for approval for new crops.
The decision is understood to affect as many as 10 applications for approval for new GM crops. It is understood that Monsanto is pulling all of its applications for crops in frustration at delays over clearing existing crops at EU level.
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]]>Today, the World Food Prize Foundation announced the annual winners of its prestigious award. Among this year's three laureates is Robert Fraley, the Chief Technology Officer at Monsanto. The other two laureates are Marc Van Montagu, Founder and Chairman of the Institute for Plant Biotechnology Outreach (IPBO) in Ghent, Belgium and Mary-Dell Chilton, Founder and Distinguished Science Fellow at Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc.
In its announcement of this year's award, the Foundation noted:
The pioneering work of Marc Van Montagu, Mary-Dell Chilton, and Robert Fraley contributed to the emergence of a new term, "agricultural biotechnology," and set the stage for engineering crops with novel traits that improved yields and conferred resistance to insects and disease, as well as tolerance to adverse environmental conditions. Their work has made it possible for farmers in 30 countries to improve the yields of their crops, have increased incomes, and feed a growing global population.
Beginning with the first cultivation of staple transgenic crops in 1996 until the present, biotech crops have contributed to food security and sustainability by increasing crop production valued at US $98.2 billion and providing a better environment by reducing the application of significant amounts of pesticides worldwide. Today, approximately 12 percent of the world's arable land is planted with biotechnology crops.
There have been dramatic increases in the total acreage planted. Corn, soybeans, canola, and cotton are the major biotech crops grown commercially on a large scale and have become an integral part of international agricultural production and trade. At the same time, a wide variety of useful genes have been transformed into a large number of economically important plants, including most of the food crops, scores of varieties of fruits and vegetables, and many tree species.
According to a recent report by ISAAA (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications), 2012 marks the first year since the introduction of biotech crops that developing countries grew more biotech crops than industrial countries. This is contributing to enhanced food security and poverty reduction in some of the world's most vulnerable regions. The report states: "In the period 1996 to 2012, millions of farmers in 30 countries planted an accumulated 1.5 billion hectares."
A record 17.3 million farmers grew biotech crops worldwide in 2012, with over 90 percent of them small resource-poor farmers in developing countries. Through their planting and harvesting of biotech crops, more than 15 million small-holder farmers and their families, totaling approximately 50 million people, were able to increase their incomes and reduce poverty conditions. In the Philippines alone, over one-third of a million small farmers benefited from biotech maize.
During the period 1996-2011, according to the ISAAA report, 328 million tons of additional food, feed and fiber was produced worldwide by biotech crops. As the world grapples with how to feed the estimated 9 billion people who will inhabit the planet by the year 2050, it will be critical to continue building upon the scientific advancements and revolutionary agricultural discoveries of the 2013 World Food Prize Laureates.
Congratulations to the winners. This recognition of their vital work is well-deserved.
Now will the activists please stop lying about crop biotechology. See my, "The Top 5 Lies About Biotech Crops." For those of you who enjoy zany activist antics, please see Reason TV's report on the "March Against Monsanto" last month in Los Angeles below.
The post Monsanto Crop Biotechnology Reseacher is Among World Food Prize Laureates appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Glibert Ross, who works with the American Council on Science and Health has published an op-ed today over at Canada's Financial Post suggesting possible activist involvement:
There is no other explanation for the Oregon discovery. Roundup is Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide or weed-killer, among the commonest used since 1974; a Roundup Ready crop means it is gene-spliced to be resistant to the chemical, while the target weeds are killed by it. Monsanto has strenuously denied having any RR wheat trials in Oregon over the past nine years, and tests of over 30,000 wheat specimens in that region in 2011 showed no evidence of the trait.
So what's behind this bizarre appearance of RR wheat? The FDA said it poses no threat to man, beast or the environment. It's safe, just like the yields of the 400-million acres of GM-crops (over one-tenth of the world's acreage) harvested in 2011. In fact, since the beginning of the "biotech revolution" in 1996, as GM harvests have spread worldwide and accelerated, there has never been one instance of adverse health or environmental effects caused by biotech crops or products.
Activists stridently opposed to biotechnology would understandably want to make a big deal out of this event. The issue is driven solely by money, not science. It is a battle being fought by those who want to reverse real progress, based upon their anti-big business agenda and to promote their own organic mega-businesses.These are the same folks who, while posing as crusaders for "public health," are endeavouring even now to label foods with GM-ingredients, scaring consumers away from perfectly safe products towards their pet organic foods.
If it is impossible for GM wheat to have somehow migrated to that particular isolated farm, or to have spontaneously mutated, there could be only one logical explanation: an intentional surreptitious sowing of rogue RR wheat seeds for the purpose of promoting fear and suspicion of all gene-spliced products. This sort of agenda and tactics have won the day in Europe, which has adopted a Dark Ages approach to biotech agriculture, with activists burning GM crops like their forebears did to witches and infidels before the Age of Reason, screaming "frankenfood" as they do.
As I noted when I reported the incident in my post, "So What if Unregulated Genetically Engineered Wheat Is Found Growing on a Farm in Oregon?":
Nobody knows yet how the herbicide resistant wheat got into the farmer's fields in Oregon but, I, for one, am very curious about who the farmer will turn out to be.
I still am.
The post Was the Biotech Wheat Found in Oregon Surreptitiously Sowed by Anti-GMO Activists? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>It's no big deal because the answer is that it is as at least as safe to people and the environment as conventional or organic wheat. So why the question? Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced…
…test results of plant samples from an Oregon farm indicate the presence of genetically engineered (GE) glyphosate-resistant wheat plants. Further testing by USDA laboratories indicates the presence of the same GE glyphosate-resistant wheat variety that Monsanto was authorized to field test in 16 states from 1998 to 2005.
Naturally, the discovery is being denounced by anti-biotech activist groups. For example, Food Democracy Now! executive director Dave Murphy in an emailed press release declared:
The USDA's announcement of unapproved GMO wheat in U.S. fields is a major threat to the $8 billion wheat export market and undermines the faith of America's crops globally and the economic livelihoods of U.S. wheat farmers.
The continued genetic contamination of organic and non-GMO farmers fields is another sign of how Monsanto's flawed technology continues to negatively impact family farmers and our food supply. Monsanto's GMO wheat has never been approved for use in the United States and has not be approved for planting in the U.S. since 2004. As long as genetically engineered crops remain unregulated and unlabeled the American people and citizens around the world will continue to protest Monsanto and their rogue business practices.
Murphy and his fellow-travelers in the environmentalist movement will be chiefly to blame if some countries ban American wheat imports. After all, it is the activists who have ginned up a massive unscientific disinformation campaign against the safety and utility of modern biotech crops. Thanks to tireless activism, several countries banned the import of American rice over a similar fake furor back in 2006. In that case, tests found that a herbicide resistant rice variety had been commingled at at rate of 6 grains of biotech rice to 10,000 grains of conventional rice.
With regard to the current imbroglio the USDA's statement added:
The detection of this wheat variety does not pose a food safety concern. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) completed a voluntary consultation on the safety of food and feed derived from this GE glyphosate-resistant wheat variety in 2004. For the consultation, the developer provided information to FDA to support the safety of this wheat variety. FDA completed the voluntary consultation with no further questions concerning the safety of grain and forage derived from this wheat, meaning that this variety is as safe as non-GE wheat currently on the market (emphasis added).
The notion that conventional wheat or organic wheat could be somehow dangerously contaminated by any amount—much less the tiny amount possibly at issue here—of this variety of herbicide resistant wheat is scientific nonsense. This herbicide resistance trait has been incorporated in hundreds of varieties of biotech crops for nearly twenty years with no adverse effects on anybody. Nobody knows yet how the herbicide resistant wheat got into the farmer's fields in Oregon but, I, for one, am very curious about who the farmer will turn out to be.
For more background, see my "The Top 5 Lies About Biotech Crops." See also, ReasonTV's excellent video of the silly "March Against Monsanto" protest in Los Angeles over this past weekend below:
The post So What If Unregulated Genetically Engineered Wheat Is Found Growing on a Farm in Oregon? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Reason TV visited the "March Against Monsanto" rally to find out what the protesters hoped to accomplish and why they continued to reject the prevailing pro-GMO science.
About 5 minutes.
Filmed and Edited by Sharif Matar and Patrick Bowers.
For more Reason coverage on genetically modified organisms, read Ronald Bailey here and here.
Scroll down for downloadable versions and sign up at Reason TV's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.
The post 'March Against Monsanto' Anti-GMO Protest in Los Angeles appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>In Los Angeles, Reason TV checked out Saturday's "March Against Monsanto," which took place all over the world and attacked genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as supposedly unhealthy and unfit for human consumption.
We'll have more footage from the LA rally, but here's a clip of a speaker ranting against GMOs, chem trails, vaccines, the Fast & Furious gun-walking program, and just about everything else under the sun.
About one minute. Shot and edited by Sharif Matar and Patrick Bowers.
Related: "The Top 5 Lies About Biotech Crops."
The post Vid: Anti-Monsanto Speaker Rants Against GMOs, Vaccines…and Fast and Furious? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Back in March, I reported on the U.S. Supreme Court case Bowman v. Monsanto in which an Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman claimed that he had the right to save and plant herbicide resistant soy bean seeds invented, patented, and produced by Monsanto without paying the company royalties. The Court issued its unanimous ruling against Bowman today:
Bowman planted Monsanto's patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article.
Genetic Engineering News reports:
The U.S. Supreme Court today unanimously sided with Monsanto's right to enforce its patents for genetically modified soybean seed beyond their initial sale, over objections from a 75-year-old Indiana farmer who used multiple generations of the seed.
The high court concluded that Monsanto's intellectual property rights to the seed extend to multiple generations beyond an authorized sale. Vernon Hugh Bowman contended that Monsanto exhausted its rights once the first generation seed was sold by its original farmers as a commodity.
"Bowman planted Monsanto's patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article. Patent exhaustion provides no haven for that conduct. We accordingly affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit," the high court said, agreeing with Monsanto in a 10-page decision written by Justice Elena Kagan.
"If simple copying were a protected use, a patent would plummet in value after the first sale of the first item containing the invention. The undiluted patent monopoly, it might be said, would extend not for 20 years as the Patent Act promises, but for only one transaction. And that would result in less incentive for innovation than Congress wanted," Kagan wrote.
Bowman paid Monsanto for the first generation of the company's Roundup Ready soybean seed he grew on his Knox County, IN, farm, then bought a bulk mix of soybean seeds at a grain elevator and grew them. He reasoned that the mix included Roundup Ready, named for its resistance to Monsanto's herbicide glyphosate or RoundUp®, which it did.
Bowman also reasoned that he wouldn't have to pay Monsanto, which requires its farmer customers to agree in writing to not save seeds from the crop they produce—effectively agreeing to purchase the company's seed each year.
Interestingly, Kagan noted that the decision does not necessarily apply to future self-replicating technologies.
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