Permission to allow field trials of genetically modified (GM) rice seed has raised food safety concerns. A scientist and a journalist take an opposing stand to a US political science professor.
Wang Chaohua: Dangers are there for all to see
China's food safety laws and regulations are largely based on the guidelines of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But are the FDA prescriptions reliable enough?
In 1992, the FDA turned a blind eye to strong protests and even the opposition of its own scientists to state that genetically modified (GM) foods are as safe as any for human consumption and, hence, there was no need to give an explanation about GM foods. This move was widely criticized as arbitrary, given the role one Michael Taylor played in the case.
Taylor was then assistant FDA commissioner but soon left to serve as chief legal adviser to Monsanto, the world's largest seed company. Moreover, a new law drafted by Taylor did not consider facts found in a research from 1958 that illegal pesticides and food additives could cause cancer.
Food safety laws in China have become a subject of public debate again after the Ministry of Agriculture granted permission to carry out trials with GM rice seed.
GM seed companies claim their products could raise crop output by 15 to 40 percent, which many experts believe to be an exaggeration. What has been proved, instead, is that GM seed are unable to adapt to abrupt climate changes and may thus cause sharp drop in output. Last year, South African farmers who had planted Monsanto's GM corn seeds 820,000 hectares reported crop failure.
This is a scary fact. And China, which has a huge population to feed, cannot take the risk to try out GM grain seeds. Scarier is the fact that GM seeds lead farmers into a vicious cycle - the more crop failure they suffer, the deeper they get into the cycle.
GM seed companies also claim their products require much less use of pesticides. But statistics show no considerable reduction in the use of pesticides on farms where GM seeds had been planted. Instead, GM seeds raise a big health concern: The sharp increase in the use weedkiller genes, introduced genetically in the seeds. These genes can enter the human body. As early as 2000, German scientists working on GM colza pollen found the use of weedkiller genes had altered honeybees' enteric genetic structure.
Cannot this kind of gene transformation occur in humans who consume GM food? Experiments on animals have proved that GM foods have the potential to cause serious health damage even in a very short period. These tests show GM foods can harm animals' reproductive systems and raise infant mortality rates.
GM foods' gene modification could take generations to suit the human body. GM foods not only have the potential of harming the human body, but also of causing irrecoverable damage to the soil, that is, biological pollution, which is more dangerous than chemical pollution. Research has shown genes of micro-organisms and weeds have undergone changes in farms where GM seeds had been planted.But what can the poor end consumer do under the pressure of the multi-billion-dollar GM seed industry? Take the case of Fox TV for example. The TV channel, under alleged pressure from Monsanto, fired two of its reporters who tried to expose GM foods' for the harm they could cause to humans. In 2008, French independent filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin's documentary, The World According to Monsanto, was banned from being screened in the US. Perhaps, only the EU takes a serious and prudent view of GM crops. The EU has strict rules that make it mandatory for GM foods to carry labels with detailed information on the materials they contain.
China should have taken all the above into consideration before allowing trials of GM rice seeds.
Xiong Lei: Decision should be left to end users
The government's approval to grow genetically modified (GM) rice, though on a trial basis, has again triggered a controversy over whether China should take the lead in subjecting a staple food crop to this technology.
It's not surprising to see GM-seed advocates condemn opponents for their "ignorance" of biotechnology and "phobia" for anything obtained through genetic modification. Champions of biotechnology will present all sorts of data and evidence to assure people that GM rice is safe.
Yet the core question concerning the GM rice issue is not whether it is safe but whether people's rights will be honored, especially their foremost right to choose what they eat. Do people have the right not to consume GM rice and other GM crops? Will the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) guarantee people their right to choose non-GM food?
Even if a person is convinced that GM rice is safe, he or she should not be forced to consume it. And GM seed companies should not be allowed to change the situation in the farming sector to such an extent that people would be left with no option but to consume GM rice.
Such a worry is not groundless. Years ago, GM cotton seeds were introduced to China without telling farmers what they were. They were marketed as "super cotton" seeds. As a result, a large number of farmers across the country had begun growing "super cotton" seeds even before it received official approval.
We thanked heaven that (GM) cotton was not a food crop. But food crops were not spared the GM dose for long. GM soybean and corn began dominating our edible oil market even before we became aware of it. The MOA actually still owes us an explanation for this.
We cannot surrender our rights again to choose what we want to grow and eat now that the MOA has agreed to conduct trials with GM rice seeds. We have the right, and that right is sacred, to refuse GM rice on our dinner tables.
So if the ministry's decision to conduct trials with GM rice seeds is irreversible, effective measures should be taken to ensure the fields it is planted on are segregated and do not pollute non-GM rice fields. The MOA has to take steps to punish any violation, too.
Next comes people's right to know. Apart from the possible GM ingredients contained in food packets on supermarket shelves, we should be convinced that GM rice is not the only solution to the food problem we are facing or are likely to face before we are forced to eat it.
People need to know, too, why no other country is growing GM grain for direct human consumption. Have other biological means been exhausted to solve the food problem? Before asserting the use of GM rice seed did the authorities and "official" scientists try other ways to meet the challenge?
Data provided by GM-grain advocates shows that by 2005 - decades after GM seeds were introduced - only about 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries were growing GM crops. This is a small figure compared to the total number of farmers in the world. Then why should China be so eager to lead the world in commercialization of GM rice? This leads us to a vital question: Does the country spend enough on research in and development of grains. Sources say researchers in GM organisms have dominated the grants allocation, many of who have personal commercial interests in promoting GM food. If that is true, the authorities should never grant permission for GM rice cultivation.
Finally, as end users people should have the final say on GM rice. Since it concerns our staple, the decision to grow GM rice should not be left to the whim and fancy of a few fanciful researchers.
Robert Paarlberg: Evidence versus raw emotion
China's Biosafety Committee in the Ministry of Agriculture has granted safety certificates for the domestic production of two kinds of rice genetically engineered to resist pests. China already allows the production of pest-resistant genetically engineered cotton, but the latest move toward approving a major genetically engineered food crop is stirring controversy.
Political misgivings about genetically engineered foods first emerged in Europe when the first shipments of genetically engineered soybeans reached there from the United States in 1996. At that exact moment, Europe was in the grips of a major food safety scare over an unrelated problem known as "mad cow disease", undercutting consumer confidence in the European regulators who had said the soybeans were safe to eat.
Fifteen years have now passed and there is still no documented evidence of any new harm from genetically engineered food, but European activist groups (led by Greenpeace International, from Amsterdam) continue to campaign against the technology, including now in China.
What these activists do not admit is that Europe's top scientists have long since found today's genetically engineered foods to be just as safe as conventional foods. This is also the official position of the International Council for Science (ICSU), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, World Health Organization and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.
It is revealing that while Europeans generally do not like the use of genetic engineering in agriculture, they have no objection to its use in medicine. They don't like genetic engineering in food because they are already well fed (indeed, overfed) without the technology. It is Europe's lack of a need for this technology, not the presence of any new risk, which has been behind the protests.
China should make a decision on this technology based on the needs of its farmers and consumers. Critics wrongly assert that genetically engineered crops are more likely than conventional crops to result in pesticide-resistant insects or invasive super-weeds, an assertion rejected authoritatively by the ICSU.
A second favorite charge is that pollen from genetically engineered crops will kill butterfly larvae, even though studies conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency found this risk to be "negligible" under actual field conditions. Another bogus yet widely circulated charge is that genetically modified organism (GMO) crops contain "terminator genes", which render the seeds sterile, a ridiculous assertion given that the technology was originally spread to Brazil and India by individual farmers who freely replicated and replanted the seeds.
It has been asserted that GMO crops are so prone to failure that they have driven small cotton farmers deep into debt. This is a laughable charge in China, where small farmers have been planting these new varieties with nothing but commercial success since 1997 .
Activists have also raised a number of bogus food safety concerns about genetically engineered crops. Without any supporting experimental evidence activists try to argue that eating GMO foods will transfer antibiotic resistance genes into the human body. They now point to a study done in Austria in 2008 purporting to find lower reproduction rates among mice that had been fed with genetically engineered corn, even though the Scientific Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms of the European Union reviewed the study and found multiple errors which nullified the conclusions.
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