GM Food May Be Okay

See The Irrational Fear of GM Food Billions of people have eaten genetically modified food over the past two decades. Not one problem has been found. By Marc Van Montagu. Dr. Van Montagu is founder and chairman of the Institute of Plant Biotechnology Outreach at Ghent University in Belgium. He is the co-recipient of the 2013 World Food Prize, along with Dr. Mary-Dell Chilton of Syngenta Biotechnology and Dr. Robert T. Fraley of Monsanto. From the WSJ, 10-23-13. Excerpts:

" Society, the economy and the environment have benefited enormously from GM crops. India has flipped from cotton importer to exporter because of insect-resistant cotton. Herbicide-tolerant GM crops have stimulated no-tillage farming, reducing soil erosion and greenhouse gas emissions. Insect-resistant GM crops have cut insecticide sprayings by more than 25%—and as much as sevenfold in some parts of India. In developing countries, GM crops have helped ensure food security and bolster incomes for farmers, allowing parents to focus more resources on other priorities, such as educating their children."

"...60%-70% of processed food on the market contains genetically modified ingredients."

" GM crops don't, as one discredited study claimed recently, cause cancer or other diseases. GM cotton isn't responsible for suicides among Indian farmers—a 2008 study by an alliance of 64 governments and nongovernmental organizations debunked that myth completely. And GM crops don't harm bees or monarch butterflies."

"In fact, people have consumed billions of meals containing GM foods in the 17 years since they were first commercialized, and not one problem has been documented. This comes as no surprise. Every respected scientific organization that has studied GM crops—the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences and the World Health Organization, among others—has found GM crops both safe for humans and positive for the environment"

"...nearly everything humans have eaten though the millennia has been genetically altered by human intervention. Mankind has been breeding crops—and thereby genetically altering them—since the dawn of agriculture."

A letter tried to refute Dr. Van Montagu. But a second letter refuted that one. Genetically Engineered Foods a Plus: The introduction of GE crops (to supplant conventional ones) has obviated the need to cultivate vast additional amounts of arable land. Here is that second letter:

"Andrew Kimbrell makes many misstatements in his letter "Our GM Food Fears Aren't Irrational" (Nov. 9): "The vast majority of GE crops are developed to resist and therefore promote pesticides, sharply increasing the amount of pesticides used in agriculture." In fact, a significant fraction of GE crops have been specifically, and successfully, crafted to supplant the spraying of chemical pesticides. According to an analysis by PG Economics, the cultivation of pest-resistant genetically engineered crops reduced pesticide spraying by 474 million kilograms (9%) between 1996 and 2011.

Mr. Kimbrell asserts that GE technology isn't "environmentally sustainable." One has to ask, compared with what? The introduction of GE crops (to supplant conventional ones) has obviated the need to cultivate vast additional amounts of arable land. Between 1996 and 2011, genetically engineered crops were responsible world-wide for the production of an additional 110 million tons of soybeans, 195 million tons of corn, 15.8 million tons of cotton lint and 6.6 million tons of canola. If modern GE plants had not been available to the 16.7 million farmers using the technology world-wide in 2011, maintaining global production levels at 2011 levels would have required plantings of more than 35 million additional acres. 

Mr. Kimbrell claims that GE crops have "very little potential to alleviate poverty and hunger." For farmers growing GE crops, the net economic benefit at the farm level in 2011 was $19.8 billion, equal to an average income premium of $329 per acre. From 1996 to 2011, the global farm income gain was $98.2 billion; the economic benefits were divided about equally between farmers in developing and developed countries.

Henry I. Miller, M.D.

Hoover Institution

Stanford, Calif."