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A telephone survey of United States consumers’ views on tobacco biopharming indicates widespread support for developing the technology when it generates a socially beneficial application.

Perceptions of risks associated with the technology, however, are split: Most respondents either hold concerns in every risk area presented or in none of them. Willingness to purchase a bio-tobacco-based medicine is bimodal as well.

These polarized perceptions point to the challenges faced by policy makers who attempt to implement regulatory oversight of biopharming by balancing the broad-based concerns of the public against the potentially significant benefits of the technology.

SciDev.Net
Jia Hepeng
September 13, 2007

[BEIJING] Chinese scientists have developed a genetically modified (GM) corn that could help improve the nutritional value of livestock feed and reduce pollution.

The research was announced by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) this week (10 September). The corn has now entered pre-production field trials.

The GM corn produces seeds containing high levels of an enzyme called phytase. The enzyme helps livestock to digest phosphorus, an important nutritional element found in corn and soy feeds.

Cereal grains and oilseeds, the main ingredients of feeds, contain large quantities of phytic acid, which has adequate phosphorus content, but livestock such as pigs lack sufficient phytase in their digestive tract to absorb enough phosphorus. This means large amounts of phosphorus are released into the environment through animal waste.

As a result, farmers add phytase to animal feed to help livestock digest phosphorus. The enzyme is a product of fermentation by microorganisms, a process which has high production costs.

The CAAS scientists — funded by the state — isolated the gene that produces phytase from a species of the fungus Aspergillus, and inserted it into corn.

Chen Rumei, of the Institute of Biotechnology under CAAS and a member of the research team, said that when compared to other corn varieties, the rate of seed germination, growth speed and yield of the GM corn were no different.

She told SciDev.Net that, under current industry criteria for feed additives, adding just a few grams of the GM corn seed per kilogram of animal feed would be enough to satisfy livestock’s nutritional demand for phosphorus.

“If this technology is commercialised, we can save up to 450 million yuan (US$60 million) per year in energy costs used to produce industrial phytase enzyme additives,” Chen adds.

“This could be translated into saved costs for farmers in purchasing additives,” she says. And farmers who plant the GM corn rather than common corn varieties could increase their income by about 1500 yuan (US$200) per hectare.

Li Zhensheng, former vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the chair of the Ministry of Agriculture team who evaluated the project, says phosphorus pollution caused by animal waste has been a serious problem, resulting in widespread algal blooms in the Chinese lakes (see Pollution control key to beating China’s algal blooms).

“If the phytase enzyme-rich feed produced from the GM corn is widely applied, phosphorus pollution caused by animal waste will be significantly reduced, and the ecology could be largely improved,” Li says.

China has not yet approved any GM corn for commercial sale.

Truth About Trade and Technology
September 13, 2007

From dust bowls in Australia to drought-hit regions in the U.S., Africa, Asia and the Mideast, growing areas are drying out, helping push crop prices to record highs.

Wheat prices topped $9 a bushel for the first time Wednesday, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture said strong global demand and tight supplies will push U.S. stockpiles to a 33-year low.

U.S. crop-year-ending stocks of wheat are forecast to fall to 362 million metric tons in 2007-08 vs. 456 million a year earlier.

Some blame bad farming. Others cite climate changes that reduce rainfall and raise temperatures.

Arid Agriculture

The good news is that big agribusiness players such as Monsanto, DuPont and Novartis are using genetic engineering to produce drought-resistant crops — including corn and grain — that grow on far less water than regular strains.

“If one result of global climate change could be increased drought, then drought-resistant corn and other crops would certainly help mitigate this stress,” said Sara Duncan, a Monsanto spokeswoman.

Even if global warming proves more of a fizzle than a threat, scientists warn that the expanding world population intensifies the use of wells and other irrigation sources to grow food. This drains local water tables, rivers and lakes — exacerbating the drought issue.

“It’s an irrigation issue, not a climate issue,” said Kendal Hirschi, a molecular geneticist and associate director of research for the Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center at Texas A&M University. “Most drought is caused by bad irrigation practices and not climate change. And it’s a matter of making crops more productive as the amount of arid regions increase.”

The U.N. Environment Program estimates that 70% of the world’s fresh water used annually goes to agriculture. Nations like Brazil that never faced water shortages are seeing them now, the U.N. says.

Monsanto is using genetic engineering to develop drought-resistant corn, soybeans and cotton.

“Corn is the furthest along and will most likely be the first to market,” said Duncan, who expects it to be rolled out in a few years.

She says such designer crops will also help satisfy growing demand for corn for use in making ethanol.

Shlomo Aronson, a professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says drought-resistant crops are an important option in dealing with climate change.

“It applies to any area of the world where you have problems with diminishing water supplies,” said Aronson, whose university is spearheading work on drought-resistant crops.

Hebrew University researchers have developed a tomato strain that grows in desert areas.

“The tomatoes are very tasty and are also insect- and disease-resistant,” Aronson said.

Major droughts will be more common in the middle latitudes and semiarid low latitudes of the globe in coming decades, according to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Affected areas include the U.S., China, Australia, the Middle East and southern Africa.

Biotech Crops Gain Favor

One upshot is that rising demand for drought-resistant crops could lead to wider public acceptance of biotech-based plants.

Some critics blast these so-called “Frankenfoods” as dangerous, since their effects on the human body and the environment are still unknown. But Aronson and others say climate change will make such scientific techniques more acceptable by force of necessity.

In drought-hit Australia, a July poll found that public support for genetically modified crops surged to 73% in 2007 from 46% in 2005. The survey by Biotechnology Australia says support rose because of gene-spliced crops’ role in countering drought and pollution.

Aronson says China and India, with their billions to feed, are keen on exploiting drought-resistant crops. China will boost spending on agriculture-based biotechnology by almost 400% by 2010 to shore up its food-growing ability.

Monsanto is finishing its fifth season of field testing drought-resistant corn and other biotech crops.

Duncan says genetic engineering is so exact that crops can be developed for specific growing conditions in arid areas of states like Kansas, Nebraska and California.

Monsanto also is testing drought-resistant strains in undisclosed locations in the Southern Hemisphere, in a range of environments.

Once these crops have been successfully commercialized in the U.S., Duncan says, Monsanto will offer them to other countries.

Ted Schettler warns that drought-resistant crops solve just a small part of food-growing problems.

“With climate change we’ll not only see drought, but other wild climate swings like floods,” said Schettler, science director at the nonprofit Science and Environmental Health Network.

He says researchers and governments must also focus on efforts to increase soil fertility and crop diversification — not just biotech.

“We ought to be looking at the entire system of agriculture,” said Schettler, “rather than a technological fix that’s pointed at a small part of a much larger problem.”

ScienceDaily
University of Delaware
September 10, 2007

Science Daily — Using a novel “deep sequencing” technology that can in one fell swoop decode 50 million sequences representing well over a billion bases of DNA, a research team led by University of Delaware scientists is working to unmask where, why and how certain genes are switched on or off in rice–a crop vital to the world’s food supply.

The goal of the four-year project, which is supported by a $5.3-million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is to advance scientific understanding of the rice epigenome–the series of biochemical modifications of the rice DNA that can toggle a gene on or, conversely, silence it. Ultimately, the research may lead to the development of hardier strains of rice, as well as shed light on similar mechanisms at work in corn and other important cereal grains that are closely related to rice.

Blake Meyers, associate professor of plant and soil sciences at UD, is the principal investigator on the project, which also involves Guo-Liang Wang, a rice biologist from Ohio State University; Steven Jacobsen, an expert in epigenetics, and computer scientist Matteo Pellegrini, both from the University of California at Los Angeles; and Yulin Jia, a plant pathologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Ark.

The effort builds on Meyers’ previous awards from the NSF Plant Genome Research Program, as well as ongoing investigations of small RNAs–short lengths of ribonucleic acids that act as gene regulators–performed in collaboration with Pamela Green, the Crawford H. Greenewalt Endowed Chair in Plant Molecular Biology at UD, whose lab is next door to Meyers’ in the Delaware Biotechnology Institute. These projects have now propelled the research in a new direction, to new frontiers in the field of epigenetics.

“Epigenetics refers to a heritable change that is not a result of a change in DNA sequence, but rather a chemical modification of nucleotides in the DNA or its associated proteins,” Meyers said. “That means that these changes can be reversible, and it’s easier to switch them on or off. Small RNAs are one of the key ‘control switches,’ directing these modifications,” Meyers noted.

State-of-the-art sequencing by synthesis (SBS) technology developed by Solexa Inc., in Hayward, Calif., will provide the data essential to the project. This novel “deep sequencing” tool, which can decode tens of millions of sequences during a single run, has become available over the last year. The application of SBS to epigenetics research was demonstrated in the human genome only within the past few months. The UD-led effort will be one of the first large-scale projects to use this approach in crop plants.

“If you think of a gene as part of a set of chromosomes, a gene is just a small fraction of a percent of a complete genome,” Meyers said. “If we learn about that gene by random sampling, by using 50 million total sequences, which is what SBS provides, we can characterize that gene at depth,” he noted. “Using this method, we can obtain statistically robust data for nearly all genomic regions in a single experiment.”

The scientists will use the technology to look for chemical modifications in chromatin, the building-block material of chromosomes, consisting of DNA and the proteins that interact with it. The scientists want to know how the chromatin is configured and what role changes in the material play in plant development.

“Formerly, we had a very narrow picture of a plant’s genome; with these new sequencing technologies, we now have the opportunity to acquire a comprehensive picture at fine detail,” Meyers said. “It’s like looking through a high-powered telescope–but now we have a wide-angle lens on that telescope to take in a view with both breadth and depth.”

Besides studying the state of the genome using a variety of different strains of rice plants, the research team will develop new bioinformatics methods to process the vast amounts of data and mine new discoveries.

“The project is part biology and part technology,” Meyers said. “Developing the bioinformatics to handle the data is critical. You have to know what to do with it. As our bioinformatics capabilities have grown, so have the resources available to the public through our web sites,” he noted. “And these online resources have led to important new collaborations.”

The data from the current project will be accessible through web sites of UD and UCLA.

The research project also includes an innovative education and outreach component targeting graduate students in plant science. Students will write, submit and exchange research proposals with students from different universities. They will then serve on a panel to critique and rank the proposals, modeled after the National Science Foundation’s own proposal review process.

“Since planning experiments and justifying these through writing proposals is such an integral part of what a scientist does, I thought this would be a good experience for our students,” Meyers said. “This way, they can also see what their advisers go through,” he added, grinning.

Meyers developed the educational project several years ago in the advanced plant genetics course (PL636) he teaches in the UD College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Since then, several colleagues and their classes at Iowa State and Penn State have participated in the program, exchanging proposals with UD, and UCLA and Ohio State are planning to join the program during the current four-year grant.

“My hope is that this program and its proposal exchange system can be used broadly by plant genetics and genomics courses at universities to build writing, communication and critical thinking skills among graduate students,” Meyers said.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Delaware.

ISAAA

Peanut allergy is one of the most common causes of deaths from food allergies, accounting for more than 100 deaths in the US alone per year. It is characterized by more severe symptoms and at a higher rate on minimal contact as compared to other food allergies. Up to now there is no available cure for peanut allergy. Avoidance of peanuts is very difficult because it is commonly used as an ingredient in several food preparations. With the advent of genetic engineering, novel strategies are now being tested to solve the problem of food allergies from the source.

A group of US scientists constructed transgenic peanut lines expressing significantly lower amount of Ara h 2, the immunodominant allergen found in peanuts, using RNA interference (RNAi). Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay (ELISA) using sera of patients allergic to peanut was used to monitor Ara h 2 expression. Several constructs showed complete absence of the Ara h 2 protein. Other phenotypic features and characteristics of the transgenic peanuts are the same as that of the wild type. Similar studies are now being made to silence other food allergens using RNAi.

Read the full paper published by the Plant Biotechnology Journal at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-7652.2007.00292.x or the abstract at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-7652.2007.00292.x

Trendy Science
Helen Pickersgill
August 30, 2007

Genes make you what you are. All living things have them (humans have about 25,000) and they’re like blueprints.

So when you’re being made, you will get two arms and two legs, rather than wings and a beak. Stuff like that. Genetic modification means changing a gene so the organism does or has something different. It’s practically impossible to do in humans and it’s only attempted for the treatment of life-threatening diseases. In plants, however, it’s much easier and has spawned the current era of genetically modified foods.

I think the reason most people are afraid of GM foods is because they aren’t natural like the rest of the things we buy in the supermarket. Like microwave meals, meat and potato pies, and crisps for example. Jesting aside though, even normal fruit and vegetables aren’t strictly ‘natural’. It’s not like the raspberries grew from a stray seed that blew on a gentle breeze into a small crevice and was nurtured by the sun and the rain. What people don’t realise is that so-called natural produce has already been forced to change genetically over the years. It’s a bit like Hitler’s plan to make us all blonde haired and blue eyed, except much less controversial and thankfully far more successful. To do that you only let the blonde and blue eyed people breed. Same with the plants, only choose the ones that look the best and last the longest. These plants have been carefully cultivated for years in artificial environments to make them look as tempting as possible (at the expense of taste unfortunately). These new techniques of genetic engineering just make the process a lot more efficient. If a geneticist (don’t be afraid - I know a few and they’re charming people) can make my tomato taste like a tomato should, then I applaud them and have no qualms sticking them in my salad (the tomato not the geneticist obviously- scientists thankfully aren’t that crazy).

The original GM crops were developed more for the farmers and the retail industries than to make a consumer’s life happier and healthier. For instance, maize and rice have had genes added that make them cheaper and easier to grow. This brings me to another common concern over GM crops - the ability of plants to pass on genes to other plants, either directly, or indirectly via a plant pathogen. But this process is inefficient, and we aren’t even sure if it’s a significant threat and exactly what the outcome would be. It would be like the tomato passing on one of its genes, which makes it look, smell and taste like a tomato, to a potato planted next to it and the potato becoming a bit like a tomato. (Important note: humans cannot pick up genes into their own cells from a plant by eating it or standing next to it). The problems start when a plant is modified, for example, to cope with specific herbicides or insects. If these genes get released into the wild plant populations they will alter this delicate ecosystem, and it may not be able to cope. Worst-case scenario could be that we lose some species altogether and have some plants becoming dominant and growing uncontrollably. The stringent control of GM technologies is paramount to their safety and success, and there are numerous efforts to decrease these potentially devastating effects on the natural plant populations.

The future for GM is more geared towards us, by generating foods that are healthier and have improved quality and flavour. For example, increasing the vitamin content of fruit would massively improve health and the fight against heart disease and cancer. No more need for those vitamin supplements. And you might even find you enjoy eating them rather than considering it a chore to rack up 5 portions of fruit and veg a day, especially when chips don’t count. No longer will we finish an orange feeling disappointed and cheated.

As a scientist, sometimes I have to revert to scientific talk, and therefore I cannot state that GM foods are completely risk-free to the consumer. By the same token, nor can I say that eating any food is risk free. Indeed, however harmless the humble apple might appear, it still contains hidden nasties like the cyanide in the pips (in very very low quantities). Genetic modification can pose additional risks to food safety because it’s possible that other genes, besides those that you wanted to alter, have been changed too. But importantly, GM foods are tested far more rigorously than any other food you buy at the supermarket, including organic food, because of these potential risks. Health and safety regulations are so extensive that they are preventing many more GM products from making it to market, partly because they are consequently so expensive to produce. However, in reality, GM crops aren’t really all that different from the conventionally bred crops. In both cases you are messing around with their genes, but at least with GM you do it in one step by adding a gene which you know the function of, rather than the more hit and miss method of conventional breeding. As long as the genes that have been changed are shown to be non-toxic to humans and not dangerous if released into the wild plant populations, then it’s alright by me. Long term effects of eating GM foods awaits the passage of time, but people in the US have been eating GM products since 1993, and there have been no reported cases to date of them being harmful to people.

I think it’s essential for everybody to stay open minded and involved in the GM food debate because the potential benefits are extensive. Of utmost importance is the development of this technology for feeding the millions of starving people in the world, which is far more important than putting cheap and tasty food on our plates. Scientists are currently working on developing crops that are less sensitive to extreme weather conditions such as drought or monsoons. But if we can’t get past current legislation and address our fears and worries, the third world, who don’t have the luxury of choice, are never going to benefit.

Personally I am very excited and positive about this technology. My only request would be to know how a product has been altered and why. Normally I like to know exactly what I’m eating - unless I’m getting a take-away and then I just shut my eyes and enjoy. At the end of the day I have this piece of advice. Whether they’re modified or not, always wash your fruit and veggies well before you eat them. I learnt that one from my mum.

Classically Liberal

Greenpeace activists in Thailand recently tried a publicity stunt to emphasize the imaginary threat of genetically engineered papaya. They were upset, as usual, about an suggestion by the Agriculture ministry to allow open field testing of GM crops.

So the Greenpeace scare mongers decided to take some GM papaya, eleven tons of it, and dump it in front of the Ministry blocking three of their gates.

The protest ran into a problem. It didn’t last long. A large crowd of onlookers rushed the pile of fruit and started packing it up and carting it off thrilled at the “free lunch” that Greenpeace had inadvertently provided them. Even officials from the Ministry grabbed some of the free food, apparently unconcerned about any supposed danger.

Greenpeace activists who tried to convince the crowd of the fictional dangers of the fruit were ignored as the happy recipients of the unintended largess took all they could carry.

On man who was sitting in his car at a stop light jumped out of the car to stock up on fruit. He told the Bangkok Post: “I’m ot scared of GM papayas. I’m scared I won’t have any to eat.”

The head doomsday prophet for the Greenpeace cult, Thailand diocese, complained that the reason people carted off the supposedly dangerous fruit was the government’s fault. Ms. Natwipha Ewasakul whined that this proves “the failure of government agencies to educate people about the possible health risks of genetically-engineered crops.”

Oh! In related news Mr. I.M. Twit bitched that the prevalence of radio signals is proof that government has not sufficiently warned the public that such signals disturb the alien life force that keeps the planet in harmony. “Continued use of radio signals could unbalance the whole planet,” said Twit, “This would lead to the eradication of gravity and we’d all die of thirst as the rain would fall upwards.” Mr. Twit showed how umbrellas could be used to catch the rising water to stave off dehydration.

And now back to the real twits.

Here is an interesting legal problem for Greenpeace. They argue that GM papaya is dangerous. So I suggest that some one in Thailand, who ate this supposedly dangerous papaya, which Greenpeace publicly dumped in front of hungry people, now sue Greenpeace for a significant amount of damages. They could go to court with Greenpeace’s own scare propaganda as evidence that the fruit is supposedly dangerous and that Greenpeace put their live at risk.

Could Greenpeace then argue the fruit was not dangerous and that it posed no risk to the happy consumers blessed with this windfall? If Greenpeace contends in court that the fruit is as dangerous as they pretend then they should have taken much stronger precautions to prevent hungry people from eating the “dangerous” fruit. As I see it Greenpeace can either say the fruit was safe and thus they were not negligent. Or they can say that their propaganda is correct, the fruit is dangerous, and they were negligent in putting it on public display when it was highly likely that it would lead to people consuming the fruit.

So the Thai people who got that fruit appear to be in line for being very lucky again, if they follow this tactic. Not only did they get a free meal out of the witless Greenpeace twits but if they play their cards right they can now demand compensation from Greenpeace for putting their lives at risk through the negligent distribution of “dangerous” food products. Oh, that would be juicy. I don’t see how Greenpeace can win a situation like that. Either they admit they lie about dangers or they admit they took no precaution regarding the danger and put the public at risk. I hope the litigants ask for lots of damages.

GMO Africa
August 30, 2007

Agricultural experts from across the world have congregated in Oslo, Norway, to discuss the future of Africa’s agriculture, including agricultural biotechnology. They are strategizing on how to kick-start the African Green Revolution. Being envisaged is an agricultural renaissance in Africa along the lines of Norman Borlaug’s 1950s Green Revolution, which transformed dozens of Asian and Latin American countries from paupers to food baskets.

I pray that the folks in Oslo exhaustively discuss every strategy that can make Africa’s agriculture shine. Africa needs to feed itself, but it wouldn’t succeed in this endeavor unless it abandons its antiquated farming methods.

Judging from the line-up of speakers attending the conference, good tidings abound. Norman Borlaug is attending, and this is good for Africa. A 1972 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his selfless efforts to feed the poor through innovative agricultural technologies such as crop genetic engineering, Borlaug is a man Africa must court at whatever cost. Borlaug never shy from reminding the world that modernizing agriculture is the surest way to enhance global food security.

In the ongoing debate about biotech agriculture, Borlaug has assumed an uncompromising position that Africa’s continued procrastination on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) endangers its own economic prosperity. African delegates attending this conference have a chance to hear from Borlaug what agricultural biotechnology is all about and how it can help farmers.

Then there’s Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Head of the United Nations (UN) Millennium Project. Like Borlaug, Sachs’ familiarity with Africa’s food problems and how they can be fixed is unrivaled. He has spoken fondly of integrating biotech agriculture into Africa’s agriculture. Sachs, a renowned agricultural economist, brings to the conference a wealth of experience in formulating agricultural policies for developing countries.

It is encouraging representatives of the recently formed Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) are also attending this conference. Recently AGRA’s President, former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, ruled out including genetically modified crops into its programs, a declaration that triggered uproar from the scientific community both in and outside Africa. AGRA’s interim Vice-President, Akinwumi Adesina, who’s in Oslo, might consider having tete-a-tete with Borlaug and Sachs on the issue. I, myself, have already advised AGRA against demonizing GM crops because, who knows, they might be part of the solution to Africa’s food problems.

Let the Oslo conference explore and discuss every possible solution to Africa’s food problems, including food biotechnology.

Biotech Brasil

The National Director for the Chilean Agricultural Research Institute (INIA), Leopoldo Sanchez, and the Executive Director for the Forestry Research Institute (INFOR), Marta Abalos, presented on August 13 the project “Generation and production of drought tolerant eucalyptus plants”. The entities developed the plant variety with the objective of making available to forestry companies and farmers from the Chilean arid regions, trees that can better resist situations of water shortage. The activity carried out in the INFOR headquarters in the city of Concepcion, has the intention of meeting the current and future demand for raw materials of the wood industry and related sectors. Currently the 1.8 million hectares located in the arid regions of O’Higgins and Bio-Bio is not adequately explored due to the long drought periods.

C Kameswara Rao
August 25, 2007

The anti-agribiotech lobbies insist that the proteins of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), in pest resistant transgenic crops are not safe to non-target organisms, ignoring a host of detailed scientific studies which have shown that these proteins are safe to non-target organisms.

The book ‘Bacillus thiringiensis: biology, ecology and safety’, published in 2000, refers to over 8,000 research publications, in over 60 years. It contains extensive data on the safety of diverse Bt proteins to non-target organisms.

The activists conveniently ignore that for Bt proteins to be toxic to any organism, a set of physico-chemical and biological pre-requisites are essential. In the absence of the pre-requisites in a particular organism, Bt proteins are safe to that organism.

What blew up the issue out of proportion was the much-publicized study by Losey, et al., (1999) which indicated that transgenic Bt corn pollen might harm monarch butterfly larvae, a conclusion immediately questioned. Sears et al., (2001) re-examined the issue, avoiding the flaws in the experimental design in the earlier study and concluded that impact of Bt corn pollen on monarch butterfly populations was insignificant. But the activists paid this only a Nelson’s eye.

In spite of all the evidence that Bt proteins were not the cause for a) the death of farm animals in the State of Andhra Pradesh (AP) in India, and b) the collapse of bee colonies in the US and Europe, both the instances were much publicized in support of anti-GE activism. Recent developments, however, seem to vindicate the safety of Bt proteins.

1. Death of farm animals in AP

Anti-GE activists in AP have a pathological compulsion to attribute any untoward incident in the farm sector to Bt crops. Two years ago, Bt proteins in Bt cotton seeds were blamed for the death of 24 peacocks in AP, while the real cause was the pesticide Goucho, routinely used in seed dressing. Subsequently, numerous reports of sheep, goats and cattle dying allegedly on consuming Bt cotton plants in the Warangal, Khammam and Adilabad Districts of the Telengana area of AP (Deccan Herald, February 7, 2007; The Hindu, March 2, 2007; GM Watch, March 4, 2007; Hindustan Times, June 17, 2007; GM Watch, June 18, 2007; Hindustan Times, June 18, 2007), became a never dying story, raising the question ‘Why do cattle die eating Bt cotton plants only in the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh?’.

The causes of death of cattle and sheep were analyzed on this blog earlier. Bt proteins were repeatedly established to be non-toxic to mammals on the basis of their mode of chemical action and experimental studies. Yet, the activists want the world to believe that Bt cotton plants cause these alleged animal deaths and so Bt transgenic crops should be banned.

Official vindication of Bt proteins in the farm animal death imbraglio in AP has now come. On August 17, 2007, the Minister for Environment and Forests, (MoEF) Government of India, cited an AP Government’s report and said that Bt cotton samples analyzed by four public sector laboratories contained high levels of nitrates, nitrites, hydrogen cyanide residues and organophosphates, which may be common constituents of soil or fertilizer or pesticides used in cotton cultivation, were the cause for farm animal deaths. The Minister reportedly said that ‘the MoEF had not received any scientific report attributing sheep mortality to grazing on Bt cotton fields per se’. Since the farmers use significantly lower quantities of insecticides on the Bt cotton crop, nitrates and nitrites are more likely to be the toxicants. The sources and symptoms of nitrate and pesticide poisoning were analyzed on this blog earlier.

2. Collapse of Honey Bee Colonies in the US and Europe

There has been a collapse of Honey Bee colonies in the US and Europe early this year, causing enormous losses. The anti-GE activists attributed this to the pollen of GE crops. While there are several GE crops in the US, it is absurd to attribute bee colony collapse to GE pollen in Europe and elsewhere, where there is a distinct lack of GM pollen in the environment.

Colony Collapse Disaster (CCD), the desertion and death of almost all the bees in a colony, occurs now and then, sometimes in epidemic proportions, in all countries. While several causes for CCD were identified, no specific reason or reliable remedies are known. Poisoning by agricultural chemicals, an unusually higher than normal winter damage and natural age dependent colony degeneration, are often confused with CCD.

Christian Evans analyzed in News Target (March 2007) the various possible causes for the bee colony disaster and concluded that the heavy chemical inputs in modern agricultural practices were responsible for the problem.

At a hearing of the US House Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture on CCD on April 5, 2007, three experts testified that the pollen from GE crops was not one of the causes for the disaster. Nicotinoid pesticides, which may affect honey bee’s learning ability, may be one of them. The general impression at these hearings was that the problem was overblown from the level of normal over-winter losses.

Irish Times (April 06, 2007) attributed bee colony losses to either to the CCD or a new form of Varroa destructor, a mite that attacks bees, which was prevalent for the past four or five years in Ireland.

On April 15, 2007, Omega News raised the question if mobile phones are wiping out the bees, by scrambling their signals and the same was reiterated in June 2007, by The Independent (UK).

So far not even a single peer reviewed report has proved that the products of new genes in GE crops are harmful to honey bees, bumble bees or such other insect pollination vectors.

3. OECD consensus document

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, has released a peer reviewed consensus document (July 2007, Document No. 42) on the safety of transgenic Bt insecticidal proteins. This document does not show any serious adverse effects of Bt proteins on non-target organisms under normal field conditions of Bt crops, which is also the experience of a decade of cultivation of transgenic crops in different parts of the world.