The Philippines
May, 2005By Lorna
Malicsi, Knowledge Management Unit Head,
SEARCA
The Philippine Agriculture, March 2005
According to Dr. Brian R. Johnson, these four lessons are:
- Generalized statements
about environmental risks from GMOs are worthless and have
no place in regulation.
- The UK experience shows
that each crop has different characteristics and carries
different potential risks.
- Risks from GM crops
sometimes are different from conventional crops, but not
necessarily higher.
- Case-by-case assessments
are always different from conventional crops, but not
necessarily higher.
"I have an open mind," say Dr.
Brian R. Johnson who has 20 years of experience on biotechnology
and who is an advisor to the UK Minister of Environment on
biotechnology issues that impact on biodiversity.
The debate continues. To some, genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) are a panacea to feeding a ballooning population: to
others, it is a complete disaster to humans.
Resolving the debate in GMOs, Johnson posed two issues to
consider:
1. Environmental Sustainability
2. Environmental Safety
Environmental Sustainability
Even without the use of GMOs, the experience of United Kingdom
(UK) shows that "non-chemical agriculture" has long destroyed
UK's natural systems. Overgrazing, irrigation, and polluted
water have damaged its arable soils by 40%. Agriculture
encroaching on natural forests, grasslands, and wetlands has
decimated many of the wildlife species in UK.
However, some of the wildlife have adapted to this type of
agriculture. "We need more food, but not more of this type of
agriculture. We need to use every tool in the toolbox. We need
to think out of the box and not continue in the box," says
Johnson.
Biotech offers some of the answers. It makes agriculture less
damaging. It lessens the burden of the natural systems bearing
the brunt of toxic herbicides and pesticides, and of water
quality depletion. It reduces farm cost; for example, Bt corn in
1998 saved 8.2 million pounds of pesticide active ingredients
(USDA).
On the other hand, there are direct and indirect risks to
contend with.
Environmental Safety
Direct risks include the following:
- Invasiveness - every
common weeds that invaded agriculture systems have
naturalized. In particular, herbicide-tolerant crops have
the "potential to create new weeds through outcrossing with
wild relatives or simply by persisting in the wild
themselves."
- Toxicity to humans,
livestock, and wildlife. For example, canola (Brassica
napus) is highly toxic to deer but no to human
population.
- Gene flow to other with
wild relatives or with other crops.
- Gene stacking - genes will
combine in plants and will stack up. In one of the studies
in UK, researchers found out that herbicides-tolerant
gene-stacked volunteers of oilseed rape would be inevitable
in practical agriculture. It is recommended that researchers
put more emphasis on "postharvest cultivation in order to
minimize volunteer populations in subsequent crops."
From the four lessons and the
risks on the use of the GMOs mentioned here, Dr. Johnson
concludes that "[In] all risk assessments, at the end of the
day, the final decision depends on your policy on what you
actually want out of your environment. It is informed by
science, but at the end of the day, it is a political judgment;
is has to be a political judgment."
Dr. Johnson is a senior advisor on biotechnology to the British
statutory nature conservation agencies and is head of the
Biotechnology Advisory Unit at English Nature, government's
advisors on nature conservation. The English Nature is one of
the largest environment conservation NGO's in Europe. |
