Warning GM plants cause surge in disease-resistant weeds and insects

Genetically modified plants have caused a surge in disease-resistant weeds and insects, warns one leading Irish organic food producer.

Irish Organic Food Growers Association’s (IOFGA) Grace Maher supported her views with statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture (UDSA), noting that the US alone has used an extra 383 million pounds (c175m kilos) of herbicide in the first 13 years of its cultivation of GM crops.

Ms Maher was speaking in response to an article in Thursday’s Irish Examiner on a UCD conference on GM foods, at which key speakers included UCD’s Professor Jimmy Burke and USDA’s Jack Bebo, a special adviser to Hillary Clinton on biotechnology and global trade issues.

The key speakers at UCD argued that GM technology is a natural progression to plant breeding.

They also said that GM can play a key role in helping food producers meet inevitably future growth in demand. With predicted surges in global population by 2050, mankind will have to produce as much food in just 40 years as it had done in the previous 10,000 years.

However, Grace Maher said: “Everything about GM seems good on paper. And, to be fair to the speakers at UCD, they were not saying that GM is some sort of golden bullet to solve world hunger. However, it should come with a health warning.

“The US has been growing GM crops commercially longer than anybody else, and they are now experiencing a surge in ‘super-weeds’. Farmers have been having huge problems trying to get rid of the weeds.

“They went into GM in the first place thinking they’d save money through using less pesticides, but the opposite has been the case. Then there is the increased use of water, and higher greenhouse gas levels.

“The whole GM industry has been an expensive experiment. The crops are creating more resistant pests, so they keep having to go back to their labs to come up with better crops. There have been numerous US court cases taken against GM companies because people feel the crops have not delivered what they promised.”

Ms Maher cited the UDSA’s 2009 report, Impacts of Genetically Engineered crops on pesticide use in the US — The First Thirteen Years. This study aligned the rise in “super-weeds” with the growth in acreage devoted to GM crops.

She also cited research by the University of Arizona, that found pests are adapting to GM crops in unexpected ways.

Resistance of cotton bollworm to insect-killing cotton plants involves more diverse genetic changes than expected, she noted.

Ms Maher also noted that majority of food produced in Ireland is destined for the EU market. She said that, as repeated surveys have shown that EU consumers will not eat GM foods, the field of GM crop production is of minimal interest to Irish farmers in any case.

Ms Maher said: “Why would Irish farmers produce a crop that doesn’t have a market? The only market for this crop in Europe is in animal feed, and that is only because the animals don’t have a say in the matter.

“Therefore why should Ireland bow to pressure from the US to grow GM crops? The time has come for Ireland to prove its green credentials. Co-existence of GM crops, conventional and organic crops is not an option due to cross contamination. In Ireland we would be advised to use our green image to produce food which is GM free and in demand across Europe.”