Friday Food Security Link-straveganza

Oh, those GMOs. Nathaniel Johnson at Grist has been doing an in-depth series of reports on whether GMOs matter. It's a series that has raised more than a few hackles in the green world, particularly because he has come to the conclusion that spending our political capital opposing GMOs is a waste of time, energy, and money.
Johnson's series is worth reading, as is Tom Philpott's response, and Ramez Naam's generally pro-GMO article. But, kas Nathaniel Johnson writes in his most recent article:

[...]I want to add a note of caution: There’s an entire industry pushing the argument that GMOs are the solution. I agree with the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development that GMOs could be part of the solution, but we shouldn’t let the hype distract us from all the other ideas out there.
There are lots of problems associated with GMOs. I just want to focus directly on fixing those problems, rather than turning GMOs into a vague representative boogieman. I see problems with seed patents, problems with overuse of pesticides, problems with the lack of funding for research on agricultural alternatives. I care deeply about these things. But I’m worried that the discussion has become so ossified over GMOs that it’s not helping those causes. We’ve focused so tightly on GMOs that people tend to lose sight of those bigger things.

Raw Story is reporting that Golden Rice, that long-touted but otherwise invisible genetically modified crop that's supposed to save millions from blindness may actually be a go:

The first genetically-modified rice to be commercially available could be approved for production in the Philippines in two to three years, researchers said Tuesday, despite strong opposition from environmental groups.
Officers of both the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Philippine government’s agriculture department said the newly-developed “golden rice” had completed field trials, despite vandalism at one test field.
“Golden rice is coming. That is in the pipeline and a lot of the principal development and research has been completed,” said Achim Dobermann, deputy director-general of IRRI.
“At the moment, there is no GM (genetically-modified) rice officially released in any country,” he stressed.

No word on the actual vitamin A content of the rice, or whether kids would still be better off eating a half a carrot a month as a nutrient source. But Golden Rice, which has been in development for at least 25 years was supposed to be the criticism-killer of GMOs, developed with world health rather than tawdry financial gain in mind. Of course, when the Australians decided to breed salt-tolerant wheat, they did it with conventional breeding, meaning that farmers will be allowed to save their own seed.
Raw Story is also reporting on GM trials in the UK of a new genetically modified version of camelina that is high in fish oils:

A genetically-modified plant that produces seeds packed with fish oils is set to be grown in open fields in the UK within months, scientists announced on Friday. The oils could provide feed for farmed fish, the researchers hope, but they could ultimately be used as a health supplement in human foods such as margarine.
Fish oils – specifically omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids – have been shown to cut the risk of cardiovascular disease and are a popular food supplement. But about 80% of the fish oil harvested from the oceans every year is actually fed to other fish being raised in aquaculture. With many fish stocks already over-exploited, the government-funded researchers from Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire have spent 15 years developing the new GM plant and hope to have permission for field trials by March, with planting to start shortly after if approval is given.

This is typical; we have a significant requirement for food, but a large amount of the food we harvest from the ocean is either by-catch and trashed, or fed to other, more commercially viable, fish. We harvest a hundred calories to eat ten. No bloody wonder the oceans are empty. The only farmed fish that are remotely sustainable are tilapia.

Tilapia via Wikipedia /Bjørn Christian Tørrissen

According to the New York Times:

Americans ate 475 million pounds of tilapia last year, four times the amount a decade ago, making this once obscure African native the most popular farmed fish in the United States. Although wild fish predominate in most species, a vast majority of the tilapia consumed in the United States is “harvested” from pens or cages in Latin America and Asia.

Known in the food business as “aquatic chicken” because it breeds easily and tastes bland, tilapia is the perfect factory fish; it happily eats pellets made largely of corn and soy and gains weight rapidly, easily converting a diet that resembles cheap chicken feed into low-cost seafood.

But, of course, the rush to monetize tilapia has led to problems as well. Fed on corn and soy, farmed tilapia contains relatively small amounts of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, which are why it is recommended we eat fish in the first place. From the same article: "For the moment, Seafood Watch lists tilapia raised in the United States as a “best choice,” tilapia from Latin America as a “good alternative” and tilapia from China as “to be avoided.”
The report from the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development points out:

Development and sustainability goals should be placed
in the context of (1) current social and economic inequities
and political uncertainties about war and conflicts; (2) uncer-
tainties about the ability to sustainably produce and access
sufficient food; (3) uncertainties about the future of world
food prices; (4) changes in the economics of fossil-based en-
ergy use; (5) the emergence of new competitors for natural
resources; (6) increasing chronic diseases that are partially a
consequence of poor nutrition and poor food quality as well
as food safety; and (7) changing environmental conditions
and the growing awareness of human responsibility for the
maintenance of global ecosystem services (provisioning,
regulating, cultural and supporting).
Today there is a world of asymmetric development, un-
sustainable natural resource use, and continued rural and
urban poverty. Generally the adverse consequences of global
changes have the most significant effects on the poorest and
most vulnerable, who historically have had limited entitlements and opportunities for growth.

Canada, the US, and  Australia did not agree.

Also from Grist, an update on the California drought--in this case a lovely comparison of satellite pictures of California now and at the same time last year:

via Grist / NASA

Oh, and CNN and the John Hopkins School of Medicine report:

More than half of all adults in the United States take some sort of multivitamin; many do so in hopes of preventing heart disease and cancer or even to aid with memory.

But an editorial published in this week's Annals of Internal Medicine says that using supplements and multivitamins to prevent chronic conditions is a waste of money.

"The (vitamin and supplement) industry is based on anecdote, people saying 'I take this, and it makes me feel better,' said Dr. Edgar Miller, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-author of the editorial.

"It's perpetuated. But when you put it to the test, there's no evidence of benefit in the long term. It can't prevent mortality, stroke or heart attack."

It's all about the money, honey.

Monsanto, Roundup, and the Devil We Didn't Know

Female (9255) fed with the GMO
alone (22%) and developing a mammary adenocarcinoma
in a fibroadenoma
(day 645) photo: Criigen website

So what do we know? We know that Roundup-tolerant corn is approved for human consumption on the basis of 90-day rat trials. We know that groundwater levels have been approved on the strength of 90-day rat trials. We know that food activists (among whom I number myself) have been saying for years that 90-day rat trials are not really the best way to approve a radical new technology. We know that Monsanto, Cargill, and other plant science patent holders have said that all they need to do are 90-day rat trials, and that those trials are sufficient to approve and use a “substantially equivalent” genetically modified organism. And we know our governments have agreed.

But that was yesterday. Today is a different world. Today, the paper, "Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize" reporting on a study conducted by a team of scientists led by molecular biologist and endocrinologist Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini, (co-director of the Risk Quality and Sustainable Environment Unit at the University of Caen, France, who is an authority on studies into the health impact of GMO's and pesticides) has been published. This is the first study of both NK603 Roundup tolerant GM maize, and water containing Roundup at levels permitted in drinking water and GM crops in the US that has followed the test rats longer than the required 90 days—in fact, the study followed them through their entire 24 month life span. And the news is not good.

Whether the test rats were fed NK603 Roundup-tolerant maize (illegal in France, where the study was conducted, the maize had to be imported from Canada, where its use is approved), or whether they received a measured dose of Roundup in their drinking water, they developed two to three times more tumours than the control group. Tumours appeared in the male rats after four months and in the female rats after seven months. Tumours only began appearing in the female control group after 14 months, and in the male control group after 23 months.

Three groups were given Roundup in their drinking water, at three different levels consistent with exposure through the food chain from crops sprayed with the weedkiller: the mid level corresponded to the maximum level permitted in the US in some GM feed; the lowest corresponded to contamination found in some tap waters. Three groups were fed diets which contained different proportions of NK603—11%, 22% and 33%. Three groups were given both Roundup and NK603 at the same three dosages. The final control group was fed an equivalent diet with no Roundup or NK603 but containing 33% of equivalent non-GM maize.
So test populations dosed with Roundup-contaminated water, Roundup-tolerant NK603 maize, and both Roundup-contaminated water AND the NK603 maize. And as it turns out, it didn't matter. Both the maize and the Roundup, individually and together, triggered the same problems: Females developed fatal mammary tumours and pituitary disorders. Males suffered liver damage, developed kidney and skin tumours and experienced problems with their digestive system. Treated males suffered severe liver and kidney dysfunction. Liver congestion and necrosis were 2.5 to 5.5 times higher than in the control group. There were also 1.3 - 2.3 times more instances of "marked and severe" kidney disease. And this happened regardless of whether the rats received the lowest or the highest dose, or whether they received either the maize or the Roundup.
This tends to indicate that the doses exceed some important threshold level. Worse, the 50ng/L of glyphosate in R-formulation (that is to say, the lowest concentration of Roundup in drinking water in the tests) was a level found in some contaminated tap waters, a level of contamination which is legal in some jurisdictions, caused the same reaction as the higher levels of contamination.
Dr Michael Antoniou, molecular biologist at Kings College, London, and a member of the CRIIGEN scientific council, says:
"This is the most thorough research ever published into the health effects of GM food crops and the herbicide Roundup on rats. It shows an extraordinary number of tumors [sic] developing earlier and more aggressively - particularly in female animals. I am shocked by the extreme negative health impacts."
"The rat has long been used as a surrogate for human toxicity. All new pharmaceutical, agricultural and household substances are, prior to their approval, tested on rats. This is as good an indicator as we can expect that the consumption of GM maize and the herbicide Roundup, impacts seriously on human health."
And corn is contained in almost every manufactured food. Corn is ubiquitous in the food system as it is currently constituted, and practically all that corn is genetically modified maize (this does not apply to sweet corn as far as I know. Only to the maize grown for feed and industrial use).
This isn't just bad news for Monsanto, or other manufacturers of glyphosate. This throws into doubt every test done on food additives that was ended after 90 days. This study has not only dropped a bomb on GM corn, it has dropped one on the whole structure of additive approval. We have not been testing for long-term effects, and this study has demonstrated that we need to change that.

Update:
As is to be expected, there has been reaction to the study. Primarily, they seem to be centred around the statistical analysis and the sample size (ie. not enough rats). Tom Philpott, over at Mother Jones, has written a well researched piece on the burgeoning controversy:

Predictably, industry-aligned scientists are raising questions about the study, but even long-time critics like Consumers Union's Hansen have concerns. Now, Hansen stresses that the new paper is "longer and better designed than any of the industry studies," adding that the journal in question, Food and Chemical Toxicity, is "well-respected."
But the sample size—ten males and ten females per group—is simply too small to draw any conclusions, Hansen says. Moreover, he adds, the researchers used a strain of rat that is known to be highly prone to developing mammary tumors. That factor, plus the small sample size, means that the prevalence of mammary tumors found among the treated female rats could be happenstance, he said.

However, Hansen told me, while all of the individual comparisons—say, kidney dysfunction or mammary tumors between 10 females eating a certain level of GMO feed and 10 females eating non-GMO feed—are "statistically insignificant" because of sample size, taken as a whole, the results paint a troubling picture. Overall, the study made 54 comparisons between treated rats and control rats, and in all but four of them—two involving females, two involving males—the treated rats showed worse outcomes. "That's suggestive that there's something going on and there that should be further research," he said.

And, unlike me, Philpott has access to events like the press conference with study author Gilles-Eric Séralini, where he raised some of the concerns with the study design. Ted Schettler, science director of the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN), said:

 he's "intrigued" by the results, but isn't convinced. "I don't want to trash" the study, he said, "but I just don't see enough there that's very persuasive to me at this point." He added: "It does suggest to me that we need longer term feeding studies with GM foodstuff, in a standardized way with the right number of animals in each group so we can pick up the changes and be confident that they exist." He stressed that using enough rats to show robust, statistically significant results would be very expensive.

The expense of a larger sample size trial seems to be the reason the French study was so small. Large sample long-term animal studies are really expensive. Small non-industry-aligned groups, like Criigen, simply don't have the necessary cash to do massive studies. But, as said above, with the results viewed together this study does paint a troubling picture.

Pushback II

It's Baaack!!! photo: PennStateLive/Flickr

Beef Products Inc. has made a splash this past week. After the eating public decided that they didn't really want ammoniated "lean finely textured beef" in their food chain--yes, the "pink slime" issue--BPI's business took a punch to the face. After Jaime Oliver's piece on ammoniated beef ran on ABC, " the firm says that what it describes as unfair coverage caused its sales to drop by 80 per cent, forcing the closure of three of its four plants. Roughly 700 workers were laid off, and the company estimates that it is still losing $20m per month in revenue." (The Independent). So they're taking pretty much everyone who ever used the words "pink slime" to court, having filed a lawsuit asking $1.2 billion (US) in damages from ABC.