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Science in Society
ISSUE 27 Autumn 2005 £3.50
What will we eat when water and oil run out?
Sustainable World Coming
Dream Farm - Biogas Bonanza for Third World Development
War on World Food Rights - No to GMOs & Agriculture Without Farmers
Debunking Nuclear Power Myths - Taking to the Wind
Safe Gene Therapy at Last - Guinea Pig Kids in AIDS Drug Trials
In this issue
Biogas
Bonanza
page 29
Is Nuclear
Energy the
Answer?
page 12
SOS: Save
Our Seeds
page 45
Contents
From the Editor
GM-Free
Molecular Pharming - the New
Battlefront over GM Crops
Molecular Pharming by Chloroplast
Transformation
GM Pharmaceuticals from Common
Green Alga
Cover-up over GM DNA in Milk
Bt10 Detection Method Unacceptable
Energy
Energy Strategies in Global Warming: Is
Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Taking to the Wind
Deconstructing the Nuclear Power
Myths
3
4
5
6
8
10
12
16
18
Science under the Spotlight
What Science, What Europe?
21
Letters to the Editor
23
Sustainable World
Bug Power
Dream Farms
Biogas Bonanza for Third World
Development
Agriculture without Farmers
Sustainable Food Systems for
Sustainable Development
Technology Watch
Safe Gene Therapy at last?
24
26
29
30
33
36
Editor & Art Director:: Mae-Wan Ho
Assistant Editor: Rhea Gala
Production Editor: Julian Haffegee
Production Assistant: Andrew Watton
Publishing Consultant & Contributor: Sam
Burcher
40
Associate Editors: Joe Cummins, Peter
Saunders, Claire Robinson and Peter
Bunyard
41
42
Other Contributors to this Issue:
Dr. Isabelle Stengers, and Prof. Pietro
Perrino
HIV/AIDS
US Foster Children Used in AIDS Drugs
Tests
Guinea Pig Kids in AIDS Drugs Trials
NIH-Sponsored AIDS Drugs Tests on
Mothers and Babies
44
Against Corporate Serfdom
Save our Seeds
Italy's Genebank at Risk
45
47
Rethinking Agriculture
Organic Cotton Beats Bt Cotton
Published by
The Institute of Science in Society
PO Box 32097
London NW1 OXR
www.i-sis.org.uk
ISSN 1477-3430
49
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SCIENCE IN SOCIETY 27, AUTUMN 2005
tel: 44 20 8452 2729
Email: [email protected]
3
Health, Human Rights, and GM crops
In 1978, the governments of the world gathered under the aegis of
the World Health Organisation to sign the Alma Ata Declaration
promising "Health for All by 2000". But this promise was never taken
seriously, and was sidelined in subsequent health policy discussions.
In December 2000, 1 453 delegates from 75 countries, representing people's movements and other non-government organizations
across the globe, came together in Savar, Bangladesh for the world's
first People's Health Assembly, to reiterate the pledge of "Health for
All", declaring health as a basic human right, including the environmental, social and economic conditions that guarantee health. The
Assembly documented the adverse impacts of the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) on people's health, and roundly condemned the international financial institutions - the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation - for
pushing SAPs, the governments for imposing the policies on their people, and the big transnational corporations for putting profit before people.
SAPs are supposed to help poor indebted nations restore their
balance of payments, reduce inflation and create the conditions for
"sustainable growth". Typical measures include devaluation of local
currencies, spending cuts in the public sector, privatisation of public
services, elimination of subsidies and trade liberalization (removal of
all barriers to trade, finance and procurement). In practice, SAPs
deprive poor people of basic healthcare, education and other essential services, and leave poor countries wide open to economic exploitation, especially through transnational corporations - based in rich
countries in the North operating in the South - that have scant regard
for human health or the environment. As a result, peoples' health worsens while the environment is destroyed at an ever-accelerating rate,
and the poor countries sink deeper into poverty and indebtedness.
The People's Health Assembly met for the second time this July
in Cuenca, Ecuador, when "Health for All" seems even more remote
than in 2000. Nevertheless, thirteen hundred delegates from 80 countries came to reaffirm the Alma Ata vision amid deteriorating conditions
of health for most of the world's people, which are blamed unequivocally on "neo-liberal policies that transfer wealth from the South to the
North, from the poor to the rich, and from the public to private sector."
The delegates were unanimous in opposing the signing of the
Free Trade Agreements imposed by the United States government
and the international financial institutions that can only further worsen
people's health prospects.
Invited to speak on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), I
explained to the Assembly why GM food and feed are proving unsafe,
because genetic modification goes against the grain of the new science of genetics. I also exposed all the lies and half-truths told by certain scientists that genetic modification is perfectly safe and very precise; and makes environmentally friendly GM crops that improve yield,
reduce pesticide use, improve nutrition and so on.
Among the most important conditions for health is people's right
to food and adequate nutrition. The People's Charter for Health calls
on governments to implement agricultural policies attuned to people's
needs, and not to the demands of the market, in order to guarantee
food security and equitable access to food. GM crops guarantee neither food security nor equitable access to food, quite the opposite.
In fact, GM crops usurp people's right to food by imposing licence
fees on patented seeds and by preventing farmers from saving and
exchanging seeds, a practice going back for thousands of years. GM
crops are industrial monocultures, only worse. They are more genetically uniform than conventional monocultures, and hence more prone
to disease. They are more dependent on external inputs, particularly
pesticides; and according to the latest reports by farmers across the
world, GM crops require more water and are less tolerant of drought.
Delegates were right to fear that the Free Trade Agreements will
mean forced imports of GM seeds and GM food and feed into Latin
America, especially as "food aid". The US' agricultural exports are
worth more than US$ 50 billion each year, and rejection of GM food
and feed across the world is hurting exports.
War on world food rights fought
over GM crops
From the Editor
A war on food rights is being fought
over GM crops with big agribusiness - supported by the US and
US-friendly governments (including
the Blair administration) - against
the rest of the world; and it is taking
place at all levels from the international arena to local communities.
The US government has sued
the European Union (EU) at the
World Trade Organization (WTO)
for restricting import of GMOs, and
wants the WTO to override the
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety - which gives countries the right to regulate and
reject GMOs - in order to force GMOs on the world in the name of free trade. The
European Commission responded to the WTO complaint by urging European
countries to lift their national bans on GMOs. But EU member states stood firm
with a clear majority vote in June in favour of keeping the existing national bans.
The US administration is pushing GMOs both officially and through unofficial
channels. In July, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a "second generation of India-US collaboration in agriculture". This, after Monsanto's Bt
cotton has proven to fail, as reported by both independent and Indian government
scientists. Monsanto's Indian subsidiary, Monsanto-Mahyco has shamelessly
hyped the GM-cotton seeds, even enlisting a Bollywood star and dancing girls to
go on promotional tours in Punjabi villages.
GM crops are also aggressively promoted in Africa. Earlier in July, a team of
"international food scientists" was reported complaining that, "regulatory hurdles
are preventing African farmers from reaping the benefits of genetically modified
foods", but nonetheless the African farmers "have been adopting this technology
rapidly". The team's spokesperson, Joel Cohen of the International Food Policy
Research Institute, was formerly with USAID, and worked with Monsanto to fund
Florence Wambugu to head Monsanto's GM sweet potato project in Kenya, generating fantastic PR for GM crops, although the project turned out to be a total
flop at a cost of millions. Florence Wambugu is regularly featured and quoted in
top scientific journals including Nature as a scientist speaking on behalf of Africa
and in favour of GM crops, despite having been exposed by fellow African scientists on many occasions.
Meanwhile, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded US$ 3.3 million to the Monsanto-backed Donald Danforth Plant Science Centre in Ohio,
USA, to genetically engineer cassava; and $16.9 million to Wambugu's African
consortium to genetically engineer sorghum for African farmers, also at a US
company, Pioneer Hi-Bred, a subsidiary of DuPont based in Des Moines, Iowa.
Within the US, repressive bills have been passed in at least 10 states to
block local communities and regions declaring themselves GM-Free, and are
clearly targeted at the grassroots uprising against GM crops that has been gaining momentum over the past year.
A Sustainable World is possible
Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, Minister for the Environment, Ethiopia,
supported the first public action against commercial GMOs in Germany with the
following statement: "Badly informed governments and corrupt members of governments everywhere in the world are the main obstacle to an objective discussion of the true problems of world food supplies. The merciless forces of the free
market, which in the wake of globalisation is taking on a cynical, inhuman character, deprive the poorest of the poor of any basis for making a living."
Alan Simpson, Member of UK Parliament, similarly declared at our Sustainable
World International Conference in London that, "irreverence, heresy, and the breaking of rules are necessary to raise awareness in the face of deepening water, energy and food insecurity."
Adopting GM crops when oil and water are both rapidly depleting under global warming, and when industrial monoculture is showing all the signs of collapse is
a crime against humanity and our planet; especially when we have all the knowledge at our disposal to build a truly sustainable and equitable world.
All SiS issues and articles can be accessed at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews.php
www.i-sis.org.uk
4
GM-Free
Molecular Pharming the New Battlefront
over GM Crops
The biggest battle for democracy
in the 'heartland of democracy' is
being fought over GM crops and it
has shifted to molecular pharming
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
US Department of Agriculture caves in to
pharm crops
binding iron required for bacterial growth. It has
been implicated in asthma with fatal consequences. Lysozyme breaks down the cell wall
material of bacteria, but may contribute to
emphysema. But by far the greater danger is that
the transgenic proteins are only approximations
of the natural protein both in DNA sequence,
amino-acid sequence and patterns of glycosylation (carbohydrate chains added to the proteins),
all of which may make transgenic proteins allergenic. Or the transgenic proteins may trigger diseases connected with the inability of human cells
to break them down properly.
As these proteins both target bacteria, there
is a large question mark over the safety of these
proteins for beneficial bacteria in our gut, which
are now known to promote healthy development
in numerous ways from cradle to grave. In addition, we know nothing concerning the effects of
these proteins on beneficial bacteria and other
organisms in the soil, on insects, amphibians,
birds and mammals that interact with the pharm
rice in the fields. Another aspect virtually ignored
in all risk assessment is the hazard from horizontal transfer of the transgenes to viral and bacterial pathogens that are everywhere in our environment.
The battlefront over GM crops in the United
States and Europe has shifted to molecular
pharming, the use of GM crops to produce pharmaceuticals. California-based company Ventria
Bioscience has been at the forefront of pharm
crop development, and has planted 75 acres of
genetically engineered rice near Plymouth in
eastern North Carolina.
Ventria made applications to grow GM rice
producing human lactoferrin and lysozyme, normally produced in human milk, saliva and tears,
in California, Missouri and North Carolina, stirring
up a storm of opposition. Ventria was driven out
of California last year, and forced out of southeast Missouri earlier this year by a last minute
uprising of rice farmers who feared contamination of their crops and damage to a $100 million
industry that depends heavily on exports.
The USDA was under pressure to turn down
Ventria's request and others like it. The Grocery
Manufacturers of America, representing $500 billion in annual sales, says that the government
lacks a way to prevent pharmaceutical proteins
from contaminating food. Advocacy groups presented Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns with
30 000 signatures asking for a ban on the use of
food crops to produce pharmaceuticals.
Northwest Missouri State University President
Dean Hubbard insists, however, that his institution is going ahead with a $40 million agricultural
pharmaceutical centre that would house Ventria
and other companies.
On 30 June, the USDA approved Ventria's
application to grow its GM rice on 270 acres in
North Carolina, despite opposition from scientists
working at the state and federally-operated Rice
Quarantine Nursery at the Tidewater Research
Station, just over half a mile from the Ventria test
site. USDA also cleared the way for Ventria to
grow its pharm rice on 200 acres in the middle of
Missouri's chief rice-growing region, even though
Ventria has already withdrawn its permit applications for that site. Anheuser-Busch, the nation's
largest brewer, had indicated it would refuse to
buy any rice from southeastern Missouri's hundreds of growers if the Ventria pharm rice was
planted there. But USDA dismissed the concerns
as "non-scientific" and beyond its legal purview.
Health and environmental hazards ignored
As numerous critics have pointed out, it is virtually impossible to prevent contamination of our
food crops either by cross-pollination or seed
spills during transport. The safety of these and
other transgenic proteins for human beings is
highly questionable. Prof. Joe Cummins has
reviewed and submitted evidence on the potential hazards of lactoferrin and lysozyme.
Lactoferrin participates in the regulation of
immune functions and controls pathogens by
Move to pre-empt local regulation
The North Carolina legislature is considering
"preemption" bills intended to block local regulation of crop plants, including biotech crops. The
bills, House Bill 671 and Senate Bill 631, were
sponsored by the biotech industry and are part of
a nationwide industry effort to preempt local governments from regulating any crops, including
GM crops. Similar bills have become law in at
least 10 other states in the US this year, and are
clearly targeted at the grassroots uprising against
GM crops that has been gaining momentum over
the past year (Science in Society 2004, 22 From
the Editor, http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews.php).
Patents on molecular pharming
A total of 369 patents are currently listed under
"Protein products for future global good" on
MolecularFarming.com, an industry website that
claims to have received its information from the
"FAAR Biotechnology Group Inc., which provides
industry, government, universities and legal
counsel with expert advice, consultation and
evaluation of biotechnology research, business
opportunities and intellectual property matters."
The patents date from 1990 onwards, and
include methods for producing antibodies, vaccines, proteins, flavourings, biodegradable plastics; methods for metabolic interventions that
change the nutrition and composition of seeds;
recovery methods for the proteins produced, for
viral systems and viral vectors used in plants;
and methods for molecular farming by chloroSiS
plast transformation.
The advantages are also its
greatest hazards; no
environmental releases
should be considered
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and
Professor Joe Cummins
Chloroplast transformation for transgene
containment
Chloroplasts are a class of plastids - organelles
in plant cells - apparently derived from a
cyanobacteria (blue-green bacteria) ancestor
that once lived symbiotically inside the plant
cell. Chloroplasts contain chlorophyll and are
found in the shoots and leaves of green plants,
while colourless plastids are found in the roots
and other coloured plastids are found in fruit.
The number of plastids in each cell is variable,
and each plastid contains multiple copies of its
own genome, typically 50 to 100. Many plastid
genomes have been sequenced. They resemble bacterial genomes in many respects; though
features normally found in muticellular organisms, such as interrupted genes and RNA editing are also present. The chloroplast genome
codes for the transcription and translation
machinery of the chloroplast plus numerous
structural proteins. But the vast majority of the
chloroplast proteins are encoded in the plant
nucleus and imported into the chloroplast after
synthesis.
Stable transformation of the chloroplast putting foreign genes into the chloroplast
genome - was first achieved in the single cell
green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in 1988,
soon to be followed by tobacco plant, and more
recently, Arabidopsis thaliana. Several biotech
companies, including Monsanto, RhonePoulenc, Novartis, American Cyanamid,
Calgene, Pioneer Hi-Bred have initiated major
programmes on chloroplast transformation
since the late 1990s.
Chloroplast transformation has been touted
at least as far back as 1998 as a means of
"containing" transgenes; that is, preventing
them from transferring to non-GM crops or wild
relatives through pollen, and hence preventing
the creation of transgenic herbicide tolerant
weeds. The theory is that chloroplasts are
inherited exclusively through the female line.
Joe Cummins has exposed the fallacy of
this claim. He pointed out that tobacco pollen
does transfer chloroplast transgenes under
selection with a herbicide-like drug tentoxin. It is
well known that chloroplasts are mainly inherited through pollen in conifers, and major crops
such as alfalfa inherit chloroplasts from both
pollen and egg. There is also occasional
biparental inheritance of chloroplast genes in
rice, and cultivars of peas vary in the presence
of chloroplast DNA in pollen. These cases, he
emphasized, are just a few examples from a
large literature showing that chloroplasts are
inherited through pollen, pollen and egg, or
selectively influenced by stress to transmit
chloroplast genes through pollen where maternal transmission is usual.
Surprisingly, C.S. Prakash, later to become
5
Molecular Pharming by Chloroplast Transformation
a major protagonist for GM crops, co-authored
a letter with C. Neal Stewart, Jr., agreeing with
Cummins, which was published on the same
page of the journal Nature Biotechnology. They
also pointed out that pollen spreading to GM
crops from weeds could create herbicide tolerant weeds, as in the case of GM canola, which
showed increased cross-pollination by weedy
relatives compared to the reciprocal cross.
They added, "Overstating the biosafety of cp
[chloroplast]-transgenic crops with regard to
gene flow could lead to policy mistakes and
ecological problems. We would hope that
assumptions of biosafety regarding gene flow
using any system will be empirically tested and
not treated as brute fact. Second, we hope that
monitoring for transgene-introgressed weeds
will become the norm for potentially problematic crops such as canola." We couldn't agree
more. But that advice has fallen on deaf ears,
including those of the subsequently transformed CS Prakash.
Other benefits of chloroplast
transformation
Peter J. Nixon of Imperial College, London
gene.
According to Nixon, this transformation procedure applied to tobacco, Arabidopsis or oil
seed rape, generates plants in which all the
chloroplast genomes are uniformly transformed
(a condition referred to as homoplasmic),
despite the fact that tobacco leaf cells may contain 100 chloroplasts, each containing 100
copies of the chloroplast genome.
Another advantage of chloroplast transformation is that foreign genes can be overexpressed, due to the high gene copy number,
up to 100 000 compared with single-copy
nuclear genes. And there does not seem to be
gene-silencing and other instability that plague
nuclear transformation. The gene product is
retained inside the chloroplasts or can in principle be targeted to a specific compartment in the
chloroplast.
Benefits over-stated
However, a somewhat less rosy picture on
chloroplast transformation was painted by Pal
Maliga of Waksman Institute, Rutgers
University, New Jersey in the United States,
commenting on the successful plastid transfor-
mental release of such transplastomic plants,
although techniques for removing the antibiotic
resistance marker gene, once it has served its
useful purpose, are being developed.
Nevertheless, Maliga ended on an optimistic note: "the capacity to express foreign
proteins at a high level in a consumable fruit
should open new opportunities for engineering
the next generation of medicinal products that
are more palatable to the consumer."
Molecular pharming by chloroplast
transformation entails unique risks
There are currently 37 patents for molecular
pharming by chloroplast transformation listed.
The first commercial exploitation of chloroplast
transformation for molecular pharming is likely
to be in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii ("GM pharmaceuticals in common green alga").
Chloroplast transformation to produce GM
pharmaceuticals entails specific risks that are
associated with its advantages.
1. The high level of transgene expression
that can be achieved increases the hazards of
environmental contamination and inadvertent
exposure of human subjects, domestic livestock
a large literature showing that chloroplasts are inherited through pollen,
pollen and egg, or selectively influenced by stress to transmit chloroplast
genes through pollen where maternal transmission is usual
University, in a paper published by UK's
Department for Environment, Food & Rural
Affairs (DEFRA) in February 2001, again recommended fallaciously, chloroplast transformation as a means of containing transgenes; but
also mentioned other advantages.
Chloroplast transformation involves homologous recombination. This not only minimises
the insertion of unnecessary DNA that accompanies transformation of the nuclear genome,
but also allows precise targeting of inserted
genes, thereby also avoiding the uncontrollable,
unpredictable rearrangements and deletions of
transgene DNA as well as host genome DNA at
the site of insertion that characterises nuclear
transformation. In practice, the inserted transgene has short DNA sequence tails added at
each end; the tails are homologous to
sequences on the chloroplast target gene,
which thus initiate homologous recombination.
Once the transgene is inserted into the chloroplast chromosome, the target gene is disrupted.
The disruption of the target gene is expected to
alter the growth and metabolism of the plant.
Leaf discs are bombarded with plasmid
constructs containing a selectable antibiotic
resistance marker physically linked to the gene
of interest, flanked by DNA for inserting into the
correct site of the chloroplast genome. The
antibiotic resistance marker most frequently
used is the aadA gene encoding resistance for
spectinomycin and streptomycin, driven by the
promoter of the chloroplast encoded 16S rRNA
mation in tomato, in which notable levels of
transgene protein accumulated in the tomato
fruit, indicating that it may be a useful system
for producing edible vaccines. Until then, plastid transformation had only been successful in
tobacco plants in that fertile plants are obtained
that transmitted the transgene to the next generation. Although transplastomic potatoes,
Arabidopsis and rice have been obtained, these
plants have not yet been shown to transmit
transgenes to the next generation. One major
difficulty is in getting homoplasmic plants plants in which all the chloroplasts are uniformly transformed - for that takes a long process of
selection. The process in Arabidopsis for example, yields 100 times fewer lines per transformed sample than tobacco.
Another problem is to get a high level of
protein expression, even though the gene copy
number is high. In chloroplasts, post-transcriptional processes determine the level of proteins
expressed, depending on translational signals.
High protein accumulation of transgene
product in the tomato fruit is good news for
those interested in the protein, but bad news for
those planning to produce the transplastomic
crop successfully. Because the protein levels
required for selection is greater than 10 percent
of total soluble protein in rice, it may constitute
a significant metabolic burden on the plants.
Furthermore, the high level of expression of
antibiotic resistance marker gene would greatly
exacerbate public concern over the environ-
and wild life.
2. The high copy number of transgenes
increases the hazards of horizontal gene transfer to bacteria and viruses, with the potential of
creating dangerous pathogens and spreading
antibiotic resistance marker genes. It is now
known that DNA persists in all environments,
and transformation by direct uptake of DNA is a
major route of horizontal gene transfer among
bacteria.
3. The close similarities (homologies)
between plastid and bacterial genomes is
expected to greatly increase the frequency of
horizontal gene transfer, up to a billion-fold.
Furthermore, the horizontal transfer of nonhomologous DNA occurs at relatively high frequencies when a homologous DNA 'anchor
sequence' is present, which can be as short as
99bp.
4. There are at least 87 species of naturally transformable bacteria in the soil.
5. The disruption of the target gene in
transformation results in changes in the growth
and metabolism of the plant that may pose risks
to health and the environment.
There can be no environmental releases of
chloroplast transformed crops or algae producing GM pharmaceuticals. They must be firmly
confined in contained use where every precaution is taken to prevent environmental releases
not only of the living transgenic organism or
SiS
cells, but also of transgenic DNA.
www.i-sis.org.uk
6
GM Pharmaceuticals from
Common Green Alga
Amid widespread protests against using crop plants to produce genetically
modified pharmaceuticals, companies are turning to the single-cell green
alga Chlamydomonas touted as a "safe" alternative; but not when it is to be
grown in large-scale outdoor bioreactors
Prof. Joe Cummins and Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Large-scale production of GM algae producing human
proteins
United States, and all government agencies, the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA), the US Department of
The Hawaii Department of Agriculture received an applica- Agriculture (USDA) and Environment Protection Agency
tion from Mera Pharmaceuticals, originally filed 1 November (EPA) had waived oversight of the trial. The native Hawaii
2004, for a permit to begin large-scale production of a algal systems have not been well documented; nor has the
genetically modified (GM) alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, ecology of Chlamydomonas itself. Apart from some last
producing a human immunoglobulin-A protein against a vari- minute attempt to conduct basic environmental experiments
ant of the herpes simplex virus. On 17 April 2005, Mera of the survival of GM algae, there are no peer-review studPharmaceuticals revised their application to include seven ies, or studies of any kind to back up Mera Pharmaceutical's
additional GM strains expressing a range of human antibod- claim of "no harm to the environment or human health."
Written and oral testimony by the public was overies, interleukins and nerve growth factors (see Box). The
case for the first GM strain was heard on 25 May 2005, and whelmingly opposed to the project. The board also ignored
the Plant Quarantine Office at Honolulu did not grant the testimony and reports by a number of local algae experts
from the University of Hawaii, Manoa, the State Biologist
permit.
The application for the seven other GM strains had been and Maui County District Health Officer. Other scientists
scheduled for 7 October 2005, but was brought forward to providing testimony include R. Malcolm Brown Jr., the
29 June. On that occasion, the state Board of Agriculture Johnson and Johnson Centennial Chair in Plant Cell Biology
gave its approval. Mera Pharmaceuticals will begin the at the University of Texas at Austin; Marti Crouch, Doug
process of importing the microalgae from The Scripps Sherman from Friends of the Earth, and Joe Cummins and
Institute, La Jolla, California, even as opponents are seek- Mae-Wan Ho from ISIS.
Malcolm Brown's message to the board was, "Hawaii is
ing to block the permit, which was approved on a six-to-two
vote after nearly three hours of testimony and an hour of dis- still the supreme ecosystem on earth to understand the
dynamics of evolution and natural selection. Let's not forevcussion.
er lose this opportunity
Single cell green algae
because a few commercial
are serving as green cell facoperations
thoughtlessly
Anything from 500 to 26 000 litres of culture
tories for producing pharmatried
to
construct
mass
ceuticals, and have been
are housed in transparent "Outdoor
scaleup
of
genetically
moditouted as a safe alternative
Photobioreactors" prone to weather, storm and
fied organisms in Hawaii."
to producing them in crop
other damage, resulting in immediate massive
Nancy Redfeather said,
plants, because they can be
contamination of the marine environment
"It
was
indeed a sad day for
contained in the laboratory.
the native algae of Hawaii
Unfortunately, Mera's proisland."
posed large-scale cultivation
is not contained. Anything from 500 to 26 000 litres of culture are housed in transparent "Outdoor Photobioreactors",
which are cooled with cold seawater with added chlorine.
The exposed facilities are prone to weather, storm and other
damage, resulting in immediate massive contamination of
the marine environment. In addition, the use of chlorinated
seawater for cooling will be expected to impact on marine
life. Neither of these concerns appears to have been
addressed.
Henry Curtis, executive director of Life of the Island, told
the Board that the non-profit organization will file for a contested case hearing.
The GM algae will be imported into Kona on the island of
Hawaii to be grown in the outdoor bioreactor system at
Keahole Point at the National Energy Laboratory Hawaii
Authority's aquaculture park. As Nancy Redfeather, Director
of Hawaii Genetic Engineering Action Network (Hawaii
GEAN ) points out, this type of "field trial" of a biopharmaceutical algae has never been attempted before in the
The Chlamydomonas reinhardtii transformation
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a preferred organism for
molecular pharming by chloroplast transformation because
its nuclear and chloroplast genomes have both been
sequenced, and it has a long history of laboratory culture. In
addition, it has a single chloroplast, which makes it easy to
produce a uniformly transformed culture. One technical
drawback with the alga is codon bias related to the high GC
content of the algal DNA, To achieve significant production,
the code of human and many other genes must be altered
to fit the bias of the algal cell, For that reason the human
pharmaceutical products are produced from synthetic
approximations of the human gene. The synthetic human
DNA in the alga, and all the more so, the expressed transgene, should not be deemed equivalent to the human gene
and gene product until they have been tested for untoward
effects on humans and other organisms in the environment.
It is already known that the proteins are not subject to posttranslational modifications as they would be in human cells,
Chlaydomonas reinhardtii, Joint Genome Institute
7
GM Chlamydomonas strains to be imported into
large-scale culture facility in Hawaii
1. Strain Hsv8, producing a full-length human
immunoglobulin-A against a variant of the herpes
simplex virus
2. Strain aFceR 1r-1, producing a protein targeting
the Fc portion of the IgE molecule, thereby limiting
the interaction between circulating IgE molecules
and receptors on mast cells, which in turn limits the
release of histamines and reduces inflammation.
3. Strain aTNFr-1, producing IgG1 anti-tumour
necrosis factor antibody.
4. Strain a TNr-1, producing IgG1 anti-microbial
antibody.
5. Strain aCRr-1, producing IgG1d anti-cell proliferation antibody.
6. Strain aBSSsr-1, producing anti-cancer cell specific antibody.
7. Strain aIL 10r-1, producing various interleukins
(including interleukin 10, interleukin 13, interleukin
5 and interleukin 3)
8. Strain aARTr-1, producing neurotrophic factors
to stimulate the growth of new nerve tissue.
and hence likely to be treated as 'foreign' by the human between the chloroplast and bacterial genomes.
immune system.
Large quantities of transgenic proteins are produced
Mayfield and Franklin described construction of trans- from multiple copies of transgenes present; in the case of
genic Chlamydomonas reinhardtii whose chloroplasts had Chlamydomonas, about 50 to 100 per cell. Strains 2-6 (see
been modified to express human antibodies. The human Box) produce antibodies that bind to immunologically active
genes were extensively adjusted for codon bias. Either the proteins that could lead to anaphylaxis (severe life-threatenrbcl (ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase of the chloro- ing allergic reaction) following repeated exposure. Strain 7
plast) promoter or the atpA (alpha-subunit of the chloroplast produce interleukins, potent regulators of immune functions
ATP synthase of the chloroplast) promoter were used to active in minute quantities. Pulmonary exposure to interdrive the antibody gene, with the rbcL transcription termina- leukin 13, for example, causes inflammation, mucus hypertor following the human gene. A 16S ribosomal subunit with secretion, physiologic abnormalities associated with asthresistance to the antibiotic accompanied the human gene ma, while interleukin 10 is a powerful immune suppressant.
transformation. Using this system, IgA antibodies directed Strain 8 produces unspecified neurotrophic factors to stimuagainst herpes simplex virus
late growth of nerve tissue,
were produced, as well as
again, potent molecules
single chain antibodies
Horizontal transfer of the GM Chlamydomonas active at very low concentraagainst the herpes virus. transgenes are likely to occur in all environments, tions, whose effects, espeThe numerous codon alterparticularly in the soil, where Chlamydomonas is cially at high concentrations
ations to optimize production
are completely unknown.
commonly found, but also in the marine environof recombinant protein in the
An additional hazard
ment and in the gastrointestinal tract of all animals
alga have been described.
from the gene products is
Code optimization need not
that they are in all cases not
change the amino acid
the same as the human prosequence of the protein produced from the recombinant tein, because of the changes in making the synthetic gene
gene, but Mera's petition contained no proof that the protein copies, and because there is no post-translational processproduced from the synthetic gene was identical to the origi- ing. They may hence be treated as immunologically 'foreign'
nal human gene, nor the fact that the transgenes were syn- by the human immune system, resulting in dangerous comthetic approximations to the human genes.
plications.
Although not prominently stated, the GM strains probaHorizontal transfer of the GM Chlamydomonas transbly all contained in addition a kanamycin resistance marker genes are likely to occur in all environments, particularly in
gene, which is necessary to select for the transformed cells. the soil, where Chlamydomonas is commonly found, but
also in the marine environment and in the gastrointestinal
Risks from the GM alga
tract of all animals. Horizontal transfer of transgenes can
The claim that the risk from contact with the recombinant occur both from the accidental release of genetically modiproducts was negligible even in the worst case is ground- fied Chlamydomonas reinhardtii itself, or from the intentionless, because no experiments were reported to support that al release of transgenic DNA in the large amounts of transconclusion.
genic wastes that are likely to be discharged from the largeAs pointed out already ("Molecular pharming by chloro- scale culture facilities into the environment.
plast transformation", this series), producing pharmaceutiAs already mentioned, horizontal transfer and recombicals in chloroplasts entails specific risks due to the large nation of transgenes could create new bacteria and viruses
quantities of transgenic proteins produced and the hazards that cause diseases and spread antibiotic resistance markof horizontal gene transfer to bacteria, due to homologies er genes to the pathogens.
SiS
www.i-sis.org.uk
8
Cover-up over GM
DNA in milk
Syngenta's GM maize linked to dead cows linked to GM DNA in milk and
scientist involved in what appears to be a major cover-up on behalf of
big dairy producer. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Campaign against GM animal feed
Greenpeace Germany began campaigning against GM animal feed in
March 2005. Their main target is
Mueller, one of Germany's biggest
dairy producers and also number one
in Britain in yogurt sales. Greenpeace
exposed Mueller's use of GM soya to
feed their dairy cows, which Mueller
does not deny. But the company tried
to stop Greenpeace's campaign, and
especially the use of the term "GEmilk" through the law court. The company claims it is scientifically demon-
Transfer of genetically modified DNA
from animal feed to milk cannot be
ruled out, and is a cause for concern,
was eventually signed by Dr. Mae-Wan
Ho, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, Dr. Susan
Bardocz, Prof. Joe Cummins and Prof.
Peter Saunders on behalf of the
Independent
Science
Panel
(www.indsp.org).
On 5 July 2005, the court of
Cologne decided in favour of
Greenpeace, refusing to grant Mueller
an injunction. The court stated that as
Mueller is using genetically modified
"The report of the ISP was vital to
support our arguments!" says
Greenpeace activist Ulricke Brendel.
Unfortunately, that's not the end of the
matter. Mueller has filed a new case
against Greenpeace, going for the
highest court in Germany to prevent
Greenpeace from using the term "GEmilk", and also asking for 500 000 in
damage compensation.
"For the next 3 to 5 years, that is as
long as it might take, we will keep
arguing the case," Ulricke added.
So what's the current status of the
GM DNA is unlike natur al DNA
in many respe cts. It conta ins
new comb inatio ns of genet ic
mater ial that have never existe d
in billion s of years of evolut ion,
includ ing genes seque nces that
are compl etely synth esized in the
labora tory, differi ng signif icantl y
from their natur al count erpart s.
GM DNA is design ed with recom binati on seque nces in order to
break and insert into genom es; it
also conta ins other chang es to
overc ome genet ic differ ences
betwe en specie s. GM DNA insert ing into genom es cause s mutational
and
other
genom e
rearra ngem ents includ ing cancer. In additi on, GM DNA contains a high propo rtion of viral
and bacte rial DNA, know n to
cause a range of immu ne reactions in huma n.
strated that no GM DNA could transfer
into the milk, and produced a statement signed by six German scientists
with the title, No transfer of genetically
modified components from animal
feed to milk. Greenpeace contacted
me for help in producing a counterstatement. The counter-statement,
plants for animal feed, the products
are connected with genetic engineering and therefore the term GE-milk is
perfectly justified. Mueller claimed that
GM-DNA fragments are not present in
milk, but Greenpeace countered by
saying it was not yet scientifically
decided.
evidence? Is there or is there not GMDNA in milk?
Unpublished evidence kept under
lock and key
There are several published studies on
the transfer of genetically modified
(GM) DNA from animal feed to milk, all
9
of them methodologically flawed; nevertheless they indicate that it is possible for DNA from GM feed to transfer
to milk. And this is confirmed in an
unpublished
study
from
the
Weihenstephen Institute of Physiology
and the Technical University of
Munich.
Astonishingly, the lead author of
the
unpublished
study
from
Weihenstephen Institute, which found
positive evidence of GM DNA in milk Prof. Ralf Einspanier - is also the lead
author of the statement on behalf of
the company Mueller, claiming there is
no transfer of genetically modified
components from animal feed to milk.
Furthermore, that unpublished
study was done on milk collected from
dairy cows on a farm in Hesse
Germany where, between 2000 and
2001, 12 cows died after eating
Syngenta's GM maize Bt 176 ("Cow
ate GM maize and died", SiS 21). No
proper autopsies were carried out,
while this crucial study dated 20
October 2000 remained under lock
and key for more than three years
before it was leaked to Greenpeace.
A handful of studies
The first study in the laboratories of
Einspanier, Jahreis and Flachowsky
detected "faint signals" of the abundant plant chloroplast DNA in milk, but
not the GM DNA. However, the limit of
detection, i.e., the sensitivity of the
detection method, was not reported.
This would involve spiking the milk
with increasing amounts of DNA from
the GM feed until a positive signal is
obtained.
A second study in another laboratory failed to find any GM DNA in milk.
But the limit of detection was 30 ng
GM soya DNA added to the milk,
which is equivalent to 16 200 copies of
the GM soya genome, or the same
number of copies of the GM DNA
insert, assuming there is a single
insert in the genome. This is unacceptably high compared to the standard
limit of detection of 10 copies or less;
and it indicates that the method used
was far from sensitive enough. A follow-up investigation did detect plant
chloroplast DNA, but not the GM DNA
in milk. Chloroplast DNA outnumbers
GM DNA by up to 50 000 copies to 1.
The limit of detection in this study was
still too high; it required 2 700 copies of
the GM soya genome and 602 copies
of the GM maize genome in 330
microlitres (about three drops) of milk.
Another limitation of all these studies
was that the animals were given GM
feed for only several weeks.
The fourth published study established the limit of detection as between
5 and 10 genomic copies of the GM
DNA, but not by adding the GM plant
DNA to milk, which is necessary, as
inhibitors of the detection reaction are
often present. Nevertheless these
researchers found plant chloroplast
DNA in high proportions, possibly all,
of the milk samples from dairy cows:
86 percent positives while the rest
were 'indeterminate'. They claim to
have found "no statistically significant"
presence of GM DNA in milk. No information on the length of the feeding
trial(s) was given in this study.
Positive evidence indicating the
presence of GM DNA in milk was contained in the unpublished report from
Weihenstephen Institute referred to
earlier. Two milk samples were
analysed, and GM DNA was detected
in both.
A wider range of probes were used
for different genes coding for: Ubiquitin
and zein (about 20 and 40 copies
respectively in the maize genome);
EPSPS, single copy gene specific for
GM soya; rubisco gene in chloroplast
genome (about 10 000 to 50 000
copies); and Bt (CrylA), single copy
gene specific for GM maize
The first milk sample was probed
for ubiquitin, rubisco and Bt; the second sample was probed for all five
gene-sequences. The milk was separated by centrifugation into the cell
fraction at the bottom, fat at the top
and solution in between.
The first sample showed that ubiquitin DNA was present in all the cell
and fat fractions, but not in solution.
The chloroplast rubisco DNA could be
detected in all cell and fat fractions.
The Bt DNA was detected in all the
fractions that were positive for chloroplast DNA, with a rather similar pattern.
The summary stated, "It was not
difficult to prove the existence of general plant DNA (chloroplasts) in this
milk. In addition, positive signals for
the presence of Bt-maize fragments
were obtained. This data indicates the
presence of small quantities of Btmaize gene fragments in the tank
milk." (emphasis added)
However, the authors made the
unjustified assumptions that the Btmaize gene fragments came from
other sources than the animals producing the milk and that they have no
biological significance, "The presence
of Bt-maize material in the milk supplied is not necessary due to endogenous factors (i.e., via the animal itself).
Thus, the presence of many different
kinds of feed in the tank milk is likely
and almost inevitable in spite of stringent hygienic conditions. The PCR
analysis will also detect dust or
aerosols from neighbouring feeding
areas. On the basis of the biological
knowledge available to us, the presence of the very small quantity of Btmaize DNA identified has only analytical but no biological relevance whatsoever."
In the second sample, not only was
the Bt gene fragment from GM maize
detected in milk, the EPSPS gene
fragment from GM soya - contained in
the animal feed - was also detected.
The summary stated, "In this milk, it
was possible to identify sporadic
traces of general plant DNA (chloroplasts) as well as zein and EPSPS
gene fragments. As well as this, slightly positive signals indicating the presence of Bt-maize fragments were also
contained. This data indicates minor
contamination with Bt-maize gene
fragments in the tank milk."
Again, this "contamination" was
deemed to have "no biological relevance whatsoever."
GM DNA in milk is a cause for
concern
The presence of GM DNA in milk is a
cause for concern, regardless of
whether it originated in the animal producing the milk, or by contamination
from "dust or aerosols" containing GM
feed, which according to the authors of
the unpublished report "is likely and
almost inevitable in spite of stringent
hygienic conditions."
GM DNA is unlike natural DNA in
many respects. It contains new combinations of genetic material that have
never existed in billions of years of
evolution, including gene sequences
that are completely synthesized in the
laboratory, differing significantly from
their natural counterparts. GM DNA is
designed
with
recombination
sequences in order to break and insert
into genomes; it also contains other
changes to overcome genetic differences between species. GM DNA
inserting into genomes causes mutational and other genome rearrangements including cancer. In addition,
GM DNA contains a high proportion of
viral and bacterial DNA, known to
cause a range of immune reactions in
human.
Another source of hazard from GM
DNA comes from the gene products
encoded, which have never been part
of our food chain. For example, one
study found that two-thirds of all the
transgenes have similarities to known
allergens and should be regarded as
potential allergens until proven otherwise ("Are transgenic proteins allerSiS
genic?" SiS25)
www.i-sis.org.uk
10
Bt10 Detection Method Unacceptable
Concerted move to reassure the European public
Swiss biotech firm Syngenta had accidentally sold illegal GM maize Bt10
in the US for the past four years, resulting in about 133 million kilograms
of the maize making its way into food and feed.
The news broke on 22 March 2005 in the science journal Nature
("Syngenta's GM maize scandals", SiS 26), although Syngenta had
entered into talks with the US government since December 2004.
Under pressure from public protests across the world, the US government fined Syngenta a derisory US$375 000 (euro 270 000) for the
mishap. And on 18 April, the European Commission imposed an emergency measure to ban certain GM maize imports from the US unless they
were accompanied by an original analytical report issued by an accredited
laboratory demonstrating that the product does not contain Bt10 ("Europe
acts swiftly to keep out unapproved GM maize", SiS26).
Scarcely a week later, the EU authorities announced that Syngenta
had presented a detection test for Bt10, which was already validated by
the EU authorities.
The validation report from the Joint Research Centre, also Europe's
Community Reference Laboratory (CRL) for GM Food and Feed, said it
carried out an in-house validation of the event-specific detection method
"proposed by GeneScan on Bt10 maize developed by Syngenta Crop
Protection AG."
Syngenta provided the DNA samples (genomic DNA extracted from
the Bt10 maize line and from a control maize line), and GeneScan provided the event-specific detection method based on a qualitative polymerase
chain reaction (PCR) assay.
Monopoly on detection method declared
So who, or what is GeneScan? GeneScan advertises itself on its website
as "the world market leader in the field of molecular biological testing for
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in food, feed and agricultural raw
materials."
The GeneScan website has a link to a page on Syngenta's website,
which advertises the "European Union Bt10 Detection Method" as a "validated detection methodology that has been thoroughly tested for accuracy, reliability and sensitivity" using authentic samples to ensure actual targeted material is detected reliably when present. The method is designed,
it says, to exclude "false positives" in the hands of "highly qualified scientific personnel with specific experience with the protocol", working under
"exemplary laboratory practice and standard operation procedures
(SOPS) from an …accredited lab", with "provisions for retesting false positives".
The same Syngenta page advises us that GeneScan is "the only private service laboratory that fulfils the elements listed above for Bt10 testing", and the fact that the EU Joint Research Centre has certified the
GeneScan method on April 22, 2005 as "the only EU official method for
Bt10 detection." Following that, yet again, the admonition to guard against
"false positives" is repeated.
In contrast, there's not a word said about false negatives, which as
every molecular geneticist knows, is also a problem with the PCR detection method, particularly if the GM insert is unstable, and prone to deletions and rearrangements, as revealed in recent analyses by European
government laboratories ("Transgenic lines proven unstable", SiS20;
"Unstable transgenic lines illegal", SiS21).
This three-way mutual reinforcement between Europe's Joint
Research Centre (the European Commission's official laboratory),
Syngenta and GeneScan seems just a bit too cosy to be reassuring.
What's more, they have jointly declared a monopoly on the detection
method, ruling out all others that could give "false positives". It is a case of
the poacher turned gamekeeper with the help of the governor.
The validation report issued by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) goes
on to state, "The results of the JRC validation demonstrated that the
method reliably detects an amplification product specific for Bt10 maize,
and therefore allows discriminating event Bt10 from other GM-events in
maize lines. The sensitivity of the method is below 0.1%….
"The method is therefore considered by the CRL as fit for the purpose
of Bt10 detection and it is the only one accepted to certify the presence of
Bt10 in maize commodities in accordance with the Commission Decision
1005/317/EC). (emphasis added)
When is a positive false?
In fact, the method amplifies and detects a small 130base pair fragment of
Bt10 DNA, said to be specific for Bt10. It is not stated which gene fragment
from Bt10 is being amplified. A strict protocol is laid out in detail. The Bt10
and wild type (non-GM) DNA supplied by Syngenta were analysed along
with other reference and non-reference material contained in the JRC's
Community Reference Laboratory.
The 130 bp band was indeed specifically amplified only in Bt10. But
unfortunately, bigger bands were amplified and detected in other GM
maize lines, and even in the wild-type maize DNA supplied by Syngenta.
Strangely enough, these higher molecular weight bands were absent from
the Bt10 DNA from Syngenta.
The origins of the "unspecific amplicons" (amplified DNA) were not
investigated further, but effectively dismissed with the remark, "This suggests that the method can be further optimised." Consequently, only the
130bp amplicon is regarded as a definite positive.
The conclusion of the validation report states that the method is "fit for
its intended purpose", with the qualification, "However, at this stage of testing, the method produces a higher molecular-weight multi-band pattern in
GM and non-GM maize which requires additional efforts in its optimisation."
Still further qualifications are contained in a later report on the detection method: "The analyst shall be aware that other validation experiments
indicated that the method might perform less reliably at annealing temperatures higher than specified in the protocol. Moreover, in some incidents
unspecific amplification was observed with PCR profiles that used higher
numbers of cycles than specified in the protocol. Time constraints did not
permit to rectify these concerns…"
As mentioned earlier, fragmentation or rearrangements of the GM
insert can change the size of the amplicon, or otherwise fail to give the
specific amplicon. Consequently, unless fragmentation or rearrangement
of the Bt10 GM insert can be ruled out, it is not legitimate to conclude that
amplicons of other sizes are "false positives".
Further data, further confusion
Syngenta's reports sent to the US Environment Protection Agency earlier
this year have been leaked to ISIS.
The first report dated 28 January 2005 is intended to present the DNA
sequence of Bt10 compared with Bt11, the GM maize line that Bt10 had
contaminated by accident. The Bt10 insert was mapped to chromosome 1
of the maize genome, while Bt11 insert had been mapped to chromosome
8. This alone will indicate that Bt10 is completely different from Bt11. In
addition, there were three nucleotide changes in Bt10 compared with Bt11:
two in an unspecified sequence contained within the Bt10 insert (unspecified sequence 1 in Figure 1 below), and one located in the nos terminator
associated with the crylAb gene. No nucleotide changes were identified in
any of the coding sequences and promoters within the Bt10 insert.
However, the map of the Bt10 insert presented can only be partial, as
it did not include the ampicillin antibiotic resistance marker gene, unless
that marker gene has inserted elsewhere in the genome. The map pre-
The last straw by Andy Watton
The detection method for Syngenta's illegal GM maize is flawed; there must be a full disclosure of information and access to reference material for retrospective risk assessment and
risk management
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Joe Cummins
This three-way mutual reinforcement between Europe's Joint Research Centre (the European
Commission's official laboratory), Syngenta and GeneScan seems just a bit too cosy to be reassuring.
What's more, they have jointly declared a monopoly on the detection method, ruling out all others that
could give "false positives". It is a case of the poacher turned gamekeeper with the help of the governor.
sented also contained at least three unspecified, unknown sequences
(Fig. 1).
Unspecified sequence 1 (>1000 bp)-p35S (516pb)-IVS6 maize adh1S
(477bp)-crylAb(syn) (1848bp)-tnos (267bp)-Unspecified sequence 2
(~400bp)-p35S(422bp)-IVS2 maize adh1S (180bp)-pat (522bp)-tnos (259
bp)-unspecified sequence 3 (~160bp)
Figure 1. Map of Bt11 from Syngenta's report to US EPA
The second report from Syngenta to the EPA is of a study comparing
the transgenic proteins expressed in Bt10 compared with those in Bt11.
The proteins were extracted from leaves of the plants, and subjected to
western blot analyses, a technique dependent on staining the protein
bands with specific antibodies after separating them by migration in an
electric field through a gel matrix.
This report claims that the analyses "revealed similar dominant
immunoreactive bands" in both Bt11 and Bt10 corresponding to the predicted Cry1Ab protein (for insect resistance) and phosphinothricin acetyltransferase (PAT) (for tolerance to the herbicide glufosinate ammonium) of
about 69 000 and 22 000 daltons respectively.
However, the photographs of the western blots contained in the report
tell a different story. Bt11 showed a series of bands at 46 000, 63 000 and
52 000 daltons (in order of strength of staining) as well as the dominant 69
000 daltons band, whereas Bt 10 only had the 63 000 daltons fragment as
well as the main predicted band. The PAT protein bands in Bt10 and Bt 11
were also different from each other and from the purified standard, with
many high molecular weight bands reacting to the antibody.
Neither report contains information on the breeding history of the GM
maize lines analysed, such as the number of generations since the transformation event; nor data from appropriate reference material. These are
sure signs of sloppy science.
Full disclosure of molecular data and access to reference material
required
The detection method for Bt10 is flawed by the admission of the European
authorities. The identity of the 130 bp amplicon, supposed to be specific
for Bt10, is not made explicit. The molecular data supplied to the US EPA
are incomplete. It is impossible to judge if the detection method is adequate in the absence of full molecular data including those from reference
material proving that Bt10 had remained genetically stable since it was first
unintentionally released.
Bt11 had already been exposed to be unstable, and to be contaminated with another Syngenta maize Bt176, implicated in the death of dairy
cows in Hesse Germany ("Cows ate GM maize and died", SiS 21).
Syngenta has admitted that Bt10, as distinct from Bt11, contains an
ampicillin resistance marker gene, which, according to an Opinion issued
by the Scientific Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms of the European
Food Safety Authority in 2004,
"should not be present in GM plants to be placed on the market". No
official information has been forthcoming regarding the ampicillin resistance marker gene in Bt10, nor any attempt to ascertain whether the marker gene has contaminated other maize varieties, GM or otherwise.
As Bt10 has already entered the market and the human food
chain, it must go through retrospectively the risk assessment
process that would have been applied to a GM product approved for
market. This is also essential for effective post-release risk management.
At the very least, Syngenta must be required to provide the following:
• Reference plant material from successive generations of the Bt10
transformation event plus the non-GM maize variety from which Bt10
was derived
• Full genetic map and base sequence of the Bt10 insert(s) including
the ampicillin resistance marker gene and the host genome sequences
flanking the insert(s)
• Genome location of the Bt10 insert(s)
•Profiles of expressed RNAs and proteins in the Bt10 reference material, compared to those in Bt11 and the non-GM variety or varieties from
which the GM maize lines were derived
• Molecular genetic data of at least five generations after the Bt10 transformation event, to document genetic stability
• Any other information available on Bt 10
Furthermore, regulatory authorities on both sides of the Atlantic must
make public all information on Bt10 that they have received from Syngenta
or other sources.
Our demands have yet to be met.
Please circulate this report widely and send it to your elected repreSiS
sentatives.
www.i-sis.org.uk
Energy
Energy Strategies in Global Warming:
Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Nuclear energy makes economic nonsense and ecological
disaster and provides great opportunities for terrorists
Peter Bunyard
Global warming is
The government sell-off in now and set to
1996 of what was to get much worse
become the UK's largest H u m a n - i n d u c e d
electricity producer might global warming is
have seemed a give-away already upon us.
at the time, but in 2002, on The trends in fossil
account of having to com- fuel use and the
pete for electricity sales release of greenagainst other non-nuclear house gases from
generators, British Energy all human activities,
including agriculfound its losses piling up
ture, indicate that
with every unit of electricworldwide we will
ity sold. In less than a
be hard pushed to
year, and in the biggest achieve the 60 to
write-off of capital in the 80 per cent reducUK, the company's market tion in greenhouse
value plummeted to little gases necessary to
more than £100 million
stabilise
greenhouse gas levels in
the atmosphere at 550 parts per million
(ppm) before the century is out. That's the
upper limit before climate change events
become extreme and devastating, according to climatologists.
The carbon dioxide level is currently
close to 380 ppm in the atmosphere, more
than 30 per cent up on the pre-industrial
level of 280 ppm. Even at 400 parts per
million, which will be reached within 10
years at the current rate of increase of 2
ppm per year, average global temperatures
will rise by 2 deg.C.
In its scientific review, Climate Change
2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that business-as-usual (BAU) activities across the
planet could lead to an average temperature rise of as much as 5.8 deg. C within
the century. But such predictions, disturbing as they are, do not take into account
the impact of global warming on terrestrial
vegetation, including the world's tropical
rainforests.
Peter Cox and his colleagues at the
Hadley Centre of UK Met Office have elaborated climate models that incorporate a
dynamic carbon cycle. They predict that,
within half a century, the BAU scenario will
cause soils and vegetation to switch
abruptly from a sink for atmospheric carbon to a source. That would mean not only
the loss of the current capacity to withhold
and remove carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere, but in addition, the release of
carbon from soils and vegetation that has
accumulated over the past 150 years.
The net result could be a doubling of
current concentrations of greenhouse
gases within a matter of years. Adding in
the fossil fuel emissions could take the levels of carbon dioxide to four times preindustrial levels, i.e 1 000 ppm. The positive feedback from the loss of terrestrial
carbon further heats up the earth's surface,
and the average surface terrestrial temperature could rise by as much as 9 deg. C
instead of the predicted 5.8 deg. C; temperatures this high have not been experienced for more than 40 million years.
The soil/vegetation feedback on global
warming is not the only one; we face other
powerful positive feedbacks, including the
change in albedo (the fraction of solar
energy reflected back into space) as ice
vanishes from the Arctic Circle and from
parts of Antarctica where grass is establishing itself for the first time in millions of
years. In addition, the potential release of
methane from the oceans overlying the
vast sediments of the Amazon Fan, or in
the permafrost regions of the Northern
Hemisphere, could lead to the large
changes in climate that were responsible
for the mass extinctions of the Permian
more than two hundred million years ago.
13
Global warming 2 by Mae-Wan Ho
Box 1
How nuclear power is generated
Uranium-235, which comprises on average just 0.7 percent of natural uranium, is a fissile (capable of atomic fission) isotope that splits into more or less two radioactive
halves when struck by a neutron. The bulk of natural uranium is made up of uranium-238, which, in contrast to the
rarer isotope, does not split on being struck by a neutron
but tends to absorb a neutron and, through a process of
radioactive transformation (with the emission of an electron), jump up to the next element - plutonium. Plutonium
is also fissile, and can be 'bred' from uranium fuel when
a reactor is up and running.
A reactor, as distinct from the uncontrolled fission that
makes an atomic bomb, needs the process of fission to
be kept at a steady operating level. That is achieved
through inserting or withdrawing control rods made of a
material that will absorb neutrons and so prevent them
from causing a runaway chain reaction (see Fig. 1).
With the exception of fast breeder reactors, which use
plutonium to 'enrich' the fuel, the majority of reactor systems use a 'moderator' such as graphite or heavy water
to slow down the neutrons so that they will be more effective in bringing about a chain reaction. The moderator
therefore allows the use of uranium with a relatively low
content of uranium-235. The majority of reactors in use
today will use uranium fuel that has been enriched to
around 4 percent.
It has emerged that the Greenland ice
sheet is less stable than previously
thought. Its rapid melting would raise sea
levels by several metres. Moreover, the
Gulf Stream is diminishing in strength
because of the influx of fresh water into the
Arctic Circle.
In short, the climate system as we
know it is poised on the edge of a profound
transition. Once past a point of no return,
terrestrial organisms including human
beings will have little or no time to adjust
and their future on this planet could well be
jeopardized.
The UK position
The UK government, spearheaded by the
Prime Minister Tony Blair, has declared its
intention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Britain by as much as 20 per
cent of the baseline year of 1990 by the
end of the First Commitment Period of the
Kyoto Protocol. That 20 per cent will incorporate carbon trading, allowing industry to
purchase carbon credits from elsewhere to
offset its emissions, including reforestation
projects in developing countries. It will also
take on board 'clean development mechanism' projects (CDMs) in developing countries, whereby a donor industrialized country can share the equivalent of greenhouse
gas emissions foregone through investing
in a 'cleaner' project than would have been
deployed had the additional investment
and technical expertise not been available.
Despite a host of different projects,
Figure 1. Controlled chain reaction in a nuclear plant as opposed to divergent chain reaction that
makes an atom bomb.
including wind-farms, it is becoming clear
that the UK will have difficulty achieving
that target. Energy demands in the UK are
rising and emission cuts are stagnating.
Indeed, over the past 40 years, the mean
rate of energy demand has been increasing at 0.5 percent a year, mostly provided
through burning fossil fuels. Moreover,
recent figures supplied by the Department
of Trade and Industry (DTI) show that carbon dioxide emissions from the UK, rather
than falling as planned, are rising rapidly,
by 2.2 per cent in 2003 and 1.5 per cent in
2004. And that is despite the UK's commitment to a legally binding 12.5 percent cut
in greenhouse gas emissions compared to
1990, let alone the 20 per cent called for.
Currently, the UK's emissions are no more
than 4 per cent below 1990 levels.
The reality is that recent energy
demand in the UK is growing at almost
double the rate of the past half century; the
DTI is predicting that the current per
annum increase of 0.9 per cent will continue at least until 2010. Energy demand is up
in all sectors of the UK economy, in transport, electricity and space-heating.
Blair's government is now reviewing a
number of options for reducing emissions,
including wind power and the renewables;
investment in tidal, wave and solar systems; a new nuclear power programme;
subsidies for energy efficient household
appliances; new building regulations that
will incorporate energy efficient designs;
carbon taxes including a rise in fuel duties;
and a reduction in the prices of alternative
fuels such as bio-diesel.
The International Energy Agency (IEA)
projects that as
much as 1400
Mixed oxide fuel,
GW (gigawatts =
109 watts) of coal- containing up to 5 per
fired plants will be cent plutonium, is ideal
in operation by material for terrorists,
2030 in the world, being no more than mildly
a considerable radioactive compared with
proportion in India spent reactor fuel, and in a
and China. At a form from which the
meeting of the plutonium can be easily
IEA and World
extracted.
Coal Institute in
Beijing (23 April,
2004), Wu Yin, Deputy Director-General of
Energy Department, National Development
& Reform Commission, China, stated that
in 20 years time, China anticipated that
coal would feature as the main fuel for a
significantly enlarged electricity supply system. Vijay Sethu, Executive Director,
Project & Structured Finance, Asia, ANZ
Investment Bank, Singapore, confirmed
that a similar situation would prevail for
India. Both countries would also resort to
nuclear power.
During their lifetimes the coal-fired
plants of China and India could emit some
500 Gt (gigatonnes) of carbon dioxide,
equal to half of anthropogenic (humansource) emissions in the last 250 years.
www.i-sis.org.uk
14
Forecasts of energy requirements
In their 22nd report on Environmental
Pollution of 2000, the Royal Commission
set out four different
scenarios for the
UK to reduce its
On Sunday 12 June, 2005,
greenhouse gas
the BBC reported that a
emissions by mid
leak of highly radioactive
century. How such
waste containing enough
reductions were to
uranium and plutonium to
be achieved was
make several atomic
markedly different
weapons had gone
in each case; howunnoticed for more than 8
ever, all four scemonths.
narios anticipated
that fossil fuels
would continue to be
used for transport, perhaps through fuel
cells, but with the hydrogen originating
from fossil fuels.
Scenario 1 is based on the notion that
the UK would have a BAU economy, but
with final energy demand kept down to
1998 levels. A 57 percent reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions would be
obtained through the deployment of at
least 52 GW of nuclear power - four times
today's capacity - or as suggested, through
using fossil fuel for electricity generation in
which the carbon dioxide is recovered and
buried in oil wells. Electricity would also be
derived from renewable energy sources,
including 200 offshore wind farms, each
with 100 large turbines, as well as wave
and tidal machines. The Severn Estuary
barrage would be up and running and photovoltaic solar panels installed on the roofs
of buildings. In recent years, efficient solar
water heating systems have been developed that, even in the UK climate, make an
effective contribution in reducing fossil fuel
energy demands.
Box 2
The nuclear fuel cycle
The nuclear fuel cycle begins with the mining of uranium, followed by extracting it from the ore.
The uranium is enriched by centrifuging gaseous uranium hexafluoride, so that the heavier uranium-238 leaves behind an increasing concentration of uranium-235, the fissile material. The
enriched uranium is then manufactured into ceramic fuel and encased in 'cladding', usually of zirconium alloy or stainless steel, as used in Britain's Advanced Gas Reactors (graphite moderator
and carbon dioxide gas for transporting heat to a steam generator).
Spent fuel from the power plant is highly radioactive and must be handled remotely. Initially,
it is placed in cooling ponds to allow short-lived radioactive isotopes to decay. Then, there are
two options: one to dispose of the intact, radioactive fuel, with its cladding, in long term repositories, where continual cooling can be provided; two to reprocess the fuel so as to extract any
unused uranium as well as plutonium. Reprocessing leads to the production of various waste
streams of virulently radioactive material. Various attempts have been made to vitrify (turning to
glass) high level radioactive waste, so that it can be deposited as a glass block. The UK still has
to decide how and where to dispose of that waste.
Meanwhile, the extracted plutonium can be made into fresh fuel, such as Mixed Oxide Fuel,
which also contains uranium. Reactors need to be adapted to take MOX fuel because its fission
characteristics are different from using enriched uranium fuel.
Essentially, fossil fuels underpin the use of nuclear power, especially in the mining, extraction
and manufacture of uranium fuel. To date fossil fuels have provided the energy and materials for
the construction of nuclear installations, quite aside from providing electricity to maintain safety
systems.
Figure 2. The nuclear fuel cycle including fossil fuels used in extracting uranium, constructing the nuclear plant, turning
the power generated into electricity and decommissioning and reprocessing to get rid of hazardous nuclear wastes.
Scenarios 2 and 3 involve a reduction
in energy use of more than a third while
Scenario 4 requires an energy reduction of
nearly one half compared to energy
demands in 1998. Through reductions in
transport, in electricity and in low- and
high-grade heat, Scenarios 2 and 4 avoid
the use both of nuclear power and fossil
fuel stations with carbon dioxide recovery.
Their demands for renewable energy
resources are also reduced compared to
Scenario 1. Meanwhile, Scenario 3 makes
up for a reduced use of renewable energy
sources by resorting to nuclear power
although far less, at 19 GW, than the
requirement for 56 GW in Scenario 1.
On the assumption that people and
businesses are not going to pay silly prices
for their energy, the Royal Commission has
suggested a cut-off price of 7p/kWh for
renewable energy supply, thereby imposing limits on the quantity of energy from
such sources that could be available by
2025.
What can the nuclear industry do for
us?
The nuclear industry has always seen itself
as the saviour of industrialised society. The
slogan of the 1960s, especially in the
United States, was that nuclear power
would deliver unlimited energy cheaply and
safely, and that it would step into the
breech when fossil fuel supplies became
scarce. At the time, no one was thinking of
the problem of greenhouse gases.
In its 1981 report on nuclear costs, the
Committee for the Study of Nuclear
Economics showed that a station such as
Sizewell B would cost some £2 billion more
(1980's money) over its lifetime than a
comparable-sized conventional thermal
power station such as Drax B in Yorkshire,
which would put nuclear power beyond the
reach of privatization.
In 1996, for £1.5 billion, the newly created British Energy acquired seven
Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) stations and
the country's only commercial Pressurized
Water Reactor (PWR). The actual cost of
construction had amounted to over £50 billion, of which more than £3 billion had
recently been spent on the Sizewell B
PWR, newly commissioned in the mid
1990s.
The government sell-off in 1996 of
what was to become the UK's largest electricity producer might have seemed a giveaway at the time, but in 2002, on account
of having to compete for electricity sales
against other non-nuclear generators,
British Energy found its losses piling up
with every unit of electricity sold. In less
than a year, and in the biggest write-off of
capital in the UK, the company's market
15
value plummeted to little more than £100
million. Basically, British Energy could not
go on trading and had to call on the government to salvage it.
Despite complaints of favouritism from
non-nuclear companies, the government
agreed a loan of £410 million to British
Energy, and a month later, upped it to £650
million. Meanwhile, as Energy Minister
Brian Wilson reiterated in parliament on 27
January 2002, the government would provide the £200 million required to go into the
fund for decommissioning.
Dale Vince, the managing director of
Ecotricity, regards such support for the
nuclear industry as economic nonsense.
He said in an interview published in The
Guardian, "If we were given £410 million
instead of British Energy, we could have
built enough onshore wind energy to power
10 per cent of the country's electricity
needs."
Unfortunately, you cannot just shut
down nuclear stations and walk away. You
have to keep the safety systems, including
core-cooling, up and running for as long as
the fuel is in the core (see Box 1).
And then, when the spent fuel is
extracted, you have to make multi-billion
dollar decisions what to do with it (see Box
2).
Do you send it to loss-making British
Nuclear Fuels (BNF) for reprocessing, with
all that entails in terms of discharges of
radioactive waste into the Irish Sea and the
atmosphere? That being the case, do you
continue sanctioning the production of
Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX), which makes
economic nonsense, as well as a dubious
saving on uranium and is a security nightmare (see below)? Or do you reduce costs
by storing the spent fuel intact?
As to the use of MOX, many critics
within and outside the industry have
repeatedly pointed out that the gains are
far outweighed by economic and environmental problems. In France, reprocessing
spent fuel to extract plutonium for MOX fuel
manufacture will save no more than 5 to 8
per cent on the need for fresh uranium.
Meanwhile, as experience in both France
and Britain has shown, reprocessing spent
reactor fuel leads to a hundredfold or more
increase in the volume of radioactive
wastes. In the end, all the materials used,
including tools, equipment and even the
buildings become radioactive and have to
be treated as a radioactive hazard.
It is also highly questionable whether
the use of MOX fuel will actually reduce the
amount of plutonium that has been generated after half a century of operating reactors, both military and civil. Worldwide,
more than 1 500 tonnes of plutonium have
been generated, of which some 250 tonnes
have been extracted for making bombs and
another 250 tonnes extracted as a result of
reprocessing the spent fuel from 'civilian'
reactors. Apart from its military-grade plutonium - plutonium relatively pure in the
239 isotope - Britain now has some 50
tonnes of lower quality reactor-grade plutonium contaminated with other, less readilyfissionable isotopes such as 241.
Because of the continued reprocessing
of spent reactor fuel in commercial reprocessing plants in Britain, France, Russia
and Japan, the world will have some 550
tonnes of separated civil plutonium by the
year 2010, enough to produce 110 000
nuclear weapons.
Mixed oxide fuel ideal for terrorists
Mixed oxide fuel, containing up to 5 per
cent plutonium, is ideal material for terrorists, being no more than mildly radioactive
compared with spent reactor fuel, and in a
form from which the plutonium can be easily extracted. Just one MOX fuel assembly
contains some 25 kilograms of plutonium,
enough for two weapons. A reactor, modified to take the plutonium-enriched fuel for
up to 30 per cent of the reactor core, has
some 48 MOX fuel assemblies.
Currently, 23 light water (ordinary
water) reactors - 5 in Germany, 3 in
Switzerland, 13 in France and 2 in Belgium
- have been converted to use MOX fuel.
Five countries, Britain, Belgium, France,
Japan and Russia, are manufacturing the
fuel. With BNFL's new MOX plant up and
running, supply will exceed demand by a
factor of two, at least until 2015.
BNFL claims that the use of MOX fuel
will help burn up stocks of plutonium,
including those from dismantled weapons.
But the very operation of civilian reactors,
with their load of the plutonium-generating
uranium isotope, the 238 isotope, makes it
inevitable that more plutonium is generated
than is consumed. A 0.9GW pressurized
water reactor which has been modified to
take MOX fuel will burn a little less than
one tonne of plutonium every ten years,
whereas plutonium production will be about
1.17 tonnes, hence about 120 kilograms
more.
Global warming and nuclear power
The new myth is that nuclear power is the
only source of energy that can replace fossil fuels in the quantities required to fuel
industrial society, whether in the developed
or developing world, while eliminating the
emissions of greenhouse gases.
Economies of scale demand that
nuclear power stations are large, at least
one GW (electrical) in size. Their sudden
shutdown can put a considerable strain on
the overall electricity supply system. And if
their shutdown is the result of a generic
problem, that will have major consequences, including the necessity of bringing on stream a large tranche of spare
capacity. Furthermore, that capacity is likely to be fossil-fuel based and relatively inefficient.
As reported recently in New Scientist,
the UK's advanced gas-cooled reactors
(AGRs) are showing signs of unexpected
deterioration in the graphite blocks. These
blocks serve the double function of moderating the nuclear fission process and of
providing structural channels for nuclear
fuel and control rods. The potential failure
of the graphite compromises safety and in
all likelihood the UK's 14 AGRs, currently
supplying nearly one-fifth of the UK's electricity, will have to be shutdown prematurely, rather than lasting through to 2020 and
beyond. Bringing reserve capacity to
replace the AGRs will inevitably lead to a
surge in greenhouse gas emissions. But
that's not the only problem the UK nuclear
industry faces.
Devastating leak
On Sunday 12 June, 2005, the BBC reported that a leak of highly radioactive waste
containing enough uranium and plutonium
to make several atomic weapons had gone
unnoticed for more than 8 months. It
appears that a pipe in British Nuclear
Fuels' thermal oxide reprocessing plant at
Sellafield in Cumbria had fractured as long
ago as last August, spewing nitric acid with
its deadly load of radionuclides onto the
floor. The leak, containing as much as 20
tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium,
was discovered only in April of this year.
British Nuclear Fuels has justified the
use of the reprocessing plant as being
essential for the production of mixed oxide
fuel from the spent fuel taken from the UK's
Advanced Gas Reactors. As a result of the
leak, the nuclear inspectorate has ordered
British Nuclear Fuels to shut down THORP,
the thermal oxide reprocessing plant. Just
how the spilt waste can be removed
remains to be seen, but once again the
accident reinforces concerns that the
nuclear industry, quite aside from its poor
economic showing, can never be made
safe enough.
In addition, the Environment Agency
inspectors told BNF that it had to improve
the way it discharged low level radioactive
waste into the Irish Sea, now probably one
of the most contaminated waters in the
world. Some commentators estimate it will
take considerably more than a century to
clean up the radioactive waste that the
industry has already discharged into the
environment, at a cost of well over £50 000
SiS
million.
www.i-sis.org.uk
16
Taking to the Wind
Wind power working
Ian Fells, professor of Energy Conversion at
Newcastle University, told BBC's Radio 4 Today
programme back in December 2002 that if we
wanted electricity on tap, while simultaneously
meeting our Kyoto Protocol commitments to
reduce carbon dioxide emissions, we would fail
abysmally unless we replaced and even added
to our nuclear power capacity (25 per cent of UK
electricity generation in 2005). Renewable energy sources, such as wind-power, he insisted,
would be marginal to needs and barely worth
the cost of developing.
Ian Fells' remarks contrasted with the experience of one of Denmark's energy experts who,
during the same December 2002 Radio 4 programme, pointed out how successful his country's strategy had been in developing an electricity supply industry (in which wind-power provides nearly 20 per cent of the total in 2005). It
had been good for jobs, good for exports and
good for Denmark's energy needs, with the
industry employing 16 000 and annual sales of
wind turbines reaching more than 2 GW, equal
to two large nuclear power plants.
Peter Edwards, ex-chairman of the British
Wind Energy Society developed the first British
wind-farm at Delabole in Cornwall 14 years ago
in response to the threat of a nuclear power station being built nearby. Initially the economics
did not look good, at least in the context of the
UK, and Edwards all but abandoned the idea.
But then, in 1991, the government simultaneously introduced the fossil fuel levy on fossil fuel
generating plants and the non-fossil fuel obligation (NFFO) to support at least 20 per cent electricity production from non-fossil fuel sources.
At the time, nuclear power was generating
20 per cent of the Central Electricity Generating
Board's production, and with privatisation in the
offing, the NFFO was little more than a straight
subsidy to sweeten up the City in time for a sale.
Nonetheless, the subsidy did open up the possibility of investing in the alternatives, such as
wind. In 1990, the fossil fuel levy amounted to
£900 million, much of which went into the pockets of the nuclear industry.
As Edwards told me in 2001, ten years on
from establishing his ten-turbine wind-farm, performance has been better than predicted. "We
now have 10 years of records carefully analysed
by ETSU (Energy Technology Study Unit) at
Harwell, as well as by the DTI, and have discovered benefits from wind generation that we
barely suspected. People are quick to say that
the wind is fickle and that it fails just when you
most need it, but such critics have also failed to
understand that when we most need the energy,
that's when the wind blows. In our part of the
UK, 60 percent of annual generation is between
October and March. Consequently, wind generation and demand go together; in winter when
the wind blows, the chill factor goes up and so
does the need for electricity; in summer just
when everyone is returning home for their tea in
the early evening that's when the onshore winds
17
Taking to the wind by Mae-Wan Ho
obligingly come into play."
It took just a few months to get the Vesta
400 kilowatt turbines up and running. Moreover,
each of the machines had been sited in
hedgerows across the farm, with minimal loss of
land, and since they were all plugged into the
local Delabole 11 000 volt substation, they
instantly provided power to the neighbourhood
and hence avoided the substantial distribution
losses that go with distantly connected power
stations.
"Such embedded generation immediately
improves the quality of supply," Peter Edwards
said, "evening out those fluctuations that have
been a curse of electricity supply throughout
Cornwall, not least because the bulk of our electricity comes from the Hinkley Point nuclear
power station, more than 150 miles away. It's
rather like a blood transfusion into an extremity
where bleeding is occurring: you balance out the
loss and consequently the local voltage is now
much more stable. Cornwall now has six windfarms, enough to supply some 27 000 households, and whether locals know it or not, the
quality of their electricity has gone up substantially."
In much of Western Europe, wind-power
has really taken off, for instance in Germany,
Spain and Denmark. In Britain, largely because
of the cost of planning applications and public
resistance, development has been slower.
However, by the beginning of 2003, the UK had
a total of 552 megawatts of installed capacity in
place from 78 different projects and another 17
to be constructed over the coming two years. By
January 2005, another 340 MW of wind farms
units required to generate that electricity which
can be more than three times greater.
Godfrey Boyle of the Energy Environment
Research Unit at the Open University points out
in a personal email to me (March 2005) that the
size of turbines has been increasing spectacularly in recent years and the largest machines in
operation today can have a capacity as high as
4.5 MW. Most of the machines now being built in
Britain, whether onshore or offshore, are rated
at about 2 MW.
How much land would be required were
such wind-machines to provide 20 per cent of
UK requirements? In 2003, total UK electricity
was a little short of 400 TWh (terawatt
hours=1012 watt-hours) so 20 per cent would
amount to 80 TWh. Denmark, which manufactures many of the turbines used here and has
considerable experience of siting such
machines, suggests that each individual turbine
should have a downwind spacing of 7 to 9 diameters and a crosswind spacing of 3 to 5 diameters, with resultant array losses of around 5 per
cent.
Therefore, each turbine of 2 MW at best
would require a minimal area of 16.5 hectares,
although it must be appreciated that the land is
still open and can be used for recreational and
agricultural purposes right up to the turbine
tower. Including array losses of 5 per cent, the
average annual output per turbine would be 5
GWh (gigawatt hours=109 watt-hours) and the
output per hectare of 300 MWh/ha. To produce
80 TWh would therefore require 267 000
hectares, which is just over 1 per cent of the
unexpected breakdowns, is met by keeping
some power plants in the electricity supply system as 'spinning' reserve whereby the turbines
are kept rotating, even when their power output
is not required. To meet peak demand is
inevitably more expensive in terms of unit costs
and therefore in relative greenhouse gas emissions, than providing for a steady base-load.
The renewables, such as wind, do not fit
neatly into the category of providing base-load
electricity nor can they be brought on at will to
supply peak demand. As the engineer Andrew
Ferguson points out: "There is no way that we
can order wind turbines to follow demand," and
on the basis that the wind supplies 30 per cent
of the 'block' of electricity determined by the
peak demand, and the flexible back-up system
provides 70 per cent then, according to
Ferguson, the 70 per cent is likely to be supplied
inefficiently at 35 per cent because of operating
'in harness' instead of 60 per cent as can be
obtained in a combined cycle gas turbine
(CCGT).
"Hence, the gas needed will be 0.70/0.35 =
2 units, whereas were there to be no wind turbines, 100 per cent of electricity would be supplied by CCGTs operating efficiently (60 per
cent), and the gas needed would be 1/0.60 =
1.67 units. Thus using wind turbines increases
gas consumption by (2/1.67) -1 = 20 per cent."
Ferguson's pessimistic view is not held by
others in the industry. Lewis Dale, a member of
the DTI/Ofgem Technical Steering Group,
together with David Milborrow, Richard Slark
and Goran Strbac, all professionals in the field,
have looked at the costs for introducing different
windpower as well as other renewable energy sources, including
photovoltaics, backed up by electricity generation from biomass, will
make a good contribution to overall electricity supply.
were up and running, hence the equivalent in
capacity terms of a small nuclear power plant,
all constructed within a matter of months of the
work commencing. Some of the new wind farms
involve relatively large machines of 2 and 2.5
MW, and several are offshore. Britain intends to
have 20 per cent of its electricity generated from
renewable sources by 2020, Denmark intends to
go a good step further with 50 per cent being
provided from such sources.
The detractors
Wind as a source of energy for generating electricity has many detractors. The arguments
range from "unsightliness and a blot on the landscape", to noisiness and perhaps the most
damming of all, to its ineffectiveness and inefficiency, due to the intermittent and unpredictable
nature of the wind. Here again, some myths
need dispelling; first, that they are inefficient as
measured by the percentage of electricity generated compared to the size and capacity of the
wind turbine. Basically, critics refer to the 30 per
cent or so of production compared to capacity.
They neglect that the capacity of a nuclear
power station tends to be measured in electricity capacity (MWe) rather than in the thermal
total UK land area.
In principle, the UK could meet up to 20 per
cent of its current electricity needs from the use
of land-based wind-turbines. Add to that offshore wind-turbines and the proportion could go
up significantly and certainly surpass nuclear
power's current contribution of 25 per cent of all
electricity generated in the UK.
Critics of wind power in particular and the
renewables in general make much of their intermittency; the fact that they do not deliver a
steady source of electricity hour by hour
throughout the year. In a conventional electricity
supply system attached to a central grid, the
notion is to have base load electricity generated
by plants that do best as steady work horses,
such as coal-fired plants or indeed nuclear
power. In fact, the economics of nuclear power
stations demands that the high up-front construction costs are mitigated by constant operation with an optimum power output. Spurts in
demand, or peak loads, add to the generating
requirements and need to be met with other
power plants, such as hydro- or gas turbines,
which can be brought on stream rapidly and
shut down equally rapidly.
Response to such spurts in demand, or to
proportions of wind power into the generating
system. They take into account the impact of
wind on the need to establish and maintain other
generating capacity; and network costs, which
arise through reconciling the input from wind
with the other inputs into the grid.
They then compare two scenarios for the
year 2020 in which electricity demand has
increased by 17 per cent with total electricity
sales of 400 terawatt-hours and a peak demand
of 70 GW. In the first scenario electricity is provided through using coal and gas, with progressive improvements in efficiency, and evergreater incursions of combined heat and power.
In the second scenario wind power has
increased to the extent of providing 20 per cent
of electricity sales derived from 26 GW of capacity with an average 35 percent load factor (a
measure of efficiency given by the ratio of energy produced during a given period of time over
the energy that would have been produced had
the wind farm been running continually at maximum output) and a typical wind speed of 8.3
metres per second. For the sake of the analysis
60 per cent of the wind capacity is located offshore, connected directly to the central grid and
continued on page 20
www.i-sis.org.uk
Deconstructing
the Nuclear
Power Myths
Peter Bunyard disposes of the argument for nuclear power: it is highly
uneconomical, and the saving on greenhouse gas emissions negligible,
if any, compared to a gas-fired electricity generating plant
Poor grade uranium
will result in a net
deficit of energy.
Hence a massive
worldwide nuclear
programme, based
on the use of poor
grade uranium ores,
will add cumulatively
to energy demands,
rather than resolving
them.
Limitations due to the quality of uranium ore
A critical point about the practicability of nuclear power to
provide clean energy under global warming is the quality
and grade of the uranium ore. The quality of uranium ore
varies inversely with their availability on a logarithmic
scale. The ores used at present, such as the carnotite
ores in the United States have an uranium content of up
to 0.2 per cent, and vast quantities of overlying rocks and
subsoil have to be shifted to get to the 96 000 tonnes of
uranium-containing rock and shale that will provide the
fresh fuel for a one gigawatt reactor.
In addition, most of the ore is left behind as tailings
with considerable quantities of radioactivity from thorium230, a daughter product of the radioactive decay of uranium. Thorium has a half-life of 77 000 years and decays
into radium-226, which decays into the gas radon-222. All
are potent carcinogens.
Fresh fuel for one reactor contains about 10 curies of radioactivity (27
curies equal 1012 becquerels, each of the latter being one radiation event
per second.) The tailings corresponding to that contain 67 curies of
radioactive material, much of it exposed to weathering and rain run-off.
Radon gas has been found 1 000 miles from the mine tailings from where
it originated. Uranium extraction has resulted in more than 6 billion tonnes
of radioactive tailings, with a significant impact on human health.
Once the fuel is used in a reactor, it becomes highly radioactive primarily because of fission products and the generation of the 'transuranics'
such as neptunium and americium. At discharge from the reactor, a tonne
of irradiated fuel from a PWR (pressurized water reactor such as in use at
Sizewell) will contain more than 177 million curies of radioactive substances, some admittedly short-lived, but all the more potent in the short
term. Ten years later, the radioactivity has died away to about 405 000
curies and 100 years on to 42 000 curies, therefore still 600 times more
radioactive than the original material from which the fuel was derived.
Today's reactors, totalling 350 GW and providing about 3 per cent of
the total energy used in the world, consume 60 000 tonnes of equivalent
natural uranium, prior to enrichment. At that rate, economically recoverable reserves of uranium - about 10 million tonnes - would last less than
100 years. A worldwide nuclear programme of 1 000 nuclear reactors
would consume the uranium within 50 years, and if all the world's electricity, currently 60 exajoules (1018Joules) were generated by nuclear reactors, the uranium would last three years. The prospect that the amount of
economically recoverable uranium would limit a worldwide nuclear power
programme was certainly appreciated by the United Kingdom Atomic
Energy Authority in its advocacy for the fast breeder reactor, which theoretically could increase the quantity of energy to be derived from uranium
by a factor of 70 through converting non-fissile uranium-238 into plutonium-239.
In the Authority's journal, Donaldson and Betteridge stated that, "for a
nuclear contribution that expands continuously to about 50 per cent of
demand, uranium resources are only adequate for about 45 years."
The earth's crust and oceans contain millions upon millions of tonnes
of uranium. The average in the crust is 0.0004 per cent and in seawater 2
000 times more dilute. One identified resource, the Tennessee shales in
the United States, have uranium concentrations of between 10 and 100
parts per million, therefore between 0.1 and 0.01 per cent. Such low grade
ore has little effective energy content as measured by the amount of electricity per unit mass of mined ore.
Below 50 parts per million, the energy extracted is no better than mining coal, assuming that the uranium is used in a once-through fuel cycle,
and is not reprocessed, but is dumped in some long-term repository. Apart
from the self-evident dangers of dissolving spent fuel in acid and keeping
the bulk of radioactive waste in stainless steel tanks until a final disposal
is found, reprocessing offers very little if anything in terms of energy
gained through the extraction and re-use of uranium and plutonium in
mixed oxide fuel (MOX).
To date, nuclear power has been built and subsidised through the use
of fossil fuels, which have provided the energy for mining, extraction,
enrichment and construction. Hence, nuclear power cannot be considered
to be free of greenhouse gas emissions. Use of the next grade down could
lead to a greenhouse gas inventory every bit as bad as for a gas-fired electricity generation plant, and considerably worse than for a gas-fired cogeneration plant, in which both electricity and end-use heating are produced.
As Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith point out in their
document, the cumulative energy produced by a nuclear plant compared
19
with the energy expenditure shows a relatively small net gain over the
course of 100 years, which incorporates the time needed to get a handle
on the costs of final disposal of the radioactive waste, including the
radioactively contaminated structural materials of the reactor. Poor grade
uranium will result in a net deficit of energy. Hence a massive worldwide
nuclear programme, based on the use of poor grade uranium ores, will add
cumulatively to energy demands, rather than resolving them.
Nuclear winter by Li Poon
Gas-fired plants better than nuclear plants
On that basis, comparisons between the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the full once-through cycle of a nuclear plant and an equivalently
sized gas-burning plant, indicate that with the poorer uranium ores, below
0.02 per cent, the gas-fired plant comes out better, with lower overall carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, the efficiency of a combined-cycle gas
plant can now achieve efficiencies of 56 per cent, more than double that
achieved for nuclear power. With gas, the costs of electricity generation
have therefore reduced in real terms.
If that gas-fired plant were to be used in co-generation, with the simultaneous production of electricity and useful heat, it would win hands-down
for all but the best uranium ores, such as are in use today.
Quite apart from the relative paucity of good uranium ores, if the world
were to embark simultaneously on the construction of nuclear plants to
replace all coal-fired power plants, that would require one gigawatt-sized
(electrical) nuclear reactor to be built every two and a half days for 38
years. Total nuclear capacity, according to Worldwatch's 1989 State of the
World, would be 18 times greater than today, at an annual cost of $144 billion (1989 money).
In his 1990 report for Greenpeace William Keepin came up with similar numbers in terms of requirements but at a more pessimistic annual
cost. He pointed out that 5 000 nuclear plants would be needed to displace
the 9.4 TW of coal equivalent estimated to be necessary in electricity generation in the world by 2025. Again he figured on the need to begin construction on a new plant every couple of days, assuming a favourable sixyear completion time. On the basis of highly optimistic assumptions concerning capital costs and plant reliability, total electricity generation costs
(1990 money) would average $525 billion per year.
Nuclear power has an appalling record for long drawn-out construction times. The last reactor to come on line in the United States took 23
years to complete. Fifteen years has been the average time taken in many
Eastern European countries using USSR technology. In France, the average time taken for construction to operation is 8 years.
We must also not neglect the considerable and proportionately
increasing impact of other greenhouse gases to global warming. The use
of nuclear power, even to its best advantage, would not make a jot of difference to the emissions of both methane and nitrous oxide since they are
primarily derived from agriculture and in particular from deforestation in the
tropics.
France - a test case
There are other costs in running nuclear power plants. Even the nuclear
industry now admits that the generation of electricity that originates from
nuclear power is not wholly free of greenhouse gas emissions. France provides a useful background to review the efficiency of power generation and
consumer preference. In 1999, France generated 375 TWh from its
nuclear stations. EdF (Electricité de France) estimates that the cost in CO2
emissions of operating its nuclear plants amounts to 6 g CO2 per kWh.
France's electricity board provides an estimate that includes construction, removing the spent fuel, reprocessing and the storage of wastes.
On that basis the total CO2 emissions per year from the operation of its
nuclear plants amounts to 2.25 million tonnes. That estimate does not
include the mining and preparation of the fuel and hence is not dependent
on the quality of the ore.
On the other hand, the Öko-Institute of Germany, taking the full fuel
cycle costs into account, comes up with an average figure that is nearly 6
times higher - 35 g/kWh - compared with EdF's, in which case the total
CO2 emissions would amount to 13.125 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
In 1990, France emitted 144 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
Therefore, nuclear power's contribution to the total emissions amounted to
1.6 percent on EdF's estimates and 9.1 percent, according to the Öko-
Institute, both numbers being significant and far from trivial. Nevertheless,
banking on the naivete of the public, the nuclear industry exaggerates the
advantages of nuclear power in terms of avoided greenhouse gas emissions by comparing its relatively low emissions compared to a coal-fired
plant of the same generating size. On that basis, nuclear power comes out
300 times better than coal.
As Mycle Schneider, director of WISE (World Information on Safe
Energy)-Paris, points out, those seemingly low percentages of carbon
dioxide emission from nuclear power plants hide an elementary truth, that
the use of nuclear power in France has to be augmented, because of consumer preference, by the use in the home of natural gas-based heating
systems, both for hot water and space-heating. For home-heating purposes electricity from whatever source is an expensive and inefficient option,
and basically the public, let alone industry, prefers to turn away from it.
In an average French household, aside from transport, two-thirds of
the energy consumed is for heating and just one-third for electricity.
Consequently, if we are going to make any comparisons as to the carboneconomy of nuclear power versus fossil-fuel systems, we should do so
only by taking the end-use preferences into account.
• First, the differences of any one system lie in its efficiency to provide
end-use energy whether for heating or electricity
• Nuclear power stations are built away from population centres
• They are relatively inefficient from a thermodynamic point of view, losing as much as two-thirds of the energy produced as heat to the immediate environment (a body of water or cooling tower).
• The one-third remainder of electricity must be transmitted into a central grid system, where the losses can amount to as much as 10 per
cent
• The net result is that about one quarter of the energy originally
released gets to the consumer.
If the consumer were to obtain both electricity and heating from a single co-generation system; the efficiency returns can amount to as much as
90 per cent of the original energy and, therefore, some three to four times
better than if nuclear generated electricity were to be the sole source of
energy in the home.
A proper evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions therefore demands
that the method of production gets taken into account when estimating the
total release of greenhouse gases. Both coal and fuel oil used in a co-generation plant are still inferior by a factor of two to a nuclear power/natural
gas combination in terms of greenhouse emissions. But that figure is
already far-removed from the 300 times advantage so heralded by the
nuclear industry and its supporters.
Meanwhile, a natural gas co-generation system is level-pegging with
the nuclear power/natural gas combination again in terms of emissions,
while being far cheaper to the consumer simply because of the three fold
better efficiency in delivering end-use energy. And what about a co-generation system based on biogas? The Öko-Institute estimates that it emits
seven times less greenhouse gases in providing end-use energy compared to a nuclear power/natural gas combination.
Although concern over the consequences of accidents, such as at
Chernobyl or Three Mile Island impinges on the issue, the high, uneconomic cost of nuclear power, more than any other factor, has brought
about the industry's failure to make its mark as a major source of energy
in the world. Increasingly too, local 'embedded' generation, such as from
a wind farm, or a co-generation plant, is becoming an important competitor against the notion of single large power plants attached to a central
grid. In a world ever more competitive in terms of reducing cost, an inefficient, high capital cost nuclear power plant is increasingly an anachronism.
If nuclear power were the answer to a cheap source of energy, why
has there been a massive turning away from nuclear power since the
1970s? In the United States, where nuclear technology originated, all civilian nuclear reactors were ordered in the ten-year period between 1963
and 1973, all with huge subsidies from the federal government, including
so-called turn-key contracts. No new ones have been ordered since 1973,
six years before the accident at Three Mile Island, and a string of cancellations in the 1970s and 80s plus permanent shutdowns meant that total
electricity generated by nuclear power went down rather than up. In 1989,
the cancellations and shutdowns exceeded those coming on stream by a
SiS
considerable margin, 4 GW compared to 10.4 GW.
www.i-sis.org.uk
20
continued from page 17
the remainder is located onshore, connected to
the 132 kV distribution network or even lower.
In effect, if 26 GW of wind power with a 35
per cent load factor were installed, some 5 GW
of conventional capacity would no longer be
needed, given that replacement electricity has to
be generated to make up for shortfalls as a
result of intermittency. The authors do not deny
that, "technical costs arise as reserve plant is
part-loaded and, in consequence, operates at
lower efficiency..."
Most importantly for 20 per cent of the generating mix coming from wind energy, some 19
per cent of fossil fuel combustion is avoided.
That includes a 1 per cent reduction in the savings because of using less efficient generators
as part of the reserve. That conclusion presents
a markedly different picture from the pessimistic
one of Andrew Ferguson.
In general, the economics of wind power
are based on the amount of fuel saved plus the
amount of generating capacity not required
minus the costs associated with intermittency.
As the Carbon Trust and the Department of
Trade and Industry conclude in a recent report:
"10 per cent wind penetration would displace
with demand rather than being prey to the wind,
as is the case with wind turbines, while simultaneously being an efficient producer of end-use
energy.
Judiciously sited in a housing complex or
block of flats, the overall efficiencies of gas-fired
combined heat and power systems, which provide useful heat and electricity, can amount to
nearly 90 per cent. If biogas is used then the net
carbon emissions are extremely low (and much
better than using current nuclear power), moreover the system can be powered down when the
wind is blowing strong and brought up to full
power when needed.
With such a system, the wind would make a
substantial difference to the amount of fuel
required, simply because of the embedded
nature of the flexible power supply system. That
is not to say that the central grid should be dismantled but could act as a back-up system for
local embedded power production.
If so, at one stroke, the UK could reduce
demand for electricity by 25 per cent or more,
simply by balancing out the difference between
base load and peak load requirements. Systems
that do just that have been in operation for at
least 30 years and were part and parcel of
throughout the UK: they could be set to allow in
a fixed amount of electrical capacity. When the
household was asleep and using minimal appliance power, the electricity entering the building
would pass automatically through to heating circuits, possibly including heat-storage cookers.
In effect each household would have its baseload requirements that could be regulated from
month to month, and season to season. Were
the demand to go above the set amount, then
the consumer would pay heavily for the marginal costs of bringing in more electricity. It would
then be up to the consumer to limit the intake
into the household by switching items on and off
as required, rather than leaving them on without
regard for the impact on the total generating
capacity required.
Once the levels of electricity supplied by an
intermittent source, such as from wind turbines,
fell below a critical point, then the back up
Combined Heat & Power system would automatically come on stream, levelling off the
power produced as the wind came back and
then switching off were the wind to be back in
full strength. The management of such a system
could be left to electronic controls combined with
self-responsibility.
A black box between the end-use consumer and the supply took any excess power,
over and above that being used for lights and appliances, and dumped it in a buffer
heating circuit. Hence storage heaters, immersion coils in boilers and even storage
heater cooking stoves benefited whenever excess electricity was available,
about 3 300 MW of capacity and 20 per cent
about 5 000 MW. As far as generating costs the
additional balancing costs would add between
1.6 and 2.4p per kilowatt-hour for 10 percent
penetration and between 1.9 and 2.8p for 20
percent."
Timur Gül and Till Stenzel, reporting for the
International Energy Agency, conclude that
windpower as well as other renewable energy
sources, including photovoltaics, backed up by
electricity generation from biomass, will make a
good contribution to overall electricity supply.
Ferguson, like the Carbon Trust/DTI, is
hooked into a conventional way to supply and
distribute electricity that entails a central grid
system supplied by large thermal power plants,
whether fossil-fuel fired or nuclear. But, what
about an innovative look at an electricity supply
system that does rely considerably on renewable sources, whether intermittent or not, and
yet is energy-conserving and therefore efficient?
Embedded local power supply for maximum
efficiency
To start let us look back to what is happening in
France where the bulk of electricity comes from
nuclear power plants ("Deconstructing nuclear
power myths", this series). The French consumer prefers to use natural gas for central
heating, cooking and heating water, thus making
heavy inroads into the supply of electricity from
nuclear power, in much the same way that
Ferguson has indicated happens with the intermittent supply from wind turbines. The difference is that the gas heating system switches on
small-scale generating systems used in isolated
dwellings and communities. The inspiration for
such a system came from a West-country based
engineer, Rupert Armstrong-Evans, who wanted
to extract as much power from a system, such
as a mini-hydro plant, that it could possibly
deliver.
Even though the electricity fluctuated on a
daily or hourly basis, it could be manipulated
electronically to provide superb quality power for
delicate appliances such as computers, TVs,
and the like. A black box between the end-use
consumer and the supply took any excess
power, over and above that being used for lights
and appliances, and dumped it in a buffer heating circuit. Hence storage heaters, immersion
coils in boilers and even storage heater cooking
stoves benefited whenever excess electricity
was available, such as during the night when the
household was asleep, or indeed during the day
if the occupants were out working.
Clearly, in such a localised embedded system, there are limits to the amount of electricity
that can be provided at any one moment.
Armstrong-Evans therefore devised his black
box to warn the household that it was approaching the limits when demand for quality electricity
was near to exceeding supply. Then all that the
consumer had to do was to switch off some
appliance that could be dispensed with, at least
at that moment. In effect, the consumer was
made responsible for judicious and constrained
use of electricity without losing the comforts and
conveniences of the modern home.
Imagine the use of such black boxes
Just by leaving appliances on stand-by in
the home, gadgets such as TVs, washing
machines, dish-washers, DVD players as well
lights, we in the UK are responsible for emitting
an extra one million tonnes of carbon-based
greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. That is
enough energy, says DEFRA, the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which
commissioned the report, to power the needs of
400 000 homes; and turning the appliances off
could reduce electricity requirements by the
equivalent to at least one large-sized generation
plant.
The UK government is now suggesting that
manufacturers should sell appliances that automatically switch themselves off when not in use.
In essence, energy conservation in the home, at
work, in factories and in transport, is by far the
cheapest and most effective way of reducing
greenhouse gas emissions - certainly an order
of magnitude cheaper than building a new
nuclear power station per kilowatt saved and
immeasurably safer.
Whatever we do, we must avoid falling into
the trap that Tony Blair and others are setting for
us in making us believe that we have no options
available to us other than resorting to nuclear
power. And we must certainly give the lie to the
notion that nuclear power is greenhouse gas
emission free or indeed can provide us with
bounteous energy for as long as we can see into
the future. Renewable energy sources are there
for the taking and we must learn to use them
efficiently and wisely. It is time to take the SiS
wind out of nuclear power.
21
Science under the spotlight
What Science, What Europe?
Europe's foremost philosopher of science offers a devastating
indictment of contemporary European science
As a philosopher, I can imagine no better
keynote to strike than: what are you doing,
what are you trying to do? Organizing a discussion on the European Research policy
matters! It matters because it is both
urgently needed and difficult.
How to read the seventh framework programme [EU's next round of public scientific
research funding, 2007-2013]? The first
point to note is that this programme does
not really invite political debate. Indeed we
are not dealing with choices that could be
discussed but with what presents itself as
the simple enactment of the "Lisbon agenda", fully endorsing its slogans, such as
"knowledge society", "economy of knowledge", "knowledge and its exploitation" as
"the key for economic growth" and "the
competitiveness of enterprises." All this,
leading, as we should trust, to employment,
while maintaining and strengthening the socalled "European Model", and also providing
an improvement of welfare and well-being,
quality of life, health and the environment;
for such improvements rely, as history has
shown, on the progress of knowledge and
its many applications.
In other words, what we are dealing with
is an assemblage of what, in French, we call
"mots d'ordre". Mots d'ordre are not made to
induce thinking and debating but to produce
agreement on consensual perception, putting on the defensive those who feel constrained to a "yes, but…" Yes to employment, yes to the European model, yes to all
those improvements, and certainly yes to
the progress of knowledge. But… The "but"
is coming too late, after so many agreements, and it will be easy to fall into the trap,
instead of addressing the means while ratifying the perceived consensual goals. It is
the very function and aim of mots d'ordre to
capture and inhibit the capacity to think, that
is also the capacity to recall or keep in mind
that there exists a world that demands thinking, that will not submit to wishful thinking.
What this conference is trying to do is as
difficult as it is necessary both to resist the
trap and to expose it for what it is.
Otherwise, the danger is that the opposition
to something everybody should agree upon
will appear as sheer ideology. But whatever
the difficulty, I would insist that this should
be done.
Indeed, the political point is not only
what European money should support,
which kind of scientific research it should
privilege. It is also what kind of role is
assigned to scientists and scientific
research for problems that are, first of all,
societal problems, such as welfare and well
being, quality of life, health and the environment. And it is certainly what kind of scientists do we need in order for this role to be
fulfilled, and not to be diverted from this
whatever the answer may be.
To give just one example, animal welfare has now entered European politics.
This is not a result of the progress of scientific knowledge. On the contrary, many scientists have seen this concern as a manifestation of the irrational sensitivity of public
opinion, and they demanded objective
demonstration that animals such as cows,
pigs or hens are able to suffer. But as soon
as there is money, even sceptical scientists
become interested. One of the propositions
stemming from the researchers of the
French INRA (Institut National de la
Recherche Agronomique) was indeed an
achievement. If farm animals indeed do suffer, it is because they are stressed by the
kind of quality of life imposed on them. Thus
we should obtain less stressed animals, that
is, select them in order to produce animals
that would accept without stress the kind of
life imposed on them. Selection, as usual, is
the answer, an answer the great rational
advantage of which is that it will not endanger the competitiveness of meat or milk production while answering the public concern.
Animals should thus be modified in such
a way that they biologically fulfil not only the
production criteria but also the competitiveness criteria that define as loss any money
devoted to their well-being. They should
only be defined as meat or milk production
devices.
Such an answer to public concern does
not identify science as intrinsically blind, calculating, and reductionist; because such an
identification would exclude as scientists
those ethologists concerned over the animal's capacity to feel and suffer. It does
reveal, however, that those INRA
researchers using European money made
available because of public pressure, were
quite indifferent to the reasons why so many
people had spent their time protesting and
fighting against what they considered as a
shame upon humanity.
The way those researchers provided the
answer would probably have cost them their
very reputation if the public had had their
right to evaluate how the scientists had met
their concern. The researchers would have
Prof. Isabelle Stengers
Dr. Isabelle Stengers Professor of Philosophy, Université Libre de Bruselles
been found guilty on two counts: that they
felt free to propose such a research project
to alleviate animal suffering, and that they
the seventh framework programme presents itself as
the simple enactment of the
"Lisbon agenda", fully
endorsing its slogans, such
as "knowledge society",
"economy of knowledge",
"knowledge and its
exploitation" as "the key for
economic growth" and "the
competitiveness of
enterprises."
had nothing but contempt for the reason the
question was posed.
What is striking in the FP7 is the very
clear signal sent to researchers that whatever the babble around sustainable development or public participation, they do not
need to listen and think too much. They may
go on living with the fairy dreams that if what
they propose may be of interest to the
industry and its obsession with competitiveness, they are still addressing the challenges of the future in the best rational way.
They may trust that they will be protected
from the so-called irrationality of those who,
as has already been the case with GMOs
(genetically modified organisms), refuse to
accept and say "yes" to the laws of the free
market as the only road to progress.
They may even feel that if scientists
leave Europe because some public pressure complicates their collaboration with
their industrial partners that would slow
down or put into question that which should
really be motivating innovation and the transition to a knowledge economy.
Some sociologists tell us that the mode
of production of science has been transwww.i-sis.org.uk
22
formed from what they call an academically
centred mode 1 that values scientific autonomy and peer evaluation, to a flexible mode
2. Mode 2 deals with uncertainty, tying multiple transdisciplinary and participatory links,
contributing to economical and social questions and adopting new norms of adaptability, accountability, openness and responsibility.
intellectual property rights
are not mentioned once in
the European document,
nor is the matter of conflicts
of interest or the freedom of
scientists under private
contract to play the role of
whistleblower.
Today such a mode 2 production is but
an apolitical dream-image, and a very tranquillizing and useful one. It is an image
much beloved by European authorities, just
like the "knowledge society", because it
allows them to have the cake and eat it too.
They are free to produce a list of problems
that "flexible" scientists should be able to
contribute to while avoiding asking hard
questions about the relevance and reliability
of their answer. This involves how to enforce
the so-called norms defining an accountable, open and responsible scientist that is
said to be part of the contemporary mode 2
production of science.
It is very striking from this point of view
that intellectual property rights are not mentioned once in the European document, nor
is the matter of conflicts of interest or the
freedom of scientists under private contract
to play the role of whistleblower. There is no
mention either of the need for the training of
researchers to include relevant means of
inducing and empowering sensitivity or a
sense of responsibility in the face of public
concern.
Indeed the whole message is framed to
reinforce the view that today, more than
ever, lay-persons must be kept at distance,
must be kept in a position of trust and belief
that this new science is the answer to their
problems, that mobilisation in the economic
war for competitiveness is the key to everything. The public is asked to say "yes" to a
Brave New World where all European stakeholders, as they are mobilised in this war,
will contribute to the improvement of welfare
and well being, quality of life, health and the
environment.
I am not sure at all that the kind of flexible scientists required by the new economy
of knowledge will be able to fulfil their
assigned role. I am personally impressed by
the sadness and resignation of a great number of researchers I meet. When I tell them
of what interests me in scientific practices,
that are indeed specialized, but may be living, challenging and intense, they tell me it
is a thing of the past.
Despairing scientists feel that what is
coming under the charming features of the
mode 2 production of science is a new mode
of mobilization of direct appropriation and
evaluation of knowledge. They rightly feel
that the so-called economy of knowledge
asks for a new type of scientist who will
accept being flexible, in the same way that
workers today are asked to be flexible. They
understand that they are being told that scientific knowledge has become much too
serious a business for them to keep what
appear to be outdated privileges. They are
told they must accept the common fate, that
competitiveness is the general rule, even if
it means relaxing the rules of sharing and
collectively verifying knowledge in the scientific community when those rules impede the
competition for and accumulation of intellectual property rights.
I think, however, that the great political
challenge is to avoid any nostalgia for the
famous mode 1 production; the Golden Age
so many researchers are regretting. Indeed
the so-called mode 1 was forged around
1870, a time characterized by intense relations with industrial production that also
coincided with the promotion of a new type
of scientists. These were specialized professionals who dismissed everything that did
not contribute to the progress of their discipline and identified the progress of their discipline as the only key to human and social
progress.
This is the "golden-eggs-hen-whichshould-not-be killed" model: society should
fund research and respect its autonomy in
exchange for the fruitful applications that
only a disinterested quest for knowledge will
produce. This model was an apolitical
model, since the golden eggs of science, as
incubated by industry, were defined as serving humanity, progress and well being, transcending political conflicts.
But those kinds of eggs are probably not
what we need today in relation to what is
now called sustainable development. We
still do not know what such a development
is. What we know, however, is that, if it is not
to remain sheer wishful thinking, and if science is to be able to contribute at all to what
it demands, we need thinking scientists, not
believers in the direct link between the
progress of knowledge and the progress of
humanity. Development, as linked to the
mode 1 golden eggs, is unsustainable
development.
We should thus be able to listen to and
amplify scientists' complaints but also succeed in disentangling them from nostalgia,
with the aim of inducing the scientist's
appetite and imagination for what is so very
interesting in the present. In order to do so,
I would propose to take seriously the idea of
a knowledge society, but only if that society
were actively involved in the GMO protest,
the growing unrest and opposition of NGOs
against intellectual property rights, the
questioning of pesticide safety and the early
concerns about nanotechnologies.
In all those cases, protests gain some
general public approbation, however vague,
as if, at last, good questions were being
raised. But what is politically relevant is the
effective learning process that enables concerned people to formulate penetrating
questions they were not meant to approach.
And what is remarkable is a very slow, very
timid recognition by some scientists, that
maybe the questions those outsiders have
learned to ask are not so irrational after all.
It seems to me that politics means constructing a position the first quality of which
is not some adequacy to matters of fact, but
the production of the sense of possibility
and the appetite required to transform such
matters of fact. It may be interesting not to
denounce the mot d'ordre, order-words that Europe has to become a knowledge
society - but to affirm as obvious that the
true measure of this becoming is the ability
of all the concerned people to produce and
assemble knowledge as it is relevant for the
issue which concerns them.
And to affirm as obvious that this
dynamic, which is the very challenge of
democracy, is also the chance for scientists
to escape flexible enslavement, and enter
into new relations with people who have
learned to become as interested as they are
themselves in the reliability and relevance of
their contributions. Such affirmations are a
very small part of the truth indeed, but what
matters is that they are the interesting,
appetizing part, and that whetting new
appetites is the only way I can think of to
escape the trap of mots d'ordre.
This article is an edited version the
keynote speech to the conference, What
Science - What Europe, organized by the
Greens in the European Parliament, 2 -3
May 2005, to launch a debate on FP7.
Research for this article was carried out
under the Interuniversity attraction poles
programme (V/16), The loyalties of knowledge: The positions and responsibilities of
the sciences and of scientists in a democratic constitutional state, financed by the
Belgian Federal Science Policy. For more
information see www.imbroglio.be. Prof.
Stengers is a signatory to the ISP Statement
to the European Commission on FP7. Add
your
name
here
http://www.iSiS
sis.org.uk/ISPF7.php
23
Letters to the Editor
Dodgy test kits and GM hybrids endanger Indian agriculture
I am writing this in reference to your report about Bt10. This year our central cotton
research institute at Nagpur has introduced Bt testing kits. We checked many samples
with the test kits, and they were negative. But when the samples were checked with a
Swiss testing kit, they came out positive. My opinion is that they are manipulating the
test kits as they wish.
Last year Monsanto sold out a big quantity of maize in our country, saying that it was
hybrid and not genetically modified. But when it failed, there was absolutely no seed
setting on the plants and the government did a lot of testing. Now the state government
secretary for agriculture says that it was GM maize.
Monsanto is selling so many GM seeds in India with terminator technology added.
The result is we are losing our traditional seeds. They have started contaminating our
wheat seeds by selling their new hybrid Mohan Wonder, which is a cross between goat
grass and wheat. Goat grass and wheat have different chromosome pairs. The result is
that if we save the F2 seeds, and sow them we get 100 percent goat grass plants. The
F1 plants contaminate local varieties over a very large distance. So we will loose all our
wheat seeds in the next three years.
I hope you understand me, I am not a technical person but a farmer, and I read your
papers.
Ram Kalspurkar, Nagpur, India.
Vitamins and minerals
I am living in the US and read your article "A reprieve for
EU vitamins and minerals". I am originally from Ireland.
When I go back to my country and see how the Health
Stores are so poorly stocked as they are with vitamins and
herbal remedies, I am appalled. It shows how political and
corrupt these lawmakers are in the EU, by passing this law
1 August 2005 (according to the Irish News).
The people that believe in getting health in an alternative way need to stand up for their Human Rights. We are
in the year 2005 with AIDS and many other illnesses that
herbal remedies have proven to give quality of life back to;
as opposed to being drugged with chemicals. It is a person's right to look after their health in any way they see fit.
Why should the pharmaceutical industry have the last
laugh, as they will be the winners in the end, with their
pockets full from all the chemicals dished out everyday.
It is a sad day for those who believe in holistic health.
Maureen O'Connor, New York City, USA
ISIS and Science in Society welcome your letters
But please keep them short. They may be edited for purposes of space or clarity. Please remember to include a town and country for your address.
Address all correspondence to: Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 OXR, UK
Farmer against corporate serfdom
I am a grass roots farmer from the USA. Your organization accurately represents the true picture of what is happening at the grass roots level of agriculture, an area where one would not
expect such expertise from a science based organization!
Most farmers have NO IDEA of how they are being manipulated like sheep into a position
that will end up having the sheep cut their own throats! Almost all the farm magazines, which
profess that they have printed only the opinions of Agriculture Experts, put a spin on the information that helps support this enslavement! You just use their secret chemicals, like
glyphosate, Roundup, etc; use their patented seed, and there you go! The energy is greatly
reduced and global warming is reduced. I refuse to go this way. Wes Jackson, from the Land
Institute, in Salina, Kansas, USA, has gained world attention by attacking these issues without using patented chemicals or seeds!
So, needless to say, to find such a balanced, qualified source of information on food production issues is like a breath of fresh air to me. It greatly encourages me that not all people
are so easily PARASITIZED, or turned into living sacrifices to do the bidding of the enslaver,
or PARASITIZOR! I am trying to avoid becoming a corporate serf on my own land.
Jerold Hubbard, Johnson, Kansas, USA
Dr Mae-Wan Ho replies to Jerold Hubbard
You have hit the nail on the head. The corporations have been all over the place trying to hijack
'sustainable' agriculture, which is precisely what you describe, plus the use of patented GM
crops, especially those made tolerant to poisonous herbicides sold by the same company.
We want to support and implement truly sustainable, low input agriculture that benefits
both farmers and consumers. Pesticides and herbicides cost a lot of energy to make and are
poisonous to human beings and wildlife. Getting rid of agrochemicals and restoring organic
soil, is, as Wes Jackson says, the right way to go. We want to liberate ourselves from the
stranglehold of corporations that have colonised science and our academic institutions in a big
way; which is why we have set ourselves up as the Independent Science Panel.
Besides supporting our Sustainable World global initiative, you can also endorse our
statement to the European Commission calling for support for independent science and
greater transparency and democracy in deciding research and funding priorities at:
http://www.indsp.org/endorsements/endorsementISP-FP7.php
For more information on the independent science panel, and the Institute of Science in
Society, visit our websites: www.i-sis.org.uk; www.indsp.org. We have written a lot about the
hazards of GM crops. You may be particularly interested in the Independent Science Panel's
first report, The Case for a GM-Free Sustainable World.
GM Algae
I read with great interest your report "GM pharmaceuticals in common alga" where you state: "The high
level of transgene expression (in ge alga) that can be
achieved increases the hazards of horizontal gene
transfer to bacteria and viruses with the potential of
creating dangerous pathogens and spreading antibiotic resistance marker genes."
That is a point not considered or taken up by the
Board of the Department of Agriculture in Hawaii who
asked once, "Is there any possibility of horizontal gene
transfer?" Mera/Rincon Pharmaceuticals answered,
"No."
May I enter this paper also as evidence in the case
we will be making to actually stop the introduction of
these 7 strains of algae into the Hawaiian Ecosystem?
Joe and Mae-Wan you certainly have been busy
lately putting our very valuable information to the world!
Mahalo nui for your expertise in these matters, which
helps all of us to do our work! Please come and vacation in Hawaii some cold winter as my guests at
Kawanui Farm on the Kona Coast in Hawaii.
Nancy Redfeather, Genetic Engineering Action
Network, Hawaii
ISIS articles in Portuguese
I'm a science journalist from Brasil. This message is
only to congratulate you for your work. Frequently I use
your articles to produce news in Portuguese (published
at www.planetaportoalegre.net and www.comciencia
.br). Sometimes I just publish a Portuguese version (as
in http://www.lainsignia.org/2004/septiembre/cyt_002
.htm).
Rafael Evangelista, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Letters continued on page 25
www.i-sis.org.uk
24
Sustainable World
Waste-gobbling bacteria
may be our dream ticket to
clean renewable energy
Bug Power
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Resources and energy from wastes
...the average energy yield from each
kilogram dry weight of potato waste
was 4.96 MJ (1.4kWh) and the maximum energy yield, 9.58 MJ (2.7kWh).
For comparison, burning 1 kg wood
yields about 20MJ. But because the
energy is generated from waste, it is
essentially free, and does not require
using up agricultural land to plant
trees and chop them down
Hydrogen economy on potato
waste
The
"hydrogen
economy" is on
everyone's lips as
the answer to the
ultimate
clean
energy. Burning
hydrogen produces
pure water instead
of
greenhouse
gases, and it is by
far the most energetic fuel on earth, weight for weight. But in order to really reduce greenhouse gas emissions, hydrogen must be produced sustainably from renewable sources such as sun, wind and biomass. About half of
all hydrogen produced currently is from natural gas, the rest is produced
primarily using other fossil fuels. Only 4% is generated by splitting water
using electricity derived from a variety of sources.
At BIOCAP, Canada's First National Conference in February 2005, a
research team at the Wastewater Technology Centre and the University of
Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, presented a poster describing a prototype
process for producing substantial amounts of hydrogen as well as methane
from potato waste.
The team used a two-stage anaerobic digestion process to get first
hydrogen and then methane. In this way, it was possible to optimise the first
stage for producing hydrogen. The key appears to be an acidic pH of 5.5 in
the hydrogen reactor, instead of pH 7 in the methane reactor. Both reactors
were run at 35C.
They pulped the potatoes bought from a store and treated the slurry
with peptone (an enzyme that breaks down protein), then seeded the two
reactors - one for hydrogen the other for methane - with digested sludge
from the local wastewater treatment plant to get the bacteria in place. For
the hydrogen reactor, the seed sludge was pre-cultivated in a sucrose
medium for a few days before switching to potato waste when high hydrogen production was confirmed. For the methane reaction, no precultivation
of the sludge was required.
From day 4, the potato pulp replaced sucrose and hydrogen biogas
was produced continuously for a further 90 days. The maximum production
rate from the one litre reactor was 270 ml/h on day 17, and the average rate
over the entire 90day period was 112.2 ml/h. The hydrogen fraction fluctuated between 39 and 51 percent of the biogas (v/v). The average chemical
oxygen demand (COD) concentration (a measure of the amount of waste
present) of the fluid coming out of the hydrogen reactor was 7 220 mg/L, at
an input concentration of 12 000 mg/L. So more than 40 percent of the
Dr. Bruce Logan and colleague harvesting bug power
Bacteria that gobble wastes are a godsend. They prevent the build up of
wastes in our environment and play an indispensable role in making wastewater safe for domestic animals, wild life, and human beings. In many Third
World countries, these same bacteria are working miracles turning manure
and other wastes into valuable resources to support highly productive farms
that require no input and generate little or no waste ("Dream farm", this
series). When these bacteria are confined in anaerobic digesters with limited or no access to oxygen, they ferment the wastes, release and conserve
nutrients for livestock and crops, and produce 'biogas' as a by-product,
which typically consists of about 60% methane (CH4) and a small amount
of hydrogen (H2), both of which can be burnt as a smokeless fuel.
Within the past two years, these same bacteria are showing even more
remarkable potential for producing clean and renewable energy while
reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
waste was removed.
Once hydrogen production became stable after day 20, the outflow
from the hydrogen reactor was transferred to the second, bigger (methane)
reactor, 5 litres in volume. During the 70 days of operation, methane biogas
was produced continuously; the maximum rate was 410 ml/h, and the average rate, 213 ml/h. The concentration of methane in the biogas was
between 69 and 79 percent. The average COD concentration in the
methane bioreactor outflow was 4 130 mg/L. Again, the process removed
more than 40 percent of the wastes. Together, the two reactors removed 68
percent of the waste.
Based on the hydrogen and methane production rates, the average
energy yield from each kilogram dry weight of potato waste was 4.96 MJ
(1.4kWh) and the maximum energy yield, 9.58 MJ (2.7kWh). For comparison, burning 1 kg wood yields about 20MJ. But because the energy is generated from waste, it is essentially free, and does not require using up agricultural land to plant trees and chop them down.
Potato is the third largest food crop in the world, and Canada is one of
the leading producers (4.7million tonnes annually). Large amounts of potato waste come from food and potato processing plants. This is potentially a
huge source of renewable, clean energy.
Dual purpose microbial fuel cell
A research team in Pennsylvania State University has also discovered how
to coax the same bugs to make plenty of hydrogen while they are gobbling
wastes.
When the bacteria ferment glucose, they generate a maximum of four
molecules of hydrogen per molecule of glucose and end up at best with two
molecules of acetic acid that they cannot convert further to hydrogen due
to an electrochemical barrier. But, given a little electrical boost, the bacteria can jump over the barrier to generate more hydrogen.
The research team, led by Dr. Bruce Logan, already made news in
2004, when they succeeded in getting the bacteria to produce electricity
while removing wastes.
The bacteria were put into a microbial fuel cell that generated 26mW
m2 of electricity while removing up to 80% of the wastes that flowed
through.
These waste treatment bacteria, numerous species belonging to many
genera including Geobacter, Shewanella, and Pseudomonas, have the
ability to transfer electrons obtained by fermenting wastes to external metals. When the bacteria are attached to electrodes, the electrons are transferred to the electrodes (the anode), to flow through an external circuit to
the cathode where they combine with oxygen from the air and protons
25
(hydrogen ions) to form water.
The reactor then used was a single cylindrical plexiglass chamber the
size of a soda water bottle in which the anode, consisting of eight graphite
rods, was placed in a concentric arrangement surrounding a central cathode that was exposed to air. The air-porous cathode consisted of a carbon/platinum catalyst/proton exchange membrane layer fused to a plastic
support tube.
The efficiency of the system, based on waste removal and current
generation was less than 12%, indicating that a substantial fraction of the
organic matter was lost without generating current; perhaps in producing
more bacteria. But as the bacteria were doing their intended job, which was
to remove waste, any electricity generated at the same time was a bonus.
Excluding air and boosting electric potential
Now, the team has discovered that by excluding air from the cathode, and
by giving the bugs a boost of about 250mV, they can make the bugs produce hydrogen at high efficiency. They refer to this process as electrochemically assisted microbial production of hydrogen.
Normal fermentation converts glucose to dead-end products such as
acetic and butyric acid:
In the first case, four molecules of hydrogen are generated, and in the
second, only two molecules. The greatest theoretical yield possible is four
molecules of hydrogen per molecule of glucose.
The microbial fuel cell, however, offers a new solution to the problem.
By augmenting the electric potential in the microbial fuel cell circuit, it gave
just the little help needed for the bacteria to make hydrogen out of acetic
acid.
In a typical fuel cell, the open circuit potential of the anode is about 300mV. If hydrogen is produced at the cathode, the half reactions occurring
at the anode and the cathode with acetic acid oxidized at the anode, are as
follows:
In order for the bugs to donate electrons to the anode from acetic acid,
however, the anode potential has to be made less electronegative.
To improve the efficiency of the intended process, the researchers also
created a two chamber microbial fuel cell instead of the one-chamber version they had previously constructed. One chamber contained the anode,
the other the cathode, separated by a proton exchange membrane. A major
advantage of housing anode and cathode in separate chambers is that the
hydrogen produced at the cathode is separated from the carbon dioxide at
the anode at source. Instead of being exposed to air, the cathode chamber
was sealed. A voltage of 250mV or greater was applied to the circuit by connecting the positive pole of a power supply to the anode, and the negative
pole to the cathode.
The external power supply increased the anode potential from -300 mV
to -291 mV with a
boost of 250 mV Thus 2.9 of the theoretical maximum
and to -275 mV with
a boost of 850mV, 4 molecules of hydrogen are obtained
producing hydrogen from the acetic acid reaction with
and degrading more water by an injection of 250 mV of
than 95 percent of electricity (see equation 3). This
the acetate in the compares favourably with the
process. The recovery of electrons as costly1800-2000 mV needed for
hydrogen was over getting hydrogen from splitting water.
90 percent. The
Coulombic efficiency - defined as the recovery of total electrons in acetate
as current - ranged from 60 to 78 percent depending on the applied voltage. Thus 2.9 of the theoretical maximum 4 molecules of hydrogen are
obtained from the acetic acid reaction with water by an injection of 250 mV
of electricity (see equation 3). This compares favourably with the costly1800-2000 mV needed for getting hydrogen from splitting water.
A combined fermentation and bioelectrochemically assisted anaerobic
microbial fuel cell has the potential to produce as much as 8 to 9 molecules
of hydrogen starting from a molecule of glucose (The theoretical maximum
is 12, see equations 1, 3 and 4.)
With this bioelectrochemically-assisted reactor, hydrogen can be produced from any type of biodegradable organic matter. Combined hydrogen
production and wastewater treatment will offset the substantial costs of
wastewater treatment as well as provide a contribution to the hydrogen
economy. As the technology is rather simple, it can be adapted for use at
different scales, in third world countries as well as industrialised countries.
At the BIOCAP Canada conference referred to earlier, another poster
pointed out that 45 of 56 wastewater treatment plants in large urban areas
of Ontario, Canada incorporate an anaerobic digestion process to reduce
the volume of disposable sludge; but the methane produced is mostly wasted by being flared off to the atmosphere. A conservative estimate suggests
that if all the wastewater sites were to use anaerobic digesters and simply
recover the methane to generate electricity, this would produce 1.51
GWh/day. It was a small percentage of the total of 317 GWh consumed
each day in Ontario. But on average, 0.3 kg of CO2 is emitted per kWh
energy produced from Ontario Power Generation, so simply recovering the
biogas energy from the current sites using anaerobic digesters represents
a saving of 432 tonnes of CO2 per day.
Imagine what could be achieved if waste treatment were optimised for
SiS
hydrogen production.
Letters to the Editor (continued from page 23)
Praise for ISIS
You people at ISIS are just an amazing phenomenon. I think the quality and stature of the articles has
got stronger since we've been reading. This latest is really knit together powerfully; all the articles are
"one thing". I've seen articles across the Net just recently on how dangerous to health are GM crops,
mentioning Dr. Putzai, and we realized that this information was first published by ISIS last year. And the
research - both scientific and journalistic - has since snowballed, thanks to ISIS.
I was also very pleased to see such a good portrait of Michael Meacher. I haven't seen such a good
portrait photograph of a public figure for a very long time, maybe 20 years. Everything has been stained
with the increasing cynicism, facade, and corruption in civilization since the end of the seventies. It's gotten so bad recently that I don't read any papers or look at magazines, don't watch TV, or the radio. And
yet, in this issue, there's suddenly a genuine* human smile of a public persona, and it's a pleasure for the
eye to linger on!
Where there is no vision the people perish.
Alexander Anderson, Yorkshire, England
Computers that read thoughts
I am replying to your Spring 2005 editorial
reply regarding computers reading
thoughts. I conducted a controlled
research project at the Institute of Noetic
Science in California on transmitting "healing energy" using computers/email via the
Internet. The results were significant,
although this particular research has no
comparable precedent. I have attached a
paper on this research for your reading.
Thank you for your fine work.
Francesca McCartney, PhD, California,
USA.
www.i-sis.org.uk
26
Abundantly productive
farms with zero input and
zero emission powered by
waste-gobbling bugs and
human ingenuity
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Environmental engineer meets Chinese
peasant farmers
Doesn't it sound like a dream to be able to produce a super-abundance of food with no fertilizers or pesticides and with little or no greenhouse
gas emission? Not if you treat your farm wastes
properly to mine the rich nutrients that can support the production of fish, crops livestock and
more, get biogas energy as by-product, and perhaps most importantly, conserve and release
pure potable water back to the aquifers.
That is what Professor George Chan has
spent years perfecting; and he refers to it as the
Integrated Food and Waste Management
System (IFWMS).
(ZERI) (www.zeri.org).
Chan left China in 1989, and continued to
work with Gunter and others in ZERI through
consultancy services. This work has taken him
to nearly 80 countries and territories, and contributed to evolving IFWMS into a compelling
alternative to conventional farming.
The integrated farm typically consists of
crops, livestock and fishponds. But the nutrients
from farm wastes often spill over into supporting
extra production of algae, chickens, earthworms, silkworms, mushrooms, and other valuables that bring additional income and benefits
for the farmers and the local communities.
Treating wastes with respect
The secret is in treating wastes to minimize the
loss of valuable nutrients that are used as feed
to generate further nutrients from algae, fish,
etc., that feed a variety of crops and livestock. At
the same time, greenhouse gases emitted during the first phase of waste treatment are harvested for use as fuel, while the oxygen required
in the second phase of waste treatment - which
gets rid of toxins and pollutants - is generated by
photosynthetic algae, so fish stocks are not suf-
Box 1
How volatile nitrogen is turned into nutrient for plants
Livestock manure contains large amounts of
ammonia gas that must be turned back into
stable nitrate before it can be absorbed as
nutrient by plants. Nitrification is the process
in which soil bacteria oxidize ammonia (NH3)
sequentially into nitrite (NO2) and then
nitrate (NO3). Ammonia is oxidized into
nitrite by bacteria belonging mainly to the
genus
Nitrosomonas,
but
also
Nitrosococcus, Nitrosospira, Nitrosolobus
and Nitrosovibrio. Nitrite is then further oxidized into nitrate by bacteria belonging
mainly to the genus Nitrobacter, but also by
bacteria in other genera such as Nitrospina,
Nitrococcus and Nitrospira.
increasing the overall benefits.
IFWMS has revolutionized conventional
farming of livestock, aquaculture, horticulture,
agro-industry and allied activities in some countries, especially in non-arid tropical and subtropical regions. It has solved most of the existing
The secret is in treating wastes to minimize the loss of valuable nutrients that are used as feed
to generate further nutrients from algae, fish, etc., that feed a variety of crops and livestock
Chan was born in Mauritius and educated at
Imperial College, London University in the
United Kingdom, specializing in environmental
engineering. He was appointed director of two
important US federal programmes of the US
Environmental Protection Agency and the US
Department of Energy in the US Commonweath
of the Northern Mariana Islands of the North
Pacific. On his retirement, Chan spent 5 years in
China among the Chinese peasants, and confessed he learned just as much there as he did
in University.
What he learned was a system of farming
and living that inspired him and many others
including Gunter Pauli, the founder and director
of the Zero Emissions Research Initiative
focated through lack of dissolved oxygen in the
nutrient-rich water entering the ponds.
Livestock wastes are first digested anaerobically (in the absence of air) to produce biogas
(mainly methane). The partially digested wastes
are then treated aerobically (in the presence of
air) in shallow basins that support the growth of
green algae. By means of photosynthesis, the
algae produce all the oxygen needed to oxidise
the wastes to make them safe for fish. This
increases the fertilizer and feed value in the fishponds without robbing the fish of dissolved oxygen. All the extra nutrients, therefore, go to
improve productivity. Biogas is used as a clean
energy source for cooking, and also enables
farmers to process their produce for preservation and added value, reducing spoilage and
economic and ecological problems and provided
the means of production such as fuel, fertilizer
and feed, increasing productivity many-fold.
"It can turn all those existing disastrous
farming systems, especially in the poorest countries into economically viable and ecologically
balanced systems that not only alleviate but
eradicate poverty." Chan says.
Increasing the recycling of nutrients for
greater productivity
The ancient practice of combining livestock and
crop has helped farmers almost all over the
world. Livestock manure is used as fertilizer, and
crop residues are fed back to the livestock.
Chan points out, however, that most of the
manure, when exposed to the atmosphere, lost
27
up to half its nitrogen as ammonia and nitrogen
oxides, before they could be turned into stable
nitrate that plants use as fertilizer (see Box 1).
The more recent integration of fish with livestock
and crop has helped to reduce this loss.
The important addition of a second production cycle of nutrients from fish waste has
enhanced the integration process, and improved
the livelihoods of many small farmers considerably. But too much untreated waste dumped
directly into the fishpond can rob the fish of oxygen, and end up killing them.
In IFWMS, the anaerobically digested
wastes from livestock are treated aerobically
before the nutrients are delivered into the fishponds to fertilize the natural plankton that feed
the fish without depleting oxygen. In this way
fish yield is increased 3- to 4-fold, especially
with the polyculture of many kinds of compatible
fish feeding at different levels as practiced in
China, Thailand, Vietnam, India and
Bangladesh. The fish produce their own wastes
that are converted naturally into nutrients for
crops growing both on the water surface and on
dykes surrounding the ponds.
The most significant innovation of IFWMS is
thus the two-stage method of treating wastes.
Chan is critical of the "erratic proposals" of
experts, both local and foreign, to spread livestock wastes on land to let them rot away and
hope that there are a small amount of residual
nutrients left, after tremendous losses that damage the environment have taken place.
According to the US Environment
teria reduce nitrate ultimately back to nitrogen
gas. Denitrifying bacteria belong to two main
genera, Pseudomonas and Bacillus. Animal
manure could be responsible for nearly half of
the N2O emission in agriculture in Europe,
according to some estimates; the remainder
coming from inorganic nitrate fertilizer. Thus,
anaerobic digestion not only prevents the loss of
nutrients, it could also substantially reduce
greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.
Chan further dismisses the practice of composting nutrient-rich livestock wastes, for this
ends up with a low-quality fertilizer that has lost
ammonia and nitrite. Instead of mixing livestock
wastes with household garbage in the compost,
Chan recommends producing high-protein
feeds such as earthworms from the garbage,
and using worm casts and garbage residues as
better soil conditioners. He is also critical of the
outmoded practice of putting manure in septic
tanks for very little financial or other benefit
while the badly treated effluent is just as dangerous as the waste itself.
Instead, the livestock waste digested anaerobically followed by oxidation in open shallow
basins with natural algae before letting the treated waste effluent flow into the fish pond, can
convert almost 100% of the organic nutrients
into inorganic nutrients that will not consume
any oxygen to deprive the fish. So, theoretically,
the quantity of waste input into the pond can
increase 10-fold without the risk of pollution. But,
Chan cautions, the nutrients in the waste must
be totally used by both fish and crop culture, or
from restaurants and abattoirs. Earthworms,
silkworms, fungi, insects and other organisms
are also encouraged, as some of them produce
high value goods such as silk and mushrooms.
The digester can be as simple as a couple
of concentric plastic bags of 5m3 capacity or
200-litre drums for a small farm, or a complex
reinforced concrete steel structure with an
anaerobic sludge blanket to collect the biogas
for a big farm or industrial enterprise.
As the fresh wastes enter the digester, the
waste-eating bacteria transform the unstable
ammonia (NH3) and nitrite (NO2) into stable
nitrate (NO3), which is ready for use as fertilizer.
As more wastes are added, the digester also
produces an abundant and inexhaustible supply
of biogas - 2/3 methane (CH4) and 1/3 carbon
dioxide (CO2) - a convenient source of free and
renewable energy for domestic, farming and
industrial uses (see Box 2). Big farms, meat and
fish-packing plants, distilleries, and various
agro-industries are now self-sufficient in energy,
besides having big volumes of nutrient-rich effluent for fertilizing fishponds, and 'fertigation' (fertilization and irrigation) of many kinds of crops.
Proliferating lifecycles for greater
productivity
The aerobic treatment in the shallow basins
depends on oxygen produced by the green alga
Chlorella. Chlorella is very prolific and can be
harvested as a high-protein feed for chickens,
ducks and geese.
From left to right:
1.Biogas digester
2. Chlorella in shallow basins
3 Fish pond
4 & 5 Crops growing on
dykes among the fish ponds
Protection Agency, up to 70% of nitrous oxide,
N2O, a powerful greenhouse gas with a global
warming potential of 280 (i.e., 280 times that of
carbon dioxide) comes from conventional agriculture. Nitrous oxide is formed as an intermediate in denitrification, a process in which soil bac-
the nutrients can create problems of eutrophication - over-enrichment of plankton - that uses up
all the oxygen in the pond, thereby lowering productivity.
To close the circle, livestock should be fed
with crops and processing residues, not wastes
When the effluent from the Chlorella basins
reaches the fishpond, little or no organic matter
from the livestock waste will remain, and any
residual organic matter will be instantly oxidized
by some of the dissolved oxygen. The nutrients
are now readily available for enhancing the prolific growth of different kinds of natural plankton
Box 2
Formation of biogas
Certain bacteria naturally present in manure produce a combustible gas (biogas) when they digest organic matter anaerobically (in the absence of
oxygen). Biogas typically contains between 60 and 70 percent methane. Anaerobic digestion involves two groups of bacteria. The first group of ordinary bacteria produces organic acids such as acetic acid by fermentation. The second group of bacteria, the methanogens (methane makers), is
special, it breaks down the organic acids and produces methane as a by-product.
Methanogens cannot tolerate oxygen and are killed when exposed to oxygen. Instead, they can use the dead end products of fermentation, carbon dioxide or organic acids such as acetic acid, to generate methane:
Methanogens are found wherever oxygen is depleted, such as wetland soils, aquatic sediments and in the digestive tracts of animals. Methane
formation is the final step in the decay of organic matter when carbon dioxide and hydrogen accumulate, and all oxygen and other electron acceptors are used up.
www.i-sis.org.uk
28
that feed the polyculture of 5 to 6 species of compatible fish. No artificial
feed is necessary, except locally grown grass for any herbivorous fish.
The fish waste, naturally treated in the big pond, gives nutrients that are
used by crops growing in the pond water and on the dykes.
Fermented rice or other grain, used for producing alcoholic beverages,
or silkworms and their wastes, can also be added to the ponds as further
nutrients, resulting in higher fish and crop productivity, provided the water
quality is not affected.
Trials are taking place with special diffusion pipes carrying compressed
air from biogas-operated pumps to aerate the bottom part of the pond, to
increase plankton and fish yields.
Apart from growing vine-type crops on the edges of the pond and letting them climb on trellises over the dykes and over the water, some countries grow aquatic vegetables floating on the water surface of lakes and
rivers. Others grow grains, fruits and flowers on bamboo or long-lasting
It can turn all those existing disastrous farming systems, especially in the poorest countries into economically viable and ecologically
balanced systems that not only alleviate but
eradicate poverty
polyurethane floats over nearly half the surface of the fishpond water without interfering with the polyculture in the pond itself. Such aquaponic cultures have increased the crop yields by using half of the millions of hectares
of fishponds and lakes in China. All this is possible because of the excess
nutrients from the integrated farming systems.
Planting patterns have also improved. For example, rice is now transplanted into modules of 12 identical floats, one every week, and just left to
grow in the pond without the need to irrigate or fertilize separately, or to do
any weeding, while it takes 12 weeks to mature. On the 13th week, the rice
is harvested and the seedlings transplanted again to start a new cycle. It is
possible to have 4 rice crops yearly in the warmer parts of the country, with
almost total elimination of the back breaking work previously required.
Another example is hydroponic cultures of fruits and vegetables in a
series of pipes. The final effluent from the hydroponic cultures is polished in
earthen drains where plants such as Lemna, Azolla, Pistia and water
hyacinth remove all traces of nutrients such as nitrate, phosphate and
potassium before the purified water is released back into the aquifer.
Processing for added value and nutrient release
One big problem with agricultural produce is the drop in prices when farmers harvest the same crops at the same time. This is solved by the abundant supply of biogas energy, which enables simple processing to be done,
such as smoking, drying, salting, sugaring, and pickling.
Finally, the sludge from the anaerobic digester, the algae, macrophytes,
crop and processing residues are put into plastic bags, sterilized in steam
produced by biogas energy, and then injected with spores for high-priced
mushroom culture.
The mushroom enzymes break down the ligno-cellulose to release further nutrients and enrich the residues, making them more digestible and
more palatable for livestock. The remaining fibrous residues can still be
used for culturing earthworms, which provide special protein feed for chickens. The final residues, including the worm casts, are composted and used
for soil conditioning and aeration.
Model for sustainable development
Chan's dream farm shows how to grow and develop in a balanced way by
closing the overall production cycle, then using the surplus nutrients and
energy to support as many different cycles of activity as possible rather like
a developing organism. The 'waste' from one production activity is resource
for another, so productivity is maximised with the minimum of input, and little or no waste is exported into the environment. It is possible to have sustainable development after all; the alternative to the dominant model of
unlimited, unsustainable growth is balanced growth. I shall elaborate on this
in "Sustainable food systems for sustainable development" (this issue). SiS
Biogas, a by-product of farmyard wastetreatment, has emerged as a major boon for
Third World countries, bringing health,
social, environmental, and financial benefits
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Biogas energy, readily available, cheap and decentralized
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 1997 Report,
Energy After Rio: Prospects and Challenges identified community
biogas plants as one of the most useful decentralized sources of
energy supply. Unlike the centralized energy supply technologies,
such as power plants based on hydroelectricity, coal, oil or natural
gas, that have hitherto been the only choices open to rural communities, biogas plants do not require big capital to set up, and do not
pose environmental problems that excite public opposition. Instead,
in most cases, they offer solutions to existing environmental problems, and many unexpected benefits besides.
The organic materials needed for producing biogas in an
anaerobic digester are readily available in developing countries.
These include firewood, agricultural wastes and animal wastes.
Many countries have large cattle and buffalo herds producing
tonnes of manure. Traditionally, these wastes are carefully collected
in India and used as fertilizer, but the increasing scarcity of firewood
has forced many villagers to burn dung-cakes in cooking their food.
As biogas plants yield good quality sludge fertilizer, the biogas
fuel and/or electricity generated is an additional bonus. And this has
motivated the large biogas programmes in a number of developing
countries, starting with China.
paying cash to poor countries not to burn firewood
is a measure of desperation for rich countries like
the United States, which, at 4.6 percent of the
world's population and growing, is responsible for
25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions
due to human activities
Overcoming early obstacles
China began mass adoption of biogas in 1975 under the slogan
"biogas for every household". Within the first few years, 1.6 million
digesters were constructed annually, but these were of low quality;
and by 1980, half of all digesters were not in use, and the rate of
adoption had slowed. By 1992, only 5 million family sized plants
were still operating, many of them redesigned to avoid leakage.
In India, as in China, a too-rapid implementation policy in the
early 1990s exceeded the capacity of India's research and development organizations to produce reliable designs and to optimise
digester efficiency. The situation has improved since, especially with
the introduction of a low-cost polyethylene tubular digester. Now,
everyone in India installing a biogas plant has the right to an
allowance paid by the central government.
In a report, Biogas in India: A Sustainable Energy Success
Story, the authors identified women and children as the major beneficiaries of biogas in India, where every year, 200 000 families turn
away from the traditional fireplace and have a biogas plant installed
to provide energy for cooking and lighting. By 2000, more than 2
million biogas plants have been built in India and almost 200 000
permanent jobs created.
India's early difficulties and recent success is being replicated in
countries such as Nepal, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
In Vietnam, as in other developing countries - Colombia,
Ethiopia, Tanzania, Cambodia and Bangladesh - the polyethylene
tubular digester was promoted to reduce production cost by using
local materials and simplifying installation and operation. The result-
29
biogas digester, ITDG
Biogas Bonanza for Third World Development
ing low-cost digester
has been well received
by poor farmers, especially when farmers
participate fully in the
necessary
maintenance and repair work.
Within ten years, more
than 20 000 polyethylene digesters were
installed and mainly
paid for by the farmers
themselves. However,
the digesters are still
not fully integrated into
the farming system, as
there is only limited use
of the effluent as fertilizer for fish and crops ("Dream farms", this series). There are also potentials for improving the digester for greater efficiency, ease of maintenance and durability. More cooperation between scientists and farmers,
and credit systems for poor farmers to install digesters will also help to
increase the adoption rate.
In Sri Lanka, biomass accounts for 45 percent of the country's energy needs, with petroleum and hydroelectricity supplying 41 percent and
14 percent respectively. Sri Lanka's economy is still largely based on
agriculture. A major constraint to production is the increasing cost of fertilizer, while solid waste, mainly organic, is collected and disposed of at
a large number of unprotected sites, affecting the health of the poorest.
Although biogas digesters have been introduced in Sri Lanka since
the 1970s, poor design, lack of maintenance skills and insufficient
capacity to deal with the problems meant that only a third of the 5 000
units installed functioned properly. The Intermediate Technology
Development Group (ITDG) started a project in 1996 to improve the success rate of the units on a national level by setting up demonstration
units to help spread information, restoring abandoned units and training
users to operate and maintain them. In addition, individual farmers get
help to install biogas units on their farms to make use of the manure from
their cows.
Mr. Ratnayake is one of the lucky farmers. With nothing more than
cow dung, he now has enough power to cook with, iron the laundry and
provide heat and light for his home, without using a single piece of wood.
All he has to do is to collect the manure from his cows in a specially
adapted cattle shed where they feed, mix it with water and leave it to ferment in a large concrete tank or pit. The gas produced is collected in a
simple storage tank, from where it is piped into his house to use.
The women and children, freed from firewood collection and from
cleaning smoke-blackened utensils and the disposal of animal waste,
gain some two hours a day for other activities. About 80% now use this
time to earn extra income that currently accounts for approximately 24%
of the family's monthly income. Another advantage of using biogas is that
there is very little waste from the process and it is environmentally friendly.
The dried manure left after biogas is generated is richer than ordinary manure and makes a fantastic organic fertilizer for Mr. Ratnayake's
crops, which he can sell at a higher price as organic produce.
Biogas brings numerous benefits
The many benefits of biogas are now generally recognized. It has resulted in a smoke-free and ash-free kitchen, so women and their children
are no longer prone to respiratory infections, and can look forward to
longer, healthier lives. Women are spared the burden of gathering firewood, a load of 60-80 lb per week, which can take up to one day a week.
That and the practice of containing livestock for manure collection, which
biogas has resulted in a smoke-free and ash-free
kitchen, so women and their children are no longer
prone to respiratory infections, and can look forward
to longer, healthier lives. Women are spared the burden of gathering firewood, a load of 60-80 lb per
week, which can take up to one day a week
might otherwise graze in the forest, contribute to both protecting the
remaining forests and allowing the forests to regenerate.
The sludge remaining after digestion is richer in valuable nutrients
than the animal manure, providing vegetables, fruit and cereals with a
top quality fertilizer that guarantees better crops.
In rural areas where there is otherwise no electricity supply, biogas
has enabled women to engage in evening study, literacy classes and
other home and community activities.
Cattle dung is no longer stored in the home, but is fed directly to the
biogas digester along with toilet waste. The anaerobic digestion process
also destroys pathogens, and as a result, sanitation has greatly
improved.
Carbon trading bonanza
There are other benefits for countries that decide to adopt biogas. The
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has set up a
Clean Development Fund, and the World Bank has put together a
Carbon Finance Unit to allow rich countries, which are pumping more
carbon into the atmosphere than is allowed under the Kyoto Protocol, to
buy emissions that poor countries prevent through conserving forests or
promoting renewable energy. An article in the Nepali Times pointed out
that Nepal's successful biogas programme not only brought farmers a
non-polluting fuel, conserved forests and provided high quality fertilizer
for crops; it can also make the rest of the world pay hard cash for not
burning firewood to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
About 85% of the fuel used in Nepal comes from biomass sources
like firewood, animal manure and agricultural residue; the remainder
being kerosene, diesel or liquefied petroleum gases. Its biogas programme would not have been possible if the users had not received subsidies. Each biogas unit costs $300 to set up, but the government pays
one-third of the amount.
Nepal's biogas programme is internationally regarded as a model for
the successful use of alternative energy for the rural Third World. Nepal
has now overtaken China and India in the number of biogas plants per
capita. Each of its 125 000 functioning digesters prevents five tonnes of
carbon dioxide equivalents from being pumped into the atmosphere
every year. This 'saved' greenhouse gas is what rich countries are buying to offset their own emissions, and is worth US$5 million. This money
can be invested back into clean energy that would make Nepal eligible
to trade even more carbon offset to rich polluters.
"We have an initial agreement with the World Bank," said Sundar
Bajgain, executive director of the Biogas Support Project, which has
played a leading role in installing biogas plants in private houses in 66
districts across the country. The biogas model can be applied to other
renewable energy sources such as hydropower (under 15MW, as recommended by the International Panel on Climate Change) and solar
power to reap rewards from carbon trading.
Admittedly, paying cash to poor countries not to burn firewood is a
measure of desperation for rich countries like the United States, which,
at 4.6 percent of the world's population and growing, is responsible for
25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions due to human activities.
It would make much better sense for developed countries to cash in on
the benefits of biogas themselves ("Bug power", this series), as they also
have greater capacity for research and development to optimise the proSiS
duction and use of biogas.
www.i-sis.org.uk
30
The WTO and EU agricultural policies are sweeping farmers off the land
Rhea Gala
in droves and threatening world food security
Agriculture without Farmers
Farming has evolved over thousands of years
with the farm as the basic unit of local community and culture. Its practice was shaped everywhere by geography and the creative skills of
the farmer to be optimally productive. Since the
arrival of the tractor and the industrial 'green
top: While less than five percent of the population in the rich
North still farm, more than seventy percent of people in the poor
South depend on a farming livelihood. Photo: ICRISAT
middle: South Korean farmers protest during fifth WTO ministerial conference in Cancun 2003. Photo: Fiscal study
bottom: Industrial monoculture enabled by agribusiness-friendly trade policies, is responsible for much desertification, deforestation, salination, soil erosion, soil, water and air pollution and
increased global warming. Photo: Resurgence
revolution' of the 1940s, small family farms
have lost out to big industrial farms, and much
of the local knowledge accumulated over the
millennia has disappeared
unable to afford to pay for the food they used to
grow.
Trade policies benefit agribusiness: Small
farmers everywhere are impoverished
'Free trade' policies of World Trade
Organization (WTO) promote overproduction of
agricultural commodities causing damage to
wildlife, depleting soil, water, and fossil fuels;
and at the same time compromising food quality, with substantial repercussions on public
health. They also greatly exacerbate global
warming in many ways, not least the millions of
unnecessary food-miles added to agricultural
commodities. Professor Jules Pretty of Essex
University estimated that the total external
costs for conventional agriculture in the UK,
paid for by the taxpayer, added up to £2.34bn
for the year 1996.
The UK government remains a chief obstacle in the fight against international poverty and
environmental degradation, despite its seemingly green credentials on climate change, and
its recent high profile in tackling poverty in
Africa. That is because the UK continues to
espouse an economic model that promotes privatisation and trade liberalisation as the key to
reducing poverty and protecting the environment, although that model has proved to have
the opposite effects. The UK has been at the
forefront of EU efforts to push through an
aggressive 'free trade' agenda at the WTO.
Transnational corporations (TNCs) have
been allowed to gain control of supply chains
and exert a stranglehold on global food security through a process of ownership of seed, proprietary chemicals, and other inputs, as well as
virtual monopoly of food processing and retail
outlets. Yet our governments are refusing to
rein in the increasing power of TNCs that have
been swallowing each other up until only a
handful remain.
The Agreement on Agriculture of the WTO
and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of
the European Union are largely responsible for
precipitating this global catastrophe in our food
production system.
In industrialized countries like the UK where the
population is largely urban, 200 000 farms have
disappeared between 1966 and 1995. The
annual UK Common Agricultural Policy budget
of £3bn gives 20 percent of farmers (large
agribusinesses) 80 percent of subsidies.
Government figures show that 17 000 farmers
and farm-workers left the land in the year 2003,
having failed to make a living.
While only 5 percent of the population in
the European Union (EU) are still farming, at
least half a million farm-workers were still leaving the land annually before the EU was
enlarged by 15 new members in May 2004. It
is now likely that Poland alone will lose up to
two million agricultural livelihoods as a result of
joining the EU. EU figures suggest that half of
north European agriculture will disappear within
a generation, as it continues to be squeezed
out by the institutions that claim to give it support.
In the US, between 1950 and 1999, the
number of farms decreased by 64 percent to
less than two million, and farm population has
declined to less than 2 percent of total. Ninety
percent of agricultural output is produced by
only 522 000 farms. Canadian statistics similarly reveal that farm numbers have decreased by
10 percent between the 1996 census and 2001;
there were less than 247 000 farms in the country in 2001.
This relentless process of consolidation
drives the heart out of the countryside, causing
social and economic decay, and replaces it with
an intensive industry that cares nothing about
plant or animal diversity, quality or compassion
in farming, but is solely interested in bringing
down prices.
'Free trade' policies made by and for the
rich countries of the North not only destroy the
livelihood of small-farmers at home, they also
encourage the dumping of subsidized goods
(selling at less than the cost of production) from
the North onto the markets of the poor South,
distorting local markets, and leaving farmers in
developing countries also unable to compete.
This has become a global scandal, as 75
percent of the population in China, 77 percent
in Kenya, 67 percent in India, and 82 percent in
Senegal still depend on farming for their living.
These numbers are plummeting, however, as
families dispossessed of their land are driven to
the cities, where they may find themselves
Agribusiness degrades the environment
while governments do nothing
The Common Agricultural Policy of the
European Union
When the EU introduced the CAP in the early
1960s, it struck a deal with the US under the
framework of the General Agreement on Trade
and Tariffs (GATT) negotiations. The US
accepted the new border protection mechanisms put in place by the EU for food, in return
for a commitment by the EU to allow unlimited
import of feedstuffs from the US at zero tariff.
The EU agreed because it was still a net
importer of food and feedstuffs; but only 15
31
years later, the EU itself was producing large
surpluses of grain and animal products as a
direct result of this deal.
The zero tariff for feedstuffs enabled
Europe's huge surpluses of the 1970s to be
dumped on developing countries, creating a
major global problem. Feedstuff imports from
the US had led directly to the industrialization of
animal production in the EU and its associated
environmental problems.
The CAP, which aimed to "ensure a fair
standard of living for the agricultural community", has for many years provided direct aid to
farmers based on area, production, and number
of livestock units (animals). This policy gave
large monocultural farms enormous subsidies,
caused massive overproduction that lowered
prices, drove small farmers out, and consolidated the power of agribusiness. TNCs have
become vast selling seed, pesticide, machinery
etc to farmers at great profit, buying produce at
below the costs to farmers, and selling it on to
consumers on a huge scale and at enormous
profit.
The CAP reform of 2003 introduces a new
system of single farm payments that 'decouples'
the link between support and production. It
comes into force in 2005-6 except for new
tonnes of pork and 125 000 tonnes of lamb,
while it exported 195 000 tonnes of pork and
102 000 tonnes of lamb
· In 1997, 126 million litres of liquid milk were
imported into the UK and at the same time
270 million litres of milk were exported out of
the UK. Twenty three thousand tonnes of
milk powder were imported into the UK and
153 000 tonnes exported out
· In 1996 the UK imported 434 000 tonnes of
apples, nearly half of which came from outside the EU. Yet over 60 percent of the UK's
own apple orchards have been grubbed up
since 1970, largely as a result of EU subsidies
The WTO Agreement on Agriculture
US agricultural policy has traditionally promoted
cumulative growth and privatisation of seed at
taxpayer's expense. That has wrung all the
profit out of farming and into trading, processing, and retailing, controlled by a few TNCs.
Research shows the share of the US agricultural economy going to farmers declined from 41
percent in 1910 to 9 percent in 1990, while farm
input and marketing industries' shares
increased by a similar amount.
As small farmers are pushed out, others
regional specialization will increase and regions
will specialize in whatever their agriculture can
produce more cheaply than others. It dictates
that when products are exchanged, everybody
gains because the combined cost of production
is less than if each region had produced its own.
In practical terms, this means promoting
exports and limiting the right of countries to follow a policy of food self-sufficiency.
The aim of the AoA is to reduce the use of
the following three methods that favour domestic production
· Border protection against imported products (the cheapest and most widespread
method used)
· Internal support measures for domestic producers (mainly used by developed countries
with taxpayers money)
· Export subsidies (used exclusively by
developed countries)
But the US negotiating position claims the
right to spend tens of billions of dollars to compensate farmers for market failures rather than
addressing those failures directly. In 2003, over
half of the compensation went to less than 2
percent of farmers, again benefiting only very
large businesses. Furthermore, developed
countries maintain the right to continue with
industrial agriculture and its policies are placing enormous stress on the world's small farmers and the
renewable resource base, especially water and soil. Moreover, the local knowledge and plant genetic diversity most needed to truly sustain the world are being lost.
member states, and its stated aim is to ensure
greater income stability for farmers, leaving
them free to decide what they want to produce
in response to demand, without losing their entitlement. However, this is not the effect it will
have.
Farm business consultants Andersons and
the National Farm Research Unit predict a further 30 percent decrease in British cereal growers and another 35 percent decrease in dairy
farmers when the new single farm payments
kick in. These payments will be lower than the
previous payments made to smaller farms; yet
prices for produce currently remain near or
below the cost of production.
A survey of English farmers showed that 87
percent did not want subsidies, only a fair return
on their costs of food production. DEFRA figures showed average farm income in 2002 at
£10 000; with farm-gate prices having risen just
2 percent in the last seven years. Meanwhile,
supermarket prices have risen by 21 percent,
and in 2002-3, Tesco's profits were 60 percent
of total UK farming income.
CAP reform was also greeted with dismay
abroad. NGOs such as the Catholic aid agency
CAFOD and Oxfam said it would mean "dumping as usual" for developing countries.
CAP has positively encouraged the most
senseless and environmentally destructive
"food swaps"
· Britain imported 61 400 tonnes of poultry
meat from the Netherlands in the same year
that it exported 33 100 tonnes of poultry meat
to the Netherlands. Britain imported 240 000
enlarge their operation, for example, in the US
pig industry a quarter of all producers went out
of work between 1998 and 2000, leaving just 50
businesses controlling 50 percent of all US production. Yet, independent pig farmers produce
more jobs, more local retail spending, and more
local per capita income than larger corporate
operations; and profits generated by small producers (of any commodity) are more likely to
remain in the community and benefit the local
economy.
As in Europe, these policies have led to low
plant and animal genetic diversity, low prices,
many failing small farms, and environmental
degradation, and because they are geared
towards maximising export, similar effects are
spreading all over the world. Seventy percent
of the world's poorest people, who directly
depend on the land, are forced to compete with
the rich nations.
The 1996 Freedom to Farm Bill followed by
the 2002 US Farm Bill produced a vast structural price-depressing oversupply of major agricultural commodities in an attempt to comply
with WTO rules. The Agreement on Agriculture
(AoA) came out of the Uruguay Round of the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) negotiations between the US and the
EU (1986-94) that led to the founding of the
WTO. It provides the rules governing international agricultural trade and, by extension, agricultural production.
The AoA is based on the firm ideological
belief that trade liberalization brings net benefits
to all participants. By removing barriers to trade,
several forms of support that are now illegal for
any other country to introduce.
The US, with its chronic overproduction in
major commodities, always needs new export
markets, and its policies therefore affect production everywhere. For example, rice, the staple of most of the poor nations, is grown on
around 8 000 farms in the US; half of it in
Arkansas where the biggest 332 rice farms,
each over 400 hectares in size, produce more
rice than all the farmers of Ghana, Guinea,
Guinea-Bissau, Niger, and Senegal combined.
In 2003, the US's crop of 9m tonnes of
rough rice cost farmers $1.8bn to produce.
Farmers received only $1.5bn from rice millers,
but were sustained by government subsidies,
which totalled $1.3bn. Between 2000 and 2003
it cost on average $415 to grow and mill one
tonne of white rice in the US, but that rice was
exported around the world for just $274 per
tonne and dumped on developing country markets at a price 34% below its true cost.
Surpluses may also be designated 'food
aid' and monetized, i.e., sold on the recipient
country's market to generate cash. Most US
programme food aid is sold to recipient countries through concessional financing or export
credit guarantees. The US is nearly the only
country that sells 'food aid' to recipient countries; other donors give it in grant form, but both
strategies reduce prices both for developing
country exporters and for smallholders in
importing countries, and deepen and prolong
the depression in world market prices.
www.i-sis.org.uk
32
Current agriculture policies undermine
human rights
The WTO's stated aims are to raise living standards, ensure full employment, and raise
incomes; and the AoA is specifically meant to
further the WTO's aims by "establishing a fair
and market oriented agricultural trade system".
But a report by the Institute for Agriculture and
Trade Policy released in March 2005 accused
WTO agriculture policies of undermining human
rights; by promoting a trade liberalization agenda that overrides efforts to improve livelihoods
in four ways
· Promote the 'right to export' over human
rights
· Fail to tackle corporate control
· Allow export dumping at artificially low
prices to continue
· Lock developing countries into an uneven
playing field
Using data from the US Department of
Agriculture and the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (2003), the
report describes how exports from US-based
global food companies were dumped onto world
agricultural markets
· Wheat exported on average 28% below
cost
fast-revolving door between top posts in agroindustry and government; and agribusiness sits
in the top ten of industry donors to candidates
and political parties in US elections, contributing
over $340m to campaign funds since 1990.
Policies reinforce industrial agriculture at
the expense of sustainable agriculture
During this multinational bonanza, industrial
agriculture and its policies are placing enormous stress on the world's small farmers and
the renewable resource base, especially water
and soil. Moreover, the local knowledge and
plant genetic diversity most needed to truly sustain the world are being lost. Recent research
has demonstrated the resilience and productivity of many traditional agricultural practices that
have withstood the test of time.
It has also documented the damage done
when small, diverse organic farms, that have
only one third of the hidden costs of non-organic agriculture, are pushed off the land by distorted markets, and replaced with large monocultures oriented towards export production.
But government policies tend to emphasize a
handful of major crops that require large fertilizer and pesticide inputs, and ignore resource
conserving crop rotations for which farmers
whatever commodities cannot be supplied at
the local level, rather than export trade being
the primary driver of production and distribution.
2. Reverse the present rules on intellectual
property and patenting. These rules strongly
favour the rights of global corporations to claim
patents on medicinal plants, agricultural seeds,
and other aspects of biodiversity, even when
the biological material has been under cultivation and development by indigenous people or
community farmers for millennia.
3. Localize food regulations and standards.
Rules that benefit global food giants, such as
irradiation, pasteurization, and shrink-wrapping
also negatively affect taste and quality; and
industrial processing has led to an increased
incidence of food poisoning and diseases in
farm animals. Each nation should be allowed to
set its own high standards for food.
4. Allow farmer marketing/supply management boards. These let farmers negotiate collective prices with domestic and foreign buyers
to help ensure that they receive a fair price for
their commodities. Less than two years after the
North American Free Trade Agreement (that
dismantled the government price regulation
agencies) went into effect, Mexican domestic
corn prices fell by 48% as a flood of cheap US
But government policies tend to emphasize a handful of major crops that require large fertilizer and pesticide inputs, and ignore resource conserving crop rotations for which farmers receive no government
incentives, or sustainable practices such as growing clover or alfalfa to enhance soil fertility
· Soybeans exported on average 10% below
cost
· Corn exported on average 10% below cost
· Cotton exported on average 47% below
cost
· Rice exported on average 26% below cost
This dumping has greatly increased since
the inception of the AoA, and prices have
dropped to new lows; but as all WTO members
have ratified at least one of the international
human rights treaties, these instruments could
be used when designing trade policies.
The policies of international agribusiness
The laws that bind international trade derive
from the ideology of international agribusiness
whose common interest lies in opening up
developing country markets. Close links with
governments and academia are exploited to
persuade policy-makers and the public that
trade liberalization is clearly in the best interest
of developing countries.
Agribusiness is at the heart of creating US
trade policy, thanks to the Agricultural Technical
Advisory Committees for Trade. Members
appointed in 2003 were selected, according to
former US Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick, to "coincide with the continuation of the
Bush Administration's aggressive push to open
foreign markets to US agricultural products....
Coordinating with our agricultural community
will continue to be important as the tempo of
negotiations for global, regional, and bilateral
trade agreements intensifies."
In the US, as in many countries, there is a
receive no government incentives, or sustainable practices such as growing clover or alfalfa
to enhance soil fertility. They also perpetuate
chemical-intensive agriculture by funding
research on chemical fixes for agricultural problems, to the exclusion of research on more sustainable options.
Sustainable systems are especially able to
compare favorably with conventional systems
when the comparison includes a full cost
accounting of the environmental and public
health harms and benefits of each system; but
these costs are usually externalized, or paid by
society rather than the polluter.
There needs to be dedicated support for
sustainable food production by small farmers
who have served us well for thousands of
years; and a curbing of the power of multinationals who serve only themselves. In spite of
spin from politicians about 'making poverty history', their trade liberalisation policies can only
continue to ruin local economies everywhere
while serving the global elites.
The International Commission on the
Future of Food and Agriculture suggests the following changes to agricultural trade policy that
would help make the world a much fairer and
healthier place:
1. Permit tariffs and import quotas that
favour subsidiarity. That means whenever production can be achieved by local farmers using
local resources for local consumption, all rules
and benefits should favour that option; thus
shortening the distance between production
and consumption. Trade should be confined to
corn exports entered the country. Thousands of
farmers have been forced to sell their lands
5. Eliminate direct export subsidies and
payments for corporations. Although the WTO
has eliminated direct payment programmes for
most small farmers, they continue to allow
export subsidies to agribusinesses. For example, the US Overseas Private Investment
Corporation funded by US taxpayers, provides
vital insurance to US companies investing overseas. Even loans from the IMF to Third World
countries have been channeled into export subsidies for US agribusiness
6. Recognize and eliminate the adverse
effects of WTO market access rules. Countries
need new international trade rules that allow
them to re-introduce constraints and controls on
their imports and exports. These would prevent
heavily subsidised Northern exports from
destroying rural communities and self-sufficient
livelihoods throughout the South. Many people
now working, for example, for poverty wages at
Nike and other global corporate subcontractors
are refugees from previously self-sufficient
farming regions.
7. Promote redistributive land reform. The
redistribution of land to landless and land-poor
rural families is a priority. This has promoted
rural welfare at different times in Japan, South
Korea, Taiwan and China. Research shows that
small farmers are more productive and more
efficient, and contribute more to broad-based
regional development than do the larger corporate farmers.
SiS
33
There is enormous scope for mitigating global warming by making our food system sustainable, halting deforestation, replanting forests for agroforestry, and harvesting biogas from
agricultural and food wastes that at the same time conserve nutrients for crops and livestock.
Sustainable Food System for Sustainable Development
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho presents a model of sustainable development to replace the dominant
model of infinite, unsustainable growth
What's a sustainable food system?
That's a question for this conference to answer.
But I'll show you what it is not. Here's a sobering
estimate of the greenhouse gas emissions from
eating in a European country, based on full life
cycle accounting, from farm to plate to waste.
The figure of 30.4 percent is clearly an underestimate, because it leaves out emissions from
the fertilizers imported as well as pesticides,
transport associated with import/export of food,
energy spent storing and preparing food in
homes, processing of food, and emission from
electricity is one-fifth of typical non-nuclear
sources in other European countries.
Our current food system is dominated by high
agricultural inputs dependent on fossil fuels,
including pumped irrigation water that have
severely depleted the aquifers worldwide, while
huge volumes of commodity are exported and
imported, too often by air. Taking all those into
account could easily increase the greenhouse
gas emissions another 5 to 10 percent of total.
That gives a rough idea of how much scope there
is for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (and
energy use) by changing agricultural practices,
cutting out agricultural inputs and unnecessary
transport, storage and packaging through local
production and consumption.
Sequestering C in soil provides food security
and mitigates global warming
Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has reached
an all-time high of 379 ppm (parts per million), giving a total of 807 Gt (109 tonnes) of carbon in the
earth's atmosphere. This is still less than a third of
the 2 500 Gt of carbon in the earth's soil, of which
1 550 Gt is organic carbon, and the rest inorganic carbon. The global soil organic carbon pool is
almost three times the 560 Gt C estimated in all
living organisms.
The earth has been losing soil organic carbon to the atmosphere since historic times, a
process greatly accelerated within the past 50
years, as agriculture intensifies, and forests are
cut down to convert to agricultural land. Estimates
for the historic losses of soil organic carbon range
widely from 44 to 537 Gt, with the common range
of 55 to 78 Gt. That is the amount we can theoretically put back from the atmosphere into the
soil as organic carbon, if we get our agriculture
and land use right.
There is significant potential for sequestering,
or taking carbon from the air into the soil through
a set of recommended management practices.
On existing croplands (1.35 billion ha), maximize
soil organic carbon and fertility through organic
inputs, cover crops, conservation tillage and
mixed farming; on rangelands and grasslands
(3.7 billion ha), prevent overgrazing, fires and loss
of nutrients, on degraded and desertified land (1.1
billion ha), prevent water and wind erosion, harvest and conserve water and plant forests; and on
irrigated land (0.275 billion ha), control salinity,
use drip/sub-irrigation, provide drainage, enhance
water efficiency and conservation.
In fact, R. Lal in Ohio State University said,
"Soil C sequestration is a strategy to achieve food
security through improvement in soil quality", and
as a bonus, it offsets 0.4 to 1.2 Gt C/year, or 5 to
15 percent of the global emissions of 7.9Gt C of
greenhouse gas due to human activities each
year.
Agroforestry for food security and C
sequestration
Another way to cut emissions is to stop cutting
down forests. Deforestation contributes 1.6 Gt C
emissions or 20 percent of the annual global
Greenhouse gas emissions from eating (France)
Agriculture direct emissions
Fertilizers (French fertilizer industry only, more than half
imported.)
Road transport goods (within France only,
not counting export/import)
Road transport people
Truck manufacture & diesel
Store heating (20% national total)
Electricity (nuclear energy in France, multiply by 5 elsewhere)
Packaging
End of life of packaging (overall emissions of waste 4 Mt)
Total
National French emission
Share linked to food system
42.0 Mt C
0.8 Mt C
4.0 Mt C
1.0 Mt C
0.8 Mt C
0.4 Mt C
0.7 Mt C
1.5 Mt C
1.0 Mt C
52.0 Mt C
171.0 MtC
30.4%
greenhouse gas emissions due to human activities. More than 14 million hectares of forests are
cleared every year, mostly in the tropics. Brazil
alone has lost 47.4 million hectares of its
Amazonia forest since 1978, mostly for raising
cattle; and in recent years, for growing soya as
cattle feed.
Tropical forests are the richest carbon stocks
and most effective carbon sinks in the world. The
carbon pool in the secondary tropical forests in
Mt. Makiling Forest Reserve in the Philippines
was assessed at 418tC/ha, of which 40 percent
was soil organic carbon; and this forest
sequestered carbon at the rate of 5tC/ha/y. An
agro-forestry system with cacao trees in a forest
reserve in southern Luzon in the Philippines had
a mean C pool of 258 t/ha. Agroforests in the
humid tropics sequester a median of 10 t C/ha/y.
Replanting forests for sustainable agro-forestry
creates significant carbon stocks and sinks, and
at the same time, restores livelihood to millions of
indigenous peoples who have been displaced
and/or poisoned by cattle ranges, soya farms, oil
and mining industries.
Tropical rain forests like those in the Amazon
also play a most crucial role in mitigating global
warming by regulating climate and rainfall, which
is why they must be preserved and restored at all
costs.
A profusion of local inventions for sustainable food production
There is a profusion of local inventions for producing food sustainably, increasing productivity
while saving energy and water, and harvesting
energy from farm wastes to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. They are described in detail in
successive issues of our must-read magazine,
Science in Society. I mention a few.
Jesuit priest, Henri de Laulanie, working with
farming communities in Madagascar in the late
1980s invented a system of rice intensification
that is now practiced by 100 000 farmers in the
country and spreading to other countries in Africa
and Asia. It depends on transplanting rice
seedlings at an earlier age and spaced wider
apart than usual, with an emphasis on organic
inputs, and most importantly, keeping the soil
moist rather than flooded during the growing season. This encourages the rice plants to put out
more side shoots, grow deeper, stronger roots,
increasing yields from 2 t/ha to 8 t within the second year, and 12 t/ha or more in later years.
These results met with scepticism from the conventional scientific community; but have been
confirmed by Chinese crop scientist Yuan
Longping, co-winner of 2004 World Food Prize.
www.i-sis.org.uk
34
Sustainable development and human capital
There has been a widespread misconception that
the only alternative to the dominant model of infinite, unsustainable growth is to have no growth at
all. I have heard some critics refer to sustainable
development as a contradiction in terms. Prof.
George Chan's dream farm, however, is a marvellous demonstration that sustainable development is possible. It also shows that the carrying
capacity of a piece of land is far from constant;
instead it depends on the mode of production, on
how the land is used. Productivity can vary threeto four-fold or more simply by maximising internal
input, and in the process, creating more jobs, supporting more people.
The argument for population control has
been somewhat over-stated by Lester Brown, and
others who predict massive starvation and population crash as oil runs out. I like the idea of
"human capital", if only to restore a sense of balance that it isn't population number as such, but
the glaring inequality of consumption and dissipation by the few rich in the richest countries that's
responsible for the current crises. The way Cuba
coped with the sudden absence of fossil fuel, fertilizer and pesticides by implementing organic
agriculture across the nation is a case in point
(Julia Wright's presentation at Sustainable World
conference www.indsp.org). There was no population crash; although there was indeed hardship
for a while. It also released creative energies,
which brought solutions and many accompanying
ecological and social benefits.
For the past 50 years, the world has opted
overwhelmingly for an industrial food system that
aspired to substitute machines and fossil fuel for
human labour, towards "Agriculture without farmers" (this series). This has swept people off the
land and into poverty and suicide. One of the
most urgent tasks ahead is to re-integrate people
into the ecosystem. Human labour is intelligent
energy, applied precisely and with ingenuity,
which is worth much more than appears from the
bald accounting in mega-Joules or any other
energy unit. This is an important area for future
research.
Sustainable development is possible
I shall present a model of sustainable development with a few diagrams, based on Chan's
dream farm.
The dominant model of infinite unsustainable
growth is represented in Figure 1. The system
grows relentlessly, swallowing up the earth's
resources without end, laying waste to everything
in its path, like a hurricane. There is no closed
cycle to hold resources within, to build up stable
organised structures.
In contrast, a sustainable system is like an
organism, it closes the cycle to store as much as
possible of the resources inside the system, and
minimise waste (see Figure 2). Closing the cycle
creates at the same time a stable, autonomous
structure that is self-maintaining, self-renewing
and self-sufficient.
In many indigenous integrated farming systems, livestock is incorporated to close the circle
(Figure 3), thereby minimizing external input,
while maximising productivity and minimizing
wastes exported to the environment.
The elementary integrated farm supports
three lifecycles within it, linked to one another;
each lifecycle being autonomous and self-renewing. It has the potential to grow by incorporating
yet more lifecycles (Figure 4). The more lifecycles
incorporated within the system, the greater the
productivity. That is why productivity and biodiversity always go together. Industrial monoculture, by
contrast, is the least energy efficient in terms of
output per unit of input, and less productive in
absolute terms despite high external inputs, as
documented in recent academic research.
Actually the lifecycles are not so neatly separated, they are linked by many inputs and outputs,
so a more accurate representation would look
something like Figure 5.
The key to sustainable development is a balanced growth that's achieved by closing the overall production cycle, then using the surplus nutrients and energy to support increasingly more
cycles of activities while maintaining internal balance and nested levels of autonomy, just like a
developing organism. The 'waste' from one pro-
duction activity is resource for another, so productivity is maximised with the minimum of input,
and little waste is exported into the environment.
It is possible to have sustainable development
after all; the alternative to the dominant model of
unlimited, unsustainable growth is balanced
growth.
The same principles apply to ecosystems
and economic systems that are of necessity
embedded in the ecosystem (Figure 6).
Deconstructing money and the bubble economy
Economics immediately brings to mind money.
The circulation of money in real world economics
is often equated with energy in living systems. I
have argued however, that all money is not equal.
The flow of money can be associated with
exchanges of real value or it can be associated
with sheer wastage and dissipation; in the former
case, money is more like energy, in the latter
case, it is pure entropy. Because the economic
system depends ultimately on the flow of
resources from the ecosystem, entropic costs can
either be incurred in the economic system itself,
or in the ecosystem, but the net result is the
same.
Thus, when the cost of valuable (non-renewable) ecosystem resources consumed or
destroyed are not properly taken into account, the
entropic burden falls on the ecosystem. But as the
economic system is coupled to and dependent on
input from the ecosystem, the entropic burden
exported to the ecosystem will feedback on the
economic system as diminished input, so the economic system becomes poorer in real terms.
On the other hand, transaction in the financial
or money market creates money that could be
completely decoupled from real value, and is pure
entropy produced within the economic system.
This artificially increases purchasing power, leading to over-consumption of ecosystem resources.
The unequal terms of trade, which continues to be
imposed by the rich countries of the North on the
poor countries of the South through the World
Trade Organisation, are another important source
of entropy. That too, artificially inflates the purchasing power of the North, resulting in yet more
destructive exploitation of the earth's ecosystem
resources in the South.
Recent research in the New Economics
Foundation shows how money spent with a local
supplier is worth four times as much as money
spent with a non-local supplier, which bears out
my analysis. It lends support to local currencies
and the suggestion for linking energy with money
directly. It also explains why growth in monetary
terms not only fails to bring real benefits to the
nation, but ends up impoverishing it.
Lester Brown argues that the economy must
be "restructured" at "wartime speed" by creating
an "honest market" that "tells the ecological truth".
I have provided a sustainable growth model that
shows why the dominant model fails, and why
telling the ecological truth is so important.
This article is an edited version of Dr. MaeWan Ho's lecture at the Sustainable World
International Conference 14 July 2005 in UK
SiS
Parliament, Westminster, London.
Parched land in Spain by Mae-Wan Ho
Other Chinese scientists documented savings on
seeds by 60 percent, 100 percent on fertilizers,
and most of all, saving 3 000 t of water/ha.
Agricultural wastes are a major source of the
most serious greenhouse gases: methane and
nitrous oxide. The perfect solution is to harvest
the methane as 'biogas' for energy, while reducing
nitrous oxide emission, saving the nitrogen as
organic fertilizer nutrient for crops. How? By
digesting the agricultural wastes anaerobically (in
the absence of air) with bacteria normally present
in the wastes, especially cattle dung. No one
knows who first invented biogas. Anecdotal evidence suggests that biogas was used for heating
bath water in Assyria during 10 BC, and the first
digestion plant to produce biogas from wastes
was built in a leper colony in Bombay, India in
1859. Based on this ancient invention, scientists
in the United States and Canada are recently producing hydrogen, the ultimate clean fuel, as well
as methane from food and agricultural wastes.
Biogas is becoming popular in many Third
World countries, and emerging as a major boon,
bringing health, social, environmental and financial benefits. Nepal's successful biogas programme saves 625 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide
equivalents from being pumped into the atmosphere each year, earning it US$5 million in carbon
trading that can be invested back into clean energy to generate yet more income from carbon trading.
As you can see, there is a lot of potential for
putting in place post-fossil fuel, minimum-emission food systems, especially in poor countries;
but we are stymied by our political leaders' overwhelming commitment to a dominant model of
infinite, unbalanced growth that has brought us
global warming and the imminent collapse of food
production, as I mentioned earlier in my introduction to our Global Initiative.
There are many success stories from the
grassroots. There's one on Ethiopia ("Greening
Ethiopia" series, SiS 23). Another is "Dream
farm" (this issue), which I shall use to illustrate a
model of sustainable balanced growth that I
believe should replace the dominant model.
35
Our current food system is dominated by high agricultural inputs
dependent on fossil fuels, including pumped irrigation water that
have severely depleted the aquifers worldwide, while huge volumes
of commodity are exported and imported, too often by air
Figure 1. The dominant economic model of infinite unsustainable growth that swallows up the earth's resources
and exports massive amounts of wastes and entropy
Figure 2. The sustainable system closes the energy and
resource use cycle, maximising storage and internal input
and minimising waste, rather like the life cycle of an
organism that is autonomous and self-sufficient
Figure 3. Integrated farming system that closes the cycle
thereby minimizing input and waste
Figure 4. Increasing productivity by incorporating more
lifecycles into the system
Figure 5. The many-fold coupled lifecycles in a highly
productive sustainable system
Figure 6. Economic system coupled to and embedded in
ecosystem
www.i-sis.org.uk
Independent scientists, economists, politicians,
and activists met to share knowledge and
ideas for sustainable food systems as the
industrial model is close to collapse.
Rhea Gala reports on the Sustainable
World First International Conference
37
Independent scientists join forces with
global civil society
Independent scientists from four continents
joined national politicians and many interested
individuals and groups to discuss strategies for
changing agriculture worldwide to a diversity of
locally-based sustainable systems that can provide food sovereignty and security to all and
protect the earth from the ravages of global
warming. This was the occasion of the
Sustainable World Global Initiative's first
International Conference, organised by ISIS,
which took place 14-15 July, starting in the UK
Parliament in Westminster, London, to a nearcapacity audience that included people coming
from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, Australia,
Belgium and South Africa.
The need to move away from large-scale
high input industrial monocultures has long
been accepted by many people as being essential for providing livelihoods to the many millions
of small farmers in the South and the relatively
few farmers remaining in the North, who are
also responsible for conserving our plant and
animal genetic diversity that have been decimated by decades of industrial monocultures.
There is now an added sense of urgency as the
industrial model is showing all the signs of failing under global warming, and water and oil, on
which industrial monocultures are heavily
dependent are both rapidly depleting.
Policies that promote food export and contravene human rights in the South also exacerbate global warming by adding food miles, or
worse, encouraging "food swaps" - shipment of
the same food commodities such as milk and
meat - across the globe. World cereal yields
from conventional industrial agriculture have
been decreasing for four years in a row; so it
was highly significant that speakers shared their
experience of sustainable agriculture systems
from around the world, which outperform the
industrial model in productivity while restoring
autonomy and responsibility to farmers, and
result in greater social participation within the
local community.
But what policy and structural changes are
needed to implement truly sustainable food systems?
ing commitment to the prevailing neo-liberal
economic model that underlies social inequity,
environmental destruction and global warming
and emphasised that there is a wealth of existing knowledge that can both provide sufficient
Alan Simpson MP declared that irreverence,
heresy, and the breaking of rules were necessary
to raise awareness in the face of deepening
water, energy and food insecurity. He warned
that by 2025, 6bn people will suffer water stress,
causing 'water wars'; yet overproduction by
agribusiness is a major cause of water depletion.
food for everyone and ameliorate climate
change.
Chairperson Peter Ainsworth MP introduced Alan Simpson MP who declared that
irreverence, heresy, and the breaking of rules
were necessary to raise awareness in the face
of deepening water, energy and food insecurity.
He warned that by 2025, 6bn people will suffer
water stress, causing 'water wars'; yet overproduction by agribusiness is a major cause of
water depletion.
He advocated the removal of patenting and
intellectual property rights and, instead, to reinstate the public ownership of useful technologies that save resources. Woking, an English
town with a population of around 100 000, for
example, currently controls and produces 135%
of its energy from renewable sources. Alan
warned strongly against the nuclear option. He
said that there are dissenters in all parties who
believe in the return and development of
diverse and sustainable food production and
the right of all countries to meet their own food
security needs without external interference.
He spoke in favour of localised sustainable systems that are connected and informed internationally.
Sue Edwards apologised for Dr Tewolde
Berhan Gebre Egziabher's absence and presented his paper that posed the question 'What
does the word 'sustainable' mean in the context
Dr Mae-Wan Ho berated governments and political leaders for their overwhelming commitment
to the prevailing neo-liberal economic model that
underlies social inequity, environmental destruction and global warming and emphasised that
there is a wealth of existing knowledge that can
both provide sufficient food for everyone and
ameliorate climate change.
The big picture
Dr Mae-Wan Ho, director of ISIS and member
of the Independent Science Panel opened the
proceedings by introducing the Sustainable
World Global Initiative. She berated governments and political leaders for their overwhelm-
If people were to become the sole inheritors of the Earth, which is threatened by mass
extinctions caused by capitalization/commercialization of all our resources, then we shall all
be dead, he said. Therefore a more equitable
of food for everyone?' It means that food must
be available to the very poorest person now,
and into the indefinite future. There is currently
both plenty of food that is overeaten by some,
and plenty of hunger, even where food is present.
system is urgently needed that is committed to
reducing or at least maintaining populations at a
sustainable level; and at the same time, the
devolution of power back to local communities
from which it was usurped. All people need to
have the land to grow the food of their choice.
Tewolde warned against GM crops that represent a further decrease in diversity and an
increase in the privatisation of nature.
Dr Mae-Wan Ho pointed to the enormous
scope for mitigating global warming by making
our food system sustainable, by halting deforestation, replanting forests for agroforestry, and
harvesting biogas from agricultural and food
wastes that at the same time conserve nutrients
for crops and livestock. She presented a model
of sustainable development - illustrated by a
"dream farm" - that depends on maximizing
internal inputs to increase productivity and
hence carbon stocks and sinks, which, she
believes, should replace the dominant model of
infinite, unsustainable growth
She showed how the carrying capacity of a
piece of land is far from constant, but depends
on the way the land is used. Thus, by maximising internal input to support diverse productive
activities, it increases the wealth of the local
economy and hence the number of people that
can actually be supported.
Michael Meacher MP spoke of the five factors that would force government to change
their policies sooner or probably, much later,
unless we put informed and relentless pressure
on them. The factors are: the dependence of
current systems on oil passing peak production
for which demand is exploding; population
movement due to water stress because we
have squandered and polluted our water; the
intensity of climate change that will affect us in
many ways, the decrease in biodiversity that
undermines our future, and escalating food
miles that will cause gridlock.
Meacher advised the promotion of low
input mixed organic agriculture that saves ten
times the energy of industrial holdings, while
factoring in all the external costs of industrially
produced food, thus exposing the lie in the UK
government's 'cheap food' policy. The development of a sustainable food policy would inform
governments while reminding them of better
policies that they pay lip service to but neglect.
www.i-sis.org.uk
38
A new approach to environmental and social
accounting would highlight problems of overexploitation of people and nature and offer alternatives that would bring the public on board.
The Common Agricultural Policy
A lively conference dinner was followed by a
stimulating discussion about the Common
Agricultural Policy led by Caroline Lucas MEP
and Martin Khor, Director of the Third World
Network. It was generally agreed that the
Common Agricultural Policy and the Agreement
on Agriculture at the World Trade Organisation
have similar effects on family farmers in both
North and South, but Martin stressed that in the
South, farmers are likely to actually die from
losing farming livelihoods, there being no social
welfare payments to fall back on.
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho raised the question of why
trade when people's livelihoods are not
assured? Why produce for export before a
country is self-sufficient in food as many Third
World countries could be? Isn't this concentration on trade a case of the tail wagging the dog?
There was general agreement to make policies as fair as possible for small farmers in the
South while working to curb the powers of
transnational agribusiness.
Knowledge-based actions for sustainable
food systems
Friday brought a crowded agenda: a host of
speakers with interesting experiences to relate.
Peter Bunyard of the Ecologist magazine
gave a telling account of how the destruction of
the Amazon rainforest affects global weather.
The Amazon plays a crucial role in regulating
and stabilizing world climate, which is thrown of
balance when vast areas of rainforest are
cleared to produce soya for animal feed, from
which Brazil earns $8bn annually.
The Sahara and Amazon Basins are connected by weather systems that are the inverse
of each other and the circulation is recharged
by the Amazon, which is now failing, turning it
into a carbon source instead of a sink. The
oceans are losing the ability to regulate terrestrial temperature, and that too, will affect climate
irreversibly. Sustainable forest use, which
begin with?
Sue Edwards spoke about sustainable agriculture in Tigray Ethiopia. She and Tewolde
have been working with local communities to
build their knowledge, confidence and inde-
Michael Meacher MP spoke of the five factors
that would force government to change their policies sooner or probably, much later, unless we put
informed and relentless pressure on them. The
factors are: the dependence of current systems
on oil passing peak production for which demand
is exploding; population movement due to water
stress because we have squandered and polluted
our water; the intensity of climate change that will
affect us in many ways, the decrease in biodiversity that undermines our future, and escalating
food miles that will cause gridlock.
pendence, in creating local infrastructures that
support food security. They found that compost
applied on crops such as faba bean, finger millet, maize, teff, wheat and barley, resulted in an
increase in yield over chemically fertilized
crops. This occurred from the first season, and
also in subsequent seasons when no compost
was added, through soil improvements by previous composting. Ponds and gullies were
made to conserve water, and grass crops for
animal food and thatching proved very successful. This ecological agriculture adds to
local sustainability through decreasing or eliminating external inputs particularly fertiliser, and
increasing animal, crop and soil biodiversity,
water resources, and social and economic equity.
Erkki Lähde, professor of silviculture from
Finland showed how an industrial forestry
model has proved to be counterproductive for
over a century. In this model a forest is clearcut and a monoculture replanted, with all economic gain coming at the point of clearance.
But his research shows that natural forest, with
many species in a special "all sizes" distribution, are the most valuable both in biodiversity
a more equitable system is urgently needed that is
committed to reducing or at least maintaining populations at a sustainable level; and at the same time,
the devolution of power back to local communities
from which it was usurped
clears only small areas of forest that can renew
themselves over 40 years, also avoids throwing
the forest ecosystem out of balance. Can we
return to these ways, perhaps by compensating
Brazil and other countries such as Argentina for
lost revenue, or cancelling their national debt to
that supports multiple use, more jobs, and
which accords with public opinion and mitigates
global warming. This model is diametrically
opposed to the current dominant model that
offers low diversity and the easy technical
and economic terms. Sustainable systems all
contain many species of many young plants
with fewer and fewer older individuals. In the
case of trees, standing and fallen dead trees
also add to local biodiversity while the living forest continues to evolve. Individual trees are
selected for cutting in line with a social model
option of the clear-cut.
Caroline Lucas is concerned that past
gains of the EU on environmental issues could
easily be lost due to the pressures of an
enlarged EU. This includes the sliding away of
the EU's sustainable development strategy, and
failure to resurrect this strategy at the centre of
a new EU agenda. Industry is pushing for less
environmental regulation and for voluntary
agreements only in the new joining countries.
While the EU was set up to help keep
peace in Europe, now it is simply about trade
and being the most competitive economy in the
world. In the recent referenda on the EU
Constitution, people voted against it because
they are not served by the EU in meaningful
ways, they feel the EU is remote and self-serving. The EU could have seized the moment to
put sustainable development as the new big
idea, with economic models that protect the
environment, regulating multinationals and
advocating protective tariffs for poor countries.
Europeans would have loved it and other countries would have followed suit.
Hywel Davies MD of Weston A Price
Foundation from Switzerland gave an account
of the relationship between early coronary
artery disease and the lack of nutrient dense
food in the western diet. Autopsies on children
who died of accidents showed thickening of tissue inside arterial muscle laminae due to multiplication of cells and large deposits of calcium
phosphate. These, he said, derived from an
excess of vitamin D and other additives present
in large quantities in babies' feeding formula
and many common foods. They contain supplements to compensate for nutrition removed by
food processing, but cause problems that can
only be remedied by understanding the importance of natural nutrients to our health and well
being. For this reason, we must grow the food
that meets these requirements.
David Woodward of the New Economics
Foundation described a starting point for
addressing the economic inequalities of our current agricultural or other neo-liberal trade sys-
39
tems. It showed how people and the planet can
be factored into economics, taking a global view
while narrowing the gap between producer and
consumer prices. The effects of the new economics aim to increase the sustainability of production while reducing environmental damage.
Jakob von Uexkull president of the World
Future Council initiative described how those in
power have lost their way, treating people as
consumers but not as citizens. In the face of
corruption, inertia and cowardice we need an
alternative voice to get things changed and
implemented in the interests of a sustainable
world.
The World Future Council will work closely
with national legislators from all over the world
to develop step-by-step reforms and legislation
to overcome the current "implementation gap".
Pietro Perrino director of the former Gene
Bank of Bari, Italy, one of the worlds largest,
described a forced merger with much smaller
institutions engaged in genetic modification of
crop plants. He told a disturbing tale of how his
large germplasm collection is endangered by
the merger. He suspects that with the rise of
DNA libraries and a research agenda that prioritises GM crops, plant genetic resources that
cannot be patented may be an impediment to
corporate control; but in any case they are not
valued. He asks whether this 'problem' has
ocurred at other genebanks around the world,
and who should look after these priceless
resources.
Joe Cummins, professor of genetics from
Canada said that his country would be the first
where farmers legally lose control of their seed.
Terminator technology provides the ultimate
control of seed production by multinational corporations. Seed with terminator technology
was developed and owned by Monsanto, but
that technology (which involved preventing the
embryo in the seed from growing) faced worldwide criticism and it was withdrawn by
Monsanto..
Now a new generation of GM crops that are
based on control of morphogenesis have
spawned a new crop of patents for multinationals, those GM constructions employ toxins
including diptheria toxin or even ricin to prevent
viable seeds from being formed. The genetic
modifications are very likely to persist and
spread to crops in the wider environment.
Whereas sterile seed guarantees sales to companies; sterile crops have no utility to the
farmer, the consumer or the environment.
Dr. Lilian Joensen from Argentina
described how corporations in Latin America
have coopted 'sustainable agriculture' using a
façade of involvement in social programmes.
NGOs have collaborated with them, and propaganda extolling the benefits of free trade have
enabled massive destruction of virgin ecosystems and their conversion to soya production.
Monsanto's Roundup Ready soya is grown on
this land, as well as conventional and certfied
organic soya, mainly to feed livestock in Europe
and China.
Soya is the main agricultural source of
greenhouse gas. In Paraguay, peasants are
being killed to clear their land for more soya.
Latin American indigenous and peasant movements are seen as a threat to US corporate
interests. Brazilian Amaggi, the world's main
soya producer, says that small holdings don't
have economic viability and industrial holdings
are needed for competition on world markets.
Dr. Julia Wright of the Henry Doubleday
Research Association spoke about Cuba's
experience when support from the Soviet Bloc
collapsed in the 1990s and most of its fossil fuel
resources were lost. The resulting non-industrial production promoted self sufficiency, human
scale plantations, ecological techniques, and
urban rural migration. By 2000 yield had doubled, wages trebled and calories increased by
25%!
A policy of non-foreign land ownership and
a non-wasteful culture helped the transition
from fossil fuel dependency. Julia explained that
if the government had been committed to
organic agriculture, the gains especially in food
quality would have been much greater.
Ingrid Hartman from Humboldt University,
Germany, spoke about the status of soils and
their temporal, spatial and social dimensions.
She described how little we know about soils
because their cycles of development can last
from millions of years to only a few months.
And that what we destroy in them through pesticide and fertiliser use causes a deficit of services in the present, but especially in the future.
Soils have a cultural and historical significance that contribute to human rights and are
vital for our survival, therefore we should protect them and at least do them the service of
making compost to aid renewal.
Hannu Hyvönen, a freelance journalist from
northern Finland showed a fascinating video
illustrating how increasing the fruit species
grown in his locality has countered the genetic
erosion caused by fifty years of industrial agriculture and promoted a resurgence of zeal and
community spirit.
First the old fruit varieties, mostly apple,
had to be sought from near and far before they
died out, and grafted to a modern variety. Local
people then participated in selecting the tastiest
ones as they have for centuries, and these were
Elenita Neth Dano who was unable to attend.
Lim described a project for conserving agricultural biodiversity through participatory plant
breeding in the Philippines. In this scheme
schools are conducted within a community near
areas of industrial production to reclaim plant
varieties with traits suited to local needs and
conditions.
This farmer-led initiative has trained over 1
148 farmers, given them control over their
crops, restored traditional varieties to the farm,
and increased local awareness of environmental issues. Lim also described a very successful biodynamic system in Mindanao that treats
the farm as a living organism.
Martin Khor of the Third World Network
then congratulated ISIS for bringing the conference to reality against a tide of mainstream
thought that gives credence only to more competition. As it is obvious that independent farmers can create and develop as many viable and
interesting farming practices as there are independent farms, we must at all times stress the
services that these farmers offer to the environment as well as the good food that they produce.
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho closed the conference by
thanking
everyone
and
quoting
Schwartzenegger, governor of California: "We
know the science, we see the threat, and we
know that the time for action is now."
Schwartzenegger set tough targets for reducing
California's emissions of greenhouse gases to
2000 levels by 2010, to 1990 levels by 2020,
and to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. More
than 100 mayors in the United States have also
pledged to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, despite President George W. Bush's continued refusal to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol.
All in all, an extremely lively conference
with plenty of audience participation. The
breaks were invariably buzzing with activity and
energy.
Thanks to conference sponsors: Fondation
pour une Terre Humaine, Third World Network,
Green People, Ecological Society of the
Philippines, International Institute for
Sustainable Development, Alara Organic,
Josephine Sikabonyi, Alan Simpson MP,
Caroline Lucas is concerned that past gains of the
EU on environmental issues could easily be lost
due to the pressures of an enlarged EU. This
includes the sliding away of the EU's sustainable
development strategy, and failure to resurrect this
strategy at the centre of a new EU agenda.
Industry is pushing for less environmental regulation and for voluntary agreements only in the new
joining countries.
planted from seed in their thousands for future
selection. Old varieties of plum and cherry that
thrive near the Arctic Circle are also being rediscovered and saved.
Lim Li Ching, researcher for the Third
World Network, previously with ISIS, spoke for
Michael Meacher MP, Caroline Lucas MEP,
Weston A Price Foundation, HDRA organics
and the New Economics Foundation. See list of
sponsors of the Sustainable World Global
Initiative here: http://www.indsp.org/reg/ISP
SiS
RegWhoHasSigned.php
www.i-sis.org.uk
40
Technology Watch
Gene defect corrected without inserting
foreign DNA . Dr. Mae-Wan Ho investigates
A research team in a company in Richmond, California,
claims to have corrected the gene mutation associated with
the fatal X-linked severe combined immune deficiency (XSCID) in human cells without the insertion of foreign DNA
into their genomes, and published their results online in the
journal Nature 2 June. This raises hope of a safer form of
gene therapy after three infants in Paris with X-SCID, who
received gene therapy through their own bone marrow cells
- isolated, genetically modified in the laboratory and injected
back into the patient - came down with leukaemia ("Gene
therapy woes", SiS 26).
In the latest experiments, the human cells were treated
with the company's patented "zinc-finger nucleases" (ZFNs).
ZFNs are proteins made up of "fingers" of about 30 amino
acids, stabilized by a zinc atom. Each finger binds to a specific combination of DNA bases and is attached to nuclease,
a DNA cutting enzyme. By using different combinations of
amino acids, they can be designed to bind to DNA at the
exact site where the gene is mutated to cut it out. This triggers the cell's repair mechanism, which corrects the gene
using a copy of the correct gene sequence provided in a
plasmid, in a process of homologous recombination, in which
the replacement depends on similarity in DNA sequence
between the replacement and the resident copy of the gene.
Infants with X-SCID have a mutated gene on their X-chromosome that makes their immune system unable to function.
More than 10 infants in the Necker Hospital in Paris, France
had been treated with conventional gene replacement therapy since 2000 using a retrovirus as the vector (gene carrier)
to insert the correct gene sequence into their bone-marrow
cells. But the retroviral vector carrying the correct gene
sequence cannot be targeted, so it ends up inserting in
wrong places in the genome. To-date, three infants have
developed leukaemia because the retroviral vector inserted
near an oncogene (cancer-related gene), causing it to overexpress, and the cell to multiple out of control. One of the
infants has died earlier this year.
The ZFNs are highly specific. Each finger recognizes 3-4
base pairs of DNA via a single alpha-helix formed by the finger, and several fingers can be linked in tandem to recognize
a broad spectrum of DNA sequences with high specificity.
Earlier work from another laboratory has shown that a zinc
finger can be linked to a non-specific DNA-cutting domain of
a DNA-cutting enzyme to produce the ZFN, which then cuts
specifically at the zinc finger recognition site. An important
feature is that two ZFNs bind to the same gene, in a precise
orientation and spacing relative to each other, to create a
double-strand break in the DNA, which then triggers the
repair mechanism.
Mathew Proteus at the University of Texas Southwestern
Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, a co-author of the Nature
paper, had earlier used the technique to correct a marker
gene in human cells. But he only managed to correct a few
percent of the cells.
In the latest paper, they succeeded in modifying 18 percent of the cells without the need to select for them with
selectable markers such as antibiotic resistance or fluorescent proteins. The advance was due to a more elaborate
combination of zinc fingers than used previously, which are
optimised for binding and cutting. A pair of four-fingered
ZFNs, each binding to 12 base pairs (24 in all), home in precisely on the target between the pair of ZFNs, a mutation
hotspot in the X-SCID gene, and replace it with the correct
copy.
In one experiment, they isolated single clones of cells
Safe Gene Therapy At Last?
Dough doll from Quito, Ecuador
after giving them the ZFNs and the correct copy of the gene,
and found that 13.2% of the clones had converted one of the
two X-chromosomes, while 6.6% had both X chromosomes
corrected.
The researchers did other experiments confirming the
findings, and demonstrated that corresponding changes
occurred in levels of mRNA and protein expressed from the
corrected gene.
The corrected gene sequence appeared to be stable for
at least one month afterwards, and analysis showed there
was no gross mis-integration of extra DNA or rearrangement
or scrambling at the site of correction.
The company's aim is to take blood from patients, correct
the genetic defect in the blood cells and then infuse the cells
back into the patients. Besides X-SCID, other 'single gene'
diseases such as sickle cell anaemia or beta-thalassaemia
can also be treated, and perhaps immune cells could also be
altered to prevent infection with HIV.
Dana Carroll, a biochemist at the University of Utah, Salt
Lake City, who has used ZFN to correct genes in fruit flies,
said, "ZFN-induced gene targeting places the normal gene at
its normal chromosomal location, where it should have no
untoward genetic consequences." But he warned that sideeffects cannot be excluded.
Is it safer?
The results look quite impressive, and as pointed out in the
Nature article, "the 'hit and run' mechanism of ZFN action
uncouples the therapeutically beneficial changes made to
the genome from any need to integrate exogenous DNA,
while still generating a permanently modified cell."
This new technique thus avoids all the hazards associated with the viral vector and foreign gene constructs with
aggressive promoters to force the cells to express the foreign
gene, and also appears to be specific: the PCRs and
Southern blots (which probe for the corrected gene
sequences) all look quite clean. Further tests that could have
been performed are genomic and expressed sequence
microarrays, and protein gels, to see if other genes have also
been corrected and/or changes in the pattern of RNA and
protein expressed have occurred. It was microarray analysis
that first alerted the gene therapy community to the problems
of the 'precision' gene therapy of RNA interference hailed as
2002's "breakthrough of the year" ("Controversy over gene
therapy 'breakthrough'", SiS 26); although microarray analyses themselves are of questionable reliability ("Biotech wonder tool in disarray", SiS 26).
It would also be important to show that the corrected protein does not cause side effects, such as immune rejection in
patients whose bodies may treat the protein as 'foreign'. SiS
41
Technology Watch
US Foster
Children Used in
AIDS Drugs Tests
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Mother and child, Thai handicraft
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded anti-HIV
drugs trials on hundreds of foster children over the past
two decades, often without the legal protection for the
children required in some states, exposing the children to
the risks of research and serious side-effects of toxic
drugs. This major scandal has been unveiled over the
past months. Most of the trials took place in the 1990s,
but some have continued to this day.
Trials were conducted in at least seven states Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North
Carolina and Texas - and involved more than 48 studies
run by top research institutions. The foster children
ranged from infants to late teens. Side effects reported
include vomiting, rashes and rapid declines in their CD4
T-cells. Some children died during the studies, although
A spokesperson stated openly at a workshop I attended not so long ago that
"development follows the most efficient pathway in low cost/low tax locations
and access to patients" (emphasis added), complaining that European regulatory standards are set far too high relative to the United States, and singled
out India as a country for ease of access to patients.
state or city agencies could not find evidence that any of
the children's deaths were caused by the experimental
drugs.
These drugs trials first came to light in New York under
the auspices of the Administration for Children's Services
(ACS), the body that looks after the welfare of children in
New York City. (See "Guinea pig kids", this issue). The
ACS has an agreement with the Pediatric AIDS Clinical
Trials Group, supported by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and
other drug companies, to test treatments on HIV-positive
children. No test can take place on children without
parental consent and drug companies have had great difficulty obtaining such consent.
However, the ACS is deemed to be the legal guardian
for many HIV-positive children. According to an influential
BBC2 documentary, Guinea Pig Kids, first screened 30
November 2004, the ACS has forced children to be
involved, removing them from foster homes if the foster
parent did not comply and even physically making the
children take the drugs, through a peg-tube inserted into
their stomachs. About 465 HIV-positive foster children
were involved in a series of clinical trials, some as young
as 4-months old, virtually all of them African-American or
Hispanic. These experiments continue to be carried out
on the poor children of New York City and elsewhere; the
exact number of children and the long-term effects of the
drugs trials on their health are still unknown.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) admitted it supplied drugs for
four of the trials conducted in New York, and also supplied
drugs and funds for another trial run by Columbia
University Medical Centre. It said the US regulator, the
Food and Drug Administration, encouraged the studies.
"Clinical trials involving children and orphans are therefore legal and not unusual." GSK said in a statement.
These revelations have triggered a congressional
investigation into whether the government has adequate
safeguards to protect foster children used in federal
research. But the problem goes far deeper.
A spokesperson for GSK has stated openly at a workshop I attended not so long ago that "development follows
the most efficient pathway in low cost/low tax locations
and access to patients" (emphasis added), complaining
that European regulatory standards are set far too high
relative to the United States, and singled out India as a
country for ease of access to patients.
The NIH have also been involved in funding AIDS
drugs trials in Uganda and elsewhere, with deaths and
thousands of severe reactions that failed to be reported
("NIH-sponsored AIDS drugs tests on mother and
babies", this series).
For the most complete information on HIV/AIDS, look
out for Unravelling AIDS: The unexamined science and
the alternative therapies (by Mae-Wan Ho, Sam Burcher,
Rhea Gala and Veljko Veljkovic, Vital Health Publishing,
2005). This book also documents the toxicities of conSiS
ventional anti-HIV drugs.
www.i-sis.org.uk
42
Guinea Pig Kids in AIDS Drugs Trials
Sam Burcher
The anti-HIV drugs, AZT and nevirapine, are known to be highly toxic and
to cause serious side effects. Despite
this, they are still being used in clinical
trials involving some of the most vulnerable members of society, pregnant
women and newborn babies in Africa,
and orphans in the United States.
On 30 November 2004, the BBC
screened a documentary that exposed
drugs trials of AZT and nevirapine on
the orphan population of HIV-positive
children in New York City. The film,
Guinea Pig Kids, by BBC reporter
Jamie
Doran,
identified
GlaxoSmithKline as one of the companies supplying the drugs used on
children as young as three months
old.
The BBC asked Dr David Rasnick,
visiting scholar at Berkeley, for his
opinion on the experiments. He said,
"We're talking serious side effects.
These children are going to be
absolutely miserable. They're going
to have cramps, diarrhoea, and their
joints are going to swell up. They're
going to roll around on the ground and
you can't touch them."
Many
HIV-positive
children,
orphans of drugs users, are treated at
the Catholic run Incarnation Children's
Centre in Harlem. The children are
under the legal protection of the
Administration for Children's Services
(ACS) as are the twenty three thousand other orphans in the city, most of
whom (ninety nine percent) are
African-American or Hispanic.
The Incarnation Children's Centre
(ICC) was the focus of the BBC film.
Before the advent of AZT and other
aids drugs many very ill children
admitted to the centre regained health
Woman by Sam Burcher
HIV orphans force-fed drugs
after receiving high quality nursing
and nutrition. Since then, drugs
regimes of AZT and nevirapine are
mandatory for the HIV-positive children, and the children remain on medication whether their condition
improves or not.
Drug treatments are mixed with
strawberry or chocolate syrup to make
them more palatable. If a child refuses or cannot tolerate the medication
then a plastic feeding device called a
"gastrostomy tube" is inserted directly
into their stomach. A cut made through
the abdomen and into the stomach
allows the small tube to be pushed
through keeping the quarter inch hole
open. This remains permanently
Box
Profile of toxic drugs
AZT was the first antiretroviral drug used to treat HIV positive men in the US at the start of the global pandemic. By 1994,
at the height of the use of AZT, AIDS related deaths in the US had risen from eleven thousand in 1986 to nearly fifty thousand. The toxic effects of AZT or zidovudine have been documented as haematological toxicity (blood poisoning), severe
anaemia, and symptomatic myopathy (muscle wasting). AZT is a nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitor
(NRTI) that suppresses cell division and the formation of new blood in the bone marrow, which can cause anaemia and
bone marrow death. AZT is reported to have caused death in pregnant mothers, birth defects, pancreatic failure, spontaneous abortion, developmental damage and death in children and adults. AZT is also implicated in cancer.
Closely associated with AZT is a newer antiretroviral drug called nevirapine or viramune. Its documented side effects
are potentially life threatening hepatotoxicity (liver poisoning) and a severe skin reaction known as Stevens Johnson
Syndrome. Nevirapine is a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) that binds directly to reverse transcriptase to prevent RNA conversion to DNA and is used in conjunction with other drugs.
43
attached to the child and drugs can
then be administered via a syringe or
a feeding tube through the gastrostomy tube directly into the stomach.
Nurse stops drugs for kids
Jacqueline Hoerger is a paediatric
nurse who has worked at the ICC for
many years. She dutifully fed the children drugs and never questioned the
doctors. In time she fostered two sisters aged four and six, and maintained
the prescribed drugs regime even
when they lived at her home. But they
continued to get sicker and weaker.
One day, after consulting an openminded medical doctor, she decided
to take them off the medication, and
the results were astonishing. The girls
became healthy, vibrant and strong.
When the ACS discovered the drugs
regime had stopped, they raided her
home and took the children away,
even though the children had received
loving care, were seen by private doctors, and provided with an excellent
education.
She has never been allowed to
red: "This study is no longer recruiting
patients."
Nevirapine is known to cause an
extreme skin reaction that results in
painful and bloody flaking of the skin
over the entire body (see Box).
A phase I and II trial of stavudine in
children with HIV infection ended with
thirty-five of thirty-seven children
experiencing serious clinical adverse
events.
When events like this occur, who
steps in to advocate on behalf of the
children? They have no parents, and
cannot evaluate the risks and benefits
of staying on a drugs regime.
Professor Arthur Caplan, head of
medical ethics at the University of
Pennsylvania, said advocates should
have been appointed for all foster children involved in drugs trials and that
researchers knew there was a great
deal of uncertainty as to how children
would react to AIDS medications that
were often toxic for adults. "It is inexcusable that they wouldn't have an
advocate for each one of those children".
falo humps". These humps are large
fatty growths on the necks and backs
of people who take protease
inhibitors.
Several months later
Scheff heard that the boy's stomach
tube had got infected, and the child
had died. But when children die in
ICC drug trials, they are assumed to
have died of AIDS.
The National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one
of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) funds the ICC clinic for HIV-positive children, which is a subunit of the
Columbia University Paediatric AIDS
Clinical Trials Unit. Since the late
nineteen eighties over two hundred
clinical trials at Columbia and twentyseven at ICC involved 13 878 children
from a variety of backgrounds. All
studies dating from the late nineteen
nineties onwards involved mainly foster children, used AZT and nevirapine,
and were sponsored by the NIH in
conjunction with pharmaceuticals
companies.
In
2002,
the
GlaxoSmithKline annual worldwide
market for AIDS medications was esti-
We're talking serious side effects. These children are going to be
absolutely miserable. They're going to have cramps, diarrhoea,
and their joints are going to swell up. They're going to roll
around on the ground and you can't touch them.
see the children again and now fears
that they have been started on drug
experimentation again. She told the
BBC about her work at the ICC, "We
were told that if the children were
vomiting, if they lost their ability to
walk, if they were having diarrhoea, if
they were dying, then all of this was
because of their HIV infection." All that
mattered is adherence to the drug-taking regimes.
No advocates for orphans
The antiretroviral drugs used at the
ICC are didanosine and stavudine as
well as AZT and nevirapine. It is
alleged that many drugs are used in
single experimental combinations
given to individual children. This is
borne out by a trial sponsored by the
U.S. National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and
National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development (NICHD) called
"The safety and effectiveness of treating advanced AIDS patients between
the ages of 4 and 22 with seven
drugs, some at higher than usual
doses". When checked on 26 May
2005, the website for this trial
(http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT0
0001108) contained the statement in
Dr Mark Kline, a paediatric AIDS
expert at the Texas Children's Health
Center for International Adoptions
admitted to enrolling orphans into his
studies without appointing advocates.
He says that excluding these children
from "the best available therapies at
the time" is something that he could
not do.
Other states in the US conducting
research on vulnerable children are
Colorado,
Illinois,
Louisiana,
Maryland, and North Carolina.
The Alliance for Human Protection
filed a complaint with the FDA to stop
the use of children in phase I and II trials. They say that the children should
receive the best care available and
not be used as a means to an end.
Inside the ICC
Liam Scheff, a New York Press
reporter, was allowed in the ICC. He
saw that the windows were shut and
barred to stop the kids from trying to
get out. He describes some of the
children as wheelchair bound, staring
ahead, unable to focus. One child, a
boy of about six years old, rushed up
to hug the reporter. The boy had a
plastic stomach tube and had undergone multiple surgery to remove "buf-
mated at $5 billion.
The problem with an AIDS
diagnosis
Liam Scheff contacted Dr David
Rasnick about what he saw at the
ICC. "AIDS doctors always assume
their patients are going to die,"
responded Dr Rasnick. "Nobody ever
asks if an AIDS patient is actually sick
from drug toxicity, because they have
never considered that the person had
a chance anyway".
When Scheff asked Kathryn
Painter, the medical director at ICC,
why she didn't use alternative treatments such as fresh air, good nutrition
and immune system boosters instead
of toxic drugs, she slammed him by
saying, "Yes, of course drugs have
adverse reactions, but the risk/benefit
of any medication must be weighed.
May I remind you that untreated HIV
infection is a terminal diagnosis".
The ACS has changed their policy
on enrolling orphans and foster children into clinical studies. They now
conduct a more "individualised
review", but defend the decision to
enlist vulnerable children to test AIDS
SiS
medications en masse.
www.i-sis.org.uk
44
Deaths and adverse events in Uganda
The United States National Institutes of Health
(NIH) began studies on mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Uganda in 1997. A single
dose of nevirapine was given to labouring
mothers and to their newborn child. Those
studies were reported to have lowered transmission of HIV by 50%.
But by 2002, problems with the US-funded drug trials had been disclosed by an NIH
auditor, medical experts and Boehringer
Ingelheim, the makers of nevirapine.
The NIH hired Westat-Corp, a professional medical auditing firm, to audit the Ugandan
testing sites. Westat-Corp's report stated, "It
appears likely in fact, that many adverse
Research standards and
drug quality that are
unacceptable in the US
and other Western
countries must never be
pushed onto Africa
called for an US congressional investigation
and demanded that nevirapine no longer be
distributed in Africa. He said, "This was not a
thoughtful and reasonable decision, but a
crime against humanity. Research standards
and drug quality that are unacceptable in the
US and other Western countries must never
be pushed onto Africa". (But see "Guinea-pig
kids", this series)
Some doctors in Africa support the use of
the drug, however; saying that without it many
more babies would be born with HIV.
Kenyan study confirms low efficacy of
nevirapine
Sam Burcher
A study on nevirapine in a hospital setting in
Kenya examined the results of 172 breast-
NIH-Sponsored AIDS Drugs
Tests on Mothers and Babies
events and perhaps a significant number of
serious adverse events for both mother and
infant may not have been collected or reported in a timely manner." The "adverse events"
included 14 deaths and thousands of severe
reactions that went undisclosed. The NIH
subsequently recorded all deaths and the
majority of adverse reactions, but blamed
them on the poor health of the patients, not on
nevirapine.
In December 2004, the Associated Press
claimed that the adverse events in Uganda
were censored and unknown to President
Bush in 2002 when he announced his $500
million plan to push nevirapine across Africa to
a million women a year. But before the plan
went into effect, the NIH shut down the
Ugandan research until the summer of 2003
to review the science and to make the necessary amendments. They asked the National
Academy of Sciences to investigate the case
and spent millions of dollars on improving
record keeping and safety monitoring. A top
NIH disease official reviewing the case concluded that the use of nevirapine even in single doses could confer instant drug resistance
to HIV-positive patients, which would prevent
the use of any other available antiretroviral
drugs for future treatment. Therefore it was
unsuitable as a drug of first choice.
South African journalist and lawyer
Anthony Brink published an article, The trouble with nevirapine, which revealed that all the
pregnant women were on either AZT or nevirapine. There were no placebo groups. Brink
saw the results of the unblinded trials, which
concluded with an official recommendation for
nevirapine. Side effects such as severe rash,
pneumonia, blood cell-death, insufficient oxygen to tissues and blood, and tissue infection
were recorded at 20 percent in both the AZT
and nevirapine groups. Thirty-eight babies
died; 22 in the AZT group and 16 in the nevirapine group. A further 16 deaths came to
light in documents recently disclosed by
Boehringer Ingelheim, mostly in the
Nevirapine group. But nevirapine gained
approval because the rate of viral infection
measured with PCR (a non-diagnostic test)
was 13.1 percent in newborns.
Although all the women had tested positive for HIV, it is known that pregnancy produces antibodies that can give a false positive
test result. A further anomaly noted by journalist Liam Scheff was that the newborn
babies were tested for HIV transmission at 6
weeks and 14 weeks using a PCR testing kit
called "the amplicor HIV-1 monitor test", But
PCR is not approved for viral testing and the
manufacturers specifically warn against using
it for the purpose of diagnosing HIV (Roche
PCR HIV-1 Monitor Test). Furthermore, eighteen months is considered the earliest age for
testing mother to child transmission of HIV.
In contrast, a study conducted on 561
expectant African mothers to assess the rate
of mother-to-child transmission of HIV using
no drugs, pills or placebos was 12 percent.
Boehringer Ingelheim had donated
411,000 doses of nevirapine to Africa, but
withdrew its application to the FDA for
approval for use in single dose on infants in
America on the premise that better treatments
had emerged.
Africans used as guinea pigs
The South African government responded to
the Associated Press revelations by carrying
an article in the ANC online journal ANC
Today on 17 December 2004, accusing top
US officials of treating Africans like guinea
pigs and telling lies to promote the sale of
AIDS drugs. Jesse Jackson, the black civil
rights activist and official US envoy to Africa,
feeding women who presented their newborns
for follow-up tests after receiving a single dose
of the drug. Blood samples were taken from
babies at 6 weeks and 14 weeks after birth.
Before the availability of antiretrovirals, HIV
mother to baby transmission rate at the Coast
Province General Hospital was 21.7 percent.
After the use of nevirapine, the transmission
rate was similar at 18.1 percent. The overall
prevalence of HIV at the hospital is 14 percent, which has remained steady since 1995.
The study concluded that the limited
effect of nevirapine confirms the lack of benefits for maternal health and justifies the concerns about drug resistance. It also questions
the enormous deployment of resources to provide nevirapine and recommends that the true
health gains of nevirapine should be reconsidered.
Nevirapine tested on US mothers to be
But African mothers are not alone in being
used as test subjects for nevirapine.
Nevirapine is known as viramune in the US.
The NIH sponsored a trial of viramune with
expectant mothers in 2004. Joyce Halford
was persuaded to take part in the trial by her
doctors because she had tested HIV-positive
during her pregnancy; otherwise she was a
healthy 33 year-old. Some way into the trial,
her doctors knew her liver was failing, but
she was kept on viramune and died two
weeks later of drug-induced hepatitis. Her
child was cut from her in her dying moments.
She and her family had not been shown the
explicit warning on the viramune label that
specifically states, "Patients with signs or
symptoms of hepatitis must discontinue viramune and seek medical evaluation immediSiS
ately."
45
Against corporate serfdom
SOS: Save
Our Seeds
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho warns of new dangers posed by
genetic engineering to the world's gene banks,
already in jeopardy from years of under-funding, and
stresses the importance of in situ conservation and
seed saving in local communities for sustainable food
systems and food security
Box 1
Loss of agricultural biodiversity from
industrial monoculture
FAO estimates that about 75 percent of the
genetic diversity of agricultural crops had
been lost during the last century. Farmers in
the United States grew more than 7 000 varieties of apples in the 1800s; by the end of the
1900s, all but 300 were extinct. In 1949, farmers in China grew 10 000 varieties of wheat;
by the 1970s, they grew just 1000. Similar
losses of maize varieties have occurred in
Mexico and of rice varieties in India. Of 6 500
animal breeds known today, almost one third
are threatened or already extinct.
World genebanks and food security in
jeopardy
Deteriorating conditions in the world's crop
genebanks pose "a major threat to US agriculture," says a new study published by the
University of California Genetic Resources
Conservation Program. The report, Securing the
Future of U.S. Agriculture: The Need to
Conserve Collections of Crop Diversity
Worldwide, notes that nearly every major crop in
the United States - including soybeans, corn,
wheat, rice, potatoes, oranges and apples - is
battling a plethora of new or re-merging pests to
which there is little or no resistance. Failure to
adequately maintain crop genebank collections
"could constrain agriculture's ability to avert billions of dollars in crop damage."
These genebanks provide the diversity
needed to enable the crops "to stay one step
ahead of pests", and also to improve quality,
nutritional value, and yield. But lack of funding
has left many of the collections in a state of
decay.
Just prior to the publication of the report,
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug
was warning the world of a new rust epidemic
from East Africa, that, if it gets loose in Asia,
North America, South America and Australia,
would infect half of all our grain varieties, and
the stage would be set for a major disaster. This
calls for ongoing research. "But when you
haven't had a major epidemic in 52 years, complacency becomes a problem." Borlaug said.
Underlying the almost $200 billion value of
US agriculture's production at the farm level is a
little known resource - the genebanks around
the world. The report, released at a congressional briefing in Washington 28 February 2005,
noted that the collections held in gene banks
"represent the historic and current diversity of
agriculture, without which farming in the U.S.
and around the world would stagnate and flounder."
Calvin Qualset of the University of
California Genetic Resources Conservation
Programme and Henry L. Shands, director of
the USDA/Agricultural Research Service's
National Center for Genetic Resources
Preservation, were co-authors of the report.
At the World Food Day symposium on 19
October 2004, United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Director-General
Jacques Diouf delivered a similar message on
the importance of genebanks. He said that global efforts to conserve plants and animals in
genebanks, botanical gardens and zoos are vital
to maintaining global biodiversity and promoting
food security worldwide. In fact, the theme of the
24th annual World Food Day was "Biodiversity
for Food Security".
Worldwide, there are nearly 5.4 million crop
samples in 1 470 genebanks. These are important repositories for conserving seeds and
germplasm, as agricultural biodiversity has been
severely eroded under industrial monoculture
practised over the latter half of the last century
(see Box 1). Lack of biodiversity leaves major
crops vulnerable to disease, potentially causing
famine and starvation. The Irish potato famine in
the 1840s was one example, when the
Phytophthora potato blight destroyed the entire
crop, as the farmers grew only one variety, and
there was no genetic diversity in seed banks or
elsewhere to fall back on. Gene banks also play
a vital role in maximizing the use of wild and cultivated varieties in crop improvement through
selective breeding.
Genebanks have been in major trouble for
some years; there simply is not enough money
for gene banks to fulfil even their basic conser-
Box 2
Global Crop Diversity Trust
The Global Crop Diversity Trust was set up in
2002 at the World Summit for Sustainable
Development as a type 2 (public-private) partnership involving the FAO and the 15 "Future
Harvest Centres" of the Consultative Group
on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR) [4, 5]. It hopes to raise US$260 million required to protect the world's most
important crop species; so far, only $56 million has been committed. Among the first
grants are to the N.I. Vavilov Research
Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) based in St.
Petersburg, established and named after the
famous Russian plant geneticist Nikolai
Vavilov, which now holds around 95 000
accessions of grain crops, over 43 000
legumes and 50 000 vegetables. Nikolai
Vavilov was one of the first and most prolific
collectors of plant seeds; he made more than
100 collecting missions around the world
between 1915 and 1930, and was responsible for the idea of "centres of origin" for
regions with a high diversity of species.
vation role, let alone their other role of maximising the use of wild and domesticated varieties
for crop breeding and improvement.
When dried and kept cold, some seeds will
last for 30 years or longer. Others have to be
grown out regularly and harvested to keep
seeds fresh and alive. Tubers, roots and cuttings
for plants can be kept in test tubes, usually as
tissue culture, and periodically regenerated. All
these cannot be done without money. Without
proper care, existing seed stock will eventually
lose its viability.
Prof. Jeff Waage of Imperial College's
department of agricultural sciences in London,
UK, had earlier reported to the United Nations
www.i-sis.org.uk
46
World Summit on Sustainable Development in
August 2002, that although the number of plant
samples held in crop diversity collections has
increased by 65 percent, genebank budgets
have been cut back in 25 percent of the countries and remained the same in another 35 percent.
Waage's report said that one in 12 of the
world's 250 000 species of flowering plants are
likely to disappear before 2025. A chief culprit is
modern agriculture, particularly when forests are
cleared to create farmland. "Among the losses
are the wild relatives of domesticated plants with
as yet untapped potential," said the report.
These include wheat, soya beans, tomatoes,
coffee and grapes
To add to the trouble, war in developing
countries had destroyed some vital centres,
other have had their electricity cut off, so rare
seeds are not kept in the cool conditions
required. Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and
Romania have all lost their genebanks. Albania,
Fiji and Nigeria have lost part of their collections.
In response to the crisis in genebanks, the
Global Crop Diversity Trust was launched at the
World Summit for Sustainable Development in
2002 (Box 2).
Genetic engineering the new threat
A new threat to gene banks has surfaced in the
events surrounding the forced merger in 2002 of
Italy's gene bank in Bari - among the world's ten
largest - with much smaller centres involved in
genetic modification of crop plants ("Italy's gene
bank at risk", this series).
Although by far the biggest institution in the
merger, its director since 1982, Prof. Pietro
Perrino, was sidelined in the competition for the
directorship of the merged institute, which went
instead, to a professor in Naples who has yet to
move to Bari. Perrino was downgraded to "manager" of Bari's germplasm collection of 84 000
accessions. But right from the first, it was obvious that the new director has little or no interest
in preserving the collection. Things came to a
head when the cooling system broke down and
the director refused to have it repaired. In desperation, Perrino resorted to the law court to
have the collection placed under his custody in
order to have the cooling system repaired. But
damage to the collection may have already
occurred.
Perrino and his supporters are convinced
that the new director and the "pro-GM lobby" are
not at all interested in conserving the collection,
but are using it as a pretext for getting research
funding for genetic modification. More than that,
Perrino and his supporters suspect that the proGM lobby and the GM giants really would like to
see the collection destroyed.
This sounds far-fetched until one gets
inside the genetic engineer's mindset. To a
genetic engineer, DNA is all. Once a genome
sequence is known and deposited in a database, and the DNA of the plant genome deposited in a DNA biobank, then the seed or plant is
really of little or no interest. After all, DNA
sequences of any gene can easily be synthesized in the laboratory and used to transform
existing crop plants to make any desired GM
variety, be it herbicide tolerant, insect resistant,
salt or drought tolerant, improved nutritional
properties, increase in yield, etc., at least in theory. That is precisely the same mentality that
motivates "gene-hunting" of indigenous tribes
threatened with extinction, so as to preserve
their DNA before they become extinct, "for the
good of humanity".
Unfortunately, we can no more resurrect a
plant from its DNA than reconstruct an extinct
indigenous tribe with its distinctive language,
knowledge and culture that constitute an entire
way of life.
This exclusive emphasis on DNA is misplaced even for genetic engineers, especially
those using marker-assisted selective breeding
on existing lines to enable them to identify useful traits. The genetic markers can be identified
through screening the DNA; but the plants themselves will still be needed for cross-breeding.
An additional disincentive for proponents of
GM to preserve germplasm in seed banks is that
they are considered the natural heritage of the
earth, if not of the human species, and cannot
be patented for commercial exploitation if there
is no genetic modification or gene isolation
involved (see the International Treaty on Plant
Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture,
Box 3). So, as far as agribusiness is concerned,
they are of no commercial value, or indeed of
negative commercial value, as seed or
germplasm collection allows farmers to do their
own selective breeding for improving crops and
livestock, instead of having to purchase patented seeds from the companies and pay royalties.
That would reverse the corporate serfdom being
imposed on farmers all over the world (see
SiS26), and that's precisely the reason why
gene banks are important, particularly if farmers
can get ready access to their collections (see
below).
In situ conservation against corporate
serfdom
Apart from the ex situ conservation, in situ conservation - maintaining biodiversity on farms and
in nature - is equally important, if not more so,
for counteracting corporate serfdom.
Jacques Diouf himself has stressed the
importance of in situ conservation. "The responsibility for conserving agrobiodiversity on farms
in a great part of the world usually belongs to
women farmers who traditionally harvest and
conserve crop seeds from season to season."
Said Diouf. "This local agrodiversity is particularly important for the resilience of farming systems and communities in emergencies or
humanitarian crises, such as those that affected
more than 45 million people last year." He pointed out that most of the earth's genetic diversity
is found in the poor countries in the developing
world; and that "it is imperative that those most
responsible for its development and its preservation - the indigenous people who maintain the
farms, the herds, the forests and the fishing
areas - are both respected and rewarded for
their efforts."
In situ conservation and seed saving by
Box 3
International Treaty on Plant Genetic
Resources for Food and Agriculture
This treaty is the outcome of the International
Undertaking (IU) on Plant Genetic Resources
for Food and Agriculture adopted by the FAO
conference in 1983. Starting in 1996, the IU
was revised through negotiations to make it
compatible with the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD), and renamed the
International Treaty (IT). Negotiations were
finalized in November 2001, and the IT was
hailed by FAO Director-General Jacques
Diouf [2] as "a triumph for the indigenous
farmers, herders, forest dwellers and fishing
communities of the world." It establishes a
multilateral system of access and benefit
sharing to ensure that plant genetic resources
of the greatest importance to food security
are readily available for use now and in the
future, and that any benefits are shared with
the countries in which they originated. It also
establishes a mechanism to ensure that
researchers worldwide have access to those
resources. Critics note however, that it does
not go far enough in protecting our common
heritage from commercial exploitation and
patenting ("Science for the poor, or procurer
for the rich?" SiS 15). The United States is a
signatory to the treaty, which entered into
force in June 2004.
local communities themselves are the keys to
recovering and safeguarding local agricultural
biodiversity for genuinely sustainable food systems that involves local production and consumption, and restores self-sufficiency and
autonomy to farmers and the local communities.
"There used to be many local variety seeds
not only for food crops such as rice and corn, but
also for beans/legumes and fruit trees." Says
Hira Jhamtani of Konphalindo, Indonesia, a public interest organisation involved in promoting
sustainable agriculture. "The problem is that the
knowledge is dying with the old farmers, and the
younger generation has no comprehensive
knowledge on seed conservation, nor do they
seem to be interested. This is where scientists
can play a role in documenting local seed varieties and reviving seed breeding among the
younger generation based and rooted in local
knowledge. The local know-how still exists in
many places in Indonesia (and also the
Philippines), the question is how to regenerate
the biodiverse agricultural-base and revitalise
this knowledge through community based activities."
Neth Dano, associate of Third World
Network in the Philippines, who has worked with
local communities to develop sustainable agriculture for many years, is less than happy about
a blanket call to increase funding for genebanks.
"The genebank/ex situ strategy should not be
seen as a stand-alone genetic conservation
strategy but should complement the in-situ/onfarm strategies of communities, institutions and
civil society." Says Dano, "This would require
genebank scientists working closely with farm-
47
ers and indigenous peoples in seeds conservation on farm. Increase funding for genebanks
should be tied to increased funding for insitu/on-farm conservation and utilization efforts."
This will ensure that the genebanks will not just
conserve genetic resources for corporate agriculture, but first and foremost for world food
security and the livelihood of those who have
nurtured and are dependent on these genetic
resources.
"We also have to take note that there are
many cases when the ex situ conservation is not
relevant at all, as in the case of the Least
Developed Countries which cannot even afford
to pay for electricity to keep the genebanks running after these have been built through grants
or even loans that the future generation will
have to pay." Dano adds.
She also points out that even if most or all
of the collections in the CGIAR genebanks are
not patented, as they are the "common heritage
of mankind", they remain inaccessible to farmers especially if traditional breeds have already
been lost. Genebanks should make every effort
to ensure that their collections are accessible to
the farmers and indigenous peoples who need
them, as most of the materials were collected by
scientists from farming and indigenous communities in the first place. There must be concrete
mechanisms to inform farmers and to facilitate
farmers' access to these materials.
Seed-saving against corporate serfdom
Seed saving is an important activity that does
not have to wait for massive funding, and many
local communities have already started to do
just that, to make sure they conserve what they
still have, and not to depend on genebanks.
For example, the Henry Doubleday
Research Association in the UK with 30 000
members is a major seed saver for organic gardening and farming, although it is not a gene
bank. Its Heritage Seed Library conserves and
makes available to members European vegetable varieties that are not widely available.
Currently, 700 accessions of open-pollinated
varieties are held, of which about 200 are in its
Seed Catalogue sent free to members
(http://www.hdra.org.uk/hsl/index. htm).
Navdanya ("Nine seeds") started by Dr.
Vandana Shiva of the Research Foundation for
Science, Technology and Ecology in India is
active not only in seed saving but also in revitalising indigenous knowledge and culture, in creating awareness of the hazards of genetic engineering, and in defending people's knowledge
from biopiracy and people's food rights in the
face of globalisation. It has its own seed bank
and organic farm over an area of 20 acres in
Uttranchal, north India (http://www.navdanya
.org/).
In Ireland, Anita Hayes founded the Irish
Seed Savers Association (ISSA) in 1991 in her
own home and garden. But with a core of willing
helpers and seed donations, and financial aid
from government bodies and many generous
funders, the ISSA took off. It now has a large
collection of Irish fruits, cereals and vegetables
SiS
(http://www.irishseedsavers.ie/).
Italy's Genebank At Risk
Prof. Pietro Perrino tells the story of how Italy's gene bank, among the
ten largest in the world, risks being destroyed under an enforced
merger with groups preoccupied with genetic modification of crop plants
The Germplasm Institute in Bari
The Germplasm Institute (GI) of the Italian
National Research Council (CNR) was founded
in 1970, in Bari, Italy, with the aim to collect,
preserve, multiply, characterise, evaluate and
distribute plant genetic resources, both cultivated and wild relatives, that are threatened by
genetic erosion and/or extinction and are
important for agriculture.
From 1970 to 2002, the GI collaborated
with many national and international organisations including the US Department of
Agriculture, the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) and different
centres of the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR),
and collected germplasm in many countries of
the Mediterranean Basin, Ethiopia, Somalia
and South Africa. In more than 100 expeditions,
over 13 000 samples of wheat and other cereals, pea, broad bean, and other pulses, including wild relatives were collected. The GI has
also acquired samples of germplasm through
exchange with other gene banks and institutions. So that, today, the collections of
germplasm amount to about 84 000 accessions: cereals (38 000), pulses (9 000), vegetables (3 000), fodder gramineae (2 000), fodder
leguminosae (4 500), medicinal plants (700)
and numerous active collections (25 000)
belonging to around 600 species.
Seed samples are stored at a relative
humidity of 35 percent and 0 C (medium term
conservation) and -20 C (long term conservation). During and after multiplication and/or
rejuvenation as well as during storage, part of
the collections is also submitted to characterisation and seed germination tests.
In all, 1 400 genebanks in the world (FAO)
are preserving ex situ more than 6 million
accessions of plant germplasm (mainly seed
samples). Of this germplasm 1 percent is preserved at GI, 30 percent in other gene banks of
Europe and 69 percent in the rest of the world.
The GI is the only gene bank in Italy, preserving nearly 90 percent of the ex situ Italian plant
germplasm and according to the size of collections and standard of conservation, it is the
second in Europe, after the German gene
bank, and is among the ten biggest gene banks
in the world. During the 32 years between 1970
and 2002, during most of which I was director
of the GI, we distributed over 81 000 accessions, more than those annually distributed by
all of the Centres of the CGIAR.
Research projects at GI were oriented to
stimulate and to promote utilisation of indigenous plant germplasm. Three strategies were
adopted. The first was to select genetic
resources in collaboration with local farmers.
The second was to select germplasm in collaboration with plant breeders, looking for adaptive
and good qualitative characters all along the
line that leads to the end food products. The
third was to develop, in collaboration with other
institutions, academic research for longer-term
objectives, such as to widen the genetic base
through breeding and studies of cell genetics,
and better understanding of the potentialities of
maintenance through studies of seed physiology.
From 1970 to 2002, the costs of
germplasm collection, maintenance, research
and salaries were about 50 million Euros.
Apart from preserving the 84 000 accessions,
GI contributed to exploration, collection, multiplication and conservation strategies, published more than 1 000 scientific papers, provided databases on documentation of the collections and trained more than 1 000 Italian and
foreign visitors, students and researchers. Most
of all, many of the genetic resources maintained in the genebank are unique and very
often no longer present in cultivated fields, due
to the high genetic erosion caused by the diffusion of new varieties with a very narrow genetic base. In this respect, the introduction and
cultivation of GMOs would make the situation
even worst. Thus, the germplasm maintained in
the genebank should be considered of a very
high value for developing sustainable and
organic agriculture.
www.i-sis.org.uk
Diversity of
wheat by
Pietro Perrion
48
Merging of the GI with other research centres against the wishes of the employees
In November 2002, against the will of myself, as
Director of the GI, and a significant number of
employees, the GI in Bari was merged with
other much smaller CNR research centres that
since their origin, have been engaged with
genetics, plant breeding activities and more
recently with genetic engineering on citrus fruits
in Palermo, on vegetable crops and flowers in
Naples, on fodder crops in Perugia and on forest trees in Florence. This merged entity was
called Istituto di Genetica Vegetale (IGV) (Plant
Genetic Institute). It is worth stressing that within the University system in Italy, there are at
least 30 other Plant Genetic Institutes, whereas
there is only one Germplasm Intitute in the
CNR. And according to the rules of reformation
of CNR, the GI should have been strengthened
and not closed down by merging it with other
groups to form a centre, which, as said, duplicates other university departments and with
much more emphasis on genetic engineering
activity. The battles from April 2001 to October
2002 between GI employees, supported by the
Agricultural Councillor of Apulia Region and the
Ministry of Agriculture on one side and the top
management of CNR on the other were largely
in vain, except that, in order to placate the GI
employees and the politicians, the seat of IGV
funds. They are not interested in biodiversity
but are fully involved in GMOs or even worse, in
the opinion of some of us (including outsider
supporters), the lobby, linked to multinationals,
wants to destroy the germplasm and prevent
farmers from using them. This last hypothesis is
not so strange if one considers that the Director
of the IGV did not respond positively to the
request of repairing the cooling systems of seed
storage rooms when they were not functioning.
The CBD the Treaty of FAO and its legal
implementation in Italy
On 30 March 2004, the Italian Senate discussed the draft of the law n. 2845 that ratified
the execution of "The International Treaty on
Plant Genetic Resources for Food and
Agriculture" of the FAO (see "Save our seeds",
this series) adopted by the thirty-first
Conference of FAO in Rome on 3 November
2001. The law was approved by the Chamber of
the deputies; and as the Law came into effect
on 6 April 2004, the Ministry of Agriculture and
Forestry has allocated to the IGV the sum of
155 000 Euros. How is the Director of IGV to
use these funds in agreement with the Treaty if
the genebank is under judicial attachment? Will
the Director of the IGV use these extra funds
assigned for activities of conservation intended
by the Treaty, after having put at risk the entire
gene bank collection?
many of the genetic resources maintained in genebank are
unique and very often no longer present in cultivated fields,
due to the high genetic erosion caused by the diffusion of
new varieties with a very narrow genetic base
was moved from Naples to Bari, and the thematics of research of the IGV was extended to
include part of the GI activities and interests,
which had previously been completely ignored.
The merger endangers germplasm
collection
Since November 2002, the management of the
IGV has created a lot of trouble for the ex GI.
The most serious concerns the cooling system
for seed storage in the genebank, which did not
function for a few months and therefore the
temperature of cold storage rooms went up for
a considerable number of days. The Magistrate
of Bari has already made an intervention with
the result that I was nominated judicial custodian of the gene bank. Only then was the cooling
system repaired. Nevertheless, the Magistrate
has decided to maintain the judicial custodianship until the probable damage to the
germplasm collections caused by the increase
of room storage temperature can be evaluated.
Moves to save the genebank
I, as Director of the ex-GI, now Research
Manager, together with a few remaining colleagues are fighting to defend the gene bank
and the stored plant genetic resources from the
Director of the IGV and his lobby, who want to
have full control of the germplasm in order to
use it as a pretext for getting large research
The future of the genebank uncertain
The future of the Bari gene bank and the preserved germplasm is uncertain. We do not
know when the germplasm collections will be
evaluated for damage that may have been done
during the breakdown of the cooling system,
and when the gene bank will be placed under
the full direct control of the Italian Government
and not left in the hands of people that would
not take care of it, or would simply use it to
make GMOs.
The Sustainable World Global Initiative and
the future of genebanks
In conclusion, the Sustainable World conference maybe the right forum to start a worldwide evaluation on the state of the world's gene
banks, to verify their functionality and usefulness, how well the plant germplasm is being
preserved, how much and how often it is used
and for what purposes, and how much is the
cost of maintenance in order to understand
whether ex situ conservation in genebanks is a
useful strategy for implementing sustainable
food systems around the world.
This article is an edited version of Prof.
Pietro Perrino's presentation at the Sustainable
World Conference 14-15 July 2005 in
SiS
Westminster, London.
Environmentally and socially sustainable
organic cotton is harvested on the Narmada
plains of Madhya Pradesh. PAN
Organic cotton is more environmentally
friendly, better for the health of the community and for the local economy than GM cotton,
according to a study by the Centre for
Sustainable Agriculture in Andhra Pradesh.
The GM Bt cotton was compared with cotton
grown without pesticide, or under non-pesticide management (NPM).
The study looked at the incidence of various pests and diseases as well as the beneficial organisms in the Bt and NPM cotton
fields. It also looked at the economics of pest
management for both systems.
The study, designed and supervised by
entomologist Dr SMA Ali, extension scientist
GV Ramanjaneyulu, and development activist
Ms Kavitha Kuruganti, involved end-of-season interviews with cotton growing farmers in
Warangal and Medak districts.
A total of 121 NPM cotton farmers farming on 193 acres and using no synthetic pesticide were compared with 117 Bt cotton farmers using proprietary pesticides and farming
151 acres. The Bt cotton varieties grown
were Mech 12 (88 farmers), Mech 184 (1
farmer), and RCH 2 (31 farmers; a few farmers grew more than one of these varieties on
different plots, hence the sum of farmers is
more than 117).
These Bt varieties all carried Monsanto's
cry1Ac gene and display low genetic diversity; providing early pest resistance. NPM cotton farmers grew many varieties including
Brahma, Maruthi, Dasera, Gemini, Sumo,
Tulasi, Bhagya, Durga, Kranthi.
Ten villages in two districts took part in
the Bt cotton survey, and 12 villages from two
districts took part in the NPM survey.
Bt cotton more prone to pests and
diseases
Overall, the NPM farmers reported a lower
incidence of medium to high infestations and
higher incidence of low or no infestations for
four traditional cotton pests.
Surprisingly, 32.5 percent of Bt cotton
farmers reported a high incidence of
American bollworm, an important pest that the
Bt cotton is designed to control; while only 4.1
percent of NPM farmers reported a high incidence of this pest. This single statistic ques-
49
49
Rethinking Agriculture
Organic Cotton Beats Bt Cotton
Organic cotton is incomparably superior to genetically modified Bt cotton Rhea Gala
tions the value of the Bt approach to pest con- farmers during the season (14.5 percent), while a vicious cycle of control by these synthetic
trol. It also corroborates the high incidence of 50 NPM farmers reported no wilt problems pesticides.
bollworm reported by farmers growing Bt cotton (41.3 percent). The degree of wilt ranged from
Economics of pest management shows Bt
in AP. In contrast, the efficacy of natural pred- 30 percent - 70 percent for Bt cotton, but was
cotton extortionate
ators and/or natural pesticides to control only 10 - 15 percent for the NPM cotton variAmerican bollworm in particular, and the other eties. While wilt causes a decrease in cotton Purchase of Bt cotton seed, genetically modibollworms in general, is remarkable (see Table yield, the traditional cotton varieties have far fied with the cry1Ac gene from soil bacterium,
1).
greater genetic diversity than the Bt cotton, giv- Bacillus thuringiensis, includes a technology
A majority of NPM farmers reported low ing greater security against losses from this fee, and costs farmers Rs 1600 per acre, compared to NPM farmers who buy their seed at Rs
incidence of spotted bolldisease.
450 per acre. This makes Bt cotton seed 355%
worm (76.9 percent
While wilt causes a decrease Beneficial insects premore expensive than the traditional varieties.
against 65.8 percent of
vail on NPM cotton
in
cotton
yield,
the
traditional
In addition, pest management costs were
Bt growers), American
cotton varieties have far
These findings reflect the greater for Bt farmers who had to use pestibollworm (76.percent
fears of many environ- cides such as Monocrotophos, Confidor,
against 17.1 percent of greater genetic diversity than
mentalists that the Bt cot- Tracer, Avaunt, Endosulfan, acephate,
the Bt cotton, giving greater
Bt growers), and Tobacco
ton endotoxin destroys demethoate, imidacloprid, quinalphos, chlorpyCaterpillar (76.8 percent
security against losses from
many beneficial insects, riphos, cypermethrin etc. to manage a variety
against 64.1 percent of
this disease.
and that has a knock-on of pests including bollworms for which Bt toxin
Bt growers). Six NPM
effect on the birds and is supposed to be specific.
farmers reported an
small
mammals
that
are the natural predators
On average, Bt crops were sprayed 3.5
absence of spotted bollworm compared to two
of these insects. Table 3 shows 85 (70.2 per- times, with two farmers reporting that they did
Bt farmers.
A majority of NPM farmers reported a cent) of NPM farmers finding a high incidence not spray at all, and others spraying as many
as seven times. The
medium incidence of pink bollworm, as did their of beneficial insects
on
their
crop,
with
97
NPM farmers used
Bt counterparts (47.1 percent against 57.3 perno synthetic pesticent), but greater numbers of NPM farmers (82.9 percent) of Bt A majority of NPM farmers reported
cides at all, but used
low incidence of spotted bollworm
also reported a low incidence of this pest com- cotton respondents
natural pesticides
(76.9 percent against 65.8 percent
pared to Bt farmers (31.4 percent against 24.8 finding only a low
incidence
and
13
such as Neem seed
of Bt growers), American bollworm
percent).
kernel extract, trichoIn the case of sucking pests, the majority of (11.2 percent) Bt (76.percent against 17.1 percent of
NPM farmers also reported a low incidence, farmers found no Bt growers), and Tobacco Caterpillar derma and panchakavya.
with several reporting no infestation of whitefly, beneficial insects at
(76.8 percent against 64.1 percent
all
on
their
crop.
Bt cotton pest
aphids and mites. Again, natural predators and
of Bt growers). Six NPM farmers
The main stratemanagement cost on
pesticides can be seen to be more effective at
reported an absence of spotted boll- average Rs 2632 per
controlling sucking pests than Bt cotton. Many gy of NPM farmers'
worm compared to two Bt farmers
pest
control
on
their
acre, whereas NPM
Bt farmers reported a high incidence of jassids,
crops
is
through
cotton pest managewhitefly and aphids, but Bt toxins are known to
ment cost on averbe ineffective against sucking pests, therefore, beneficial insects
farmers necessarily use additional pesticides that are, by definition, predators of cotton age Rs 382 per acre, making pesticide costs
pests; they also use natural organic pesticides. 690 percent more expensive to the Bt cotton
specific to these pests (see Table 2)
Wilt, a common disease of cotton was In contrast, Bt farmers report a low incidence of farmers.
Yields and incomes were not included in
reported absent by only 17 of the Bt cotton pest predators due to the toxicity of the Bt varieties and associated pesticides, necessitating this study as cotton picking was still going on at
Table 1. Incidence of Bollworm complex on Bt and NPM cotton.
Level of incidence Spotted Bollworm
American Bollworm
Bt cotton NPM cotton
High
15(12.8) 4 (3.3)
38 (32.5) 5 (4.1)
Medium
23 (19.7) 18 (14.9)
59 (15.4) 24 (19.8)
Low
77 (65.8) 93 (76.9)
20 (17.1) 92 (76.1)
Nil
2 (1.7)
6 (4.9)
0 (0)
0 (0)
Figure in parentheses is percent of respondents
Table 2. Incidence of sucking pests on Bt and NPM cotton.
Level of incidence
Jassids
Thrips
Bt
NPM
Bt
High
52 (44.5) 7 (5.8)
1 (0.8)
Medium
42 (35.9) 20 (16.5) 21 (17.9)
Low
22 (18.8) 94 (77.7) 92 (78.7)
Nil
1 (0.8)
0 (0)
3 (2.6)
NPM
0 (0)
8 (6.6)
107 (91.5)
6 (4.9)
Whitefly
Bt
39 (33.4)
35 (29.9)
41 (35.0)
2 (1.7)
Tobacco Caterpillar
8 (6.8)
2 (1.7)
34 (29.1) 22 (18.2)
75 (64.1) 93 (76.8)
0 (0)
4 (3.3)
NPM
2 (1.6)
15 (12.4)
90 (74.4)
14 (11.6)
Aphids
Bt
35 (29.9)
43 (36.8)
39 (33.3)
0 (0)
NPM
1 (0.8)
20 (16.6)
95 (78.5)
5 (4.1)
Pink Bollworm
20 (17.1) 25 (20.7)
67 (57.3) 57 (47.1)
29 (24.8) 38 (31.4)
1 (0.8)
1 (0.8)
Mites
Bt
21 (17.9)
45 (38.6)
50 (42.7)
1 (0.8)
NPM
3 (2.5)
10 (8.3)
101 (83.5)
7 (5.7)
www.i-sis.org.uk
50
Table 3. Incidence of beneficial insects on Bt and NPM cotton.
Incidence level of beneficial insects
Bt Cotton Fields
NPM Cotton Fields
High
0 (0)
85 (70.2)
Medium
7 (5.9)
26 (21.5)
Low
97 (82.9)
8 (6.6)
Nil
13 (11.2)
2 (1.7)
In two years, 2000 poor rice
farmers in Bangladesh reduced
insecticide use by 99 percent.
small rural economy into the pockets of powerful multi-nationals every year.
Farmers stop spraying chemical pesticides, yields go up!
the time of data collection, but Bt cotton yield ered the art and science of sustainable cotton Farmers in India are not alone. In two years,
and quality has been well documented as lower cultivation by using NPM systems. But this 2000 poor rice farmers in Bangladesh reduced
than traditional varieties, in spite of claims to small revolution in India's cotton belt has been insecticide use by 99 percent.
the contrary. Yet the study clearly proves that ignored by agricultural scientists, perhaps
Gary John, senior scientist at the
restoring the ecological balance in the cotton because it is an appropriate technology that International Rice Research Institute in Manila,
fields, by removing both the GM endotoxins does not lend itself to exploitation by outsiders, said "To my surprise when people stopped
and the synthetic chemicals, will bring both and because it does not have the 'glamour' of spraying, yields didn't drop, and this was
short and long term benefits to farmers and the 'cutting edge technology'. Nevertheless, it so across 600 fields in two districts over four seaenvironment.
impressed the AP
sons. I'm convinced
The study punctured the following myths in agriculture minister,
that the vast majority
pest management costs were
the current pest management paradigm:
who witnessed the greater for Bt farmers who had to
of insecticides that rice
· Pests can be controlled only by killing them
transformation
for
farmers use are a
use pesticides such as
with pesticide; whereas prevention is better
himself, that it has Monocrotophos, Confidor, Tracer,
complete waste of
than cure
been replicated in 400
time and money". In
Avaunt, Endosulfan, acephate,
· All insects in the fields are pests; whereas
surrounding villages.
the Philippines, simidemethoate, imidacloprid,
they include natural predators that kill pests
A few farmers
larly, a decline in
· No relationship exists between monoculfrom a local non-gov- quinalphos, chlorpyriphos, cyperinsecticide use has
ture and pest incidence; whereas a reduced
ernmental organiza- methrin etc. to manage a variety
been accompanied by
of pests including bollworms for
genetic base over large areas results in
tion began in 1999
an increase in producunobstructed proliferation of the pest espe(before the arrival of which Bt toxin is supposed to be
tivity leading to great
cially as in India where non-Bt cotton refuges
GM cotton in India), to
specific
savings for farmers.
are not used
experiment with nonThis comes as a
· Chemical fertilizers and pest incidence are
pesticidal management practices on their cot- revelation only after land and water have been
unrelated; whereas chemical fertilizers
ton crop, and persuaded 20 local farmers to try poisoned, the environment degraded, and,
increase plant vulnerability to the pest due to
it.
according to WHO figures, 20 000 people have
increased 'succulence'.
The environment, previously contaminated died from pesticide poisoning worldwide annu· Pest resistance is a genotypic rather than
by a vicious cycle of pesticide application ally. And because science has viewed all
an environmental issue; whereas environbegan to improve, and the pest burden things traditional as backward and substandard
mental management of pests will give farmreduced. By 2004, the environmental and eco- the collective wisdom of generations of farmers
ers more control over their crops than the
nomic impact was such that the entire village has been largely lost; and at the same time
use of patented seed derived from manipuwas using NPM that had restored natural pest agricultural scientists are still promoting uselating genes
control systems, and they therefore had no rea- less and harmful technologies like genetic
· Pest resistance management is about
son to adopt GM cotton when it became avail- modification.
using newer and newer generation pestiable.
But while ordinary farmers are getting wise
cides; whereas NPM systems cut costs to
In the early 1960s, only six or seven major to GM propaganda and hard sell around the
farmers and the environpests worried the cotton world, an Indian government study has found
ment leading to greater
farmer, but costly inputs serious faults with its GM Bt cotton under comBy 2004, the environmental
independence of farmers
prescribed by agribusiness mercial production. The government has been
and economic impact was
and a healthier, more bioand agricultural research sitting on this study for two years. It describes
such that the entire village
diverse environment
has created a spiral of pol- a multitude of problems already expressed by
was using NPM that had
· Prevention of pest/dislution, debt and death that farmers but previously denied by its own scienrestored natural pest control
ease means spraying
has also resulted in the tists and politicians. Meanwhile organic farming
systems, and they therefore
even when the pest is
farmer fighting 70 major successes are being more widely reported, for
had no reason to adopt GM
absent; whereas pest
pests on cotton today. example, Paul Desmarais, Director of the
management is not about cotton when it became availAlthough average yields for Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre in Zambia
able.
schedules or routine but
farmers in Punukula are writes "We have successfully grown organic
the needs of the actual sitgreater than for Bt cotton cotton for two years now at Kasisi. We have
uation
farmers, most mainstream agricultural scien- good control of insects and there is not resist· Benefits of synthetic pesticides outweigh
tists, and politicians prefer to support GM tech- ance built in the system as there is even with Bt
the risks; whereas suicides in the Indian cotnology and agribusiness.
cotton. Our yields are double the national
ton belts show that the economics of pestiIf Punukula had adopted GM Bt cotton, the yields. Farmers using the conventional route
cide use do not add up, even before other
village would have paid Rs 600 000 in addition- are barely eking out an existence with the price
adverse effects are taken into account, such
al seed price for the 500 acres under cultivation of cotton dropping and the price of inputs climbas increased crop water consumption
(Rs1 200/acre technology fee), before addressing up. We have just had the seed cotton testing the extra cost of pesticide application. The ed for fibre length, micronair, etc. and our cotThe story of Punukula: it's not rocket
farmers would have remained caught in the spi- ton did very well on all the scores. Let us purscience
ral of debt as victims of the 'cutting edge tech- sue the growing of organic cotton. It is possible
Punukula, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, nology' that draws millions of rupees from the and it is sustainable".
SiS
with a population of about 860, has rediscovSCIENCE IN SOCIETY 27, AUTUMN 2005
Peter Bunyard
Ingrid Hartman
Joe Cummins
Alan Simpson MP
Peter Ainsworth MP
Lilian Joensen
Jakob von Uexkull
Hannu Hyvonen
D.Hywel Davies
Pietro Perrino
e full
read th
n
story o
page 36
First International Conference
Julia Wright
Caroline Lucas MEP
David Woodward
Dr. Mae Wan Ho
Lim Li Ching
Erkki Lahde
Michael Meacher MP
and Sue Edwards

howto email jesse mccartney

Transcript

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