GEO WATCH: New Transgenic Soybean

Credit: Redicecreations

USDA QUIETLY APPROVED NEW GMO

Bayer
product is more dangerous than Monsanto’s Roundup Ready line

Devon G. Peña | San Luis, CO | September 5, 2013

The
transgenic
treadmill is reliable in only one sense: Regardless of results, it keeps
cranking out more products. The products may not be fully tested for biosafety
or human health effects; they may not even be effective as a long-term response
to weed or insect control; and the transgenic crops may not even present
productivity or economic advantage to growers; but you can rest assured that
the Gene Giants will keep cranking out more products under the guise of
innovation, technological advances, and dubious claims about feeding a hungry
planet and saving the environment.

With
a measured degree of glee, we
have been observing and reporting on the decline of Monsanto’s Roundup®
Ready transgenic product line as a consequence of the spreading resistance of
weeds like Lambs Quarters and Pigweed to glyphosate. Recent
reports indicate that more than half of all farms dependent on glyphosate
(the generic version of Roundup®) now have “superweeds” that are resistant to
any amount of the herbicide treatment, which of course is reducing yields and
causing untold environmental and health problems, to say nothing of the
destruction of soil biota with sustained use of these chemical agents.

Like
the pesticide treadmill of old, the transgenic treadmill is yielding the same
pattern in which nature finds a way to undermine the technological assault.

Despite
this evidence, instead of retreating from GMOs and chemical-intensive
agriculture and turning to more natural and organic methods, our nation’s
growers are being encouraged by the USDA and FDA to stay on track by turning to
ever more toxic chemical inputs. The latest example of this was the
under-the-radar approval in August by the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) of a new GMO paired with a chemical treatment that the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) already labeled as a “probable human carcinogen”.

Credit: Beesource

According
to a report from the Center
for Food Safety, the GMO in question is the new Bayer CropScience genetically
engineered (GE) soybean crop, called FG72. The adoption of this transgenic
soybean “will likely cause a fourfold increase in the use of isoxaflutole,
or IFT, a toxic herbicide. The chemical triggers liver and thyroid tumors in
animal tests.” Of course, Bayer is already on tap as a major culprit behind collapse of the honeybee population since it is a principal producer of a prime suspect, the neonicotinoid pesticides, which both kill the bees directly or weaken their immune system, making them susceptible to fungus and parasitic diseases.

The
problem with soybean is that, like corn, it has become ubiquitous since it is
an often obscure ingredient in a wide range of processed foods and this
includes many versions of a favorite vegetarian item, tofu. Soybean products
are also used as a staple in livestock feed.

In
1994, when I was invited to attend the White House Conference on Sustainable
Agriculture, the proponents of transgenic crops – including the at the time
President of Calgene (which gave us the commercial failure Flavr Savr tomato)
promised that commercial agricultural biotechnology would reduce the amount of
insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides used by growers. Instead, the opposite
has occurred with an ever-increasing chemical barrage on our landscapes: In
2009, conventional farmers dumped more than 57 million pounds of glyphosate on
human and livestock food crops. The Center for Food Safety summarizes the
problem:

The skyrocketing use of glyphosate with Roundup Ready
GMO crops has wiped out ecological diversity in fields, decimating milkweed
stands and causing the crash in monarch butterfly populations, explains Bill
Freese, science policy analyst at Center for Food Safety. Killing field borders
and diversity also kills other beneficial insects that keep crops from being
overrun by insect pests. [Now:] “Bayer and other biotech companies are now
poised to introduce a host of ‘next-generation’ GE crops resistant to more
toxic herbicides as a false ‘solution’ to massive weed resistance. But their
effect will be to generate still more intractable weeds resistant to multiple
herbicides,” Freese says.

According
to the EPA’s Conditional
Registration Fact Sheet for isoxaflutole (IFT),

Based upon a battery of acute toxicity studies,
Balance Herbicide is classified as Toxicity Category III. Isoxaflutole
demonstrates developmental toxicity and has been classified as a Group B2 carcinogen
(probable human carcinogen). The data available at this time indicate that
isoxaflutole is very phytotoxic. Isoxaflutole is persistent and mobile, and may
leach and accumulate in groundwater and through surface water.

Basically,
what the EPA has concluded is that IFT is a likely human carcinogen and it the
chemical and its breakdown product persists in surface and ground waters, where
they are toxic to aquatic organisms and wild plants. According to Freese, IFT
is “also …toxic to many vegetable crops, meaning vegetable farms near soybean
fields sprayed with IFT could be damaged.”

Instead
of moving toward a less chemically-intensive agriculture as was promised two
decades ago with the advent of these biotechnologies, the next generation transgenic
crops and their herbicide and pesticide treatment protocols are taking us back
to the age of more chemical pollution.  In fact, chemical companies are now turning to older, more
toxic pesticides, as current GMO crops aren't killing weeds as promised.

I
have a word for this behavior on the part of the USDA:  Murder through slow death and seditiousness
through unmitigated violence against citizens. These are grounds for
impeachment of the Secretary of Agriculture. We must work to end the era of
Monsantacles; demand organic food from all your grocers. Boycott Bayer products
writ large.