GEO Watch | Data base for GMO crop contamination incidents

Charting the transgenic threat

A TOOL FOR ACTIVISTS AND FARMERS

Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | November 4, 2014

Note: In the world of seed saving and plant
breeding, this is the biggest news all year. A new peer-reviewed scientific
journal, Food
Contamination, has just published a meta-analysis of the GM Contamination Register that was compiled over the past ten years by Genewatch and Greenpeace. 

















Janet Cotter (Greenpeace) and Becky Price (Genewatch)



were the lead compilers of this important database. Here is my
take on the significance of this sort of data mapping for  farmers concerned with protecting the genomic integrity and organic or biodynamic status of their land race and heirloom crop varieties.

Image courtesy of Transgenic Study Blog

One of the most significant issues in
the debate over the environmental impacts of transgenic[1] crops is the irrefutable
scientific fact posed by gene flow.  As a
farmer, seed librarian, and plant breeder, I am deeply concerned with the
threat of genetic contamination posed by transgenic crops to center of origin
land race varieties grown across all of the indigenous First Nation territories
of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Other farmers and scientists who
share this concern have been presenting evidence of this transgenic threat
since 2001 when Ignacio
Chapela and David Quist of the University of California-Berkeley documented
introgression of transgenes in native land race populations of Zea mays (maize) in Oaxaca, Mexico.

It has been a challenge to keep track
of the growing number of such events in which genetic materials from GMO/GE
crops introgress[2]
(contaminate) the native genome of land race crop varieties. Transgenic
introgression is a real, verified, direct, and immediate threat to the genomic
integrity of center of origin land race varieties.

The political challenge in part derives
from the Obama Administration and its efforts to impose a so-called
“Co-Existence” policy in which organic, biodynamic, conventional non-GMO, and
GMO farmers will have to learn to get along. A new database on GMO
contamination events would provide one important tool to help farmers reject
this policy and continue bioregional level work to ban GMO crops in any area where
this would pose a threat to center of origin land race varieties.

Fortunately, we now have a database on
contamination events. This is a very good start to the mapping of the threats
posed by GMO crops. According to the compilers of the database:

Since large-scale commercial planting of genetically modified
(GM) crops began in 1996, a concern has been that non-GM crops may become
contaminated by GM crops and that wild or weedy relatives of GM crops growing
outside of cultivated areas could become contaminated. The GM Contamination
Register contains records of GM contamination incidents since 1997 and forms a
unique database. By the end of 2013, 396 incidents across 63 countries had been
recorded.

While all of the introgression events are worrisome,
there are some surprises. For example, I expected corn to lead the way, but the
analysis of the Register database reveals rice has the highest number of GM
contamination incidents of all crops (accounting for a third of incidents).
What makes this particularly troubling to the investigators is the fact that
this has occurred despite the fact that there is no approved commercial growing
of GM rice anywhere in the world. The same is the case with the mysterious
appearance of unapproved Monsanto transgenic wheat in Oregon. The authors of
the Register also note that the majority of the rice contamination incidents involve
unauthorized GM rice lines – the LLRICE from the USA and BT63 rice from China.

Introgression events involving maize account for one
quarter (25%) of the reported GM contamination incidents while soya and oilseed
rape account for about 10 percent of the incidents. The authors further note
that some of these introgression events have continued over a number of years
and are ongoing. This is the case with papaya in Thailand, maize in Mexico, and
grass in USA (Oregon).  Other
contamination cases like those involving Bt10 maize and
pharmaceutical-producing GM crops have occurred only within a single year.

One of the most significant issues posed by the
Register is that the route(s) of contamination are often unclear. It is my view
that this issue can only be addressed if we compel governments to require
environmental regulators to map all GM
crop plantings.

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[1] Transgenic crop a.k.a. GMO
(Genetically Modified Organism), GE (Genetically Engineered), Genetically
Modified (GM) crop. I prefer the term transgenic because this places the
emphasis on the use of recombinant DNA technology. I also believe that all land
race crops are genetically modified in the sense that the varieties emerged
from the domestication of wild relatives across many generations of farmer
adaptation and selection pressure to alter the source genomes. We need to be
clear about the fact that transgenics and genetic modification are not
necessarily the same technology since traditional selection (including its
continuation in marker-assisted breeding) does
not involve the combination of viral, bacterial, and other non-plant
genetic materials.

[2] To ‘introgress’ is defined here as: Infiltration of
the genes of one species into the gene pool of another through repeated
backcrossing of an interspecific hybrid.