Blog

BY ROGER KALLA
….not on environment

There is less than 100 Days to go before the Commonwealth Games here in Melbourne. I can’t but wonder if we are going to see the first GM Athletes compete in the pool at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre or in the track and field events at the MCG.

At a recent conference at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm organized by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) gene doping – the unscrupulous use of genetic modification to enhance athletic ability by athletes, sportspeople and coaches was discussed as well as methods of detection of DNA cheats . The testing methodology is still under development and will not be ready for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Torino nor the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

One example of a gene that could potentially be used for gene doping is IGF-1.

US researchers has inserted IGF-1 into the muscles of mice. Humans have this gene as well, and our muscles make IGF-1 to repair themselves. But as we get older, our muscles make less and less of it. The muscles of mice given IGF-1 got on the order of 15 to 20 percent stronger without the animals doing anything. So the introduction of this gene which caused a higher production of IGF-1 caused the muscles to get stronger without any exercise. With exercise the gene altered mice muscles became 30 percent stronger.

According to Brad Kloza in ScienCentral News of the 7 December 2005 the US researchers responsible for the study has gotten hundreds of emails from athletes and coaches who want to test the technique – regardless of safety guarantees. While declining their requests, the willingness to try this untested therapy has convinced the researchers that gene doping will become a reality.

In the same article Richard Pound, president of the WADA is quoted as saying “There will be, if not countries, there will be people in some countries that are going to be prepared to try it. And unfortunately that’s human nature.”

Athletes are looking for something that gives them the edge over the competition. Some are willing to take a risk to gain a benefit.

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald has a piece by Environment Writer Wendy Frew in which she quotes Dr Chuck Benbrook as follows:

“Across the south-eastern US, where soybean and cotton farmers have relied almost exclusively on (genetic engineering) technology for several years, the system is on the brink of collapse, the volume of herbicide used is setting new records and farmers’ profit margins are shrinking”.

Benbrook is visiting Australia for two weeks at the invitation of the organics industry to talk down GM, click here for more information on the tour.

I heard him on ABC Radio National’s Bush Telegraph Program yesterday, have the transcript from a press conference he gave in Canberra last Tuesday and I attended a talk he gave in Brisbane last Friday.

He generally focuses on soybeans, claiming that herbicide usage in soybeans initially dropped with the adoption of GM soy, but that usage subsequently increased with the advent of herbicide resistance and is now several time what it was before US farmers started growing GM soy.

Benbrook has stated that he uses official data, the data in reports that come out in May each year from the United States Department of Agriculture.

It is tedious extracting the information from these reports. I have spent much of this morning going thought the reports and extract figures on pesticide useage in soybean from here: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/nassr/field/pcp-bban/ and yield in soybeans from here http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/nassr/other/pcu-bb/#field .

Based on this information I have constructed the following table:

It would seem that with the advent of GM soy, the total amount of herbicide used on a per acre basis in the US has hardly changed and that the yield on a per acre basis has hardly changed.

The area planted to soybeans has increased with the 2004 USDA report stating that a total of 3.14 billion bushels of soybeans were harvested last year which is the largest soybean harvest in US crop history. This harvest also had the highest yield on record at 42.5 bushels/acre.

It is a bit hard to reconcile these figures with Benbrook’s ascertain that the industry is on the “brink of collapse” – see above quote from Sydney Morning Herald.

GM soy was first planted in 1996 and this year 87 percent of the total area planted to soybeans in the US has been planted to GM soy.

There has been no spectacular increase in yield or spectacular reduction in herbicide usage, but as Benbrook conceded in the interview on radio national yesterday, GM soy was developed to make weed control easier and facilitate use of the more environmentally-friendly herbicide glyphosate.

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I would really appreciate it if someone else when through and extracted the figures for cotton in the US – for both yield and herbicide usage.

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UPDATE 9.30pm (in Brisbane), 7TH DECEMBER 2005

Christopher Preston has extracted the cotton figures as follows. Thanks Chris!