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Why urbanites need to worry about
the rural
http://www.nation.com.pk/columns/30-Apr-2014/toxic-warfare-on-the-farm
Toxic
warfare on the farm
April 30, 2014
NAJMA
SADEQUE
When you smell the
insecticide in the air, it is already getting into your lungs. When you eat the
foods that has the insecticides on it, it is getting into your stomach and
destroying your cells. The same goes for food plants that absorb the
insecticides through their root system.” — Just one pained response of an
affected rural in America where every third citizen is a cancer candidate — to
reportage of what agro-chemicals were doing to farmers, their families and
communities everywhere.
When in 2010, Punjab Chief Minister
Shahbaz Sharif rejected Monsanto’s proposal for Pakistan, one credited him with
singular environmental wisdom. It transpired later he turned them down because
Monsanto demanded a royalty fee for every acre that Bt seed was sown on – akin
to sub-letting someone else’s land ! — Also for the right to prosecute farmers
who planted copied seeds or saved seeds; and because Bt cottonseed had no
solution for the Cotton Leaf Curl Virus, the main pest destroying 2-3 million
bales every season.
On Monsanto’s part it was all take and no give, and
Sharif would have none of it. Unfortunately, he’s had a change of heart since.
Agricultural shenanigans not being Mr. Shahbaz
Sharif’s forte, he needs to be informed by neutral sources, not government and
other GM supporters parroting the same sales pitch. Obviously no one told him
that Bt cotton produces up to 4,000 times more toxic Bt than soil
microorganisms, rendering the entire plant poisonous and all-round hazardous.
In early 2011, Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus at
Purdue University and internationally-recognized plant pathologist, wrote
frantically to US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, to warn him
of a new mystery AIDS-like disease. His team discovered a common but infectious
microscopic pathogen that was specifically prevalent in GM crops.
Glyphosate, the primary chemical in Monsanto’s Roundup
herbicide, weakens the plant’s immunity, making it susceptible to the pathogen.
This blocks the plant’s ability to absorb certain vitamins and minerals, and
finally kills it. Nor is the damage limited to plants but also affect humans
and animals that eat the chemically-grown foods. Vast areas of GM farmland have
already died, and many animals consuming GM feed became infertile or suffered
abortions.
Mr. Shahbaz must consider that Bt and the chemicals it
partners with, cause infertility in both men and women. Over 50 pesticides are
classified as hormone disruptors. There are increased miscarriage and
infertility rates and drastic fall in male testosterone levels. Women becoming
pregnant during peak pesticide-use season, face highest risk of birth defects
in newborns — Spina bifida, cleft lip, clubfoot, and Down syndrome. Over 260
studies link pesticides to various cancers, including leukemia and brain,
breast, prostate, bone, lung, liver, bladder, thyroid, and colon cancers.
Today, women have even more to worry about. In late
2012, Canadian scientists conducted a study on women for five basic toxins in
the environment and food system. They found one or more toxins in each and
every woman tested. Pregnant women were passing it on to their children.
Symptoms include cramping, burning, nausea, shock, vomiting, and sore throat.
Among the toxins were Glyphostate and Cry1Ab, the Bt toxin, both Monsanto
hallmarks.
Greenpeace states Cry1Ab could further compound existing problems of antibiotic
resistant infections. Yet these chemicals are classified in USA as Generally
Recognized As Safe (GRAS). Governance doesn’t work there either; political and
financial persuasions do.
In 2012 too, the ‘Institute of Science in Society’
reported that glyphosate in Monsanto’s Roundup was causing both DNA and
cellular damage to mouth and throat cells. Alarmingly, it took only a tiny
amount of Roundup — 200 times below the routine farm-spray strength to do the
damage. As crops and workers get drenched, chromosomal abnormalities develop
and ultimately kill cells.
Earlier this year, the ‘International Journal of
Environmental Research and Public Health’ reiterated these facts, linking
Monsanto’s Roundup to a fatal chronic kidney disease striking down poor farmers
everywhere. It develops mutated insects and kills human kidney cells, even in
low doses. Worryingly, chemically-driven Bt crops currently cover about 40% of
globally cultivated GMO crops.
Just this month we finally discover why even
scientists get fooled. It has to do with how regulatory agencies test
agro-chemicals. How do they evaluate? Turns out no chemical compound is ever
checked in its entirety, as actually sold to and used by farmworkers. Instead,
tests are carried out on a single chemical ‘active’ ingredient, assumed to have
pest or weed-killing action. Manufacturers conveniently exclude mentioning the
additives – known as adjuvants – that boost pest- or weed killing abilities.
Any biologist or chemist knows that various substances
in combination work very differently from the individual components, each on
its own. In other words, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So the
Biomedical Research International (BRI) decided to look at the chemicals not
tested – the supposedly ‘inert’ adjuvants, usually suppressed as confidential
by manufacturers.
The findings of the BRI research were horrific. BRI
tested the toxicity of 9 major agro-chemical formulations used globally on lab
rats but on three human cell lines. In 8 of the 9 formulations, the combined
effects of interactions between multiple chemicals were hundreds or thousands
of times more toxic than the single chemical declared safe by regulators! It
exposed a serious defect in the ‘single-chemical’ testing process.
It means both regulators and corporations are giving a
very inaccurate and misleading picture to farmers and consumers. Products used
not only on farms but on lawns and home-gardens as well are falsely advertised
as safe. A single chemical may not do much harm, but in combination with others
becomes up to 10,000 times more toxic.
In 2010, Bt Cotton seeds by local seed companies and
government institutions were approved, despite unsatisfactorily low toxin and
poor quality. This year more low-quality varieties were introduced. Three
consecutive seasons of failures did nothing to discourage the inexplicable
determination to bulldoze in Bt crops.
The reason why became clear when some scientists and
bureaucrats suddenly took the plea that in view of consistent failures, there
was no choice but to return to Monsanto for all Bt cottonseeds.
Both sides knew the government institutions and local
companies lacked the requisite technical know-how and capacity to produce and
test trial runs. Failure was a foregone conclusion, but well worth the wasted
time for
Monsanto if it brought the government running back to them, translating into a
near monopoly of Pakistan’s cotton economy.
Last week, Governor Punjab Chaudry M Sarwar publicly
declared that Bt Cotton would double our cotton production from 13 to 26
million bales! Would Monsanto give a written guarantee to that effect? No,
because they need their usual escape route of blaming farmers for wrong
practices when things fail.
Decision-makers need to be careful about information fed to
them — local seed companies and Pakistani scientists have already displayed a
conflict of interest by submitting biosafety data copied from Monsanto. And Bt
cotton trials that never had oversight or testing and unsurprisingly failed,
are now advertised for sale anyway.
Whether they admit it or not, the government is not
merely toying with agriculture and the economy, but with our very lives.
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