GMO Crops Could be Banned in L.A.

We're going to attract the ire of pretty much all of you crunchy liberals out there, but we'll say it anyway:

This campaign against GMO foods has gone too far. Sure, we don't want bizarre, unhealthy frankensnacks any more than you do. But consider the bigger picture: Genetically modified foods help feed the world, and a vast majority of the planet doesn't live near the Santa Monica Farmer's Market or Whole Foods, nor could it afford to shop at them if they did.

That's not stopping the L.A. City Council from jumping on the bandwagon, of course:

L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz has submitted an ordinance that would ban the "growing or selling of genetically-modified seeds or plants within the City," according to a summary from his office.

Koretz says "we don't want GMOs growing in Los Angeles ... "

This is one of those ordinances about nothing, the Seinfeld of laws. Because, face it, how many people do you know who are growing or selling GMO seeds or plants within city boundaries?

This isn't exactly farm country.

David King, founder and chair of The Seed Library of Los Angeles, pushed for the law and admits it's largely for show:

"It is more symbolic," he told us. "We're the second largest city in the United States. If Monsanto and other biotech people have their way, they're going to want to sell genetically modified seeds to the home gardener."

Joanne Poyourow, director of the nonprofit group Environmental Change-Makers, states:

This ordinance will protect our school gardens, our home gardens and our community gardens. It will create 502 square miles where we can safely grow precious heirloom vegetables and save our own seeds. Heirloom and open-pollinated seeds are the foundation of a clean, healthy, reliable food supply.

Koretz's office says that 52 percent of L.A. County voted in favor of the statewide mandatory labeling initiative for GMO products that failed on on last November's ballot.

Many vegetables, such as corn, have been highly modified over the years through genetic engineering and selective breeding. So finding purebred forms might be difficult. About 90 percent of corn in the United States is believed to be genetically modified.

Mother Jones:

Since several common ingredients like corn starch and soy protein are predominantly derived from genetically modified crops, it's pretty hard to avoid GM foods altogether. In fact, GMOs are present in 60 to 70 percent of foods on US supermarket shelves ...

Jeff Brown / Flickr

But in terms of buying seeds for home gardens, few you'll find on the market are apparently of the GMO variety.

In any case, this law would be nearly impossible to enforce: So the Mexican grandmother down the block is growing GMO corn in her backyard, and the LAPD is going to pounce? (The draft ordinance we saw doesn't talk enforcement -- it simply directs the City Attorney's office to figure it out).

In many respects, GMO foods feed us, allowing insect- and weather-resistant crops that can be grown year-round and that can even be targeted toward specific nutritional needs.

That's a notion, however, that anti-GMO activists dispute, saying natural crop diversity is the only solution to satiating a burgeoning global population.

"I reject that whole thing," King of the Seed Library says. "The people that feed the world are small farmers. You do battle with nature, you lose. In the long run you're going to find that genetically modified plants are going to be a failure." LA Weekly News

China Pushes Genetically Modified Food

A Chinese farmer harvests corns in rural Jiaozhou city, Shandong province, China, October 2013.

Caught between rising pressures to increase its food resources and popular skepticism over allowing more genetically modified food, China’s government is stepping up a public-relations campaign that could pave the way toward full approval for commercial production of these politically sensitive crops.

In recent months, the agriculture ministry and other state agencies have rolled out a series of statements and publicity events loudly backing the safety of GMO food, ranging from research on cucumbers to taste tests for rice. GMOs is a technical term referring to genetically modified organisms that have had their genetic blueprint artificially re-engineered; for example, corn altered to become bug-resistant.

In China’s central Wuhan city, capital of Hubei province, pro-GMO activists at top state school Huazhong Agriculture University held a weekend shindig offering cake and porridge made from genetically modified “golden rice” – modified to produce more beta-carotene, a form of Vitamin A – grown by the university, the official Xinhua news agency reported Monday. Similar “taste tests” have been staged in more than 20 cities since May, Xinhua said.

On Monday, the Ministry of Agriculture published a statement lauding research by a Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences scientist Huang Sanwen that mapped the genetic code of the lowly cucumber. The research, it noted, was published in Nature Genetics, an influential global journal for high-level genetic research.

Days earlier, the ministry had put out an extensive question-and-answer essay on its website, aimed at rebutting a series of recent anti-GMO screeds published in the media. The ministry took aim – not for the first time – at an essay published in the nationalist daily Global Times by Peng Guangqian, a People’s Liberation Army major general who warned that it would be strategic foolishness to allow the U.S. to threaten China’s food security by nurturing the Middle Kingdom’s dependence on American genetically modified corn exports. The ministry also identified other media articles, including in the daily China Business News, that it said “revived rumors claiming GMO food causes cancer and affects fertility and again raised panic among people over GMO techniques.”

Fronted by appointed heavyweight academics, the ministry stated that there hasn’t yet been any healthy safety issues irrefutably linked to GMO food. GMO foods “undergo rigorous pre-market safety assessment” and GMO yields were far higher than conventional crops, it said.

The last point is arguably of growing importance to China. The world’s most populous nation is facing, for the first time in 10 years, the possibility that its rice production may be falling. While China’s overall grain harvest this year is likely to remain robust, imports of key grains including corn – around 95% of which are genetically modified strains coming from the U.S. – have been surging since 2010.

“Using domestic and foreign resources, and coordinating between two markets, are an inevitable choice for China,” the ministry said. It added that the U.S. is not only the world’s largest producer of GMO corn, but also its largest consumer.

The public-relations offensive may be a signal that the government is readying itself to open the door to domestic commercial production of GMO crops, a local newspaper suggested in an article.

“The next step will be to increase scientific propaganda for our GMO biotechnology industry, to create an environment of good public opinion, and to accelerate GMO regulatory amendments,” the Beijing News report said Tuesday, citing an unnamed agriculture ministry official. The ministry didn’t reply to a call for comment.

China currently permits the commercial production of GMO tomatoes, cotton, papaya and bell pepper. It allows the import of GMO corn, soybean, canola and cotton for use in animal feed and other non-human consumption. In November 2009, the Ministry of Agriculture granted bio-safety certificates – which allow for domestic field trials – for two pest-resistant varieties of GMO rice and one variety of corn.

The sentiment in the media and China’s Twitter-like microblogging world tend to question the safety of GMO food in a country already awash in toxic-food scandals. For now, an ocean of critical public opinion still separates commercial production of these grains from approval by the agriculture ministry.

But Beijing’s publicity blitz may now no longer be just about a war of wonky words with military theorists and academics. It may be revving up to turn the tide of opinion among the masses. At the taste tests for “golden rice” at Wuhan on Saturday, according to the Xinhua report, volunteer organizers were seen sporting T-shirts with a catchy slogan that said, “Love Science, Support Genetic Modification.” WSJ

– Chuin-wei Yap

Genetically modified crops should be part of Africa’s food future

By Editorial Board, Washington Post

A RECENT DISPATCH in The Post from a village in Tanzania foreshadowed stark choices facing Africa in the decades ahead. Journalist Sharon Schmickle, watching young children eagerly await scoops of corn and beans for lunch, described the conflict in Tanzania between those who suffer from food shortages caused by drought and pestilence and those who hold deep suspicions about the genetic engineering of crops, which might help grow more food. The doubters about genetic modifications seem to have the upper hand in Tanzania at the moment, and that is disturbing.

As a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies points out, genetic engineering in agriculture is not a magic bullet for Africa, but it can help battle pests and diseases, improve nutrition and reduce the use of water and chemicals, all of which would benefit farmers and their families. Genetically modified crops can increase yields, which lag in Africa behind those of the rest of the world.

African countries and research organizations in the Water Efficient Maize for Africa project, for example, have incorporated a gene from a common soil bacterium into corn, enabling plants to produce kernels even when short of water. The genetically modified corn is expected to increase yields by 25 percent during a moderate drought.

Yet this corn is not being tested or planted in Tanzania. The country has adopted some of the most restrictive rules on the continent to govern genetically modified food. A policy of “strict liability” threatens companies or organizations that introduce genetically modified crops, and none has dared to bring such plants to Tanzania’s fields. Scientists are hampered and frustrated.

Africa in general has been slow to accept genetic engineering. Only four nations have commercialized biotech crops: South Africa, Egypt, Sudan and Burkina Faso. Underlying the hesitation is a suspicion that the genetically modified crops are the first wave of malevolent U.S. corporations seeking a toehold in African fields. Since U.S. farmers first adopted genetically modified crops in 1996, some 17 million farmers in 29 countries have followed suit, but Europe has rejected the crops, and European activists have urged Africa to follow suit. There is much talk of a threat to Africa’s “food sovereignty.” This is having some impact, however misguided.

Smallholder farmers — those with less than two hectares — are the backbone of Africa’s agriculture. They face immense difficulties. Fewer than a third of the farmers in sub-Saharan Africa use any type of improved seeds that have been developed through conventional breeding, let alone more advanced, genetically modified varieties. This is the hard reality that can’t be changed overnight by genetic engineering. Surely, there is no harm in a vigorous debate about genetically modified food; if people don’t understand it, the benefits will never be realized. But it is a shame to abandon these crops based on irrational fears and suspicions. If Europeans choose to forego genetically modified food, they can do so without risking hunger. They ought not discourage its use for those village children in Tanzania who are hungry and at the mercy of drought.