No free lunch except GMO-free menu

A seminar being held in Bangor next week on genetically engineered foods (“Biotechnology: Boon or Boondoggle”) purports to be balanced pro and con, but the list of participants shows heavy disproportion on the side of bureaucratic risk managers and “myth” dispellers – the usual suspects who rely on corporations for funding of bioengineered strains for what they claim to be enhanced crop resistance, toleration of inclement weather, and nutritional value.

One exception among the panelists, Charles Benbrook, has written that genetically modified organism, or GMO, crops will reduce diversity on farms, reduce farm profits, and make commercial farms even less sustainable than they already are. He has offered a way to decrease reliance on chemical pesticides in order to spare us the public health hazards and environmental dangers they pose. But otherwise the forum appears deeply biased in favor of “Frankenfood” developers: Monsanto, Novartis, Dupont, et al.

There are many reasons to oppose biomanipulation of food crops – arguably the most pernicious being the alteration of seeds to withstand spraying with Roundup, which is therefore saturating the soil, water and air more heavily in the process of killing weeds around cotton, corn, soy and (soon) wheat.

The pesticides are harming humans and wildlife, too. To make Roundup-ready seeds legal, the Environmental Protection Agency had to triple the amount of glyphosate (Roundup) residues allowed on crops. A recent study by the Lymphoma Foundation (lymphomahelp.org) shows a statistical link between glyphosate (along with other pesticides) and lymphoma. Higher incidence of lymphoma is recorded among farm workers, but we are all at risk, regardless of how well we safeguard ourselves and our children and pets.

Benbrook and others have warned against another way of modifying seeds (implantation with a Bt gene) so that the crop itself becomes toxic to particular pests, including some beneficial insects. The problem magnifies when, like humans who overuse antibiotics, pests become resistant, leaving Bt ineffective not only for the GMO scientist but also for its most important user – the organic farmer, for whom this is the least-toxic insecticide of last resort. The Bt engineered into every cell of a food source is a different form of the toxin – an activated form and a form that obviously cannot be washed off.

An estimated two-thirds of foods on supermarket shelves contain GMOs, so unless the lunch provided at the Agriculture Department forum on Nov. 14 (at the Bangor Motor Inn conference center) is certified organic, there is every reason to expect that attendees will be served a bioengineered buffet. How ironic. Here, if anywhere, consumers must have the right of informed choice: organic or genetically modified.

I suggest stating a clear preference when registering.

Call 287-2731 or e-mail paul- gregory@STATE.ME.US today.

Jody Spear is a resident of Harborside.