GMO Pundit a.k.a. David Tribe: Misleading and inacurate claims by Jeffrey Smith about GM crops exposed in The Weekly Times

REPORTED IN FULL IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST with added links by GMO Pundit.

Scare tactics fail in anti-GM battle

The Weekly Times, Melbourne November 28th 2007

A high profile book warning against GM crops is short on scientific credibility, says Peter Hunt

Anti-GM campaigners rolled out "acclaimed" author Jeffrey Smith this month to fire some last-gasp shots at the Victorian and other state governments as they prepared to lift their bans on GM food crops.

Mr Smith's book Genetic Roulette makes claims based on what appear to be hard science that would alarm any reader.
The book warns GM crops are not only toxic, they could lead to the creation of new super diseases, endanger children and the unborn and cause infertility in rats, pigs and cows.

But what every politician, farmer and journalist should be doing is conducting a simple test to determine the credibility of Mr Smith's work.

Open the book, to any page you like and test Mr Smith's claims against the scientific references listed in the back of his book.

Page 145
Mr Smith claims: "Glufosinate-tolerant crops may produce herbicide inside our intestines." He states Liberty Link crops convert the Liberty (glufosinate ammonium) herbicide into a harmless derivative called NAG (N-acetyl-L-glufosinate).

He argues:"The problem is that NAG, which is not naturally present in plants, remains there and accumulates with every subsequent spray. Thus when we eat these GM crops, we consume NAG.

"Once the NAG is inside our digestive system, some of it may ( be re-transformed back into the toxic herbicide.

"In rats fed NAG, for example, 10 per cent of it was converted back into glufosinate by the time it was excreted in the faeces." (Reference 6) What Mr Smith doesn't tell you is that the international Food and Agriculture Organisation report he is quoting states: "The Meeting concluded that the intake of residues of glufosinate ammonium resulting from its uses, that have been considered by the JMPR (Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues), is unlikely to present a public health concern."

The other important point to make is that NAG quickly breaks down in the plant and does not accumulate in the way Mr Smith claims.

(See GMO Pundit Post Good News About Glufosinate (Liberty) Herbicide: Most is washed off in Rain, Stays Put in Leaves, Or Flushed Down The Toilet.)

Page 49
Mr Smith states that research by "leading scientist" Irina Ermakova at the Russian Institute of Higher Nervous Activity suggests feeding GM soy to pregnant rats leads to the stunting and premature death of their young.

Mr Smith even leads off this chapter of the book with the claim that "most offspring of rats fed Roundup Ready soy died within three weeks".

It all sounds very worrying.

Why is it then, that every other study by scientists across the globe has failed to fmd any impact on rats and other mammals from eating GM Roundup Ready soy?

It turns out that our "leading scientist", Dr Ermakova, admitted in an interview in the prestigious Nature Biotech journal last September that:

She bought the RR soybeans and protein isolate used in her rat feeding trials from ADM in the Netherlands. ADM does not sell (and has never sold) pure 100 per cent RR soybean preparations.

She ignored the standard scientific practice of submitting her research for peer review before publicising her results. Dr Ermakova has still not submitted her work to peer review for publication.

Dr Ermakova fed her control group of rats a product called Arcon SJ, which is a soy protein concentrate that contains 70 per cent protein as opposed to the other rats in her trial, which were fed soy beans containing 40-45 per cent protein.

Dr Ermakova did not record the exact dietary composition of each feed or the amount each rat ate. There were only five rats in each experimental group in her study. The international standard for such a feeding trial is 20-25 rats per group, to ensure statistical rigour.

(See GMO Pundit Post Toxicity tests are tricky for tyro toxicologists to try.)

Page 96
Mr Smith headlines this chapter with: "Sheep died after grazing in Bt cotton fields".

After the cotton harvest, sheep grazed continuously on Bt cotton. Reports from four villages revealed that about 25 per cent of sheep died within a week." One Indian shepherd who ate the flesh of one of these dead sheep even reported suffering from diarrhoea.

Well that does sound awful.

But anyone with even just a smattering of rural knowledge would soon realise that these sheep are more likely to have suffered from nitrate poisoning or the impact of consuming cotton, which contains high levels of tannin.
Mr Smith writes the sheep were grazed continuously on the Bt cotton, eating the tender leaves and pods of the plants.

What's remarkable about Mr Smith's claims about GM crops containing Bt is that this is the same compound found in the bacterial sprays used by many of the organic farmers who funded his book.

So, why is it that our scientific community struggles to counter the claims of anti-GM activists like Mr Smith? The answer lies in the fact , that Mr Smith can fire off 60-odd claims that create fear and panic.
In contrast, scientists' responses to these claims are often complex, take time to understand and cannot be delivered in snappy little phrases.

(GMO Pundit comment: Similar qualifications can be made about other scare stories which mention how stock suffer after transfer to new diet. Common agricultural explanations like grain-bloat after shifting steers from pasture to grain, or mould-toxins in rain affected cereal feeds have to be discussed as likely alternatives. Unless of course you really want to carry out a witch hunt.)