Is it Time for Genetically Modified Wheat?

Bob Quinn | President, KAMUT

Good afternoon. My name is Bob Quinn. I’m from Big Sandy, Montana, where I’ve been a farmer for over 30 years; I’m a third generation wheat farmer. I was raised there, my grandfather started the farm in 1919, and my father was raised there. I went to the local schools in Big Sandy, came to MSU for a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Plant Pathology and Botany, and then went to UC Davis for a PhD in plant biochemistry. I returned to the farm in 1978 to raise my family.

Today I’ve come to talk about a subject that I think is very important, entitled, “Is it time for GMO Wheat?”

I would like today to raise a warning voice to both consumers and grain growers, not only in Montana but throughout the country, concerning the introduction of GMO wheat in its present form.

The debate over genetically modified organisms, or GMO, has gone on a long time now. The multi-national companies who control and support the introduction of GMOs continually preach that their product is absolutely safe and necessary to support a growing world’s population. I believe that over the past few years, since the beginning of the debate, it has been focused on the wrong topic. The topic is not whether GMOs are good or bad, but rather how the owners of the patents are acting and how they are promoting and controlling the introduction of this technology.

To tell you the truth, I have five primary concerns. Most of these, as you will see, have to do with the owners of the patents. The first concern I have is the lack of third party, independent testing for the effects of GMOs on health. The second is the lack of responsibility by the GMO patent owners to pay for losses or damage created by the technology. The third concern I have is the lack of labeling requirements for GMO foods in this country. The fourth concern is the lack of demand for GMO wheat by our overseas customers. And the fifth is the lack of diversity created by GMOs and the resulting concentration and ownership and control of our food production systems, which is being concentrated into the hands of a few.

First let me summarize briefly what GMOs are. A genetically modified organism is an organism which could never appear in nature as a result of normal breeding programs such as: natural selection, creating hybrids by crossing closely related organisms with different traits, or slightly modifying DNA of an organism by radiation or by chemicals which produce different traits in that organism.

GMOs are created in a completely different way.

They are the result of the introduction of genetic material from a completely foreign species to the one that is being changed. That would never happen in conventional breeding programs. For example, genes from fish and from bacteria have routinely been placed into plants. The fact that man has created something that does not exist in nature does not mean that it is inherently bad or that we should shun it. However, creating new foods from organisms or parts of organisms not normally used for foods in our daily diets without thoroughly testing the results of eating those foods I believe is a severe problem.

The owners of these new patents claim that there is no substantial difference between their new plants and the original, so they can be exempt from further testing that is required before new plant products are introduced into our food chain. Specific desired traits, such as resistance to lethal chemicals like Roundup to make Roundup Ready Soybeans, or the addition of toxin for a bacterium to improve a plant’s resistance to attacks by insects such as Bt corn, are introduced from foreign pieces of DNA that would never happen in nature.

We have already seen unintended consequences of these experiments, such as the destruction of non-target pollinators by the insecticide in these plants, as well as the rise of new strains of insecticide resistant insects, which once again attack the plants. The same problem has also been seen in Roundup Ready plants where the unintended result is that we have seen the rise of super weeds, which are resistant to this strong herbicide. They are now more difficult to control.

There’s another problem with these GMOs however. The designated traits which people are looking for can be seen and can be tested for. But other traits which exist have no way to be detected and have no way to be tested for. The problem of unknown consequences brings me to the first concern I have. I’d like to share with you a story that illustrates this concern.

Several years ago in the UK, a professor by the name of Dr. Árpád Pusztai was working in a research laboratory for the sole purpose of demonstrating once and for all that GMO foods were safe. He designed an experiment that he believed would do that. He was a very strong supporter of GMOs and came up with the idea of taking a potato, which had been altered by the insertion of an insecticide to protect that plant against insects and comparing it to a non-GMO potato, and then comparing it to a further control with a non-GMO potato which had the insecticide added to it as a free chemical. So he was trying to eliminate the possibility that, if the GMO potato caused any trouble, the trouble was being caused by the presence of the insecticide.

When he finished the study he found that the non-GMO potato had no problems, not a surprise. The non-GMO with the insecticide also created no trouble. But to his surprise the GMO potato showed significant problems that caused deterioration in organ systems such as the liver and the kidney. When he had a press release to discuss these findings, within a few hours the institute received more than one phone call from the prime minister’s office in London.

By the next day the man had lost his job, he’d been slapped with a court-issued gag order, and all of his notes and papers confiscated.

The result was that it took an Act of Parliament to restore his papers to him and remove his gag order so that he could testify before Parliament. After he received his papers back he was able to finish publication, which he submitted to The Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious research journals. They published it. But instead of the scientists of the world offering to repeat the experiment with other GMO plants, there was a deluge of criticism for him and his work. Of course it’s not hard to imagine what the source of that was: the owners of the patents of course.

If you really would like to know more about this study I would encourage you to Google “GMO potato study in UK.” Read it for yourself. There are many other interesting stories about research that has been conducted that you will find there.

We have seen our government turn a deaf ear to demands and requests for further research that guards the health concerns that people have seen after they and their animals have eaten GMO foods. Many people, after consuming GMO foods, feel types of negative responses. Those who feed it to their animals are seeing reduction in fertility rates. But without proper research studying these observations we really don’t have any idea what is actually happening, or what is the root cause of these problems.

But I think we should never be afraid to ask the hard questions, to demand before these patented foods are released, that the proper studies have been done to ensure they are safe for us.

In the past our food has only contained small portions of GMOs. For example soymeal, soy oil, corn oil, and corn sweeteners have made up a small percentage of the total food that GMOs are present in. This however will all change when we start seeing GMO wheat on the market. When that is made into bread, suddenly the majority of the product that you eat will be a GMO-sourced material, not just a small percentage.

Instead of eating a small percentage of material, your daily bread will be made up of a majority of GMO material. You’ll be eating an increased concentration of GMO without any idea of what the consequences might be for you or your family. With the growing concerns about the sensitivities people are having about modern wheat, with more and more demand for gluten-free products, I think it is a great mistake to add another level of adulteration to the staff of life and to add it to our daily bread before we have adequately looked at the research which might determine if it is safe or not safe.

My second concern is the willingness of the patent owners to claim full jurisdiction and rights of ownership so exclusively, that they are mandating that farmers not be able to replant their seeds, while they carefully avoid any liability and responsibility which normally comes with ownership of a patent. If pollen drift allows their seed to contaminate a non-GMO feed which causes a loss of market for that farmer due to that contamination, there is no compensation for that innocent farmer who has lost that market and profit. If GMO crops cross with native plants in the environment, there is no plan to reclaim them from the wild. If the entire market is lost, such as the entire Canadian market for canola in Europe was lost after most of the Canadian canola crops were contaminated by GMO canola, there is no compensation to the farmers because of the lack of those markets.

Since wheat is normally a self-fertilized plant, it is not likely that pollen drift will be a concern. But there is a great concern for the contamination of grain in the handling facilities. There is no way to visually detect GMO seed in non-GMO grain. We have seen in the past where GMO corn has contaminated non-GMO corn. When corn was shipped to Japan, that entire shipload was rejected at the port. There was a huge loss incurred. But the patent owners refused to pay for any of those losses, except that were required to do so by the courts.

It should be noted that once released, no GMO crop has ever been prevented from contaminating a non-GMO respective crop. On this point we are losing the freedom of choice by both the farmer and the consumer. Before any GMO wheat is released it should be required to look different from non-GMO wheat. This could be done easily by coloring the bran, or by adding a pigment which could be detected by ultra violet; an easy way to be detected and avoid contamination before greater carloads or shiploads are contaminated.

Until these changes are made I believe that patent holders should not be allowed to introduce any new GMO crops.

My third concern is lack of labeling. We often brag about how many rights we enjoy in this country. One we do not enjoy is the right to know what is in our food. We have no idea what is really in our food, whether it contains GMO or does not. In Europe they have this right. I believe it is time for this right to be extended to all Americans so that they can make a choice whether they want to eat products that have GMO in them or not.

When asked, most people believe that they have never eaten GMO products. Yet the truth is that most people eat GMO products almost every day. The companies themselves, the patent owners, have tried to discourage at every turn efforts to label GMO crops in this country and also abroad. If a company is so proud and believes their GMO crop is so good, why wouldn’t they want people to know about it, to support it and buy their product labeled GMO? I think that is really an interesting question. I believe a mother has the right to be able to feed her child non-GMO products if she desires. She should be able to tell easily.

My next concern is probably the most serious. That is the effect GMO wheat will have on the American wheat markets. It is a simple fact that most of Montana’s wheat customers are in Asia. They have repeatedly told us that they will not buy GMO wheat. If our biggest customers do not want GMO wheat, why would we drive them to other suppliers? If we lose the major foreign markets, a surplus will occur in this country and drive the price of wheat down, therefore negatively affecting wheat growers throughout the country.

Dr. Neal Blue, a grain market consultant and former research economist at Ohio State University, in a January 27, 2010 article entitled, “A Review of the Potential Market Impacts of Commercializing GMO Wheat in the U.S.,” concludes that wheat buyers in Europe, Japan, and other Asian countries are likely to switch to GMO-free wheat from other countries if GMO wheat is introduced in this country. As a result the price of U.S. Hard Red Spring Wheat would fall approximately 40 percent; the price of Durum Wheat could drop by 57 percent. It is important to note that these countries not only won’t accept GMO wheat, but they won’t accept any wheat grown in the U.S. if GMO wheat is introduced here.

They know that complete containment and segregation is impossible.

It is the current strategy of the GMO wheat patent holders to introduce their product to the largest wheat growing countries of the world at the same time, so that reluctant customers will have little choice. Do you suppose that these customers will make every effort to find a source of non-GMO wheat, to find a way to reserve their right to choose? We have seen what has happened in the American beef industry when they refused to give the European markets what they wanted, which was non-hormone implanted beef. Because the American beef industry refused to do this, they went to Argentina and that market was lost. Even though today we have many animals that have been raised naturally without hormonal implants, the Europeans are still refusing to buy American beef.

That is a very serious situation and loss for our stock growers. Do we as wheat growers in Montana want to face the same kind of loss from our markets in Asia? When GMO wheat provides us with no economic advantage and only creates the potential for losses of foreign markets and the reduction of prices domestically, why would we want to see this grain introduced at this time?

My last concern is really my largest in the long run: the reduction of diversity and the concentration of power. Whenever any system becomes less diverse, it becomes weaker. The more diverse a system is the more stable it is, the more resilience it has to adversity. It does not matter if we’re talking about the foods we eat, the farm you work, the crops you grow, your factories, your business, our city or state, even your local school or organization, the principle is still the same.

The more monoculture we have in wheat, the more likely a single disease or insect or climate event will wipe out an entire crop. GMO crops including wheat will tend to reduce diversity rather than increase it. Isn’t it a paradox that we spend so much effort and resources maintaining diversity in nature by trying to save species endangered of extinction, while at the same time accepting and promoting a reduction of diversity in the crops we plant and eat?

Imagine the problems we will have if the amount of control and ownership that we are seeing being gathered into a small group of patent owners continues. They currently control a greater and greater share of the world’s food production systems. In the United States alone 75 percent of the corn and soybeans are GMO, controlled by these few patent owners.

Do we now want to add wheat to that list? Do we really want to put the control of our food production in the hands of a few patent owners? That kind of concentration of power and control is never good; history is awash in the abuse of such power and control.

We have been told over and over that GMO foods are necessary to feed the growing world. Yet to date there has been no hard evidence that GMO crops have increased any yields. I would suggest that GMO foods are designed primarily to feed the bank accounts of the patent owners who hold them.

After considering this presentation, I hope you will think seriously about the choices you have before you. I encourage you to ask the hard questions; educate yourself. Spend some time searching out the facts; once armed with those facts write letters and talk to our government officials, speak up in public meetings, write letters to the editor, and talk to your neighbors and friends.

We must help preserve the freedom of choice for our farmers, small businesses, and our consumers, for this and future generations. Freedom of choice is an essential American right. Just as important as preserving bio-diversity, we are preserving our national wealth for future generations.

Let’s not hand over our future to a few corporate giants. Our future and our national wealth are ours to share, not theirs to own.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for your consideration.

Good day.