The latest production from Consumer Reports, aย 30-page guideย entitled โFrom Crop to Table: Pesticide Use in Produce,โ is a sprawling document. It addressedย the need for people to eat more fruits and vegetables, promoted its own โDietary Risk Indexโ to help consumers make choices based on health and possible pesticide residue and, overall, suggested readers should โbuy organicโ to avoid harmful pesticides.ย It also offered what the editorsย believe are reasons not to eat foods that contain genetically modified ingredients.
Is CR on firm science ground?
The once venerable consumer magazine stumbled again. Its report is based almost entirely on studies that have been refuted or are otherwise out of the scientific mainstream, anti-GMO sloganeering about dangerous pesticides and โsuperweedsโ and, curiously, a bungled discussion about patent issues on seeds and crops.
Theย introduction urged readers to buy organic food to โminimize the effects of pesticides on the environment, workers and yourself.โ It claimed that organic farming uses โno synthetic pesticides, with very few exceptions,โ which is just not accurate. Theย USDA list of pesticides that can be used in organic farming (and at least carry the โUSDA Organicโ label) is extensive.It includes alcohol, chlorine, hydrogen peroxide, ozone, boric acid, sulfates, carbonates, oxides, or silicates of zinc, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, and cobalt. โNon-syntheticโ pesticides include manure ash, strychnine, lead salts, nicotine sulfate (from tobacco dust) and arsenic.
A now famous articleย by Christie Wilcox in Scientific American in 2011 was thought to haveย demolished theย myth once and for all that organic farmers do not use pesticides, but ideological publications, as Consumer Reports has become on this issue, sidestep the science.
In the only section that addressed genetically engineered crops, the CR report differentiated the techniques from traditional plant breeding โbecause it (genetic engineering) requires intensive genetic overwriting to allow for genetic changes that cannot occur in nature.โ That’s just not true. Just last week, for example, word came of yet another anti-GMO myth shattered, the discovery that sweet potatoes are naturally transgenic (no word if CR will callย for a ban or for all sweat potatoes to carry a label). This latest news underscores the fact thatย enetic splicing techniques not only use the same processes that plants themselves use (introduction of new or mutant DNA, insertion with restriction endonucleases, breeding to test for phenotypes), there is no scientific term for โgenetic overwriting.โ
GMO patent scare ignores history
The CR team then veered into a discussion about โethical concerns,โ which revolved around patenting of engineered seeds and plants, claiming that corporations can โclaim ownership of the genetic code,โ that โhas eliminated theโฆage-old practice of saving seed from this yearโs crop for next yearโs planting.โ Not so accurate.ย The historyย of patents and farmingย is far more nuanced.
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During Americaโs colonial days, successful seeds and cultivated plants were closely guarded by farming associations (whose members included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson). After nearly a century of free seeds made available by the US Department of Agriculture, the government passed the Plant Patent Act in 1931, which allowed patent protection on grafted and other non-sexually reproducing crops. Another act, passed in 1971, allowed the same protections on sexually reproducing plants. Both of these acts passed decades before genetically engineered crops were created. So, except for a brief period of free seeds from the US government, this โage-old practiceโ of having control over seeds never really existed; and certainly hasnโt since before World War II.
As far as owning the genetic code, the recent Association for Molecular Pathology versus Myriad Supreme Court decision (on the status of the naturally occurring BRCA gene in breast cancer) has delineated what natural products can be patented and what canโt; the effects of this decision on agriculture have not yet been sorted out.
The report also refers to farmers who have been sued because they are the innocent victim of โgenetic pollution,โ where a farmer plants a genetically modified seed and is sued by the manufacturer for patent infringement. Itย cites the now infamous Bowman case in whichย an Indiana farmer repeatedly planted genetically modified seed, and whose case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Bowman vs. Monsanto Supreme Court decision, handed down in 2013, determined that he acted intentionally–that he stole the genes–and that no such โgenetic pollutionโ even occurred. Consumer Reports did not cite the now two-year old Supreme Court decision.
Other CR missteps
CR alsoย promotedย concerns overย โsuperweeds,โ a non-scientific term used by anti-GMO activists to refer to a supposedlyย unique form of resistance to pesticides used in farming genetically engineered crops. We addressed this misperception recently in the GLP. Oddly, the report claimed that genetically engineered crops resulted in 527 million more pounds of herbicide use. This is misleading because while some herbicide use is up (particularly glyphosate), overall pesticide use (which includes herbicides, fungicides, insectides and rodenticides) has dropped significantly since the introduce of GM crops,ย according to USDA figures. For example, in California, use of organophosphate and carbamate pesticides has dropped by 66% from 1998 to 2009, according to that stateโs Department of Pesticide Regulation. Californiaโs most used pesticide? Sulfur, which is allowed on organic crops.
Consumer Reportsย addressed many more issues than genetically modified food. But, considering the non-profitโs fervent embraceย of anti-GMO activist statements and apparent disregard for scientific information, the report raised even more questions about its rejection ofย empirically based science.
Andrew Porterfieldย is a writer, editor and communications consultant for academic institutions, companies and non-profits in the life sciences. He is based in Camarillo, California. Followย @AMPorterfieldย on Twitter.
