Making the World a Living Hell

[Guest guest]

Well, that was cheery news.

[Guest guest]

Scientists are expressing alarm about the relationship

between the application of a common weed killer to food

crops and the resultant proliferation of potentially

toxic fungal moulds in the harvest. Monsanto's popular

product Roundup, which contains a chemical called

glyphosate is alleged to increase the size of colonies

of the fungus Fusarium, a genus of often very toxic

moulds that occurs naturally in soils and occasionally

invades crops, but usually held in check by other

microbes. If true, these allegations not only call

into question the world's number one weed killer, but

they also jeopardize the world's acceptance of

Monsanto's flagship line of genetically-engineered

" Roundup Ready " crops.

" Glyphosate-treated wheat appeared to have higher

levels of Fusarium head blight (a toxic fungal

disease) than wheat fields where no glyphosate had

been applied. " said Scientist Myriam Fernandez of

the Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre in

Swift Current, Saskatchewan in a recent interview.

Fernandez added " We have not finished analysing the

four years of data yet or written up the study. "

While Fernandez's research recently made headlines

throughout Canada, it was not the first to discuss

the relationship between glyphosate-containing weed

killer formulations and the enhancement of

potentially toxic fungi, but it was the first to

report on the possibility of potentially toxic crop

damage caused by the link in wheat and barley, two

of Canada's most important crops.

According to Dr. Harvey Glick, head of Monsanto's

Scientific Affairs, who remains critical: " It appears

to be that Dr. Fernandez did a field survey looking

at levels of Fusarium and then the factors that might

be related. So, from what I can gather, that was not

a cause and effect. It's just that they saw in the

study area some fields that had higher levels of

Fusarium, for whatever reason, and then they looked

at a list of factors that might be related and one

of them was there was Roundup used in those fields

the previous year.

Maybe, but, over the last two decades, several

scientists from New Zealand to Africa have noticed

and investigated the glyphosate-fusarium

relationship through small-scale experiments in the

relative obscurity of their labs and reporting the

results of their work through the hidden world of

academic journals. The result of all of this work,

is " just under 50 scientific papers, " says

Kremer PhD., a soil scientist at the University of

Missouri. This body work shows an increase in

Fusarium or other microbes after the application of

glyphosate.

Monsanto's Dr. Harvey Glick disagrees: " Roundup is

almost 30 years old and scientists have been

looking at all aspects of its use for at least that

long. So there is a tremendous amount of

information available. And that is why there is

such a high level of confidence that the use of

Roundup, based on all of this earlier work, does

not have any negative impacts on soil microbes...

And a lot of it has been published. "

Dr. Kremer's ongoing research deals with the

effect of glyphosate-fusarium relationship on

soybeans, not just regular soybeans, but " Roundup

Ready " soybeans also. Monsanto has been producing

a series of genetically-engineered " Roundup Ready "

seed stock for various crops including, cotton,

soybean, wheat and corn to be used exclusively

with their successful glyphosate weedkiller

Roundup. " Roundup Ready " crops are themselves

unaffected by the Roundup weedkiller, which will

kill all any competing plants such as weeds in

the same area. Because they are genetically-

engineered, they have not found easy acceptance

in many countries outside the US, and they are

still banned in Canada and Europe.

Dr. Kremer found that in his " Roundup Ready "

soybean experiments that " Glyphosate seems to

stimulate Fusarium in the roots area of the

plants, " to such a degree that he considers the

elevation of Fusarium levels to be glyphosate's

" secondary mode of action. " While he found

enhanced Fusarium colonies in the roots of his

plants, which could potentially reduce the

harvest, he did not find it in the harvested

soybeans themselves. Even so, he expressed

concern about what this accumulation of

Fusarium in the soil could lead to.

Dr. Kremer also noted: " We didn't see

enhancement of Fusarium when other herbicides

were used. " However, in the case of " Roundup

Ready " crops, Roundup is to be used exclusively

or in combination with other chemicals as a

weed killer. To use other weed killers alone

would be a violation of contract.

Thus, if Roundup increases Fusarium levels, then

" Roundup Ready " crops that use Roundup as a weed

killer could become potential disasters,

increasing Fusarium levels in the soil to such

critical levels it could produce an epidemic and

move from field to field throughout a wide area.

In a recent article titled " GM cotton blamed for

disease, " the Farm Weekly, an Australian

publication, predicted that " up to 90 percent of

Australia's cotton belt could be inundated by the

soil borne pathogen Fusarium wilt within the next

decade " due to Roundup Ready cotton.

Fusarium contamination of cereals, such as the

Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) in wheat and barley

that Dr. Fernandez is studying in Saskatchewan

has been responsible for serious crop losses.

About a fifth of the wheat crop in Europe every

year is lost to FHB and in Michigan during 2002

it was estimated that 30-40% of the crops were

destroyed by the infestation. When the mould

passes into the food-chain undetected, Fusarium

epidemics on cereals can have even worse effects:

a Fusarium epidemic of cereals was considered

responsible for thousands of deaths in Russia

during the 1940s and more recently in 2001, it

caused a series of deadly birth defects among

tortilla-eating Mexican-Americans in Brownsville,

Texas.

When cultured on Petri dishes, Fusarium can

display various colours, often ranging from

orange to salmon-coloured, and it has a varying

appearance on different cereals and at different

stages of its life cycle. On wheat and rye it

can appear as a chalky white colour; on barley

it can appear as a black rust, and on oats it

can be black and reddish-orange coloured. Small

amounts of contamination of grains are invisible

to the human eye, and chemical tests have to be

done to detect it. Since such tests are at the

expense of the farmer, minute amounts

continually enter commercial food products. It

is at the higher levels that it can become a

serious problem.

The Fusarium fungus can produce a range of

toxins that are not destroyed in the cooking

process such as vomitoxin, which as its name

suggests, usually produces vomiting and not

death, to the more lethal compounds which

include fumonisin, which can cause cancer and

birth defects to the very lethal chemical

warfare agent fusariotoxin, more often

referred to as T2 toxin.

During 2000, the US Congress planned to use

the fungus Fusarium as a biological control

agent to kill coca crops in Colombia and

another fungus to kill opium poppies in

Afghanistan, but these plans were dropped by

then-president Clinton who was concerned that

the unilateral use of a biological agent would

be perceived by the rest of the world as

biological warfare. The Andean nations,

including Colombia, where it was to be used

in the drug war against coca cultivation

banned its use throughout the region.

Sanho Tree, the director of the Institute for

Policy Studies Drug Policy Project commented

about using a chemical that produces a banned

micro-organism: " The US has supplied tens of

thousands of gallons Roundup to the Colombian

government for use in aerial fumigation of

coca crops. We have been using a fleet of crop

dusters to dump unprecedented amounts of high-

potency glyphosate over hundreds of thousands

of acres in one of the most delicate and bio-

diverse ecosystems in the world. This futile

effort has done little to reduce the

availability of cocaine on our streets, but

now we are learning that a possible side-effect

of this campaign could be the unleashing of a

Fusarium epidemic in Amazon basin. The drug war

has tried in vain to keep cocaine out of

people's noses, but could result instead in

scorching the lungs of the earth. "

Because of the glyphosate-Fusarium link, Canada's

National Farmers Union is already opposing the

introduction of genetically-engineered " Roundup

Ready " wheat, and this issue shows no signs of

going away. Time will only tell if Monsanto will

be able to " fix " the problems of their " Roundup

Ready " crops with more genetic engineering- this

time to control Fusarium--or will their top weed

killer and flagship line of " Roundup Ready " crops

be rejected by today's farmers?

Bigwood is a freelance writer and

investigator specializing in Latin America. A

shorter version of this story was published by IPS.

http://www.counterpunch.org/bigwood08232003.html

[Guest guest]

Thank you Axel! A great article....I wish that this could be heard on the

evening news...we all need to aware of the real dangers of GM crops.

Jannette

Scientists are expressing alarm about the relationship

between the application of a common weed killer to food

crops and the resultant proliferation of potentially

toxic fungal moulds in the harvest. Monsanto's popular

product Roundup, which contains a chemical called

glyphosate is alleged to increase the size of colonies

of the fungus Fusarium, a genus of often very toxic

moulds that occurs naturally in soils and occasionally

invades crops, but usually held in check by other

microbes. If true, these allegations not only call

into question the world's number one weed killer, but

they also jeopardize the world's acceptance of

Monsanto's flagship line of genetically-engineered

" Roundup Ready " crops.

" Glyphosate-treated wheat appeared to have higher

levels of Fusarium head blight (a toxic fungal

disease) than wheat fields where no glyphosate had

been applied. " said Scientist Myriam Fernandez of

the Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre in

Swift Current, Saskatchewan in a recent interview.

[Guest guest]

send it to your local news station, papers, etc.

We carry within us the wonders

we seek without us ~ Sir Browne