CRUCIAL PAPER 29: German ban on MON810 is legal and based on sound science
This is a clearly written and very important article which defends the German ban on MON810, which was brought in, quite legally, on the basis of new science published in this article:
Bøhn T, Primicerio R, Hessen DO, Traavik T:
Reduced fitness of Daphnia magna fed a Bt-transgenic maize variety.
Arch Environ ContamToxicol 2008, 55:584–592.
The article showed that in fields of MON810 maize, there were significant and negative long-term effects on a well-established aquatic arthropod model organism, Daphnia magna. When compared to its unmodified maize counterpart, it was concluded that the tested Bt- transgenic maize had a lower quality as a feed source. The authors called for greater attention, not only to the runoff material from transgenic agricultural fields but also for the sensitivity of aquatic non-target organisms to transgenic plant products and Bt-transgenic crops.
Although it is obvious to any intelligent human being that Bt crops, with built-in toxins, will be harmful to non-target organisms, Monsanto has tried for years to pretend otherwise, and sought to have the German ban overturned in the courts. It lost its case.
In this article:
Ricroch A, Berge JB, Kuntz M:
Is the German suspension of MON810 maize cultivation scientifically justified?
Transgenic Research 2010, 19:1–12.
Agnes Ricroch and others sought to demonstrate that the Bøhn et al study was flawed -- and of course this latter study was then used tactically and politically by the GM industry to claim that bans on MON810 were flawed scientifically and therefore illegal. Now Thomas Bøhn and his colleagues have fought back, with a point-by-point refutation of the allegations made by their critics. They show convincingly that the study published in Transgenic Research contains i) serious scientific flaws, such as omitting core results and misrepresenting others; ii) inconsistency in how laboratory studies that show negative effects of GM plant exposure should be followed up; and iii) a systematic selection of particular results and/or studies that match their own arguments. Nothing new in any of that...........
This is yet another example of how corrupt practices and even scientific fraud can creep into GM science -- and another example of how the GM industry will stop at nothing to get their way and to achieve a total abandonment of the Precautionary Principle.
MON810 is currently banned in 6 countries within the EU. It should have been banned across Europe long since -- and in the light of this and other science it would be an outrage if EFSA and the EC give it a renewal of existing cultivation consent. (Note: it looks as if the EC is beginning to see sense on this issue, since the latest news is that the Monsanto request for renewed authorisation -- dating back to 2009 -- is going nowhere. The Commission has sent the dossier back to EFSA for further safety evaluation -- in spite of EFSA stating that it has no reason to vary its original opinion about this controversial variety. Par for the course -- EFSA thinks that ALL GM varieties are perfectly safe, no matter what evidence may be brought to its attention.....)
The German ban on GM maize MON810: scientifically justified or unjustified?
Environmental Sciences Europe 2012, by Thomas Bøhn (thomas@genok.org), Raul Primicerio (raul.primicerio@uit.no ) and Terje Traavik (terje.traavik@uit.no)
http://www.enveurope.com/content/24/1/22
Abstract The ongoing controversies over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Europe remain intense. Assessing the risks associated with new technologies is crucial, and becomes particularly important for self-replicating GMOs used in open ecosystems. In general, scientific disagreement and debate is at the core of knowledge generation. However, in the GMO debate, it seems that pre-conceived conclusions can in some cases overshadow real data and factual results of investigations. In this article, we describe how the German ban on the cultivation of MON810 Bt-transgenic maize plant has been criticized for not having a sound scientific justification, and provide arguments for why we disagree with this perspective. We do this by demonstrating in detail how arguments put forward by Agnes Ricroch and colleagues in an article from Transgenic Research are based on i) serious scientific flaws, such as omitting core results and misrepresenting others; ii) inconsistency in how laboratory studies that show negative effects of GM plant exposure should be followed up; and iii) a systematic selection of particular results and/or studies that match their own arguments. We conclude that Ricroch et al. misrepresent and selectively scrutinize certain data only. The effect of this double standard is that those only reading or referring to Ricroch et al. will be seriously misinformed about our study as well as in the discussion on the 2009 German ban of the MON810 GM maize. However, we do not claim that the ban was finally and irreversibly justified by the science referred to, including our own studies within the field. The German ban on MON810 was, and must be, a political decision, guided by valid scientific evidence.