NaturallySavvy's "Top Ten Reasons to Avoid GMOs"

A few days ago, I found myself reading a list entitled "What's So Bad About GMOs? Top Ten Reasons to Avoid Them" (archived here). I first stumbled upon NaturallySavvy.com when they were demonstrating the "toxic" properties in tampons by performing an experiment worthy of a 3rd grade science fair project, in efforts to scare the bejezuz out of you and convince you that their organic femcare products were much better.

I'm going to look over this Top Ten List and figure out if there's any truth to it. I've always tried to have a positive tone in what I write, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to fail miserably today.

(NOTE: I started writing this post back in November, soon after half of the people where I worked had gotten laid off, including myself. Yes... #ScientistsArePeople who get laid off, in this case due to corporate restructuring. Needless to say, I had a lot of pent up rage, so this was probably a healthy way to funnel all that energy. In retrospect, the post seems a bit rage-y, but I'm still going to go ahead and publish it, in the hopes that someone will look for an article debunking the NaturallySavvy piece. If you're not in the mood to read snark, stop reading after bullet #1. Consider yourself warned.)

Where's the syringe in the corn??
Or the creepy scientist that always hovers over GMO corn?

1. Are they safe? The article from NaturalSavvy says that although seed developers claim that GMOs have met safety requirements, "long term studies haven't been done on their impact to the human body." Seed developers are not the bodies that claim that GMOs have met safety requirements. The FDA, USDA, and other regulatory bodies are. Just because the writers at NaturallySavvy feel that long term studies are needed doesn't make it so. In the past, I've reviewed why long term human studies are difficult to conduct. Briefly, since GMOs are substantially equivalent to their non-GMO counterparts, there is generally no mechanism by which there could be an impact on the human body. Tests for allergenicity are conducted to ensure that the protein that is introduced is not an allergen. Most people expect GMOs to be tested like drugs, but drugs are designed to cause a change in the human body. Since drugs are altering something in humans, it's important to know the side-effects that they may cause and whether or not they're causing the anticipated effect (i.e. is it better than placebo). In contrast, GMOs are designed to be equivalent to their non-GE counterparts. GE crops which ARE designed to impact human health, such as vitamin-A enriched rice (i.e. Golden Rice), should be tested in humans.

2. Known health risks: The article from Natural Savvy states: "What we do know is that when genetic modification happens, genes are forced to express certain traits (including pesticides). To do this, the scientists "turn on" all the gene's components, which can mean releasing allergens that would normally not be expressed in a non-GMO variety. Experts like Jeffrey Smith suggest this is directly related to the rise in health issues." For the first time in this blog's history, I will ask: "WTF??" What does that string of random, science-y sounding words even mean? To express certain traits, scientists turn on all the gene's components? And somehow turning on "gene components" means that this would release allergens? And then the article has the major cojones to say that Jeffrey Smith, a person with no scientific training, is an "expert"?? In case you aren't familiar with my blog's history, I spent over half a year reading the section on Health Risks from Jeffrey Smith's website and failed to find a single one that was true. Anyway, I can't debunk this because that word salad is actually verbal diarrhea of the Chipotle variety. 

3. Heavy use of toxic pesticides and herbicides: The article claims "By design, genetically modified seeds require pesticides and herbicides." That is inaccurate in the sense that some genetically modified crops designed to withstand herbicides. At the same time, no GMO requires herbicides: farmers can technically choose not to apply any. Most importantly, there are GMOs that have nothing to do with pesticides/herbicides, such as the Rainbow papaya, which was designed to be resistant to the ring-spot virus, and saved Hawaii's papaya industry. And what about the Innate potato, which resists bruising and browning and will consequently cut back on food waste? Transgenesis is a method used to generate crops and lumping all the crops generated with the technique into a single category is disingenuous. It is important to note that there are non-GE crops made to resist pesticides as well, such as Clearfield seeds (made through mutagenesis) or SU canola (made by gene editing).

4. Pesticides and digestive health: The article claims that pesticides "negatively impact the gut bacteria of humans" and points to Jeffrey Smith's movie as a evidence. A movie does not evidence make. Show me the data. Unfortunately, documentaries are a narrative and are not peer reviewed. The film makers can choose to portray only one story/perspective in that narrative, and as such, they are often highly biased.

In the past I've written on the topic of GMOs and the gut microbiome, and have reviewed several papers on the topic. None of the papers point to negative health impact. But don't let that get in the way of the outstanding evidence in the movie!

I'm losing all hope for this Top Ten list from Naturally Savvy...

5. Cancer: The top ten list from Natural Savvy states: "Both pesticides and GMOs have been connected with an increased risk of certain types of cancer. There are additional health concerns too including reproductive issues, autism and even heart disease." The reference in that statement is to a news article from 2012 that covers the publication of a scientific article which has since been retracted due to its inherent crumminess and republished elsewhere. Many scientists and organizations have written about the notorious Seralini study, which was a 2-year feeding study on rats claiming that the GM feed and low levels of glyphosate cause tumors and other health impacts. Despite claims from activists that the findings from the paper were ignored or that institutions were paid off to refute the paper, Seralini's paper led to several in-depth reviews and studies (see information here from the EFSA and information here about the GRACE project).

As for the sentence about alleged reproductive issues, autism, and even heart disease: no, no, and what???

6. Environmental impact: Naturally Savvy claims: "GMO crops and their companion pesticides and herbicides wreak havoc on the environment including polluting air, water and soil. Glyphosate—marketed by Monsanto as the herbicide Roundup—is in effect, an antibiotic, which can destroy soil quality and thus impair the plant's nutritional value as well." You know, all the farmers that I've spoken to say that they keep buying GM seed year after year because it destroys their soil quality and consequently, the crops. They don't care if the crops have lower yield due to the soil that's been destroyed. They just want to leave their mark in the world by contributing to the environment's demise.

Seriously, how is it possible that this article has 15K facebook likes??

7. Superbugs and superweeds: Naturally Savvy claims: "Despite the claims that pesticides and GMO crops can relieve farmers of crop-destroying insects and plants, the opposite is showing to be true. Farmers in the Midwest are now battling superbugs and superweeds resistant to pesticides. They're damaging crops and farm equipment and costing the farmers more money in having to apply heavier doses of toxic pesticides." Pesticide and herbicide resistance is not unique to GMOs. It's evolution in action. There's even a paper describing how pulling weeds by hand can give rise to superweeds. Thinking that GMOs are to blame for pesticide/herbicide tolerance narrows the scope of the issue and deters efforts of finding genuine solutions to the problem. But hey, let's not let facts get in the way of NaturallySavvy's top ten list!

8. Patent issues: "At the core of the GMO industry is the corporate ownership of seed and seed patents. Companies like Monsanto are notorious for suing small farmers for saving seeds or if GMO crop drift pollinates on their land." Farmers moved away from saving seeds quite some time ago, primarily due to hybrid vigor, meaning that the seeds that farmers buy perform much better than the seeds they replant, and it's not just for GMOs. Additionally, farmers have plenty of options on the market. If they do not like the contracts that biotech companies such as Monsanto make them sign, then they can find different seeds. Monsanto has taken farmers to court for having broken this contract. Additionally, such contracts are not unique to GMOs, and farmers have been sued by companies other than Monsanto for replanting non-GMO seeds. As for lawsuits due to "GMO crop drift" pollination, I rebut your pure and utter BS with this lawsuit: OSGATA vs Monsanto, where Organic Food and Seed distributors together with anti-GMO activists tried to invalidate several of Monsanto's patents due to the possibility of a lawsuit due to inadvertent contamination. You read that correctly. Organic Food and Seed Distributors took Monsanto to court. When the judge asked them for evidence that Monsanto might sue them for inadvertent contamination "The appellants concede that Monsanto has never specifically alleged that they infringe its patents, nor threatened suit against them. Nevertheless, the appellants contend that in light of Monsanto’s evident history of aggressive assertion of its transgenic seed patents against other growers and sellers (144 suits and 700 settlements), they must assume that if they infringe those patents, they will also be sued—even if they only infringe inadvertently." Just to make that absolutely clear, Organic Food and Seed Distributors could find no evidence that Monsanto has threatened to sue them due to inadvertent contamination, and based their entire case (which was thrown out) on the possibility that Monsanto might sue them.

See what I did there, NaturallySavvy? I provided an original source that is relevant to the argument.

9. Corporate protection: "Earlier this year, the U.S. government passed a bill nicknamed the "Monsanto Protection Act." In essence, it grants biotech companies immunity from the courts, even if a judge determines it's unlawful to plant GMO crops, the companies can do it anyway." It's a scientific fact that if you add "Monsanto" to anything, it becomes 1048 times scarier. How do I know this? Well, truthiness is on my side and my gut tells me so.

You know what? I'm not even going to bother with this one, since the act already expired. If you're curious about it, read this article that goes over the legislation.

10. Prolific presence: "Whether or not GMOs are safe has yet to be determined, yet every day, millions of Americans eat them unknowingly due to the lack of labeling requirements. Are you a lab rat? Don't you at least have the right to know what you're eating?" You know what, NaturallySavvy? I think that your readers have the right to know when they're being deceived. Because when the leading scientific organizations in the world state that GMOs are no more risky than traditionally bred crops and when the scientific literature overwhelming supports the relative safety of GMOs, then a scientific consensus is formed. You're trying to scare your readers into buying whatever organic, non-GMO nonsense is for sale on your site. And no. I'm not a lab rat, any more than you're a lab rat for eating organically grown pluots. How long were those tested? Pluots have genes from plums AND APRICOTS!!! That's NOT natural! It took scientists decades to make pluots because these frankenfruits don't happen naturally. Don't you have the right to know what variety of pluots are in your organic Kashi? Oh, the horror!!! WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!

And NaturallySavvy? Despite having infinite combinations of scary words at your disposal and the ability to interject science-y words to give your list the aura of truthiness, your outline of arguments #1 and #10 on your list are the same. You should consider having a serious chat with the author of the piece. Wait... The author is also the Founder and "Chief Passionista" of your company??

No comment...

Review of "Compositional differences in soybeans on the market: Glyphosate accumulates in Roundup Ready GM soybeans"

Soy bean field with irrigation system.
Wikimedia Commons. Image by Dwight Burdette.

A friend asked me to review the paper entitled "Compositional differences in soybeans on the market" (free available here), so I thought I'd make my comments publicly available. I'm going to read the paper first, provide comments as I go along, and then find reviews online (if any exist).

The paper starts by outlining the principle of substantial equivalence, meaning that GMOs have the same nutritional content than their unmodified counterparts. The authors outline that studies examining substantial equivalence for Round-Up Ready soybean were performed early on, but not when treated with Round-Up. A follow-up study found substantial equivalence when the soy was sprayed with Round-Up, but didn't examine how much glyphosate accumulated in the plant. It is the authors' hypothesis that this is a flaw and their study is designed to examine this question (i.e. is GMO Round-Up Ready soy substantially equivalent to its non-GMO counterpart when sprayed with Round-Up, and how much Round-Up accumulates). They hypothesize that high levels of glyphosate may affect plant metabolism. The authors point out that USDA data highlights that glyphosate use is increasing, so this question is all the more important.

I pause here to note that the authors do not clarify if this is glyphosate use per acre, or total glyphosate use. If I owned a house with 0.5 acre backyard ten years ago and now owned a house with 10 acre yard, and I used weed killers on both properties, then of course the total amount of weed killer I used would show an increase, simply because I have more land. But that may not mean that I've been using more weed killer per acre.

In their study, they examine 31 samples of soybeans grown in the state of Iowa to examine their two questions. They examined 3 different types of soy:
1) Round-Up Ready Soy
2) Conventional Soy possibly sprayed with other pesticides
3) Organic Soy bean which would have no glyphosate residues

The authors then list the variety of soy bean and how they were grown. They collected 3 kilos of soy from 31 different farmers, and it seems very odd to me that they'd select different varieties of soy and different methods of treatment for each category. Why wouldn't they try to find 31 farmers that used the same type of seed? The authors don't specify if the conventional soy is the isogenic variety to the Round-Up Ready soy. This is a key issue given the question they're trying to answer: for example, if I did a study on apples and collected apples from 31 different farmers, you'd want them all to be of the same variety rather then having some Red Delicious, some Fuji, etc.  Otherwise, it's not really an apples to apples comparison. Ha!! Get it???

So, they did a bunch of analyses on the soy beans. They found residues of glyphosate and one of the compounds it breaks down into in all the GM-soy, but not the conventional or organic (oddly enough, their graph doesn't have error bars...). Then, they did statistics on nutritional content and the authors highlight some of the differences (it's also worth nothing that they highlight measurements where the organic category had higher measurements, but not where GM/conventional had higher measurements). The authors then cluster the soy samples based on the results and find that the three different categories tend to group together.

Then the authors go on to reject the null-hypothesis of substantial equivalence. They highlight that their paper identified glyphosate residues in the crops at higher levels than had been hypothesized. They highlight the "toxicity" of Round-Up by citing Seralini (minus 200 points for citing Seralini).

My main comment, as I've mentioned in the past, is that substantial equivalence does not mean identical: "Substantial equivalence is often confused for identicality, however, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations states that substantial equivalence “is established by a demonstration that the characteristics assessed for the genetically modified organism, or the specific food product derived therefrom, are equivalent to the same characteristics of the conventional comparator. The levels and variation for characteristics in the genetically modified organism must be within the natural range of variation for those characteristics considered in the comparator and be based upon an appropriate analysis of data”" (emphasis has been added)

Also, the levels of glyphosate are provided and the authors point out that these are below the maximum permissible levels. So I'm not sure what their problemo is.

So, I searched for reviews of the paper and found one on GMOanswers, written by someone at Monsanto. They too, made the same criticism as me about the seeds: "When the authors collected the soybean varieties for this study, they separated them into the three groups — organic, conventional and GM. Unfortunately, each group contained different soybean varieties, with no overlap (with one exception) of varieties between the three groups, so each group was already inherently different from the others. Even the authors acknowledge that different varieties can have widely different seed composition. Therefore, concluding that any differences between the groups in this study were due to the way the soybeans were grown (organically or not), or the presence/absence of a glyphosate-tolerance gene in the GM varieties, is simply not possible. The three groups are expected to produce different results because they started out with different genetics."

GMOanswers also notes the fact that they were grown in different farms: "Since the plants in this study were not grown together but rather taken from separate fields across a region spanning a 200 km radius, any real differences between the three groups can’t be separated from the variation caused by location, and no reliable conclusion about their nutritional quality can be made. To put this in context, we are looking at satellite imagery to help farmers make more-informed decisions by increments of meters, not miles." I agree with this point, but having a bunch of crops that were grown in the same area could have provided some information if they were the same type of seed. But since they weren't, the different farms makes matters only worse.

GMOanswers puts the findings within the context of natural variation, which I appreciated: "Finally, when we take into account the effects of genetics and location, we see that the compositional differences the authors observed in this design are not unexpected. Protein levels in soybeans generally average ~40 percent dry weight (dwt) but have been shown to range naturally from 34.1 to 56.8 percent dwt (Wilson, 2004). This natural variability can be due to variety, location or environment, and it means that people are already consuming soybeans with larger variability than the differences in soybeans reported here."

The reviewer also notes that glyphosate residues were within permissible levels and then there's a blurb about the safety assessment of pesticides, yada, yada, yada... He also noted the slant that the authors have in not really discussing what pesticide residues in organic food means.

Amelia Jordan, whom I've interviewed in my series "Better Know a Scientist", did a review on Skepti-forum, and highlighted several other issues: the fact that there's no information on how the organic crops were treated, how the soil was treated in any of the farms, and very importantly, the
fact that 31 samples for a study with this much variability in a number of factors is very, very low.

All in all, I don't think the study is conducted well enough to draw any meaningful conclusion, especially not the one that they're trying to draw which is that organic food is "better" than GM. Their finding about glyphosate is interesting and I think that future studies that examine compositional differences between pesticide/herbicide tolerant crops and controls should do similar analyses, but the measurements in this study have been deemed to be safe.