Puerto Rico host to experiments on ‘pharm crops’ US

By Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

San Juan, Puerto Rico, Oct. 29 (IPS)— Puerto Rico is host to open air field experiments with genetically modified (GM) plants unfit for human consumption as food, according to a recent report by Genetically Engineered (GE) Food Alert, a US-based coalition of environmental and consumer advocacy groups.

The GM plants in question, commonly called “pharm crops,” are produced by introducing mammalian genes into plants like corn, soya, rice, and tobacco. They secrete industrial and pharmaceutical chemicals in their tissues, and are therefore not edible.

The tests are part of an ongoing attempt to “grow” drugs, with the hope that the process will be cheaper than manufacturing.

The chemicals these plants produce include vaccines, growth hormones, clotting agents, industrial enzymes, human antibodies, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs.

The report, titled Manufacturing Drugs and Chemicals in Crops, points out that Puerto Rico is one of four main centers in the United States for these tests. The other three are the states of Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Hawaii.

According to GE Food Alert, the US Department of Agriculture has approved over 300 pharm crop field tests since 1991, in secrecy and with no public debate.

These plants are by no means the only experimental GM crops grown in Puerto Rico. This Caribbean island has been host to 2,296 USDA-approved GM open-air field tests as of January 2001 according to “Raising Risk”, a report by the US Public Interest Research Group and GE Food Alert.

This makes Puerto Rico host to more GM food experiments per square mile than any US state, except Hawaii.

Puerto Rico is not a state. Its residents are US citizens but have no voice or vote in the US Congress or in the United Nations.

Environmental activists, consumer advocates, and organic farmers warn that GM crops are risky, but that the risks of pharm crops are exponentially bigger.

“Just one mistake by a biotech company and we’ll be eating other people’s prescription drugs in our corn flakes,” warned Larry Bohlen, director of health and environment programs at Friends of the Earth, in a press release.

“How will crops that are engineered to produce industrial chemicals or drugs affect soil micro organisms or beneficial insects?,” asks the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, a Canada-based think-tank.

“Will pharmaceutical proteins be altered in unforeseen ways? Could they cause allergies? What if biopharmaceutical crops end up in animal feeds?”

Fears of unapproved GM products accidentally entering the human food supply are not unfounded. In late 2000, traces of Starlink, a variety of GM corn not approved for human consumption, were found in supermarket products in the United States.

No less than 143 million tons of corn were cont
aminated with Starlink, according to its creator, the Europe-based Aventis corporation. Seed companies, farmers, processors, and food makers spent over one billion dollars and six months trying to get rid of this unwanted GM corn.

Critics also point out that GM crops can pollinate wild relatives and non-GM fields, with unforeseeable consequences. The presence of GM corn has already been documented in rural communities in Mexico, even though genetically modified crops are prohibited there.

When asked about genetic engineering in agriculture, Puerto Rico agriculture secretary Luis Rivero-Cubano said that the only such crops in the Caribbean island are experimental.

But Puerto Rico Farmers Association president Ramon Gonzalez has revealed that he plants GM crops in his farm in the town of Salinas. He said that genetically modified crops in Puerto Rico are commercial and include a herbicide-resistant soya plant made by Monsanto and a variety of corn that produces its own bio-pesticide, known as Bt corn.

The soya in question, known as Roundup-ready, can resist repeated applications of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

According to Gonzalez, the harvested GM crops planted here are sold as seed to be planted elsewhere. “Puerto Rico is the preferred place to make seed because our weather permits us to have up to four harvests a year.”

A phone call to the local offices of the US Department of Agriculture proved fruitless, as none of the employees seemed to know anything about genetically engineered crops.

The local office of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was no more helpful. Its spokesman Jose Font stated that agriculture does not concern the EPA unless toxic pesticides are involved.

Local regulatory agencies seem to be unaware of the issue. A spokeswoman for the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board told IPS that since Puerto Rico has no laws or regulations for GM crops, it has no mandate to intervene or investigate.

Navy sonar system blocked by federal court

San Francisco, California, Oct. 31 (ENS)— A federal judge today issued a preliminary injunction stopping the US Navy from deployment of a new high intensity sonar system that could hurt or kill whales, dolphins, seals and sea turtles with its loud signals.

Granting a request by five environmental groups, US Magistrate Judge Elizabeth LaPorte ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service issued the Navy a permit that likely violates federal law.

On July 15, the Navy received its permit to “harass marine mammals” in the course of operating low frequency sonar used to detect submarines while remaining outside the range of their onboard weapons. The Navy has been approved to deploy two ships that use the new sonar system.

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Iraq war could unleash oil spills, toxins, say experts

By Katherine Stapp

New York, New York, Nov. 1 (IPS)— Major casualties of a war with Iraq would be the region’s fragile environment and the health of its inhabitants and combatants, if the last Persian Gulf conflict is anything to judge by, arms experts and activists say.

Eleven years ago, both sides in the Gulf War left Kuwait’s ecosystems in chaos -- Iraq by torching oil wells as its soldiers retreated, and the United States by littering the desert with thousands of rounds of depleted uranium (DU) munitions.

DU is the trace element left over when uranium is enriched; most of the highly radioactive types of uranium are removed for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons.

Used in the Persian Gulf in 1991 and in Kosovo in 1999, DU munitions are prized for their high density and ability to punch through walls and armored vehicles.

According to the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, the US has four weapons that rely on DU and that could be used in a future war with Iraq: the A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft, the Apache and Cobra helicopters, and the M1A1 Abrams Tank.

“These types of weapons will undoubtedly be used as Washington has made it clear it wants to bomb bunkers and kill as many of the Iraqi government leaders as possible,” said John Catalinotto of the New York-based International Action Center, a leading critic of DU.

“This would lead to an even greater amount of DU being spread around Baghdad this time, a city of five million people,” he said.

Although the Pentagon insists that DU is not toxic or radioactive, many Iraqi survivors of the Gulf War believe differently. The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that those most likely to be exposed to DU are aid workers and local populations living and working in contaminated areas.

“The Gulf War is the only indicator for the increase of cancer in Iraq,” Loua’i Latif Kasha, a pathologist and director of Baghdad’s Mansour Hospital, told Reuters news agency last week. “The rate of cancer has risen five to sevenfold more than before 1991.

“Radiation pollution from depleted uranium bombs by itself causes cancer like leukemia and thyroid,” said Kasha.

Some Desert Storm veterans, who now suffer from disabilities and mysterious illnesses, are leery of sending troops back to the region.

“Science has absolutely shown that the illnesses Gulf War veterans face are not as a result of the stressors of war but as a result of exposures, unapproved vaccines, unapproved pills and a myriad of other things that have not yet been researched,” said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center in Washington.

“Our government has ignored the Gulf War veteran experience of 1991. Will America stand by and watch another tragic event occur that could be avoided?” he asked.

The Pentagon carried out numerous studies on DU, and concluded that it poses no significant health threat. It has not changed its stance, despite years of complaints from veterans groups.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and currently president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, wrote in a January 2001 article on DU that: “Because [DU] is radioactive, it can damage cells in the lung, bone, kidney, and lymph glands causing cancer of the bone, lung, kidney, and the white blood cells -- leukemia.”

Caldicott added that, “Gulf War veterans are excreting uranium 238 [DU] in their urine and semen.”

Peace groups and veterans’ associations point out that no adequate explanation has ever been offered for the cluster of symptoms known as “Gulf War Syndrome.”

In April, the Veterans Administration released a report that found that one-third of all troops sent to the Persian Gulf in 1991 have filed claims for medical problems. About 9,600 Desert Storm veterans, of a total of 200,000, have died since the end of the war.

“While we were never sure which combination of factors caused the illness of over 100,000 US service people in the Gulf in 1991, many of the same suspected factors will be present [in a future war],” Catalinotto said.

“DU, widespread vaccinations, exposures to toxic materials destroyed by US bombs will all be there again.”

Aside from DU -- and possibly the use of biological and chemical weapons -- environmentalists warn of more oil spills should US forces invade Iraq, which is sitting on at least 112 billion barrels.

When Iraqi forces pulled out of Kuwait in 1991, they ignited more than 700 oil wells. Eight months elapsed before the fires could be put out. The resulting 10,000-square-mile cloud of soot darkened the sky to the point that cars had to use their headlights in the daytime.

About 11 million barrels of oil were also deliberately dumped by Iraq into the Arabian Gulf. A decade later, scientists assessing the damage found that while ocean ecosystems had mostly recovered, 40 percent of Kuwait’s fresh water reserves were permanently ruined by lakes of oil that had seeped through the sand.

Green Cross International estimated the total environmental damage suffered by Kuwait at $40 billion.

Environmental Media Services, which put out a fact sheet on the subject, says it is unlikely that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would torch his own wells.

But the group notes that the size of the country and its oil wells would make it much more difficult to extinguish burning oil fields there, should they be ignited by a bombing campaign or for other reasons.

Some of the wells contain a significant amount of gas, and fire-fighters have much more difficulty controlling and capping these types of high-pressure wells, the group says.

ENVIRONMENT BRIEFS

Half world’s
plants threatened with extinction

The results of a new study suggest that as many as half of the world’s plant species may qualify as threatened with extinction under the World Conservation Union (IUCN) classification scheme.

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Food scientists face farmer anger, water warnings

On Oct. 31, police and security with water cannons in Manila dispersed a farmers’ street conference and exhibition held to oppose the annual meeting of World Bank-funded CGIAR (Consultative Group on Agriculture Research) in a nearby hotel. Some of the displays, including community seedbanks, were confiscated.

CGIAR is an association of 46 countries plus companies like Syngenta its mission is “to mobilize cutting edge science to reduce hunger and poverty, improve human nutrition and health, and protect the environment.”

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Zambia rejects
GM food aid

Three million people in the country face severe food shortages, but authorities in Zambia have decided to ban the use or consumption of GM foods after local scientists said that insufficient evidence was available to demonstrate their safety.

Mundia Sikatana, the agriculture minister, said: “The major recommendation of the study team of scientists is that government should maintain its earlier position not to accept GM foods in the country. Government has accepted this recommendation...we will not allow GM foods in Zambia.”

Sikatana said that Zambia did not have suitable bio-safety legislation to accept genetically modified foods. He said: “There is a risk of contamination of the local traditional crop varieties by GMOs [genetically modified organisms], which may have a disruptive effect on the long-term sustainability of the local production systems.”

Zambia rejected the offer of donations of US GM maize in August, saying that it wanted its own scientists to explore the safety of transgenic foods.

The US says that GM grains pose no threat, but Europeans are suspicious of GM foods. (Telegraph UK)

EPA approves interpollutant
trading for Louisiana

Ignoring criticism by its own staff experts, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved a new form of “interpollutant” credit trading designed to bypass New Source Review (a process that ensures changes in plant operations are subject to state-of-the-art emission controls), according to internal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national alliance of local, state, and federal resource professionals.

The plan, which has not yet been publicly announced, allows Louisiana oil and chemical companies to emit more carcinogenic and other hazardous chemicals in return for cutting less dangerous nitrogen oxide emissions, PEER says.

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Kyoto pact
back on agenda

The eighth Conference of the Parties (COP-8) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control (UNFCCC) in New Delhi ended Nov. 1 with one tangible result: a resolution that said, “Parties that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol strongly urge parties that have not already done so to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in a timely manner.’’

“If COP-8 failed to make progress on climate change it was because the usual suspects in the fossil fuel lobby, particularly the US and Saudi Arabia, worked to prevent any forward movement,” said Steven Sawyer, international campaigner for Greenpeace International.

The US, the world’s biggest polluter, refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol for fear that it would undercut economic growth.
“Our position is that the Kyoto Protocol is not fair, it is not affordable and it is not effective,’’ said Paula Dobriansky, US undersecretary of state.

Developing countries have been spared from cutting emissions till 2012 and are balking at even discussing the subject as the United States and other developed countries are demanding.

A United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) study distributed at the conference said that global warming killed more than 9,000 people this year and caused damage worth $70 billion. (IPS)