Just What Is It With The BBC?

Last May in the USA a brave lady called Tami Canal started a movement called March Against Monsanto, because it had proved impossible to have food containing genetically modified ingredients labelled as such in California. Initially she hoped for support from perhaps 3000 people. In the event, on the Saturday in question it was estimated that two million people in 436 cities in 52 countries turned out with banners to express their support, first of all for the principle that GM food should be so labelled, but also for the campaign against the use of GMOs in our food chain.

I would have thought that was a pretty major event! But try as I might, I was unable to find any reference to it in any of the BBC’s news coverage anywhere!

The event is being planned again for October 12th. I wonder if it will make the news this time.

Like most disappointments, I allowed this one to fade from my thoughts.

In June Owen Paterson, Environment Secretary, (an avowed climate change sceptic, by the way) gave a memorable speech to Rothamsted Research Centre in which he expressed enthusiastic support for GM crops, basing his enthusiasm on a selection of ‘facts’ which even his most loyal supporters would have had difficulty swallowing. This speech, however, received copious BBC coverage; as did the Prime Minister’s endorsement of the process.

In August, Dara O Briain’s Science Club programme went out with a ‘fun’ piece about using genetic modification to combat malaria. Now whatever you may think about the principle, this particular process is not without pitfalls and is far, far from fool-proof. And yet the programme was screened in such a way as to leave the viewer with the impression that genetic modification was ‘it’, ‘the answer’, problem solved. No room for doubt!

On September 18th, the BBC ran the first episode of Science Britannica with Professor Brian Cox, who is a particle physicist (O Briain studied maths and physics) as well as being a rather ubiquitous media star. I was watching it idly with half an eye, it not being on my list of things I must not miss, when Prof. Cox started talking about GM crops. By the time I was fully awake, the 5 minute section was long gone. I was away from home at the time, so my feeling of unease at the spin being put on GMOs by Cox was put on hold until I got home.

Then I was trawling through iPlayer and decided to run the programme again. This time the spin made me not just uneasy but angry!

Here is the letter I have written to the BBC.


BBC Complaints
PO Box 1922
Darlington
DL3 0UR


Dear Sirs

Science Britannica episode 1
Broadcast on 18th September at 9 pm

I have recently watched, for the second time, the first episode of Science Britannica, and was very concerned at the evident bias of the programme regarding GM crops, about 40 minutes in to the programme. It was probably the most prejudicial five minutes of television I have seen in many years. This bias has appeared before in a previous program, Dara O Briain’s Science Club. It is becoming clear that the BBC, along with certain politicians, is keen to portray the anti GMO lobby as either nonexistent, or ignorant, fearful, and anti-science.

It is certainly the case that on the subject of climate change, the BBC have been criticised for giving disproportionate air time and credibility to climate change ‘deniers’ and I would echo that criticism, because there is no longer a scientific rationale for their position. But to imply, as Brian Cox does, that there is no scientific rationale for the position of the anti GMO lobby is to misunderstand the situation completely, and I would expect a more balanced approach from him and from a BBC science-based programme.

As with the ‘Science Club’ programme before it, the case for GM crops was made in a way which suggested that no credible opposing view exists. Professor Cox appeared to regret that scientists ‘have not always been able to control the debate’, but these programmes make it clear that they are trying to do just that. Cox suggests that ‘public opinion has been led by a vigorous anti GM campaign that started in the 1990s, which left many people dead set against GM crops’. This statement was accompanied by a film of white-suited figures jumping up and down in a field. That was as close as we have come to hearing a view from anyone who is against GM food, although today’s concerns arise not from those 1990s protests but from substantial research into the effects of GM food on both agriculture and animals, not just in a laboratory, but also in the field.

Cox continues, ’There are fears that the crops may contaminate the environment or that they may be unsafe to eat, and underlying it all is a feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong about meddling with life at such a basic level.’ It is clear that Cox has not taken the time to listen to any of the premises which give rise to the opposition to GMOs. In the Americas the environment has already been irretrievably contaminated. Many ill patients in the USA have been prescribed an organic diet by their doctors, to escape the effect of the GM ingredients in almost all American food; this prescription proving successful.

Professor Cox’s interview with Professor Jones starts with an inane question about the label ‘Frankenfood’, inane because this was a journalist’s term, not one espoused by those concerned about the process, and Jones’ response was as predictable as it was banal. Cox raises the spectre of the ‘unnatural’ process, again prompting a predictable response from Jones – a response I might have used myself!

Jones rhetorically asks the obvious question, ‘What is the least bad way of protecting our crops from disease and pests, or reducing the losses caused by weeds?’ and the viewer is left to conclude that GMOs must be that least bad way.

Then Cox baldly states that Professor Jones’ view ‘is also backed up by a vast body of research that shows it to be safe and effective.’

I challenge Professor Cox to find any of that vast body of evidence. (Substantial Equivalence testing doesn’t prove anything!) I used to share Brian Cox’s willing acceptance of the GMO philosophy, until I discovered that there is no substantial research which shows that GM food is safe, and that there are many reputable and peer-reviewed scientists who say that it is not, with the evidence from tests on animals to substantiate their view. As to the effectiveness of the process, there is overwhelming evidence throughout the Americas and India which shows that the emerging disadvantages of GM crops outweigh the advantages, and that alternative less invasive science-based agricultural methods are more productive.

Professor Cox expresses himself baffled as he feels that simply presenting the evidence should be sufficient to convince us laymen. A more productive dialogue might emerge if he was to present all the evidence. He calls for effective public engagement. Does he mean that? There are plenty of scientists with credentials as worthy as his who would be happy to ‘engage’ with him and with Professor Jones.

I hope that you will be able to investigate the one-sided approach to this matter exemplified in this programme, with a view to re-establishing the reputation for fairness which used to be the hallmark of BBC programming.

I look forward to your early reply

In the past I have ignored suggestions that the BBC’s impartiality is a myth. But now I am beginning to wonder. It is crystal clear that the unscientific Mr Paterson has formed his views based on the scientific opinions he is given by his establishment advisers. It is certainly the case that those opinions are coloured by the GM industry, or at least their extremely well funded propaganda machine. It can be proved that as soon as a study emerges that finds fault with any aspect of GM crops, that propaganda machine will take steps to discredit it. The same tactics were used by the tobacco industry for years, and are still being used by the oil industry in respect of global warming. Happily both the politicians and the BBC have realised that the positions taken by those industries have been discredited some time ago.

All the same, when it is increasingly clear that the policies of this Government are guided by the demands of Big Business (just listen to David Cameron’s conference speech!) it is disconcerting to think that the policies of the BBC are increasingly influenced by the Government.

GM crops - I am not in favour!

A few days ago I listened to Owen Paterson, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, being interviewed on the Today programme. Subsequently I read a transcript of his speech in which he sought to both open and close the debate on GM food.

It’s safe! We just need to reassure the public that it is completely safe. Job done!

This from the man who is from the Nigel Lawson school of thought on climate change! (Last I heard, Nigel Lawson’s anti-climate change think tank was being investigated for peddling misleading information to the public!)

I have been keeping an eye on the GM debate for some time now and I must say that in this context I find Owen Paterson really scary! Some of his facts are just plain wrong, and others are based on very questionable research. And now the EU President’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Prof. Anne Glover, has declared that there is no substantiated case of adverse impact etc etc. David Cameron has also decided he is in favour of introducing us all to GM farming.

The difficulty is that no one has even attempted to substantiate any one of the numerous cases of adverse impact!

Poor old Professor Seralini got into really hot water by finding that a particular GM maize produced massive tumours in rats. Monsanto declared that the research was invalid because he used the wrong species of rat, with too few of them to provide a meaningful statistical sample. With Monsanto money behind the anti Seralini campaign, it isn’t surprising that his research was widely regarded as discredited. So most people didn’t get to hear that Prof. Seralini used the same type and number of rats that Monsanto used in their original tests on the same maize, but he did it for longer (hence the tumours). But it is the same Monsanto test results which the US Food and Drug Agency use when authorising the product for human consumption.

There is a lot of material out there on the internet which would cause the average person to think twice before welcoming GM food into his home. Some of it strongly suggests that the actual GM process itself can cause serious health problems. Some of it indicates the harmful effects of the weed killer used. A lot of it documents the contamination of normal crops by GM crops even at a considerable distance. None of it, of course, is substantiated to the satisfaction of Prof. Anne Glover!

Personally I cannot prove that GM food is bad for you. I haven’t yet heard from anyone who can prove it is not; they would need another decade of tests at least to do that. Meanwhile – watch what you eat! Most supermarkets will no longer guarantee that their poultry products (including eggs) have not been fed on GM feed. They claim that the problem is that non GM feed is too difficult to source! In Europe, something labelled as GM free may have a little bit of GM stuff in it (I can’t remember the permissible threshold). Happily most European countries are saying ‘non’, which I consider to be the first good reason I have heard recently for staying in Europe!

Here is the letter I have sent to my MP Sarah Newton, a devout Tory, Deputy Party Chair, who will toe the party line and do nothing to rock the boat:


21 June 2013

Mrs Sarah Newton MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

Dear Sarah

GM Food
During the past few weeks, culminating in Mr. Owen Paterson’s speech, there has clearly been an orchestrated move towards ‘reassuring’ the public about GM food. I find this deeply worrying and I would be grateful if you could pass my concerns to Mr. Paterson, so that we can be reassured that Mr. Paterson has acquainted himself with all the scientific opinion on the subject, as well as where it is lacking, and not just that promulgated by the industry and the US Food and Drug Agency.

My concerns rest on the following facts.

First; the assumption appears to be that the GM crops being grown in the USA have been adequately tested. But the FDA bases its approval of GM products on tests carried out by the manufacturers of the product, with no independent verification. (There is evidence that these tests are sometimes inadequate and sometimes misrepresented.)

Second; while Prof. Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser to the EU President, has said that there is ‘no substantiated case of adverse impact’ on health (clearly discounting all the numerous health issues which have arisen in the USA during the last ten to fifteen years or so), it is equally true that there is no evidence to show that GM food does NOT do harm. Since GM food does not require to be labelled as such in the US, evidence in either direction would be hard to substantiate.

Third; despite Mr. Paterson’s assurances, I have not been able to discover any evidence that crop yields have been significantly improved over time by the use of GM seed, indeed in some cases rather the opposite. As against that, agroecology, as suggested in 2010 by Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, has been shown to be capable of improving yields significantly in many different contexts.

Fourth; Mr. Paterson believes that growing GM crops would be good for the environment. Up until now this has been shown to be not the case in several different situations from the US to South America to India. One purpose of GM crops is that they can be grown in large areas of monocrop cultivation. This method of agriculture requires that quantities of weed control chemicals need to be used. Experience in the US has shown that after a few years, in order to control poison-resistant weeds, on Monsanto’s recommendation, extra chemicals need to be mixed in to make a more poisonous cocktail. Thus the land, which has already been stripped of nutrients, is drenched in ever increasing amounts of chemicals. Tests already show that in 18 European countries there is significant Glyphosate in the population’s urine, and there is plenty of evidence that Glyphosate is harmful to humans. This can only have come from food which has been sprayed with the chemical, and growing poison-resistant GM crops in Europe can only aggravate that situation.

In the US it is now clear that contamination of a crop in one area from GM crops in another area can be carried hundreds of miles by wild life or wind, which makes a nonsense of buffer zones. (See farmer interviews in the video clip linked below.)

I was greatly relieved to hear that Mr. Paterson is against the patenting of seed. The possibility that we in Europe might fall into the traps set by Monsanto and their like in the US and India is frightening. I would also hope that should we be in the position of allowing GM produce into our food chain, it would be adequately and prominently labelled as such, so that unlike our American cousins we would be able to choose whether or not to buy.

I know that a significant number of farmers polled in the UK by the Farmers’ Guardian said that they would like to grow GM crops. I hope that they, as well as Mr. Paterson, will watch the video clip (link below) of Michael Hart, a Cornish farmer who went to North America specifically to get first hand advice on GMOs from American farmers. It is interesting that the poll of UK farmers also discovered that only 15% would be prepared to eat the product themselves! It is interesting also that there is a growing movement in the US for food producers, where they can, to label their food ‘Certified Non-GMO’ as a result of pressure from the general public. Unfortunately many of those producers have difficulty in sourcing non-GMO ingredients. Furthermore, it is reported that many patients are being prescribed an organic diet by their doctors, specifically to avoid GMOs.

There are a number of studies which indicate adverse effects both from the process of genetic modification and from the chemicals which go with it. Even if we believe that these publications are not conclusive, they should not be dismissed without further study.

Although I am concerned about the effects of GM food on the nation’s health I am far more concerned, given adequate labelling of food products, about the potential harm to our environment, our biodiversity, our wild life and our pollinating insects. It is already evident in this country that large areas of monocrop farming are having a serious effect. (Ironically, the bee population in conurbations such as London is flourishing away from our chemical based agriculture.) The introduction of GM farming, with its sophisticated chemical controls, would inevitably mean an increased assault on our environment.

Mr. Paterson has suggested that he wishes to reassure the public that GM crops are safe and beneficial. But stating it does not make it so, nor will it reassure us. There needs to be proper independent, substantial and robust peer reviewed research, on the crops, and the chemicals that go with them including the degree of their continued use. This research should include the effect on human health, and particularly on the beneficial gut flora which is within all of us.

You will recall the efforts made by the tobacco industry to discredit the evidence that smoking is harmful to health. Equally I am sure you have been aware of similar tactics (often using the very same 'experts'), used by the oil industry to discredit the proponents of the encroaching climate crisis. It has become clear to me in my reading that the GM industry in America has been taking a similar approach. We need to be more certain than we can be at this time that the introduction of GM crops would be beneficial and safe before allowing it or encouraging it to be grown in our fields, because this is a genie which cannot be put back in the bottle.

Yours faithfully

Tim Thomson

Cc Shadow Environment Secretary


Below are details of only a small selection of the available published material, much of it from neutral and peer reviewed sources.


Link to video by a Cornish farmer, Michael Hart, who went to America to find out farmers’ views on GM farming - ‘GM crops Farmer to Farmer’

Link to UN report on ‘Right to Food’

Influence of soy with the gene EPSPS CP4 on the physiological state and reproductive functions of rats in the first two generations
New Ermakova peer-reviewed paper (2009)
Russian Academy of Natural Sciences "Modern problems of science and education" № 5, 2009 UDC: 612.82, 57.02

The Lancet, Volume 354, Issue 9187, Pages 1353 - 1354, 16 October 1999
Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine
Dr Stanley WB Ewen FRCPath, Arpad Pusztai PhD

Eur J Histochem. 2004 Oct-Dec;48(4):448-54.
Ultrastructural analysis of testes from mice fed on genetically modified soybean.
Vecchio L, Cisterna B, Malatesta M, Martin TE, Biggiogera M.

Holes in the Biotech Safety Net by Doug Gurian-Sherman Ph.D

A month has now gone by and I have not yet had the courtesy of a reply!

Time To Reconnect

I’m not an economist.

I’m not a scientist.

I’m not an industrialist.

Maybe that means that I can take a more detached view of things....

I have been reading articles about biodiversity and cultural diversity, and the links between the two. I don’t need to explain that – if you’re interested you can read about it yourself. Suffice it to say that it has been very clearly established, by the UN amongst others, that there is a very clear connection between the two things. Areas on the globe which have strong cultural diversity, evidenced for instance by the variety of languages, also have strong biodiversity, as indicated by the number of species of animals and plants.

Similarly, where cultural diversity has been eclipsed by the shadow of globalisation, biodiversity has also suffered.

The survival of life on this planet depends upon the maintenance of biodiversity, and this depends upon the maintenance of cultural diversity. Take a look at (for instance) some of the indigenous peoples in South America. They are by and large content (except when their homelands are being destroyed by globalisation), and have developed a way of life which is in harmony with their environment. They are not interested in ‘growth’, and exist in a steady state economy. They maintain their own culture, and live in a sustainable way.

What a lesson for the rest of us.

I recently travelled from Cornwall to London by coach. You can see a lot through the window of a coach, and I admit that as we left Heathrow to head for the centre of London I was bewildered by the sheer volume of traffic. I found myself wondering how on earth we, the ‘civilised’ society, arrived in this horrendous situation, in which we are too busy chasing meaningless goals to enjoy life.

Can the driver for all of this be greed?

People have ambitions, fuelled by advertising, by ‘competitive materialism’, by dreams of what their perfect life might be, and yet it has been well established that having more money doesn’t automatically enhance happiness. George Soros, financier of note, counts his annual income in the billions of dollars. For an individual, that obscene quantity of cash is meaningless – what can he, personally, achieve with a billion that he couldn’t achieve with a million? And would he really suffer if he only had $100,000 a year?

I listened to an interview with Peter (now Lord) Mandelson this morning. I happen to think that he is one of the best brains in politics, but I was depressed to hear him state that the global economy would double over the next twenty years. Our leaders are convinced that healthy economies are growing economies - but I know what happens when you keep on blowing up a balloon!

Perhaps in the present crisis he needs to say such things, but he seems to have glossed over our impending double whammy of Climate Change and Peak Oil: these two little gremlins are likely to scotch any ideas of a growing economy – indeed even a ‘steady state’ economy will be very difficult to achieve under the pressures of peak oil and energy descent. And the general consensus (leaving out 10 Downing Street) is that peak oil will be with us at some point between now and 2012. Unfortunately Downing Street thinks peak oil will not be with us before 2030.

But in any event, some time soon we are all going to be forced to accept the conclusion that globalisation no longer works and that growth is no longer possible.

We in the Western World have become so disconnected from our natural surroundings that we no longer appreciate what our environment has to offer. I took a young friend of mine (age 10) out for a drive earlier this year and discovered that she didn’t know what a foxglove was – and we live in the country. How can this be?

I sat in my parked car this morning and watched a minute insect scurrying around on my windscreen: I became fascinated by the miracle of such a small creature containing enough energy to allow it to move so quickly over such long distances without recharging. Later I watched a couple of ravens lazily going about their business above, in no great hurry, and quietly gossiping with each other. We miss so much in our perpetual frenetic rush towards ‘more’ and ‘better’. Even in these economically uncertain times, I saw on the Freecycle website that someone is giving away a 21” CRT TV, presumably because they have upgraded to an up-to-date slim line model. And yet I am certain that the older model works perfectly well.

The older I get, the more I am convinced that the secret of a happy life is to be content with what you have. We need to relearn respect for our environment. This way we may just learn to deal with our climate and energy crises before it’s too late. But this needs to be a ‘bottom-up’ exercise, not top down.

No individual can do it alone, but many individuals, over time, by setting an example, working within their own communities, and talking about what they do, can – indeed, must.