The deceptions of anti-GM crops activists in Nigeria and abroad

Plant breeding is the science and art of developing superior crop varieties containing the most favorable traits. Breeders achieve this by identifying and introducing the genes controlling these traits into an adapted background.

Often a crop species does not have the desired trait, which may however exist in a non-related species. In conventional breeding, this trait is not accessible because of the mating barrier between different species. Thus, in conventional breeding the available gene pool is limited to what can be found within the species or closely related ones.

Another limitation of conventional breeding was our own limited knowledge of genes and limited capacities to manipulate them. The knowledge of genes was based largely on biostatistics and cytogenetics. However, with the advent of molecular biology and Recombinant DNA, scientists had learnt more about genes, their physical location, structure, functions and regulations.

A gene can be precisely located, cut and inserted where it is desired. Thus, modern biotechnology and molecular genetics had breached the barrier among species. It is now possible to take a desired gene from any biological organism and insert it into other unrelated organism.

The gene from the donor organism is called transgene, while the receiving organism is referred to as genetically modified organism (GMO) or transgenic organism. Thus the gene pool for crop improvement has become quasi unlimited.

Agricultural biotechnology is the most advanced tool for crop improvement. It has created unprecedented opportunities to solve some of the most challenging problems in agriculture, for example drought tolerance and insect and disease resistance. For instance, we know that resistance to chewing insects like stem and ear borers are too low to have any practical value. The control of these insect pests relied on repeated applications of costly toxic and ineffective pesticides, and the destruction of the crop residues that favours soil erosion and leads to the depletion of soil organic matter.

Resistance transgenes to borers are now available. They are obtained from a soil inhabiting bacterium, Bacillusthuringiensis (Bt) that has been used as a bio-pesticide sprayed to control insect pests of the moth family since the 1920. Scientists discovered that the spores of Bt contain proteins that kill the caterpillars that ingest them. The toxins are made of proteins called crystal proteins or simply Cry proteins. The genes that control their production have been identified and named Cry genes.

There are many Cry genes and their corresponding Cry proteins. The biopesticide Bt has one problem in common with chemical pesticides; both are ineffective against borers when sprayed on to the plant. Cry proteins are readily destroyed by solar radiation; and rain can wash down the bacterial spores before caterpillars ingest them. To solve this problem, the Cry genes were inserted into maize and the test showed that they give complete protection against the borers. Now the maize plant becomes its own protector.

The first Bt- Maize was approved in 1995 and the seeds were made available for the farmers in 1996. This was followed by Bt-cotton and Bt-soybean. These crops were adopted rapidly by the farmers (ISAAA, 2016). Such a rapid adoption of an agricultural technology has not been seen since the development of hybrid maize in the 1930s. Currently there are at 99 million hectares of crops with the Bt gene grown worldwide, out of 185 million hectares of GM crops overall (ISAAA. 2016. Global Status of Commercialised Biotech/GM Crops: 2016. ISAAA Brief No. 52. ISAAA: Ithaca, NY).

Currently the quasi totality of the U.S. corn, soybean and cotton acreage is under GM-varieties. In the meantime the development of transgenic papaya saved the papaya production system in Hawaii from devastation by a deadly disease caused by a virus against which there is no resistance, the Papaya ring spot virus. So GM crops have been grown for more than 20 years with an extremely safety record.

Before any GM crop is released, it is intensively analysed for human, animal and environment safety. Despite their historical high safety record and popularity with farmers there are diverse groups of people opposed to biotechnology and GM crops. One group is made of apostles dedicated to organic farming. They don’t use any chemicals, fertilizer or pesticides, and are often highly opposed to commercial agriculture. This group is also opposed to seed and chemical companies. They advocate a return to the old ways of farming, which is according to them the only sustainable way of farming and safeguarding the environment.

Some members of this group claim that the world produces enough food to feed six times its actual population. Therefore, there is no need to increase food production and the only existing problem to be solved is the distribution of this food. They do not say anything about who owns this food surplus and how it is going to be distributed across the globe. Since according to the famous Economist Milton Friedman “there is not such a thing as free lunch”, countries who need this food must pay for it.

Asia is not going to give its rice free to Africa; if Nigerians want to eat bread, Europe is not going to give its wheat free; Nigerians have to pay for it. It is obvious that this argument may hide a dark agenda because it simply means that African countries should not endeavor to improve agricultural production but must continue importing food.

The second group of GM opponents are against GM crops because of their philosophical or religious orientations. They think that we should not mimic God. Moreover, they want to impose their philosophy on the rest of the planet. A final group is opposed to genetically modified crops for political/economic reasons. While overlooking that humans have been creating new food crops by plant breeding for millennia, these opponents hold that direct manipulation of DNA should only be done by God, and we should not mimic God.

Members of this group are mostly found in Europe but include giant commercial organic farmers who want to protect their market niche. This group is the most dangerous one because its members hide behind the other groups and use them. Despite their differences, these groups united to wage a worldwide crusade against GM crops.

However, faced with a total lack of scientific evidence to back up their arguments, their main weapon consists of made-up stories carefully designed and packaged in such a way to mislead and scare the public. They had been taught this method by their God Mother, Vandama Shiva who made the famous claim that in India each year 100,000 farmers committed suicide because of GM cotton.

These well packaged made-up stories are then spread on the Internet and predatory journals (faked scientific journals). The Anti GM groups had created NGOs and virtual institutions (existing only in computers) with beautiful names. Examples of these are the Institute for Responsible Technology (whose only employee is its creator who has no background in biological safety but is highly influential among Anti GM groups), and the Natural Health International; among the most notorious NGOs we can cite Friends of the Earth.

In the scientific community they found a handful of friends or allies who are not ashamed to conduct misconceived experiments, then purposely misrepresent and misinterpret their own data (Arpad Putzai, Seralini and coworkers, Finamore and coworkers) or to come up with data that are not only impossible to obtain with the laboratory equipment they used, but that are against established biological facts (Aziz Aris and Samuel Leblanc).

The network of the Anti GMO activists covers the African continent where they have been very active; and the terrain looks favorable for them for three main reasons. Firstly, the majority of the people did not have formal education.

Second, even among people who have university degrees, many do not have the necessary background in modern molecular genetics and biotechnology to discern the fallacies in the stories propagated by the Anti GMO activists. The third reason is the dependence of many African governments on Foreign Aid. This provides a leverage for EU countries to put tremendous pressure on African governments not to adopt GM crops (Paalberg, 2008).

About three weeks ago, an anti GM organisation calling itself the African Center for Biodiversity (ACB) had distributed to many personalities by electronic mails a report on GM cowpea entitled “GM and seed industry eye Africa’s lucrative cowpea seed markets: the political economy of cowpea in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi”.

The report, written in June 2015 is freely available online. It is primarily and unmistakably targeted at the Pod borer (Maruca) resistant cowpea that is being developed in these four countries. Those large sections of the report are made of general information on cowpea statistics, biology and agronomy is only intended to give a certain scientific credibility to the author(s); something they do not have, as we will see.

The mains points of the ACB’s email and its report have been picked up by anti GM activists in Nigeria and has been the object of a press release by a person describing herself as Academician (Prof.) Prince Dr Phillip C. Njemanze MD (Hons) Chairman Council on National Health Policies, Global Prolife Alliance.

In this article, we review the major claims made by these Anti GM activists. In the process, we give the readers the facts in order to enable them to judge and decide for themselves.
To be continued tomorrow