What is genetic modification?
There is a fundamental difference between traditional breeding programmesand genetic modification of plants. Using traditional breeding techniques, plantbreeders (whether they are farmers, foresters or laboratory researchers) canonly cross plants of the same species or of closely related species. It is notpossible to cross fish with eucalyptus trees, for example. Genetic modificationallows scientists to modify trees by inserting genetic material from anothertree of the same species, from another tree species or from another speciesof plant or animal altogether. Genetic modification, in other words, allowsscientists to insert fish genes into eucalyptus trees.The genetic information required to build a complete organism from individualcells is contained in a molecule inside cells called deoxyribonucleic acid(DNA). The fact that the information stored in one organism’s DNA can beread by any other organism, means that foreign DNA can change the way aplant species grows, functions or reproduces, when it is inserted into theplant’s cells.
A gene is a segment of DNA. Genetic modification involves inserting geneticmaterial from another species into a plant or modifying a plant’s genes bymanipulating the DNA molecule. The total genetic information in an organismis called the genome.Scientists have developed three techniques for inserting foreign DNA intoplants. The first technique involves coating gold particles with DNA and blastingthem into plant cells using a “gene gun”. John Sanford, Edward Wolf, NelsonAllen and Theodore Klein, scientists at Cornell University, developed the firstgene gun. In 1983, Sanford and Wolf used an air rifle to shoot tungsten powderinto an onion. Cornell’s scientists patented the technology and subsequentlysold it to chemical giant DuPont, which had set up laboratories to work onplants in the early 1980s.A second technique is to use a bacterium, such as Agrobacterium tumefaciens,which can transfer some of its DNA into plants. In nature, the bacteriumcauses swellings, or cancers, on host plants and transfers part of its DNA into host plant cells. Molecular biologists modify the bacterium so that itcontains the desired foreign DNA. Plant cells are then infected with thebacterium and the foreign DNA is transferred to the host plant.For example, New Zealand biotech company called Forest Research iscarrying out research into insect resistant GM trees. “What we have done inthe laboratory is taken out the nasty cancer-forming gene and replaced themwith our favourite piece of DNA,” Dr Julia Charity of Forest Research told theNew Zealand Herald. “We get the bacteria to take up the DNA by giving it anelectric shock. The cell walls open in absolute horror and the DNA shoots inthere . . . the bacteria acts like a shuttle and basically injects its DNA into theplant cell,” Dr Charity explained.A variation on this technique is to use the fact that some plant viruses insertthemselves into a host plant’s DNA. Scientists modify the plant virus byremoving the disease-causing genes and replacing them with the genes theywant to insert into the host cell. The plant is infected with the virus which thenexpresses the foreign gene in the host plant.A third technique is to insert the DNA into a plant protoplast, a plant cellwhich has had its cell wall chemically removed. The desired DNA is locatedon a plasmid vector (a self replicating DNA molecule) which is injected intothe protoplast. Plant cells are grown in tissue cultures and the vector insertsthe desired genes into the host plant’s genome.None of these techniques is particularly precise and genetic modification canhave wildly unpredictable effects. The location of foreign genes in the genomeaffects their function. Yet there is no way of knowing exactly where the foreigngene might be inserted in the recipient cell’s genome. There is no way ofcontrolling how many copies of the DNA will be inserted or how much (orwhether) the foreign genes will affect the plant’s growth. Neither is there anyway of knowing whether the insertion will be stable. The foreign genes caninteract with the host plant’s genes in unexpected ways. “The process isuncontrollable, unreliable and unpredictable”, as Mae-Wan Ho and Joe Cummins of the Institute for Science in Society put it.An experiment carried out by the Chinese Institute for Forestry illustrates theproblem. Scientists introduced genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensisto make poplar trees resistant to insects. The same genes were inserted intoall the trees, but scientists observed three different groups of results. In thefirst group the trees were still affected by the insects. The second group oftrees were insect resistant but the leaves were more yellow and smaller thanusual. In the third group, the trees grew normally and were resistant to theinsects. Two years later, however, insects which were previously unknown as
pests in poplar trees attacked the trees.Brian Tokar, editor of the book Redesigning Life?, points out that adding genesfrom viruses to a plant can increase the instability of a plant’s genome. Geneswhich are needed for the normal functioning of the plant may be switched off,or silenced. Viral vectors raise the possibility of further transfer of genes tounrelated organisms. GM viruses can combine with other viruses to form newinfectious viruses and diseases.
There is a fundamental difference between traditional breeding programmesand genetic modification of plants. Using traditional breeding techniques, plantbreeders (whether they are farmers, foresters or laboratory researchers) canonly cross plants of the same species or of closely related species. It is notpossible to cross fish with eucalyptus trees, for example. Genetic modificationallows scientists to modify trees by inserting genetic material from anothertree of the same species, from another tree species or from another speciesof plant or animal altogether. Genetic modification, in other words, allowsscientists to insert fish genes into eucalyptus trees.The genetic information required to build a complete organism from individualcells is contained in a molecule inside cells called deoxyribonucleic acid(DNA). The fact that the information stored in one organism’s DNA can beread by any other organism, means that foreign DNA can change the way aplant species grows, functions or reproduces, when it is inserted into theplant’s cells.
A gene is a segment of DNA. Genetic modification involves inserting geneticmaterial from another species into a plant or modifying a plant’s genes bymanipulating the DNA molecule. The total genetic information in an organismis called the genome.Scientists have developed three techniques for inserting foreign DNA intoplants. The first technique involves coating gold particles with DNA and blastingthem into plant cells using a “gene gun”. John Sanford, Edward Wolf, NelsonAllen and Theodore Klein, scientists at Cornell University, developed the firstgene gun. In 1983, Sanford and Wolf used an air rifle to shoot tungsten powderinto an onion. Cornell’s scientists patented the technology and subsequentlysold it to chemical giant DuPont, which had set up laboratories to work onplants in the early 1980s.A second technique is to use a bacterium, such as Agrobacterium tumefaciens,which can transfer some of its DNA into plants. In nature, the bacteriumcauses swellings, or cancers, on host plants and transfers part of its DNA into host plant cells. Molecular biologists modify the bacterium so that itcontains the desired foreign DNA. Plant cells are then infected with thebacterium and the foreign DNA is transferred to the host plant.For example, New Zealand biotech company called Forest Research iscarrying out research into insect resistant GM trees. “What we have done inthe laboratory is taken out the nasty cancer-forming gene and replaced themwith our favourite piece of DNA,” Dr Julia Charity of Forest Research told theNew Zealand Herald. “We get the bacteria to take up the DNA by giving it anelectric shock. The cell walls open in absolute horror and the DNA shoots inthere . . . the bacteria acts like a shuttle and basically injects its DNA into theplant cell,” Dr Charity explained.A variation on this technique is to use the fact that some plant viruses insertthemselves into a host plant’s DNA. Scientists modify the plant virus byremoving the disease-causing genes and replacing them with the genes theywant to insert into the host cell. The plant is infected with the virus which thenexpresses the foreign gene in the host plant.A third technique is to insert the DNA into a plant protoplast, a plant cellwhich has had its cell wall chemically removed. The desired DNA is locatedon a plasmid vector (a self replicating DNA molecule) which is injected intothe protoplast. Plant cells are grown in tissue cultures and the vector insertsthe desired genes into the host plant’s genome.None of these techniques is particularly precise and genetic modification canhave wildly unpredictable effects. The location of foreign genes in the genomeaffects their function. Yet there is no way of knowing exactly where the foreigngene might be inserted in the recipient cell’s genome. There is no way ofcontrolling how many copies of the DNA will be inserted or how much (orwhether) the foreign genes will affect the plant’s growth. Neither is there anyway of knowing whether the insertion will be stable. The foreign genes caninteract with the host plant’s genes in unexpected ways. “The process isuncontrollable, unreliable and unpredictable”, as Mae-Wan Ho and Joe Cummins of the Institute for Science in Society put it.An experiment carried out by the Chinese Institute for Forestry illustrates theproblem. Scientists introduced genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensisto make poplar trees resistant to insects. The same genes were inserted intoall the trees, but scientists observed three different groups of results. In thefirst group the trees were still affected by the insects. The second group oftrees were insect resistant but the leaves were more yellow and smaller thanusual. In the third group, the trees grew normally and were resistant to theinsects. Two years later, however, insects which were previously unknown as
pests in poplar trees attacked the trees.Brian Tokar, editor of the book Redesigning Life?, points out that adding genesfrom viruses to a plant can increase the instability of a plant’s genome. Geneswhich are needed for the normal functioning of the plant may be switched off,or silenced. Viral vectors raise the possibility of further transfer of genes tounrelated organisms. GM viruses can combine with other viruses to form newinfectious viruses and diseases.
Cloned trees are not necessarily genetically modified. Cloning uses part of aplant to make an exact copy of the original plant and involves no change tothe DNA of the plant. Often described as “genetically improved” trees, clonesare reproduced from selected parent trees showing a desired trait (such asfast growth, straight stems, fewer branches or whatever trait scientists werelooking for). Cloning allows forestry scientists to do something which isimpossible in nature: the mass production of trees that are genetically identicalto one parent tree.
The simplest form of cloning, which farmers and gardeners have been doingfor centuries, is to take a cutting from a plant.
Tissue culture involves growing plant tissue in a laboratory where all inputssuch as nutrients, hormones, water and oxygen can be carefully controlled.Somatic embryogenesis is a recently developed process in which scientistsgrow embryos from the non-reproductive cells of trees. Tissue cultures orembryos can be frozen, allowing researchers to test the material and thendefrost the best specimens.
Forestry scientists also use various techniques, including DNA sequencing,gene mapping and gene function studies to match a particular trait, such asfast growth, with DNA sequences. Genetic maps could help tree breeders byidentifying the trait out of the huge variation in different trees. For example,researchers at the University of California-Davis in the US are using geneticmaps to chart which parts of a tree’s genes control traits such as fast growth.The next step is to breed trees (or genetically modify them) for these identifiedtraits, using the information in the genetic maps.While not in itself involving genetic modification, much research into trees at the genetic level is carried out with an eye on future genetic modification. For example, Forest Research, a biotech forestry firm in New Zealand, is carrying out research into how trees produce lignin, the glue that holds wood cells together and makes trees strong. Among Forest Research’s long term goals is to produce GM trees with reduced lignin, or lignin that is more easily removed during the pulping process. Scientists at Forest Research are working on a technique to genetically modify wood cells to introduce specific genes and to analyse the effect on wood cell development. Companies working on producing a genetically modified tree often also produce “genetically improved” tree clones, using tissue culture and somatic embryogenesis. The sale of these trees provides an income for the company its scientists are working on GM tree development. It can also act as a commercial back up plan, in case the GM tree research fails.
In 2003, scientists at a Tree Biotechnology meeting in Sweden proposed setting up a “Eucalypt Genome Initiative”. The beneficiaries of this research are clear from the list of pulp and paper companies that expressed an interest: Aracruz, Nippon Paper, Sappi, Mondi, ArborGen, Stora Enso, Suzano and Oji Paper.
Indeed, much of the research that scientists are conducting into GM trees is primarily of interest to the pulp and paper industry. Faster growing GM trees would in theory allow pulp mills to grow more fibre more quickly. Herbicide tolerance was one of the key areas of initial research into GM trees. Scientists have engineered insect resistant GM poplar, larch, white spruce and walnut trees. Scientists in Japan have produced GM eucalyptus trees which can grow in salty soils. GM trees with reduced lignin would make the pulping process less polluting, which would be useful for pulp industry public relations.
Researchers are working on GM disease resistant trees. Large scale monoculture plantations are particularly susceptible to diseases. GM trees engineered to be sterile would grow faster since the trees would focus their energy on growing rather than producing flowers. The pulp and paper industry is also interested in research into GM trees with more uniform fibre, fewer branches and straighter trunks.
Researchers are also looking into ways of engineering trees to absorb and store more carbon, as a supposed solution to climate change. Others areworking on engineering trees to clean up pollution. Physicist Freeman Dyson has even suggested that within 50 years, scientists will be able to genetically engineer trees to make Mars habitable, making it an attractive destination for space tourists. Since the first GM poplars were planted in Belgium in 1988, there have been several hundred field trials of GM trees – the majority in the US. Two years ago, China’s State Forestry Administration approved GM poplar trees for commercial planting. Well over one million insect resistant GM poplars have now been planted in China. The GM trees are part of the government’s plan to cover 44 million hectares with trees by 2012, supposedly in an attempt to prevent floods, droughts and spreading deserts. Chinese forestry scientists see GM trees as a technical fix to the serious damage that insects cause to tree plantations in China.
“Recent research on insect-resistant forest tree breeding shows considerable promise,”
wrote Wang Lida, Han Yifan and Hu Jianjun of the Chinese Academy of Forestry in a recently published book (Molecular Genetics and Breeding of Forest Trees edited by Sandeep Kumar and Matthias Fladung). But neither the government nor the scientists who produced the GM trees have any records of where the trees have been planted.
Huoran Wang represents the Chinese Academy of Forestry in Beijing on the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Panel of Experts on Forest Gene Resources. In November 2003, Wang told an FAO meeting that “Poplar trees are so widely planted in northern China that pollen and seed dispersal can not be prevented.” Attempts to prevent genetic pollution by maintaining “isolation distances” between GM and non-GM poplars is “almost impossible”, Wang added. There isn’t even a system in place to monitor the GM plantations that have so far been planted. Wang suggests setting up a system “to monitor the situation of the GM plantations” and their impact on surrounding ecosystems.
The dangers posed by GM trees are in some ways even more serious than those posed by GM crops. Trees live longer than crops, they are largely undomesticated and forestry scientists’ knowledge about fragile forest ecosystems is poor. The risks involved are serious enough to justify the demand for a global ban on releases of GM trees.
The origins of GM trees
The development of genetically modified trees can be traced back to the mideighteenth century in Europe and the invention of scientific forestry. The purpose of scientific forestry was to produce a single product: timber. Simplification of forests and ever increasing state and forest department control over forest land went hand in hand with colonisation in the tropics. The vast monoculture tree plantations marching across the Global South are the most extreme form of this model of forestry. The companies backing GM tree research are interested in the supply of large quantities of cheap, homogenous wood fibre to feed their pulp mills. Genetic modification of trees is forestry science’s latest offering to its industrial masters.
GM trees are designed to be planted in large, monoculture, industrial tree plantations. These plantations have serious impacts on people and forests and GM trees will increase these impacts. Local people’s names for industrial tree plantations illustrate the problems that this model of forestry causes. In Thailand, farmers call eucalyptus the “selfish tree”, because eucalyptus plantations remove nutrients from the soil and consume so much water that farmers cannot grow rice in neighbouring fields. Mapuche Indigenous People in Chile refer to pine plantations as “planted soldiers”, because they are green, in rows and advancing. In Brazil, tree plantations are called a “green desert”, and in South Africa, “green cancer”. Throughout the Global South people and organisations have formed networks opposing industrial tree plantations on their land. In Brazil, a group of more than 100 organisations consisting of villagers, indigenous peoples, workers, trade unionists and environmentalists has formed the Alert Against the Green Desert Network. The Network opposes the encroachment of villagers’ land by monoculture plantations for pulp and charcoal production. In April this year, the Movement of Landless Peasants (MST) in Brazil protested against the pulp and paper industry’s take over of vast tracts of land. Landless people occupied areas of industrial tree plantations owned by the pulp and paper companies Veracel, Klabin, VCP, Aracruz and Trombini.
In Thailand, villagers have rallied outside town halls, marched in their thousands, pulled up trees and burned down local forestry officials’ houses in protest against industrial tree plantations.
GM trees, if commercially developed, would intensify the problems associated with industrial tree plantations. Local people’s opposition to GM tree plantations would therefore also be greater.
The next section of this book counters some of the arguments used by proponents of GM trees to promote further research and development of GM
trees.
Section 3 describes some of the companies, research institutions and networks behind the development of GM tree technology. Like any other technology, research into GM trees is not neutral. Among the questions that we need to ask about this new technology are: Who is carrying out the research? Who is paying the researchers? Who stands to benefit? And who faces the risks? Ask yourself whether you trust scientists funded by pulp and paper companies to tell the truth about the dangers of GM trees, especially when the results of their research will primarily benefit the pulp and paper industry.
Section 4 explains some of the international and national regulations and legislation. Unfortunately, much of the legislation is inadequate to control the development of GM trees. The final section outlines some of the campaigns and actions that people have already taken against GM trees. People around the world are saying “NO” to GMOs. Resistance against GM trees is growing!
Unravelling the lies: Why GM trees don’t
make sense
Proponents of genetically modified trees try to convince others that the research into GM trees is a neutral technology developed by scientists to solve some of the world’s problems. They put forward a series of arguments which deflect attention from the problems associated with GM trees and industrial models of forestry, including monoculture tree plantations. Steven Strauss is a professor of molecular and cellular biology and of genetics at the Department of Forest Science at Oregon State University. He is one of the world’s leading researchers into GM trees. In 2001, Strauss and colleagues at the Oxford Forestry Institute wrote that discussions about GM trees tend to be “highly polarized”:
In debate, the arguments often shade from biological to ideological, depending on the worldview of the participant. Those against intensive management for wood production, who feel genetic modification is unacceptably unnatural or who object to the highly patent-intensive and thus corporate role in genetic modification, tend to dislike it. Those who believe that growing more wood on less land is an important environmental as well as economic goal, and who accept a continuing major role for technology and large corporations in forestry and agriculture, tend to favor it. This statement also reveals much about Strauss’ worldview and that of his middle-class, male, Northern, highly qualified colleagues. This is a worldview that has little in common with the reality faced by villagers who have lost land and livelihoods to massive industrial tree plantations in the Global South. Or with plantation workers who have seen their co-workers and friends poisoned by the excessive amount of pesticides they have to spray on the plantations. Or with workers who produce charcoal from eucalyptus in horrific conditions in Brazil. The arguments in favour of GM trees do not address the concerns of villagers living near plantations. Neither are the arguments aimed at anyone who has ever listened to villagers describing their problems since a pulp and paper firm covered their land with a monoculture tree plantation. Instead, GM proponent’s arguments are aimed at poorly informed readers who have never seen a monoculture industrial tree plantation, or if they have, then it was with officials from the firm managing the plantation. GM tree proponents never discuss land rights, or the rights of local communities to manage their own resources. They do not talk about reducing demand for timber products, such as paper, or the fact that the demand is largely from the North. Their arguments are aimed at deflecting attention from these issues.
1. Faster growing GM trees will not help take
pressure off native forests
The argument that planting faster growing GM trees means “growing more wood on less land” appears at a first glance to be convincing. GM tree proponents argue that since world demand for timber products is rising, if more wood is produced in faster-growing GM tree plantations then less will need to be cut in native forests.
However, this overlooks the reality of establishing plantations, particularly in the South. Industrial tree plantations and pulp mills provide few jobs, but destroy local livelihoods. People are forced to move away, including to new forests where they clear land for farming. Tree plantations are often established after native forests have been destroyed.
In Sumatra, for example, vast areas of forests have been cleared to feed pulp and paper mills. To replace the clearcut forests, the pulp mills are establishing acacia plantations. Asia Pulp and Paper’s Indah Kiat pulp and paper mill in Riau province has a production capacity of 1.8 million tons of pulp and 654,000 tons of paper. Unresolved land rights conflicts exist on more than 50,000 hectares of APP’s concessions. In an attempt to address its serious problems with maintaining fibre supply in the future, Indah Kiat is reported to be working in collaboration with the University of Beijing on GM tree research. Fast growing tree plantations produce wood that is suitable for the pulp and paper industry, for charcoal or for pit props. Producing more fibre for the pulp industry will not change the demand for high quality decorative tropical hardwoods for the construction industry, which come largely from native forests. Demand for timber is not the only cause of deforestation. Forests are opened up by roads, submerged by hydropower dams, or cut down for cash crops (such as soya) or cattle ranching. Mining and oil extraction in forests is massively damaging both for the forests and the people that live there. Creating new industrial tree plantations has no affect whatsoever on this destruction. Any large corporation must continually expand in order to repay debt and investment costs and to keep shareholders content. Aracruz Cellulose is the world’s largest producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp, with 31 per cent of world market share. The eucalyptus trees which feed Aracruz Cellulose’s pulp mills in Brazil have been bred for fast growth for three decades. Aracruz’s monoculture plantations consist of some of the fastest growing trees in the world. But Aracruz continues to expand both its pulp production and its area of plantations, putting more pressure on local people’s livelihoods and what little remains of the Mata Atlantica forest in the area. Aracruz is also carrying out research into GM trees. Trees genetically modified for fast growth are likely to consume even more water than the trees currently used in industrial tree plantations, which will lead to more dried up rivers and streams, more lowering of water tables and more dried up wells. Nutrients will be removed from the soil more quickly, requiring more chemical fertilizers. GM trees will grow faster than native trees and could be highly invasive of surrounding forests, crowding out vegetation and destroying habitat for the animals, birds, insects and fungi that have evolved to live in native forests. Proponents of industrial plantations and GM trees assume that ever-increasing demand for timber products is an unalterable fact. They ignore the fact that most of the pulp produced in the South is to feed demand in the North. Aracruz, for example, exports 95 per cent of its pulp. Per capita paper consumption in Germany is 70 per cent of that in the US. On average, people in Vietnam consume two per cent of the amount of paper consumed by people in the US.
Literacy rates in the US, Germany and Vietnam are almost identical. Almost 40 per cent of paper is used for packaging. Sixty per cent of the space in US newspapers is taken up by adverts. In 2002, Jukka Härmälä, Stora Enso’s chief executive officer, explained in a presentation titled “Achieving our Growth Ambitions” that the key factor in increased paper demand was increased spending on advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Ever increasing paper consumption is neither necessary nor inevitable.
2. GM trees cannot help reverse climate change
In December 2003, the ninth Conference of the Parties (COP-9) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change reached a decision allowing Northern companies and governments to establish plantations in the South under the Kyoto Protocol’s “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM). These carbon sinks are intended to absorb carbon dioxide and to store carbon. COP-9 allowed the use of plantations of GM trees as carbon sinks. The idea that planting trees can help reverse climate change is based on the false assumption that one ton of carbon released by burning coal or oil is the same as one ton of carbon contained in a tree. Carbon stored in the form of fossil fuel under the earth is stable and unless corporations dig it out and burn it, it will not enter the atmosphere. Tree plantations, in order to remain as a carbon store, have to be protected from catching fire, from being destroyed by pests, diseases or being logged. Trees have to be prevented from dying and rotting. Local communities have to be persuaded not to try to reclaim the land they lost to the plantations by cutting down the trees.
In terms of the impact on the climate, these are two different types of carbon which cannot be added to, or subtracted from, each other. Including GM trees in the CDM makes a bad situation worse. In 1993, Japanese car manufacturer Toyota started field trials to test trees which had been genetically modified to absorb more carbon. While carbon absorption increased, Toyota’s scientists also noted a dramatic increase in water consumption.
3. Genetically modifying trees for reduced lignin is no
solution to pulp mill pollution
To produce bleached kraft pulp, trees are chipped, cooked under pressure, washed and then bleached. Toxic chemicals are used in the cooking process to remove lignin, a glue-like substance that holds wood cells together and makes trees strong. As lignin causes yellowing of paper, any lignin remaining has to be bleached. Forestry scientists argue that by genetically modifying trees to have less lignin they have found a way of making pulp mills less polluting. “The costly portion of the pulp and paper making process, from both an economic and environmental perspective, is attributable to the removal of lignins. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop means by which lignin content is decreased, or make lignins more extractable,” explained forestry scientists from Oxford University and Oregon State University in a paper published in Plant Biotechnology Journal in 2003. The risks associated with reduced-lignin GM trees include trees which are weakened structurally and which are more vulnerable to storms. Reducedlignin trees are more susceptible to viral infections. Reducing lignin can reduce trees’ defences to pest attack, leading to increased pesticide use. Low-lignin trees will rot more readily, with serious impacts on soil structure and ecology. If reduced-lignin GM trees were to cross with forest trees these impacts would not be limited to plantations. Although reduced lignin GM trees might be less competitive than native trees, the GM trees would be planted in vast numbers. If the plantation was near to a small population of native trees of the same species, the GM trees could overwhelm the reproduction of same-species native trees. Trees that cannot resist storms and which are at risk from attack by pests and viral infections could take over ecosystems and wipe out samespecies
native trees locally. They could also lead to a rapid increase in insect populations. Focusing narrowly on lignin as the cause of pollution from pulp mills, GM proponents can argue that reducing the amount of lignin in trees is a reasonable solution. They overlook other possible solutions such as using crops like hemp which have lower levels of lignin than trees. Growing plantations of GM trees with reduced lignin fail to address any of the environmental and social problems that industrial plantations cause to local communities. Rather than asking questions about the nature of the global pulp and paper industry for which they are working, forestry scientists are asking whether genetically modifying trees for reduced lignin will work.
In 2003, scientists at a Tree Biotechnology meeting in Sweden proposed setting up a “Eucalypt Genome Initiative”. The beneficiaries of this research are clear from the list of pulp and paper companies that expressed an interest: Aracruz, Nippon Paper, Sappi, Mondi, ArborGen, Stora Enso, Suzano and Oji Paper.
Indeed, much of the research that scientists are conducting into GM trees is primarily of interest to the pulp and paper industry. Faster growing GM trees would in theory allow pulp mills to grow more fibre more quickly. Herbicide tolerance was one of the key areas of initial research into GM trees. Scientists have engineered insect resistant GM poplar, larch, white spruce and walnut trees. Scientists in Japan have produced GM eucalyptus trees which can grow in salty soils. GM trees with reduced lignin would make the pulping process less polluting, which would be useful for pulp industry public relations.
Researchers are working on GM disease resistant trees. Large scale monoculture plantations are particularly susceptible to diseases. GM trees engineered to be sterile would grow faster since the trees would focus their energy on growing rather than producing flowers. The pulp and paper industry is also interested in research into GM trees with more uniform fibre, fewer branches and straighter trunks.
Researchers are also looking into ways of engineering trees to absorb and store more carbon, as a supposed solution to climate change. Others areworking on engineering trees to clean up pollution. Physicist Freeman Dyson has even suggested that within 50 years, scientists will be able to genetically engineer trees to make Mars habitable, making it an attractive destination for space tourists. Since the first GM poplars were planted in Belgium in 1988, there have been several hundred field trials of GM trees – the majority in the US. Two years ago, China’s State Forestry Administration approved GM poplar trees for commercial planting. Well over one million insect resistant GM poplars have now been planted in China. The GM trees are part of the government’s plan to cover 44 million hectares with trees by 2012, supposedly in an attempt to prevent floods, droughts and spreading deserts. Chinese forestry scientists see GM trees as a technical fix to the serious damage that insects cause to tree plantations in China.
“Recent research on insect-resistant forest tree breeding shows considerable promise,”
wrote Wang Lida, Han Yifan and Hu Jianjun of the Chinese Academy of Forestry in a recently published book (Molecular Genetics and Breeding of Forest Trees edited by Sandeep Kumar and Matthias Fladung). But neither the government nor the scientists who produced the GM trees have any records of where the trees have been planted.
Huoran Wang represents the Chinese Academy of Forestry in Beijing on the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Panel of Experts on Forest Gene Resources. In November 2003, Wang told an FAO meeting that “Poplar trees are so widely planted in northern China that pollen and seed dispersal can not be prevented.” Attempts to prevent genetic pollution by maintaining “isolation distances” between GM and non-GM poplars is “almost impossible”, Wang added. There isn’t even a system in place to monitor the GM plantations that have so far been planted. Wang suggests setting up a system “to monitor the situation of the GM plantations” and their impact on surrounding ecosystems.
The dangers posed by GM trees are in some ways even more serious than those posed by GM crops. Trees live longer than crops, they are largely undomesticated and forestry scientists’ knowledge about fragile forest ecosystems is poor. The risks involved are serious enough to justify the demand for a global ban on releases of GM trees.
The origins of GM trees
The development of genetically modified trees can be traced back to the mideighteenth century in Europe and the invention of scientific forestry. The purpose of scientific forestry was to produce a single product: timber. Simplification of forests and ever increasing state and forest department control over forest land went hand in hand with colonisation in the tropics. The vast monoculture tree plantations marching across the Global South are the most extreme form of this model of forestry. The companies backing GM tree research are interested in the supply of large quantities of cheap, homogenous wood fibre to feed their pulp mills. Genetic modification of trees is forestry science’s latest offering to its industrial masters.
GM trees are designed to be planted in large, monoculture, industrial tree plantations. These plantations have serious impacts on people and forests and GM trees will increase these impacts. Local people’s names for industrial tree plantations illustrate the problems that this model of forestry causes. In Thailand, farmers call eucalyptus the “selfish tree”, because eucalyptus plantations remove nutrients from the soil and consume so much water that farmers cannot grow rice in neighbouring fields. Mapuche Indigenous People in Chile refer to pine plantations as “planted soldiers”, because they are green, in rows and advancing. In Brazil, tree plantations are called a “green desert”, and in South Africa, “green cancer”. Throughout the Global South people and organisations have formed networks opposing industrial tree plantations on their land. In Brazil, a group of more than 100 organisations consisting of villagers, indigenous peoples, workers, trade unionists and environmentalists has formed the Alert Against the Green Desert Network. The Network opposes the encroachment of villagers’ land by monoculture plantations for pulp and charcoal production. In April this year, the Movement of Landless Peasants (MST) in Brazil protested against the pulp and paper industry’s take over of vast tracts of land. Landless people occupied areas of industrial tree plantations owned by the pulp and paper companies Veracel, Klabin, VCP, Aracruz and Trombini.
In Thailand, villagers have rallied outside town halls, marched in their thousands, pulled up trees and burned down local forestry officials’ houses in protest against industrial tree plantations.
GM trees, if commercially developed, would intensify the problems associated with industrial tree plantations. Local people’s opposition to GM tree plantations would therefore also be greater.
The next section of this book counters some of the arguments used by proponents of GM trees to promote further research and development of GM
trees.
Section 3 describes some of the companies, research institutions and networks behind the development of GM tree technology. Like any other technology, research into GM trees is not neutral. Among the questions that we need to ask about this new technology are: Who is carrying out the research? Who is paying the researchers? Who stands to benefit? And who faces the risks? Ask yourself whether you trust scientists funded by pulp and paper companies to tell the truth about the dangers of GM trees, especially when the results of their research will primarily benefit the pulp and paper industry.
Section 4 explains some of the international and national regulations and legislation. Unfortunately, much of the legislation is inadequate to control the development of GM trees. The final section outlines some of the campaigns and actions that people have already taken against GM trees. People around the world are saying “NO” to GMOs. Resistance against GM trees is growing!
Unravelling the lies: Why GM trees don’t
make sense
Proponents of genetically modified trees try to convince others that the research into GM trees is a neutral technology developed by scientists to solve some of the world’s problems. They put forward a series of arguments which deflect attention from the problems associated with GM trees and industrial models of forestry, including monoculture tree plantations. Steven Strauss is a professor of molecular and cellular biology and of genetics at the Department of Forest Science at Oregon State University. He is one of the world’s leading researchers into GM trees. In 2001, Strauss and colleagues at the Oxford Forestry Institute wrote that discussions about GM trees tend to be “highly polarized”:
In debate, the arguments often shade from biological to ideological, depending on the worldview of the participant. Those against intensive management for wood production, who feel genetic modification is unacceptably unnatural or who object to the highly patent-intensive and thus corporate role in genetic modification, tend to dislike it. Those who believe that growing more wood on less land is an important environmental as well as economic goal, and who accept a continuing major role for technology and large corporations in forestry and agriculture, tend to favor it. This statement also reveals much about Strauss’ worldview and that of his middle-class, male, Northern, highly qualified colleagues. This is a worldview that has little in common with the reality faced by villagers who have lost land and livelihoods to massive industrial tree plantations in the Global South. Or with plantation workers who have seen their co-workers and friends poisoned by the excessive amount of pesticides they have to spray on the plantations. Or with workers who produce charcoal from eucalyptus in horrific conditions in Brazil. The arguments in favour of GM trees do not address the concerns of villagers living near plantations. Neither are the arguments aimed at anyone who has ever listened to villagers describing their problems since a pulp and paper firm covered their land with a monoculture tree plantation. Instead, GM proponent’s arguments are aimed at poorly informed readers who have never seen a monoculture industrial tree plantation, or if they have, then it was with officials from the firm managing the plantation. GM tree proponents never discuss land rights, or the rights of local communities to manage their own resources. They do not talk about reducing demand for timber products, such as paper, or the fact that the demand is largely from the North. Their arguments are aimed at deflecting attention from these issues.
1. Faster growing GM trees will not help take
pressure off native forests
The argument that planting faster growing GM trees means “growing more wood on less land” appears at a first glance to be convincing. GM tree proponents argue that since world demand for timber products is rising, if more wood is produced in faster-growing GM tree plantations then less will need to be cut in native forests.
However, this overlooks the reality of establishing plantations, particularly in the South. Industrial tree plantations and pulp mills provide few jobs, but destroy local livelihoods. People are forced to move away, including to new forests where they clear land for farming. Tree plantations are often established after native forests have been destroyed.
In Sumatra, for example, vast areas of forests have been cleared to feed pulp and paper mills. To replace the clearcut forests, the pulp mills are establishing acacia plantations. Asia Pulp and Paper’s Indah Kiat pulp and paper mill in Riau province has a production capacity of 1.8 million tons of pulp and 654,000 tons of paper. Unresolved land rights conflicts exist on more than 50,000 hectares of APP’s concessions. In an attempt to address its serious problems with maintaining fibre supply in the future, Indah Kiat is reported to be working in collaboration with the University of Beijing on GM tree research. Fast growing tree plantations produce wood that is suitable for the pulp and paper industry, for charcoal or for pit props. Producing more fibre for the pulp industry will not change the demand for high quality decorative tropical hardwoods for the construction industry, which come largely from native forests. Demand for timber is not the only cause of deforestation. Forests are opened up by roads, submerged by hydropower dams, or cut down for cash crops (such as soya) or cattle ranching. Mining and oil extraction in forests is massively damaging both for the forests and the people that live there. Creating new industrial tree plantations has no affect whatsoever on this destruction. Any large corporation must continually expand in order to repay debt and investment costs and to keep shareholders content. Aracruz Cellulose is the world’s largest producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp, with 31 per cent of world market share. The eucalyptus trees which feed Aracruz Cellulose’s pulp mills in Brazil have been bred for fast growth for three decades. Aracruz’s monoculture plantations consist of some of the fastest growing trees in the world. But Aracruz continues to expand both its pulp production and its area of plantations, putting more pressure on local people’s livelihoods and what little remains of the Mata Atlantica forest in the area. Aracruz is also carrying out research into GM trees. Trees genetically modified for fast growth are likely to consume even more water than the trees currently used in industrial tree plantations, which will lead to more dried up rivers and streams, more lowering of water tables and more dried up wells. Nutrients will be removed from the soil more quickly, requiring more chemical fertilizers. GM trees will grow faster than native trees and could be highly invasive of surrounding forests, crowding out vegetation and destroying habitat for the animals, birds, insects and fungi that have evolved to live in native forests. Proponents of industrial plantations and GM trees assume that ever-increasing demand for timber products is an unalterable fact. They ignore the fact that most of the pulp produced in the South is to feed demand in the North. Aracruz, for example, exports 95 per cent of its pulp. Per capita paper consumption in Germany is 70 per cent of that in the US. On average, people in Vietnam consume two per cent of the amount of paper consumed by people in the US.
Literacy rates in the US, Germany and Vietnam are almost identical. Almost 40 per cent of paper is used for packaging. Sixty per cent of the space in US newspapers is taken up by adverts. In 2002, Jukka Härmälä, Stora Enso’s chief executive officer, explained in a presentation titled “Achieving our Growth Ambitions” that the key factor in increased paper demand was increased spending on advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Ever increasing paper consumption is neither necessary nor inevitable.
2. GM trees cannot help reverse climate change
In December 2003, the ninth Conference of the Parties (COP-9) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change reached a decision allowing Northern companies and governments to establish plantations in the South under the Kyoto Protocol’s “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM). These carbon sinks are intended to absorb carbon dioxide and to store carbon. COP-9 allowed the use of plantations of GM trees as carbon sinks. The idea that planting trees can help reverse climate change is based on the false assumption that one ton of carbon released by burning coal or oil is the same as one ton of carbon contained in a tree. Carbon stored in the form of fossil fuel under the earth is stable and unless corporations dig it out and burn it, it will not enter the atmosphere. Tree plantations, in order to remain as a carbon store, have to be protected from catching fire, from being destroyed by pests, diseases or being logged. Trees have to be prevented from dying and rotting. Local communities have to be persuaded not to try to reclaim the land they lost to the plantations by cutting down the trees.
In terms of the impact on the climate, these are two different types of carbon which cannot be added to, or subtracted from, each other. Including GM trees in the CDM makes a bad situation worse. In 1993, Japanese car manufacturer Toyota started field trials to test trees which had been genetically modified to absorb more carbon. While carbon absorption increased, Toyota’s scientists also noted a dramatic increase in water consumption.
3. Genetically modifying trees for reduced lignin is no
solution to pulp mill pollution
To produce bleached kraft pulp, trees are chipped, cooked under pressure, washed and then bleached. Toxic chemicals are used in the cooking process to remove lignin, a glue-like substance that holds wood cells together and makes trees strong. As lignin causes yellowing of paper, any lignin remaining has to be bleached. Forestry scientists argue that by genetically modifying trees to have less lignin they have found a way of making pulp mills less polluting. “The costly portion of the pulp and paper making process, from both an economic and environmental perspective, is attributable to the removal of lignins. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop means by which lignin content is decreased, or make lignins more extractable,” explained forestry scientists from Oxford University and Oregon State University in a paper published in Plant Biotechnology Journal in 2003. The risks associated with reduced-lignin GM trees include trees which are weakened structurally and which are more vulnerable to storms. Reducedlignin trees are more susceptible to viral infections. Reducing lignin can reduce trees’ defences to pest attack, leading to increased pesticide use. Low-lignin trees will rot more readily, with serious impacts on soil structure and ecology. If reduced-lignin GM trees were to cross with forest trees these impacts would not be limited to plantations. Although reduced lignin GM trees might be less competitive than native trees, the GM trees would be planted in vast numbers. If the plantation was near to a small population of native trees of the same species, the GM trees could overwhelm the reproduction of same-species native trees. Trees that cannot resist storms and which are at risk from attack by pests and viral infections could take over ecosystems and wipe out samespecies
native trees locally. They could also lead to a rapid increase in insect populations. Focusing narrowly on lignin as the cause of pollution from pulp mills, GM proponents can argue that reducing the amount of lignin in trees is a reasonable solution. They overlook other possible solutions such as using crops like hemp which have lower levels of lignin than trees. Growing plantations of GM trees with reduced lignin fail to address any of the environmental and social problems that industrial plantations cause to local communities. Rather than asking questions about the nature of the global pulp and paper industry for which they are working, forestry scientists are asking whether genetically modifying trees for reduced lignin will work.
4. Insect-resistant GM trees will not lead to decreased pesticide use
Monoculture tree plantations face a permanent threat of insect attack. When that happens, the only solution is very often to apply chemical pesticides. Biotechnology offers the possibility of GM trees that are insect resistant, usually achieved by introducing genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). The resulting GM trees produce their own insecticide, which kills insects that try to feed from the tree. Scientists at Forest Research in New Zealand have genetically modified radiata pine in this way. GM tree proponents claim that this development will lead to less need to spray plantations with pesticides. However, pests are more likely to develop resistance to an insecticide that is always present. Genetically modified Bt cotton has been widely planted in China. While it has initially led to reduced pesticide use, there are signs that the cotton bollworm is developing resistance to Bt cotton. Liu Xiaofeng from Henan Agriculture Department’s cotton office recently told Reuters that the bollworm would no longer be affected by genetically modified Bt cotton trees in six or seven years’ time.
If pests became resistant to GM insecticide producing trees, plantation managers’ “solution” would be to spray yet more pesticides. Until pests develop resistance, GM Bt trees may have an advantage over forest trees which are vulnerable to insect attack, thus increasing the risks of Bt trees invading surrounding forests. If they did so, GM Bt trees would disrupt insect population dynamics in natural forests as well as in plantations.
Monoculture tree plantations face a permanent threat of insect attack. When that happens, the only solution is very often to apply chemical pesticides. Biotechnology offers the possibility of GM trees that are insect resistant, usually achieved by introducing genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). The resulting GM trees produce their own insecticide, which kills insects that try to feed from the tree. Scientists at Forest Research in New Zealand have genetically modified radiata pine in this way. GM tree proponents claim that this development will lead to less need to spray plantations with pesticides. However, pests are more likely to develop resistance to an insecticide that is always present. Genetically modified Bt cotton has been widely planted in China. While it has initially led to reduced pesticide use, there are signs that the cotton bollworm is developing resistance to Bt cotton. Liu Xiaofeng from Henan Agriculture Department’s cotton office recently told Reuters that the bollworm would no longer be affected by genetically modified Bt cotton trees in six or seven years’ time.
If pests became resistant to GM insecticide producing trees, plantation managers’ “solution” would be to spray yet more pesticides. Until pests develop resistance, GM Bt trees may have an advantage over forest trees which are vulnerable to insect attack, thus increasing the risks of Bt trees invading surrounding forests. If they did so, GM Bt trees would disrupt insect population dynamics in natural forests as well as in plantations.
5. Herbicide-tolerant GM trees will not lead to decreased herbicide use
In 1995, Monsanto produced a herbicide-tolerant GM eucalyptus in Brazil.
“We estimated that the modification would cut weed-control costs in half and would increase final yield by 10 per cent,”
In 1995, Monsanto produced a herbicide-tolerant GM eucalyptus in Brazil.
“We estimated that the modification would cut weed-control costs in half and would increase final yield by 10 per cent,”
David Duncan, Monsanto’s former head of forestry, told journalist Casey Woods in 2002. Scientists at Forest Research in New Zealand have produced herbicide resistant GM spruce and
pine trees. The trees are currently being tested in field trials. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Monsanto boasts that its glyphosate products “are among the world’s most widely used herbicides.” Monsanto describes its glyphosate herbicides as “broad-spectrum, non-selective herbicides.” In other words, glyphosate herbicides will kill just about anything green with which they come into contact. As Viola Sampson of Eco-Nexus and Larry Lohmann of the Corner House point out that “Trees genetically engineered to be tolerant of herbicides will further entrench the use of the chemicals in corporate and state attempts to
create wooded landscapes free of ‘extraneous’ species.” Plantations of GM herbicide-tolerant trees could result in increased use of herbicides, for two reasons. First, the fact that the trees cannot be damaged by the herbicide could encourage irresponsible use of herbicides by plantation managers. GM tree plantations could be sprayed at any stage in the growth
of the tree. Second, GM trees which are tolerant of Roundup are designed to be used in plantations where Roundup is used as the herbicide. Using a single herbicide to remove weeds increases the chances of the weeds developing resistance to that herbicide. As scientists from the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland and the Max Plank Institut für Chemische Ökologie in Germany explain, “Resistance to herbicides, such as Round-Up or glyphosate, the most commonly quoted in anti-GM literature, can only become a significant problem if we rely on it as a sole source of killing weeds”. The scientists are advocating using a cocktail of chemicals to deal with weeds in plantations. In this case, GM trees which are designed to be tolerant of a single herbicide would be of little benefit. Still more herbicides would be needed, if herbicide resistant GM trees were to cross with related trees outside the plantation, or if herbicide resistant GM trees were to spread outside plantations as weeds. Herbicide tolerant weeds have started to appear in farmers’ fields. In 2003, Bob Hartzler, Professor of Agronomy at Iowa State University, produced research indicating that in the past seven years five weed species had become tolerant of the herbicide glyphosate. In Argentina, 11 million hectares have been planted with genetically modified soya since 1996, covering half the country’s arable land. The GM soya is resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Between 1996 and 2001 Monsanto halved the price of Roundup in Argentina. Use of glyphosate in Argentina has exploded, up from 13.9 million litres in 1997, to 150 million litres in 2003. Farmers have to use more and more herbicides in an attempt to control weeds which have also become tolerant of Roundup. As a result, in Colonia Loma Senes in northern Argentina, livestock have died and small farmers have lost their crops as pesticide spray spread from neighbouring GM fields. Families report skin rashes and smarting eyes. In response to criticism of GM soya use in the country, Argentina’s council for biotechnology, Argenbio, argued that GM soya has allowed farmers to avoid using a cocktail of chemicals on their crops. Gabriela Levitus, the executive director of Argenbio, told the UK’s Daily Telegraph that “damage had been caused by some farmers’ reluctance to practice crop rotation, but that would be true of any monoculture, whether the crop was genetically
modified or not”. However, GM soya seeds which grow after being dropped during harvesting cannot be killed by applications of normal amounts of Roundup. Syngenta has run adverts in Argentina stating “Soya is a weed”. Syngenta suggested that a mixture of paraquat and atrazine should wipe out the invasive GM soya.
pine trees. The trees are currently being tested in field trials. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Monsanto boasts that its glyphosate products “are among the world’s most widely used herbicides.” Monsanto describes its glyphosate herbicides as “broad-spectrum, non-selective herbicides.” In other words, glyphosate herbicides will kill just about anything green with which they come into contact. As Viola Sampson of Eco-Nexus and Larry Lohmann of the Corner House point out that “Trees genetically engineered to be tolerant of herbicides will further entrench the use of the chemicals in corporate and state attempts to
create wooded landscapes free of ‘extraneous’ species.” Plantations of GM herbicide-tolerant trees could result in increased use of herbicides, for two reasons. First, the fact that the trees cannot be damaged by the herbicide could encourage irresponsible use of herbicides by plantation managers. GM tree plantations could be sprayed at any stage in the growth
of the tree. Second, GM trees which are tolerant of Roundup are designed to be used in plantations where Roundup is used as the herbicide. Using a single herbicide to remove weeds increases the chances of the weeds developing resistance to that herbicide. As scientists from the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland and the Max Plank Institut für Chemische Ökologie in Germany explain, “Resistance to herbicides, such as Round-Up or glyphosate, the most commonly quoted in anti-GM literature, can only become a significant problem if we rely on it as a sole source of killing weeds”. The scientists are advocating using a cocktail of chemicals to deal with weeds in plantations. In this case, GM trees which are designed to be tolerant of a single herbicide would be of little benefit. Still more herbicides would be needed, if herbicide resistant GM trees were to cross with related trees outside the plantation, or if herbicide resistant GM trees were to spread outside plantations as weeds. Herbicide tolerant weeds have started to appear in farmers’ fields. In 2003, Bob Hartzler, Professor of Agronomy at Iowa State University, produced research indicating that in the past seven years five weed species had become tolerant of the herbicide glyphosate. In Argentina, 11 million hectares have been planted with genetically modified soya since 1996, covering half the country’s arable land. The GM soya is resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Between 1996 and 2001 Monsanto halved the price of Roundup in Argentina. Use of glyphosate in Argentina has exploded, up from 13.9 million litres in 1997, to 150 million litres in 2003. Farmers have to use more and more herbicides in an attempt to control weeds which have also become tolerant of Roundup. As a result, in Colonia Loma Senes in northern Argentina, livestock have died and small farmers have lost their crops as pesticide spray spread from neighbouring GM fields. Families report skin rashes and smarting eyes. In response to criticism of GM soya use in the country, Argentina’s council for biotechnology, Argenbio, argued that GM soya has allowed farmers to avoid using a cocktail of chemicals on their crops. Gabriela Levitus, the executive director of Argenbio, told the UK’s Daily Telegraph that “damage had been caused by some farmers’ reluctance to practice crop rotation, but that would be true of any monoculture, whether the crop was genetically
modified or not”. However, GM soya seeds which grow after being dropped during harvesting cannot be killed by applications of normal amounts of Roundup. Syngenta has run adverts in Argentina stating “Soya is a weed”. Syngenta suggested that a mixture of paraquat and atrazine should wipe out the invasive GM soya.
6. GM trees will not clean up pollution
Scott Merkle and Richard Meagher at the University of Georgia have produced GM cottonwood trees which can remove mercury from contaminated soil. The scientists modified Escherichia coli bacterium genes and inserted them into the cottonwood trees. The GM trees are designed to suck up the mercury from the soil and release it to the atmosphere. In July 2003, the scientists planted a field trial of 60 GM cottonwood trees at the site of a 19th century
hat-making factory in Danbury. Professor Joe Cummins, a geneticist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, questions whether the GM trees will actually improve the situation. “The mercury ‘remediation’ will . . . simply move the pollution to the atmosphere, from which it will be redeposited over the cities of the Northeast and the lakes and waterways of northern USA and Canada”, he wrote in Science in Society magazine. “Such ‘remediation’ is no remediation at all, it is just moving the problem from one place to another!” he concluded. David Salt, of Northern Arizona University, expressed his concerns about using trees to clean up pollution back in 1995. “Would we simply be exchanging soil pollution for air pollution?” he asked.
Scott Merkle and Richard Meagher at the University of Georgia have produced GM cottonwood trees which can remove mercury from contaminated soil. The scientists modified Escherichia coli bacterium genes and inserted them into the cottonwood trees. The GM trees are designed to suck up the mercury from the soil and release it to the atmosphere. In July 2003, the scientists planted a field trial of 60 GM cottonwood trees at the site of a 19th century
hat-making factory in Danbury. Professor Joe Cummins, a geneticist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, questions whether the GM trees will actually improve the situation. “The mercury ‘remediation’ will . . . simply move the pollution to the atmosphere, from which it will be redeposited over the cities of the Northeast and the lakes and waterways of northern USA and Canada”, he wrote in Science in Society magazine. “Such ‘remediation’ is no remediation at all, it is just moving the problem from one place to another!” he concluded. David Salt, of Northern Arizona University, expressed his concerns about using trees to clean up pollution back in 1995. “Would we simply be exchanging soil pollution for air pollution?” he asked.
7. Risks of genetic pollution
“Outcrossing”, the term that scientists use for trees in plantations crossing
with forest trees, is one of the biggest risks associated with field trials and
commercial plantations of GM trees. In a paper published in 2003, Malcolm
Campbell and colleagues at the Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford
University acknowledged this risk: “Because most [plantation] trees have an
abundance of wild or feral relatives, outcross, and display long-distance gene
flow via pollen and sometimes seed, there is likely to be considerable activist
and public concern about large-scale use of genetically engineered trees.”
Forestry scientists’ solution to outcrossing is to produce GM trees which will
not flower. The prospect of sterile monoculture plantations might look good
from the corporate perspective, but if the trees were indeed sterile, this would
mean thousands of hectares of trees without flowers, pollen, nuts or seeds.
No birds or insects could live in such a plantation and the biodiversity of the
plantation would be even lower than in today’s monoculture tree plantations.
Much has been written about “terminator” technology in food crops, in particular
the dangers it presents of allowing a small number of multinational corporations
to control the world’s food supply. Less discussed is whether the technology
actually works. There is not a single published study that investigates whether
sterile GM crops remain sterile under field conditions, according to Norman
Ellstarnd, a professor of genetics at the University of California.
Whether GM trees are in fact sterile, and would remain that way throughout
their lifetimes is almost impossible to prove. Trees have very long lifespans
and the only way of knowing that trees genetically engineered for sterility will
remain sterile for their entire lifespan is by repeatedly conducting trials lasting
the hundreds of years of a tree’s lifespan.
Scientists admit that there are problems with attempts to engineer sterile
trees. For example, Ron Sederof, a botanist at North Carolina State University,
and Simcha Lev-Yadun, a plant geneticist at the University of Haifa in Israel,
wrote in a letter to Nature Biotechnology:
The most common strategies to suppress gene flow are based on
suppression of genes essential for the development of reproductive
structures, especially pollen and seeds. These approaches are limited
in two ways. The first problem is that suppression of the activity of the
target genes may not be complete; and second, the transgenes
themselves may undergo gene silencing resulting in reversal of
suppression.
The term “gene silencing” refers to the fact that genes can be switched on or
off at different times during a tree’s life, as a result of stresses such as extremes
of heat or cold, drought, storm, disease or pests. Ricarda Steinbrecher, codirector
of Econexus, a UK-based NGO, points out that “No risk assessment
can predict the interference that genetic engineering will have on the stress
response and the aging of trees.”
As Steinbrecher explains, scientists long since stopped discussing whether
it would be possible to prevent genes from GM plants from escaping into the
wild. Instead they are arguing about what the impact of the genetic pollution
might be, with many of them denying that there is a problem. For example,
Kevan Gartland from the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland and
colleagues argue that “There is currently no clearly compelling evidence of
significant damage due to limited amounts of GM tree pollen being able to
spread within the environment.” The argument is disingenuous. Gartland and
colleagues need to refer to research which proves that GM trees are safe,
rather than point at a lack of evidence when few (if any) independent research
tests have been carried out. Moreover, it is hardly in the interests of the pulp
and paper industry (or the scientists whose work the industry supports) to
carry out research which might indicate a serious danger with GM trees.
Scientists at Oregon State University have monitored gene flow from non-GM
poplar plantations. They found gene flow from the plantation poplars took
place more than 10 kilometres away from the plantation. The researchers
consider that gene flow is inevitable if GM plants are grown close to their
relatives. Determining a “safe” distance from wild relatives is difficult, because
of the huge distances that pollen can travel. Pine tree pollen has been found
in India 600 kilometres from the nearest pine tree.
Some trees can re-grow from broken twigs and others send suckers up from
their roots. Seeds can float down rivers. Trees, whether genetically modified
or not do not respect international boundaries. It is conceivable that GM trees
(or genes from those trees) planted in one country could spread into
neighbouring countries, regardless of international legislation on importing
GMOs.
8. GM elm trees are no solution to Dutch elm disease
Scientists at the University of Abertay in Dundee, Scotland have produced
GM elm trees which are resistant to Dutch elm disease. In the US, scientists
at Cornell University are working on GM American chestnuts which are resistant
to chestnut blight fungus.
The wild populations of both of these trees have in the past been devastated
by fungal diseases. Research which promises to replace trees almost
completely lost to the British and US landscapes is almost bound to be
popular with the public.
Some GM tree proponents see this type of research as a possibility to improve
the image of GM tree research with the public. For example, Don Doering, a
senior researcher with the World Resources Institute, a Washington DCbased
think tank, told Science magazine that genetically modifying the
American chestnut to be resistant to blight fungus is an opportunity to “speak
directly” to the public to demonstrate biotech’s societal benefits.
However, if GM elms are designed to resist the latest outbreak of the fungus,
this is of little value if the fungus returns in a more destructive form. This has
happened in the past. Dutch elm disease appeared in the northwest of Europe
around 1910. Thirty years later the epidemic died down. In the 1960s it was
back. Europe’s elms had almost no resistance to the disease and millions of
trees were killed.
Moreover, the dangers with this sort of research are similar to those for any
other type of GM trees. The engineered genes might escape if the trees were
to breed with wild relatives. The results are unpredictable.
Another problem is that when forestry scientists breed trees, they produce
vast numbers of trees but with very narrow genetic diversity. For example,
Radiata Pine is one of the plantation industry’s favoured trees. There are four
million hectares planted with the tree worldwide, but only five radiata pine
forests left anywhere in the world: three on the Californian coast and two on
islands off the coast of Mexico. Scientists from Australia’s Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) are desperately
collecting seeds from the few remaining wild radiata pine trees left. As CSIRO’s
Colin Matheson points out, “Australia’s radiata plantations are much less
diverse than the native populations although they occupy a much greater
area.”
GM breeding programmes (even more so than non-GM breeding programmes)
could lead to a similar squeezing of genetic diversity of elm and American
chestnut trees. In the long run this would make the trees more vulnerable to
disease rather than less.
9. Do GM trees make economic sense?
Apart from widespread public concern about GMOs in general, an important
reason why GM trees have not yet been commercially planted except in
China, is that GM trees simply do not make economic sense, at least for the
time being.
In 1999, Roger Sedjo of the conservative think tank Resources for the Future
wrote that “forestry is on the threshold of widespread introduction of genetic
engineering”. Sedjo estimated that herbicide tolerant GM trees could save
industry US$975 million a year worldwide. The source for the figure on which
Sedjo based his calculations of potential savings is a report produced by a
pro-biotech consulting company called Context Consulting (now called the
Context Network). When I asked Sedjo for a copy of the report, he replied, “I
don’t think it was publically [sic] available. . . . I guess I would suggest that
you contact the successor company to see if they will provide you with a full
copy of the study.” Context Network did not reply to my repeated requests for
the report.
In 2003, Sedjo was still using the same source for his estimates of the potential
economic benefits of GM tree plantations. Sedjo now seems a little sheepish
about his enthusiasm about the savings that herbicide tolerant trees could
present the plantation industry. “In more recent work, papers not yet in print .
. . I suggest reasons why that full potential is unlikely to be reached although
I don’t try to recalibrate the figure to provide an ‘actual’ estimate,” he told me.
In fact, several companies which were at one time involved in GM tree research
have since pulled out. Weyerhaeuser has apparently withdrawn from GM tree
research because of the long wait before the research will generate a profit.
“When you have to wait 20 to 30 years to get payback,” Todd Jones, director
of Weyerhaeuser forest biotechnology, told Science magazine in 2002, “you
have to have something that looks like it’s going to have some real economic
potential. If we look at economic models for some of the genes that do appear
to be out there, there aren’t that many that make that hurdle.” Regarding
herbicide tolerance, Jones pointed out that applying herbicides “is not that
large of an expense” in the forest industry.
Weyerhaeuser’s publicity material includes the following statement:
“Weyerhaeuser’s genetically improved trees, both in the past and in the
foreseeable future, are not altered by direct manipulation of DNA or the use of
“Outcrossing”, the term that scientists use for trees in plantations crossing
with forest trees, is one of the biggest risks associated with field trials and
commercial plantations of GM trees. In a paper published in 2003, Malcolm
Campbell and colleagues at the Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford
University acknowledged this risk: “Because most [plantation] trees have an
abundance of wild or feral relatives, outcross, and display long-distance gene
flow via pollen and sometimes seed, there is likely to be considerable activist
and public concern about large-scale use of genetically engineered trees.”
Forestry scientists’ solution to outcrossing is to produce GM trees which will
not flower. The prospect of sterile monoculture plantations might look good
from the corporate perspective, but if the trees were indeed sterile, this would
mean thousands of hectares of trees without flowers, pollen, nuts or seeds.
No birds or insects could live in such a plantation and the biodiversity of the
plantation would be even lower than in today’s monoculture tree plantations.
Much has been written about “terminator” technology in food crops, in particular
the dangers it presents of allowing a small number of multinational corporations
to control the world’s food supply. Less discussed is whether the technology
actually works. There is not a single published study that investigates whether
sterile GM crops remain sterile under field conditions, according to Norman
Ellstarnd, a professor of genetics at the University of California.
Whether GM trees are in fact sterile, and would remain that way throughout
their lifetimes is almost impossible to prove. Trees have very long lifespans
and the only way of knowing that trees genetically engineered for sterility will
remain sterile for their entire lifespan is by repeatedly conducting trials lasting
the hundreds of years of a tree’s lifespan.
Scientists admit that there are problems with attempts to engineer sterile
trees. For example, Ron Sederof, a botanist at North Carolina State University,
and Simcha Lev-Yadun, a plant geneticist at the University of Haifa in Israel,
wrote in a letter to Nature Biotechnology:
The most common strategies to suppress gene flow are based on
suppression of genes essential for the development of reproductive
structures, especially pollen and seeds. These approaches are limited
in two ways. The first problem is that suppression of the activity of the
target genes may not be complete; and second, the transgenes
themselves may undergo gene silencing resulting in reversal of
suppression.
The term “gene silencing” refers to the fact that genes can be switched on or
off at different times during a tree’s life, as a result of stresses such as extremes
of heat or cold, drought, storm, disease or pests. Ricarda Steinbrecher, codirector
of Econexus, a UK-based NGO, points out that “No risk assessment
can predict the interference that genetic engineering will have on the stress
response and the aging of trees.”
As Steinbrecher explains, scientists long since stopped discussing whether
it would be possible to prevent genes from GM plants from escaping into the
wild. Instead they are arguing about what the impact of the genetic pollution
might be, with many of them denying that there is a problem. For example,
Kevan Gartland from the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland and
colleagues argue that “There is currently no clearly compelling evidence of
significant damage due to limited amounts of GM tree pollen being able to
spread within the environment.” The argument is disingenuous. Gartland and
colleagues need to refer to research which proves that GM trees are safe,
rather than point at a lack of evidence when few (if any) independent research
tests have been carried out. Moreover, it is hardly in the interests of the pulp
and paper industry (or the scientists whose work the industry supports) to
carry out research which might indicate a serious danger with GM trees.
Scientists at Oregon State University have monitored gene flow from non-GM
poplar plantations. They found gene flow from the plantation poplars took
place more than 10 kilometres away from the plantation. The researchers
consider that gene flow is inevitable if GM plants are grown close to their
relatives. Determining a “safe” distance from wild relatives is difficult, because
of the huge distances that pollen can travel. Pine tree pollen has been found
in India 600 kilometres from the nearest pine tree.
Some trees can re-grow from broken twigs and others send suckers up from
their roots. Seeds can float down rivers. Trees, whether genetically modified
or not do not respect international boundaries. It is conceivable that GM trees
(or genes from those trees) planted in one country could spread into
neighbouring countries, regardless of international legislation on importing
GMOs.
8. GM elm trees are no solution to Dutch elm disease
Scientists at the University of Abertay in Dundee, Scotland have produced
GM elm trees which are resistant to Dutch elm disease. In the US, scientists
at Cornell University are working on GM American chestnuts which are resistant
to chestnut blight fungus.
The wild populations of both of these trees have in the past been devastated
by fungal diseases. Research which promises to replace trees almost
completely lost to the British and US landscapes is almost bound to be
popular with the public.
Some GM tree proponents see this type of research as a possibility to improve
the image of GM tree research with the public. For example, Don Doering, a
senior researcher with the World Resources Institute, a Washington DCbased
think tank, told Science magazine that genetically modifying the
American chestnut to be resistant to blight fungus is an opportunity to “speak
directly” to the public to demonstrate biotech’s societal benefits.
However, if GM elms are designed to resist the latest outbreak of the fungus,
this is of little value if the fungus returns in a more destructive form. This has
happened in the past. Dutch elm disease appeared in the northwest of Europe
around 1910. Thirty years later the epidemic died down. In the 1960s it was
back. Europe’s elms had almost no resistance to the disease and millions of
trees were killed.
Moreover, the dangers with this sort of research are similar to those for any
other type of GM trees. The engineered genes might escape if the trees were
to breed with wild relatives. The results are unpredictable.
Another problem is that when forestry scientists breed trees, they produce
vast numbers of trees but with very narrow genetic diversity. For example,
Radiata Pine is one of the plantation industry’s favoured trees. There are four
million hectares planted with the tree worldwide, but only five radiata pine
forests left anywhere in the world: three on the Californian coast and two on
islands off the coast of Mexico. Scientists from Australia’s Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) are desperately
collecting seeds from the few remaining wild radiata pine trees left. As CSIRO’s
Colin Matheson points out, “Australia’s radiata plantations are much less
diverse than the native populations although they occupy a much greater
area.”
GM breeding programmes (even more so than non-GM breeding programmes)
could lead to a similar squeezing of genetic diversity of elm and American
chestnut trees. In the long run this would make the trees more vulnerable to
disease rather than less.
9. Do GM trees make economic sense?
Apart from widespread public concern about GMOs in general, an important
reason why GM trees have not yet been commercially planted except in
China, is that GM trees simply do not make economic sense, at least for the
time being.
In 1999, Roger Sedjo of the conservative think tank Resources for the Future
wrote that “forestry is on the threshold of widespread introduction of genetic
engineering”. Sedjo estimated that herbicide tolerant GM trees could save
industry US$975 million a year worldwide. The source for the figure on which
Sedjo based his calculations of potential savings is a report produced by a
pro-biotech consulting company called Context Consulting (now called the
Context Network). When I asked Sedjo for a copy of the report, he replied, “I
don’t think it was publically [sic] available. . . . I guess I would suggest that
you contact the successor company to see if they will provide you with a full
copy of the study.” Context Network did not reply to my repeated requests for
the report.
In 2003, Sedjo was still using the same source for his estimates of the potential
economic benefits of GM tree plantations. Sedjo now seems a little sheepish
about his enthusiasm about the savings that herbicide tolerant trees could
present the plantation industry. “In more recent work, papers not yet in print .
. . I suggest reasons why that full potential is unlikely to be reached although
I don’t try to recalibrate the figure to provide an ‘actual’ estimate,” he told me.
In fact, several companies which were at one time involved in GM tree research
have since pulled out. Weyerhaeuser has apparently withdrawn from GM tree
research because of the long wait before the research will generate a profit.
“When you have to wait 20 to 30 years to get payback,” Todd Jones, director
of Weyerhaeuser forest biotechnology, told Science magazine in 2002, “you
have to have something that looks like it’s going to have some real economic
potential. If we look at economic models for some of the genes that do appear
to be out there, there aren’t that many that make that hurdle.” Regarding
herbicide tolerance, Jones pointed out that applying herbicides “is not that
large of an expense” in the forest industry.
Weyerhaeuser’s publicity material includes the following statement:
“Weyerhaeuser’s genetically improved trees, both in the past and in the
foreseeable future, are not altered by direct manipulation of DNA or the use of
.
.
.
