Between The Lines - Karen Perry Stillerman: Monsanto's Claims Extolling Benefits of Genetically Engineered Crops Challenged (Week Ending Aug. 17, 2012)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

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Critics Challenge Monsanto's Claims Extolling Benefits of Genetically Engineered Food Crops

RealAudio MP3

Posted Aug. 8, 2012

Interview with Karen Perry Stillerman, Union of Concerned Scientists' food and environment program, conducted by Scott Harris

The Monsanto corporation, an international leader in biotechnology, is currently spending millions of dollars on an advertising campaign to convince the public and politicians that the genetically engineered food crops that they've developed and are marketing is helping to feed more people, protecting natural resources and promoting biodiversity. Monsanto's slogan is, "we’re all in this together, producing more, conserving more, improving lives.”

But the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has studied Monsanto's claims, challenges many of the company's assertions of benefits for agriculture and society. To that end, the Union has produced their own series of advertisements placed on Washington D.C. buses and transit stations near the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with the goal of setting the record straight on genetically modified crops.

In one ad, the Union declares that "Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops, genetically engineered to tolerate the company's Roundup herbicide, increased herbicide use by an estimated 383 million pounds between 1996 and 2008. And monarch butterflies have laid 81 percent fewer eggs thanks to habitat loss since Roundup Ready was introduced."

Another ad asserts that Monsanto's products aren't the answer to meeting the needs of a hungry planet. The Union says that genetically engineered crops have so far done little to improve yields in the U.S. and their Roundup Ready crops have spawned an epidemic of superweeds. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Karen Perry Stillerman, senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists' Food & Environment Program, who challenges the Monsanto Corporation's claims on the benefits of genetically engineered food crops.

KAREN PERRY STILLERMAN: Well, I should say that Monsanto is not the only company that is doing this, but they are the industry leader and so we've looked at the industry, but we've also looked some at Monsanto's specific products. And so, a couple of years ago in 2009, actually, we produced a report called "Failure to Yield" and we decided to look at these problems and the claims one by one. So, we wanted to look, because they were saying at the time, Monsanto was running a big ad campaign on public radio, in fact, and places like New Yorker magazine and other places. And they were specifically saying that their seeds were increasing yields. So we looked at that and my colleague, Doug Green Sherman looked at the data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the scientific literature to really kind of tease out, "Well, what is the situation with the crops that Monsanto and other companies are engineering?" Are they really increasing in yield? And is the genetic splicing that they're doing, is that what's responsible?"

What we've found is, you know, of course, over the the past decade or more, yields of crops and soy beans have gone up dramatically. But when we really tease out what was responsible, we've found out that it was mostly attributable to common plant breeding and improved farming techniques, and that, in fact, the genes that the companies were putting in there – one of which Monsanto uses to make the crops tolerate herbicides, weed killers – and so you can plant the crop and spray herbicides over it once it's growing so that the crop doesn't die, but the weeds do. That's a really great thing for farmers, but what it doesn't do is help increase yields.

And so, if we're interested in increasing food production, that doesn't do it.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Karen, in your research looking at some of the problems associated with genetically modified crop seeds, I've read a report that said that Roundup Ready crops, which are resistant to that particular Roundup pesticide may be associated with a reduction of monarch butterflies in the Midwest. D. o you want to tell our listeners a bit about that?

KAREN PERRY STILLERMAN: It's part of the problem with agriculture on an industrial scale as we're practicing it today. You know, the Roundup and other herbicides are used to keep fields weed-free and as the prices of things like corn has gone up in recent years, farmers have planted more and more of it, so they're leaving less land in sort of a less of a weedy state. And monarch butterflies just happen to be a species that rely on certain kinds of weeds to lay their eggs in and to eat. So it is a problem that the more herbicides that are used, and the more land area is kept free of weeds of all kinds, the less kind of diversity you are going to see.

And that's not necessarily something that Monsanto set out to do, but it is an impact of the industrial kind of agriculture that their products really perpetuate and exacerbate.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So Karen, what is the objective of the Union of Concerned Scientists' campaign here? What would you like to see in terms of new regulations on companies like Monsanto that produce genetically modified crop seeds? Is that where you want to go with this in terms of having more stringent regulation here? Or is it just to give the public and farmers more awareness of these claims which you believe are false?

KAREN PERRY STILLERMAN: Well, I think it's both. We do want to see these kinds of experimental or genetically engineered crops regulated more tightly for lots of reasons because the regulation is pretty lax in terms of really being able to sort out health impacts and environmental impacts. We'd like to see more study done and the regulations don't require that at all.

But I think more importantly, what we'd like to see is the USDA in particular, and Congress in the Farm Bill – which is the piece of legislation that Congress debates every five years that really sets the rules and incentives for agriculture – we'd like to see those folks really get more serious about alternatives because as I mentioned, genetic engineering is complicated, it takes a long time to produce these crops and huge investments.

What we find is that simple plant breeding – the kind that is done at universities and by researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself – can actually achieve the kinds of goals that Monsanto and its competitors talk about more quickly and more cheaply and just more efficiently generally. But those plant breeders are really starved for resources in recent years. So we'd really like to see more research dollars going into simple plant breeding of the kind that can produce results.

Find links examining Monsanto's claims on genetically-engineered food crops by visiting ucsusa.org.