Hope Not Hype - Third World Network

Pesticides
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(Box 6.1 continued)
The claim of an indirect benefit through lower costs or higher profits is also
questionable. It would appear that any benefit of insecticidal crops for reducing
mycotoxins is to reduce the cost of using high-rent GM seeds and chemically intensive
farming practices. Integrated pest management and agroecological methods are far more
promising and sustainable strategies for controlling insect damage to crops (Chapter 7).
The benefit of insecticidal plants would be to reduce the high cost of using GM seeds
and proprietary insecticides rather than a net benefit to the food supply. This benefit
claim requires more systematic study including using the best alternative agricultural
models (see Chapter 7) as controls (Benbrook, 2005).
Felicia Wu, in a paper on the economic benefits of Bt plants, found that there
could be a maximum economic benefit to the US of US$23 million/year (Wu, 2006).
But even the economic benefit needs to be kept in perspective. Recall that the US corn
farmer is heavily subsidized. According to a report of the Congressional Research Service,
corn subsidies in the US averaged US$4.5 billion per year, with a peak of US$10.1
billion in 2000 (Schnepf and Womach, 2007). At US$23 million/year, the net reduction
in the costs of mycotoxin would amount to a scant 0.5% of the public loss on corn in
general. Sadly, the maximum possible economic benefit of insecticidal plants would
not even recover the amount that the corn biofuel lobby paid to US politicians on average
per year over a recent 15-year period (Schubert, 2006).
specific (Delmer, 2005) (Box 6.1). The reporting of benefits and harms has been heavily
generalized, which has the effect of reducing the accuracy of reporting. Furthermore, there
are clear gaps in some aspects of safety testing, including human health and non-target
effects. The main point for the Assessment was that it was not possible to extrapolate to a
definitive endorsement of genetic engineering from the existing context-dependent data.
Human health and environmental risks from herbicide-tolerant crops
Like with other herbicides, there is a price to pay for using commercial formulations
of glyphosate and glufosinate even though they are claimed to be less toxic to humans and
less harmful to the environment.
Environmental benefits centre around the use of more benign herbicides than many of the
alternative products that may be used in the equivalent non-HT crop, fewer herbicide
applications, and reduced tillage, since herbicide incorporation into the soil is not necessary
(Devine, 2005, p. 313).
Herbicide formulations can also have non-target effects. Glyphosate formulations
can be toxic to some animals (e.g., see Relyea, 2005; Relyea et al., 2005, but also challenged
by Thompson et al., 2005) or tissues (Benachour and Séralini, 2009; Richard et al., 2005).
Although glyphosate is claimed to have a lower toxicity to humans than many other
alternative herbicides (Alan, 2000), these claims may be oversimplifications of the true
impact of glyphosate-based commercial formulations which rely on a number of other