The Bees Knees

As today is the last day of winter, here is a a Bee resting on a flower to remind us of the summer to come.

Prince Charles and GM Foods

Because I was busy yesterday, I was not the first to hear the comments made by Prince Charles. Also there are times when I just don't trust the way that the media reports some stories. While Prince Charles is the heir apparent to the British throne, he is often portrayed as being rather semi detached. In the past, when it became known that he talked to his plants, he was portrayed as crazy.

As I regularly talk to a Tree, and she talks back, well I must be as crazy as Prince Charles. But being serious, I too am seriously concerned about Genetically Modified organisms.

As I have said before I am not against GM per say, what concerns me and most of the world is that the testing of these organisms is not any where as through as it needs to be. The problem really started when the GM industry lobbied the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to get a less rigorous and hence cheaper testing and approval system. What should have happened was that these products should have been tested to the standard that drugs are. But even to the industries surprise, the FDA agreed to a claim by the industry that GM was no different to any other form of conventional breeding.

This lead to GM crops being introduced far faster than was ever expected. Equally the businesses that were and are developing GM, were saved billions of development costs.
It is the lack of testing that is the main reason why there is a significant opposition to GM.
Now back to what Prince Charles was saying. He is say count me out of having to grow this stuff. As well that he is saying that GM is an environmental disaster on the same scale as Climate Change.

As Prince Charles is to be the next King, there has been a lot of tut tutting about him meddling in politics. While I do not think that anyone should inherit power, I admire him for speaking out about this. While the GM industry has promised much, the reality is that they have not delivered on those promises. A few months ago when the industry was calling for more GM as a way of feeding the growing human population it emerged that in spite of dramatic claims of improved yields, the actual improvement is only one percent. The industry claims that it is only because the farmers are not putting all the expensive inputs onto the crops that is causing the much lower yields. Well they would say that.

The reality is that these novel crops do not and can not feed the planet. Also those farmers growing them have to sign contracts that tie them to using the fertilisers, herbicides and other inputs from that company and only that company. There is an aspect of the way that farmers in the US have taken to GM that really surprises me. I had always been under the impression that American farmers were fiercely independent and I wonder why these farmers would allow themselves to have their hands tied like this?

I suspect that the reality is that many exaggerated claims were made about GM and the industry have subsidised aspects of the agri-business to get farmers growing these crops. And it really is this exaggeration of the benefits of GM that is at the heart of the doubts that many have. Add to this the concerted effort by the Bio tech industry to stop and suppress any science that cast doubt on the safety of GM. The case of Arpad Pusztai is the best known but there have been others. What is significant about all the independent checks that have been done so far, is that GM appears to suppress the immune system.

It hear that the true significance of what Prince Charles was saying has been lost. The benefits of GM has be over hyped, the benefits have not been proved and in fact it appears to to be harmful.

I agree with what Charles says and I would go further; as we have already released this menace onto the environment and it looks as though it is harming our food sources. While the effects of climate change is partly why we are suffering from falling crop yields, it also looks as though cross pollination and cross contamination from and by GM is a factor here too. Add to this the fact that when tested GM produce seems to be having a suppressive effect upon the immune system then it looks as if the food we rely on is in fact killing us.

It is this last factor that really should alarm everyone. As it also looks as though it is killing our environment too. Throughout the globe Bees are dying, a condition that is being called Colony Collapse Disorder. The key characteristic is that the bees have a suppressed immune system and it seems that mites and viruses then kill the bees. The same effect that independent tests have shown that GM foods will do, suppress the Immune system. While the evidence at the moment is circumstantial, as no one will fund or oppose the bio tech industry, it is there and it is growing. Where GM has been grown commercially and for the greatest period is where the greatest losses of bees has happened.

The real problem is that the commercial imperative has taken over and governments have failed their people yet again. If proper testing had been carried out before hand then we would have discovered all this before we took the stopper out of that poison bottle.

I don't think that all this will lead to mass starvation or dramatic crop failures but this has to be a lesson we heed. Science can and has been a major benefit to humanity, but we need to be sure of the consequence of our actions before we act. When it comes to the environment, protecting the environment for humanity has to be our primary concern. If not just as the immune system of an animal kills off an infection, then the immune system of the planet could well kill us off.

Honey Bees & GM Update

This is a bit of an update posting. As my regular reader may know I posted some carefully worded details of some partial research that seemed to indicate that there could be a link to the problem of “Colony Collapse” in honey bees and genetically-modified-crops. However, the data I saw raised more questions than it answered. Further, I questioned why the researchers were not taking this data to the main stream media.

Therefore I posted with caution and caveats. Anyway here is the original posting.

About a week following the posting I was contacted by someone who had been told of the posting. I mailed this prospective reader the story. This reader was using a dot ac address.

Now before I continue I should point out that for me personally, the jury is still out on GM. As most of the crops thus far produced are just breed to allow the use of more chemicals, the benefits have yet to be proved. Especially as the promised yield increase from them is only one percent. Further, the much promised ability to feed the developing world has yet to happen. So while they have promised so much they have delivered so little.

Additionally the cost of development for these crops means that for farmers and growers in the developing world to grow them, they have to borrow money for the seeds. This is causing some farmers and growers in the developing world, effectively become indentured to the seed companies.

There is one exception that I have heard of, that of a rice verity that survives flooding and is benefiting the people in Bangladesh.

However, my main concern is that we don't yet understand what genes do. At the moment all we are doing is acting like children, switching on pretty lights, without knowing what they do or what else is happening.

Now, in the research that seemed to suggest that bees feeding on the pollen from GM crops were dying, seemed to be an example of this. Where an unknown effect of a gene was producing an unwanted and unexpected effect.

Therefore, while I have serious reservation about GM crops, I am not totally against them per say, but I do think that there needs to be much more rigorous testing of these crops for safety.
Thus when the prospective reader contacted me I was not surprised that this person was sceptical. However, once we overcame the rather tetchy initial communications made to me, this student started asking many of the questions I had about the original posting. Further, we both acknowledged that more research was needed. This was something the student did.

While the results are far from conclusive, the student mapped out where GM crops are grown, or have been grown, and where the Colony Collapses have occurred and more or less they do match. I emphasise again that this is not conclusive proof that GM crops are at the root of this problem but it does raise questions that need answering.

I don't have access to all the data I would need to retest this hypothesis, but as there are no other evidence based theories offering an explanation I feel it should be properly tested. What data I have had access to though, does show that there is a mirroring of the incidences of Colony Collapse and where GM crops are grown.

I will end this posting with a further caveat. As I have in the past been contacted by people who have tried to feed me miss information regarding Climate Change, in the hope of undermining my credibility, I am making this posting with caution. While the evidence and data that I have seen seems to point to a smoking gun, I am still wary of why these people have not take this data to the mainstream media?

Are Genetically Modified Crops Killing Bees?

Several months ago I started writing a piece about the rise in food prices and the unethical way that we in the west are diverting food crops to Bio-Fuels. I was going to also talk about the effects of climate change and the way that our changing climate could be effecting bees. As has been reported bees are suffering from a condition called, Colony Collapse Disorder.

Now while I strongly suspected an environmental reason for this, however as I always use good quality research as the basis for my postings, I did not want to blame global warming for this Colony Collapse Disorder if that is not what the sciences shows. Therefore I contacted people that would know what the current state of knowledge is. While I thought that it was likely to be an environmental factor, what I was told shocked me.

However, I needed to verify if what I was being told was accurate. Therefore I have been very busy ensuring that the data I was being shown was accurate. Further was the interpretation of the data correct.

Well I have long thought that big business, global business and its total disregard for the environment is pushing us to hell in a hand cart, but the data “Appears” to show that pollen from GM crops is killing the bees.

While I have strong reservations about Genetically Modified foods, I am not against them as long as they are properly tested. Something that has never happened. The research, while not conclusive, showed that when bees were feed on various GM crops lost their ability to navigate. Why this should happen is still a mystery, but its the only effect demonstrable in the laboratory that mimics what's happening in the wild.

I have spent much of my time asking some hard questions of the people who have supplied this data. Why have they not made this data public and why not go to the media? They told me that effectively they have been gagged as research funding is dependent upon “pleasing” vested interests. They cant go to the media as while the research appears to be impacting the immune system of the Bees the data was not conclusive proof and they reminded me of Arpad Pusztai. For those that don't know or don't remember, Arpad Pusztai gave a television interview where he expressed concern about GM as in his experiments of feeding GM potatoes to rats, they failed to thrive. Effectively the potatoes were less nutritious.

Arpad Pusztai, paid the price with his career.

While the science is not conclusive proof, yet, as the powers that be have halted any further research by these scientists, I now find this knotty problem in my lap.

As the Internet is the home of every nut job, and I am fully aware that to many as an Environmentalist I fall into that category, in breaking this news I could be being set up.
While all the documents I have seen look genuine, and while the story I have been told sounds “reasonably” credible, I still don't fully understand why I have been given tacit approval to break this story. While I know that I do have my readers here, three Americans and a cat, I have to trust that their reasons are genuinely altruistic. They needed a conduit like me to get this story out in the public domain.

If True and Accurate then we really have destroyed our planet. Charles Darwin accurately predicted that without Bees we would (The Human Race) suffer a total collapse of our ability to grow food in six years. Colony Collapse Disorder is a real disaster for us all. We really are going to hell in a hand cart.