Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong On GMOs

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Mark Lynas is the author of three major popular science environmental books: High Tide (2004), Six Degrees (2008) and The God Species (2011), as well as the Kindle Single ebook Nuclear 2.0 (2012). Six Degrees won the Royal Society book prize, and was made into a National Geographic documentary.

Lynas was advisor on climate change to the President of the Maldives from 2009 until the coup in 2012. He has contributed extensively to global media, appearing on CNN, BBC and other broadcast outlets as well as writing for the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post and numerous others. He is a frequent speaker around the world on science, climate and agriculture, and since 2014 has been a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Alliance for Science.

Also available in the Bloomsbury Sigma series:

Sex on Earth by Jules Howard

Spirals in Time by Helen Scales

A is for Arsenic by Kathryn Harkup

Breaking the Chains of Gravity by Amy Shira Teitel

Suspicious Minds by Rob Brotherton

Herding Hemingway’s Cats by Kat Arney

Death on Earth by Jules Howard

The Tyrannosaur Chronicles by David Hone

Soccermatics by David Sumpter

Big Data by Timandra Harkness

Goldilocks and the Water Bears by Louisa Preston

Science and the City by Laurie Winkless

Bring Back the King by Helen Pilcher

Built on Bones by Brenna Hassett

My European Family by Karin Bojs

4th Rock from the Sun by Nicky Jenner

Patient H69 by Vanessa Potter

Catching Breath by Kathryn Lougheed

The Planet Factory by Elizabeth Tasker

Immune by Catherine Carver

Reinventing the Wheel by Bronwen and Francis Percival

Making the Monster by Kathryn Harkup

Best Before by Nicola Temple

Catching Stardust by Natalie Starkey

Eye of the Shoal by Helen Scales

Nodding Off by Alice Gregory

The Science of Sin by Jack Lewis

The Edge of Memory by Patrick Nunn

Turned On by Kate Devlin

Borrowed Time by Sue Armstrong

Love Factually by Laura Mucha

The Vinyl Frontier by Jonathan Scott

Clearing the Air by Tim Smedley

Superheavy by Kit Chapman

18 Miles by Christopher Dewdney

Genuine Fakes by Lydia Pyne

Grilled by Leah Garcés

The Contact Paradox by Keith Cooper

Life Changing by Helen Pilcher

Death By Shakespeare by Kathryn Harkup

In memory of David MacKay

Contents

GMO, GM or GE?

Chapter 1: UK Direct Action: How we Stopped the GMO Juggernaut

Chapter 2: Seeds of Science: How I Changed my Mind

Chapter 3: The Inventors of Genetic Engineering

Chapter 4: A True History of Monsanto

Chapter 5: Suicide Seeds? Farmers and GMOs from Canada to Bangladesh

Chapter 6: Africa: Let Them Eat Organic Baby Corn

Chapter 7: The Rise and Rise of the Anti-GMO Movement

Chapter 8: What Anti-GMO Activists Got Right

Chapter 9: How Environmentalists Think

Chapter 10: Twenty Years of Failure

Notes

Acknowledgements

Index

GMO, GM or GE?

A note on definitions. I’m using the terms ‘GMO’, ‘GM’ and ‘GE’ somewhat interchangeably in this book. The first of these is especially problematic. I've used it in the title because it has the highest international recognisability factor, but many scientists I know refuse to use it on principle. What is a ‘Genetically Modified Organism’ anyway? Your pet dog is genetically modified from the original wolf – otherwise you wouldn't let it anywhere near your kids. All our crops and domesticated animals have been genetically modified from their ancestors to be useful to humans. So are they also GMOs? That’s what bugs the scientists: it makes no logical sense to single out anything that has been altered in the lab for special concern and even vilification. Changing genes via laboratory molecular techniques, the main subject of this book, is not much different from conventional selective breeding.

I use the term ‘GMO’ to indicate the popular debate, and I do not claim it is scientifically valid or even very definable. In fact, the terms ‘GM’ (Genetically Modified) and ‘GE’ (Genetically Engineered) are preferable. I’ve found GM is mostly used in the UK, because in the US it means a large car company. I’ve used both in the text to avoid repetition.

CHAPTER ONE

UK Direct Action: How we Stopped the GMO Juggernaut

It’s three in the morning, and properly dark. But there’s still just enough light, cast by nearby street lamps a couple of fields away, to make out the neat rows of maize plants. They are healthy and strong, about shoulder height. Although there is far too little light to see colours, I fancy I can make out the lush dark green of the broad leaves and robust stems. As I ready my machete I’m struck by how, even when it seems pitch dark outside, there is always just enough light – once your eyes get attuned to it – to see by. This theory has only ever failed once: a couple of years earlier, in South Wales, as I traversed a woodland with some other activists protesting against an opencast coal mine. That time it was so dark that I walked straight into a tree. Tonight we’re closer to civilisation, somewhere in eastern England; in the deep country certainly, but in that part of England you’re always close enough to some human habitation. That’s why we keep our torches turned off. You never know who’s watching.

I feel a momentary twinge of conscience as I swing back and my machete hacks into the first row of maize. I’m a hobby gardener and have spent time on farms; I don’t like to destroy healthy plants. These are admittedly better looking than anything I have ever grown, but then they’re genetically modified and therefore to my mind not quite natural. I see this innocent-looking maize as an artificial intrusion, a form of living pollution that doesn’t belong in the English countryside. That’s why they must be utterly eradicated, I remind myself, as I build up to a rhythm. Slash, whack, chop. Slash, whack, chop. It’s surprisingly easy when you get going. The maize plants topple straight over, like trees clear-felled in a forest.

I’m not alone, of course. There are about a dozen of us, spread out evenly across the field, each working a row. You can’t be too careful in the near-dark with sharp tools. This would not be a good time to cause an injury. Some of the other activists are close friends; others I hardly know. We have travelled together cooped up in a hired van, a couple of hours on the road, wearing our hoodies and surrounded by metal tools. The dress code is black, or as dark as you can make it. Like all criminals, we don’t carry ID, just some spare cash in case of emergency.

It’s a funny feeling being on the wrong side of the law. Many people, for good reason or bad, will know what I mean. Suddenly everything is reversed. The friendly policeman is an enemy; you no longer feel a member of everyday society in quite the same way. It is almost as if a veil is drawn between you and ordinary people. You are an outlaw, you carry a secret. You might look normal, but you’re not. There are things you cannot say, things that you should not reveal to strangers. On that night in the maize field, as at most times, we are even careful with each other: many people use nicknames or assumed names. Information is typically shared on a ‘need to know’ basis only. Asking too many questions would lead to suspicion. That fellow activist in the standard uniform of combat clothes and dreadlocks just might turn out to be an undercover cop.*

On a different occasion, we were once stopped by police, all piled together in the back of a car with our spades and blades, somewhere in the back roads of Norfolk. The cops made us all get out and stand by the side of the country lane while they wrote down our names and addresses in a notebook. Like a fool I blurted out real details. I spent the next few days in a fog of paranoia, waiting for a knock at the door. It never came, and I still wonder what those police officers must have thought, pulling over this strange car full of mostly youthful gardeners in the middle of the night. Did they guess what we were up to? Did they really believe our hastily invented cover story about being on our way back from a ‘garden party’?

After three-quarters of an hour in the maize field we are making good progress. A good portion of the crop, earlier so vigorous and lush, is now lying wilted and flat. Leaves and stalks, separated from the strong roots that sustained them, are getting trampled into the English mud. But there is still much more to do, and after a short break and some whispered conversations, we redouble our efforts. Slash, whack, chop. Slash, whack, chop. There are car headlights, passing by on the other side of the hedge that runs alongside the genetically modified maize field. Are they moving too slowly, as a patrol car would? We all freeze, but they pass on, humming into the distance. A few minutes later, there are different lights flashing over in the far corner. Have we been busted? We pause again. Then the lights stop – a trick of the night, perhaps. I continue cutting, keeping my eyes on the job, focusing only on the row of maize plants directly in front of me. Slash, whack, chop. Slash, whack, chop.

Then suddenly all hell breaks loose. There are shouts, thuds. People are running everywhere. I hear the unmistakable crackle of police radios. In slow motion, like that recurring nightmare everyone has when you’re running in treacle, I try to move, with only one thought: escape. There’s an area of woodland on the far side of the field, but between there and where I am now the ground is too open. The best cover is in the tallest part of the maize field itself. Only a few rows away from where I was slashing, I throw myself face down onto the ground. I can taste the earthiness in my mouth as I try not to breathe. I’m not alone – a friend from Oxford is lying next to me, but she keeps trying to whisper something. I bark at her hoarsely to shut up. Then everything is perfectly still, except for the crunching of booted feet through the felled maize as the cops hunt for us. A minute later, they’ve brought in police dogs. I hear the rapid panting of Alsatians as they charge up and down the rows, sniffing and searching for their silent prey. One comes so close to my prone form that I can almost feel its hot breath as its panting gets closer and closer … and then further away again as for some reason it passes by.

There’s a flurry of barking from a short distance behind us. Someone’s been caught. Once they have a hold, police dogs are trained not to let go – there is no point in struggling. Now’s our chance. ‘Let’s go!’ I whisper to my Oxford friend, and we break cover, dashing for the safety of the woodland. A 100-yard sprint. There’s a barbed-wire fence. Dark clothes are torn, but it doesn’t matter. Another wooden fence, then a gate, and we’re through, hidden by trees and brambles and steadily getting further and further away from the cops. Once at a safe distance, we hide out in the undergrowth until dawn, then make our way to a nearby railway station. The emergency cash we were supposed to carry is insufficient, but no matter – we vault the barriers and board the first train to London. All the way home I look at the CCTV cameras, in stations and on street corners: are they swivelling to follow me? Have I just delayed the inevitable arrest, followed by the brief appearance in court and then a lengthy jail sentence? I arrive home muddy and exhausted.

This story began, for me at least, in a chilly squat in Brighton in November 1996, three years before the events described above. This particular building was a semi-derelict office block. Bits of concrete and broken glass covered the floors, and the walls were scrawled with graffiti. There was no water or electricity, and even the organisers admitted that only two out of the total 14 floors were usable. It was frigidly cold too: as we bedded down in the rubble in our sleeping bags, it was obvious that no one was going to get much sleep. This was certainly an inauspicious place from which to launch a movement.

The following morning, bleary-eyed and after the customary vegan breakfast (partly salvaged from waste food thrown in skips by nearby supermarkets), we all diverged into different thematic workshops of our choice. Talks were being given on squatting and homelessness, on supporting the Liverpool dock workers who had recently come out on strike, sharing news from the Zapatista revolutionary movement in southern Mexico and updating activists on the situation at the Newbury bypass, where a new road project cutting through countryside and ancient woodlands was being opposed by hardy protesters camping out in treehouses and down tunnels. I headed, along with perhaps half a dozen others, to a side room to listen to Jim Thomas, a professional campaigner then working for Greenpeace, discussing the new subject of ‘genetics’. Jim, who I later briefly shared a house with in Oxford, was, like me, in his early twenties, but I remember him as a big, bearded bear of a man, with a warm, almost puppyish enthusiasm that belied his natural air of authority. He was a brilliant activist, with a creative mind, a clever tactical insight and a deep understanding of the issues, for which he was widely respected. Jim circulated black and white Greenpeace leaflets about ‘genetic engineering’, and his workshop in that draughty building was the first time I heard the ominous word ‘Monsanto’. Monsanto. I thought it sounded almost onomatopoeic in its evilness. Almost as if Satan himself had started a company and decided to poison our food.

As Jim Thomas told it, this Monsanto company was genetically engineering crops, starting with soy, in order to patent the new gene-spliced plants and assert an increasing dominance over the global food supply. He was concerned that this technology would intensify the concentration of corporate power and economic globalisation. ‘No Patents on Life!’ was the new rallying cry. Monsanto was an American chemicals multinational, he told us, and the new engineered foods (the term ‘Frankenfoods’ only came into widespread use later; contrary to assertions, it was not coined by me) were imminently appearing on European shelves unidentified by any labelling. Perhaps most importantly, these new crops were genetically engineered for one purpose only, Jim Thomas told us: to withstand applications of Monsanto’s own herbicide, Roundup. Instead of the more wildlife-friendly farming system we wanted to see, these new unnatural gene-spliced crops would be grown in sterilised fields as part of the worst kind of chemical-dependent monoculture imaginable.

I was hooked. Back at my home in Oxford we already had the perfect vehicle to publicise and drive forward the new anti-GE campaign: a freshly launched activist magazine called Corporate Watch. Jim had convinced Greenpeace to give us some old computers they had going spare in their head office, and we camped out either in spare rooms in people’s houses or later in a shared activist office space. The magazine was produced and photocopied on the cheap and circulated by post to grassroots direct action groups around the country. I was one of the six co-founders, and the first issue had just been published the month before the Brighton direct action conference, in October 1996. Its black and white cover page featured a cartoon of a boardroom full of corporate baddies discussing their profits while an activist hid under the table with a microphone. Another activist was pictured in a tree outside with binoculars. That was pretty much how we saw ourselves: as investigative gatherers of truth, exposing the misdeeds of the powerful corporations who seemed increasingly to dominate the world. As the first issue editorial page declared: ‘Corporate Watch intends to research and expose the crimes and hypocrisies of those corporations that refuse to act in a responsible manner.’ The cover was straplined: ‘The earth is not dying, it is being killed. And those who are killing it have names and addresses’ – a wonderfully arresting quote attributed to the folk singer Utah Phillips.

Having discovered that Monsanto was the new corporate behemoth killing the Earth with its biotech seeds, I was determined to do what I could to expose and oppose it. Back in Oxford, I wrote a piece headlined ‘The Campaign Against Genetic Engineering – It’s food, Jim, but not as we know it’, which appeared a month later, in December 1996, our second issue. The introduction summarised the whole story: ‘In the great global genetic experiment, which is being pursued by chemical and food multinationals in their search for greater profits, we – the consumers – are the guinea pigs. If we let them win their battle to force us to accept genetically engineered produce, reports Mark Lynas, the course of life on planet Earth may be changed for ever.’

It was illustrated by two more cartoons: one showing a befuddled shopper framed by a giant X; the X, conjured up by Greenpeace as a symbolic cross between a chromosome and the X-Files TV series,¹ was to become something of a trademark for the early anti-GM movement; and the second illustration showing a fish-carrot chimera getting overly friendly with an equally grotesque frog-tomato. ‘By the time you read this article, you may have already unknowingly consumed food which has been genetically engineered,’ I cautioned in the piece. ‘Imports of transgenic Roundup Ready soybeans from the United States will soon be arriving in quantities that Greenpeace will find it impossible to stop’ (Greenpeace had just carried out an action at Liverpool docks on 26 November 1996, trying to stop a cargo ship carrying GE soybeans from docking). ‘If we let this happen, the floodgates will open …’ Quoting from newspaper articles and experts about the fearful health and environmental impacts of genetic engineering, I ended the piece with the warning: ‘There are dangerous times ahead.’

Corporate Watch was not intended as mere passive information for activists. It was about spurring people to action – direct action. That meant property destruction, theatrics, office occupations, whatever might work in the circumstances to either gain attention or directly alter the situation on the ground. We were briefly notorious in the mainstream press for publishing a booklet containing the names and home addresses of some of the UK’s leading company directors, who we felt should be held personally responsible for their presumed crimes. My piece on genetic engineering took the same approach. The third page of the story detailed the main corporate villains, led by Monsanto. ‘Monsanto is leading the campaign to push genetically engineered foods onto unwilling consumers’ dinner plates,’ I wrote, before adding a list of its previous alleged misdeeds, from producing the Agent Orange defoliant dropped by the US government in the Vietnam War to manufacturing the artificial sweetener, aspartame. As to the latter: ‘Several studies have linked it with cancer, mood swings, behavioural changes and seizures.’ I did not provide further details or references to justify these allegations.

An entire facing page was devoted to listing the places and types of GMOs being trialled in UK fields, at that time varying from chicory to strawberry to poplar trees. We knew the exact locations of these GM field trials, right down to precise six-figure grid references, thanks to the UK government’s ‘GMO Public Register’. This was initially set up to assuage public fear through maximum transparency, but for us it was a handy tool to locate and then destroy every GM crop being grown in field trials. One of my friends in London later maintained a master spreadsheet, with all the field trials and grid references in separate columns, and simply ticked them off as each site was ‘decontaminated’. It really was that simple.

As far as I know, my Corporate Watch article was – following Greenpeace’s initial impetus – the first in activist literature aimed at spurring the UK’s environmental movement to action against genetic engineering. The challenge I and my Corporate Watch colleagues laid out was nothing if not ambitious. Previously we had tried to stop road-building projects, or focused on specific instances of ecological harm, such as opencast coal mining projects or airport runways cutting into old-growth forests. Now we were trying to stop the march of an entire technology. We didn’t expect to succeed in stopping GMOs altogether, but we hoped that this call to mobilisation would trigger an upsurge of direct action that would at least hold things up for a few years.

We were not disappointed.

The following 21 April 1997 was declared a ‘Day of Action’ against genetic engineering. I knew immediately what I wanted to happen, and which corporation I thought should be targeted. I had recently discovered that Monsanto had its UK headquarters only 20 miles south of my home in Oxford, in an unremarkable office block nestling in the Chiltern Hills near the town of High Wycombe. I drove over there in my little Ford Fiesta, parked in their company car park and had a look around. The Monsanto HQ was five storeys of red brick, surrounded by open parking areas and with no security gates or fencing to deter easy access to the building. However, there was not much nearby cover; no woodland where activists could hide out before pouncing. We would have to go for the straightforward approach. The only stumbling block would be the keycode on the front doors, but I noted that there was a cafeteria on the ground floor, and that its windows were mostly open.

I got a few hundred quarter-A4 leaflets printed, featuring the same image of the nervous shopper framed by a big X from my Corporate Watch article. The flyers were headlined ‘GENETIC ENGINEERING – Day of anti-corporate action’. I advertised the time and meeting place, the road round the corner from King’s Cross station, a nice convenient central London starting point.† The small print on the flyer said: ‘Be prepared for the whole day. Target to be confirmed. This will be a non-violent direct action.’ At the bottom it claimed responsibility: ‘Produced by the Corporate Action Network’ – an outfit that only ever existed in my imagination, but that I vaguely hoped might serve as the direct action arm of Corporate Watch. The flyer text under the X image is worth quoting in full. I can’t speak for other activists, but it is a good, concise summary at least of my thinking at the time:

Genetic engineering involves the transplantation of DNA between entirely unrelated species. It is dangerous and unnecessary – and 60% of your food may already contain genetically manipulated products. Huge corporations – like Novartis and Monsanto, aided by food processors and retailers like Nestlé and Sainsbury’s – are using genetics to engineer a corporate takeover of our entire food supply. There is still time to stop them.

The next organisational step was to hire buses. That was easy – I paid for them myself, so the activists I hoped would turn up on the day would get a free trip. I could afford to hire buses because I was one of the few people in the direct action movement with a ‘real job’, something which I was mildly embarrassed about and wanted to put to good use. It wasn’t that I worked for an evil corporation: I was the editor of a small human rights and environment charity website network called OneWorld, based, conveniently enough, halfway between Oxford and High Wycombe. But having an actual job, rather than valiantly subsisting on a combination of state benefits and scavenging, put me some way down the activist pecking order. I could not answer immediate action calls and rush to a roads protest camp facing an eviction, for example, because during office hours I’d probably be tapping away quietly in the OneWorld headquarters in a converted garage in the woods. The activist movement operated an unofficial hierarchy of commitment, with full-timers living on protest camps at the top, down to weekenders like myself with one foot in the scene and the other still anchored down firmly in mainstream society. On this occasion at least I hoped I could make a virtue of a necessity and use the money from my job to help things along.

The big day dawned. I was beyond nervous. Would the action be a total flop? Would anyone turn up? Would we fail to get into the building and be forced to stand around like idiots in the car park, while everyone shouted at me for insufficient planning? Some good news came early: there had been a decent turnout in King’s Cross, and about 50 activists were safely on buses and heading out of London on the M40 motorway, destination Monsanto HQ, High Wycombe. With a couple of other Oxford-based activists I arrived early in my car and waited at a safe distance. The vague plan was to try the front door, and failing that the ground-floor windows. Keeping in touch via mobile phone (a rare thing in those days) I asked the buses to wait out of sight until we had the access problem sorted. If those inside the targeted building saw buses rammed full of protesters pull up in full view outside there would of course be immediate lockdown.

In the event the issue was settled in a typically British way. One of the Monsanto employees, unable to resist the instinc­tive urge to be polite, simply held the door open for us. Thus was the expensive and high-tech keypad security system cleverly evaded. On another mobile phone instruction, the buses pulled around the corner and into the car park. The bus doors hissed open and out leapt dozens of activists, dressed in the most extraordinarily colourful and striking costumes. This was to be the first outing for the Super Heroes Against Genetix (we all enjoyed the acronym: SHAG), masked, caped crusaders wearing the trademark superhero garb of underpants over their trousers. As we Oxforders in our turn held open the doors of Monsanto head office, everyone raced in and bolted straight up the stairs. Within minutes anti-GM banners were being hung from the window of an upper floor, while several other activists had taken over the glass-walled boardroom and had their feet on the table, holding a mock board meeting.

In a matter of minutes the building was ours. Monsanto staffers, following an unseen command from their superiors, filed submissively out of their office, leaving their desks – and more importantly their files – unguarded. I fielded press calls on my mobile while filing cabinets were emptied, their contents either scanned for confidential information or otherwise simply messed up to hinder whatever shady planet-killing work we presumed Monsanto got up to on a normal day. After several hours of negotiation with a few bemused High Wycombe policemen, we all left the building – which was not quite in the same state in which we had found it – and climbed back on the buses, our super heroes with their capes flying behind them and heads held high for a job well done.

It must have been a rude awakening for Monsanto, an unambiguous signal that its attempt to crack the European market with its new GM products was not going to pass unopposed.² To my knowledge it was a global first: the earliest targeting of a Monsanto premises anywhere in the world. Many more such actions, some of them much worse from Monsanto’s perspective,