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Adverse
Environmental Impacts of GE Bt Cotton
Chinese experience illustrates the need for international
liability rules
BEIJING/AMSTERDAM,
4 JUNE 2002 - A Greenpeace
report reviewing Chinese experience of genetically engineered
(GE) Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton shows adverse environmental
impacts after just five years of commercial growing, concluding
that the variety will be ineffective in controlling pests
after eight to ten years of continuous production. Bt cotton
is the main GE crop variety grown in large-scale commercial
production in China.
Laboratory tests and field monitoring conducted by four Chinese
state-owned science institutes verify:
- a resistance
build-up towards Bt in the main target pest, cotton bollworm:
susceptibility of bollworm to the Bt toxin fell to 30 percent
after 17 generations under continuous feeding with Bt cotton
leaves. The resistance of the bollworm increased 1000 times
when the feeding was continued to the 40th generation.
- a significant
reduction of the parasitic natural enemies of cotton bollworm.
- an increase
of secondary pests: e.g. cotton aphids, cotton spider mites,
thrips and others, replaced the cotton bollworm as primary
pests in some of the cotton fields.
These
factors have forced farmers to continue the use of chemical
pesticides, and increased the possibility of outbreaks of
certain pests due to the destabilized insect community.
The author
of the study, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Environmental
Sciences, and an advisor for Greenpeace, Professor Xue Dayuan,
said:
“The
report confirms that the Bt cotton is released to the environment
prematurely. After five years of growing, Chinese farmers
and scientists are now faced with serious problems and confronted
with the fact that too little is known about the interaction
of GE crops with the environment. High hopes have been brought
crashing down and reality shows that the information from
the GE industry has been unsubstantiated.”
Bt cotton,
a genetically engineered variety containing a gene from soil
bacteria inserted to produce a toxin that kills certain types
of pests, was first introduced to China in 1997 by Monsanto.
It was advertised as a magical fix to pest problems. Since
then the area of cultivation has increased to 1.5 million
hectares in 2001, which is 35 percent of the total cotton
area. Monsanto’s Bt cotton accounts for two third of
all GE cotton grown in China.
“As
farmers growing this GE crop are now finding themselves entangled
in Bt-resistant superbugs, emerging secondary pests, diminishing
natural enemies, destabilized insect ecology, and the need
to keep spraying chemical pesticides to deal with the increasingly
uncontrollable situation, will Monsanto deal with any of these
problems their lack of precaution have caused?” asked
Lo Sze Ping, Greenpeace China Program Manager.
“The
Chinese government has a role in helping the international
community to ensure that corporations such as Monsanto are
held liable for the damage they are causing by having developed
and released GE crops,” Lo added.
Further information:
View and executive
summary or the full
report "A summary of research on the environmental
impacts of Bt cotton in China"
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