This time a good article:

Frankenforests: GE Trees Threaten Ecosystem Collapse

By Dara Colwell, AlterNet

Posted on August 2, 2007, Printed on August 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/58477/

In China, over a million poplar trees have been
planted since 2002 to combat deforestation. But
the move has not been widely applauded by
everyone. The poplars, which are genetically
engineered, are China's first foray into the
world of transgenic forestry -- or
"frankenforests" -- and other countries are not
far behind.

As the biotech industry continues to lay the
groundwork for genetically engineered crops --
poorly tested, widely debated and yet plugged as
a technological wonder -- a potentially greater
threat to biodiversity has begun to emerge.
Pushed forward by biotech and the
multibillion-dollar timber industry, genetically
engineered trees are the latest invention.

"The industry has tried very hard to keep it
quiet, or tout the technology as benign and
beneficial to the environment," says Anne
Petermann, co-founder of the Global Justice
Ecology Project
http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/, a nonprofit
established to advance global justice through
ecological awareness. "The technology is moving
forward very quickly, outpacing regulations.
There are no controls in place to properly
address or assess the risks -- which are major."

GE trees are planted in monoculture forests,
which look more like plantations, and pose
serious risks to the ecosystem. Trees live
decades or centuries longer than plants, and
their seeds can travel hundreds of miles,
increasing the likelihood of gene contamination
to wild species. The technology was created to
optimize the manufacturing process, but
environmentalists worry that it will open an
ecological Pandora's Box and threaten the health
of the forests we depend on for survival.

The world is a test lab
GE forestry research is already alarmingly
prevalent across the globe. The United States
leads the world in research projects, with 150
tree test plots -- two-thirds of the world's
known research areas -- and they are joined by
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Finland,
France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal,
Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United
States.

Despite the prevelance of the practice, GE
forestry has remained somewhat obscured by GE
crops, which have raised more immediate health
concerns, as forestry "doesn't seem to affect the
daily shopping trip -- or at least, less
visibly," according to Larry Lohmann, a
researcher with U.K.-based Corner House
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/, a nonprofit
that fights for social and environmental justice.

"But the problems transgenic trees pose are just
as severe. Whether it's endangering wild species
or pollen drift, the fact is we're in danger of
setting off a chain of events that's
irreversible. We don't know what we're messing
with," he says.

From the perspective of the timber industry,
driven by commercial pressure and deforestation
to "build" its own resources, the case for GE
trees is clear-cut. Uniform, faster-growing
species produce more paper or lumber in a shorter
period of time, driving down costs.
Faster-growing trees also produce greater
biomass, which can potentially be converted into
a second-generation biofuel -- an important
financial incentive in the current gold rush for
agrofuels. Biomass furthermore acts as a carbon
sink, sucking carbon dioxide emissions from the
air, which the industry claims is an
environmental plus, though native forests
actually absorb more. The industry's outlook is
simple: The technology poses minimal risk with
maximum return.

"The industry is looking for a way to make more
money, damn the consequences. What's driving this
is not environmental concern, but mass production
-- you can't say that's environmentally
friendly," says Lohmann.

Concerns over the technology's long-term impact
are serious. "The forests are already under
tremendous pressure from climate change and human
interaction," says Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher,
co-founder of the London-based nonprofit science
watchdog Eco-Nexus http://www.econexus.info/.
Steinbrecher, also co-author of "Hungry
Corporations: Transnational Biotech Companies
Colonize the Food Chain," has a Ph.D. in
molecular genetics.

"Compared to crops that have been cultivated for
thousands of years, trees are 'wild.' If a GE
trait enters a forest species, the implications
could be absolutely horrendous. We could see the
ecological system weaken and collapse. Without
the forests, we're sunk."

Steinbrecher's fears resonate deeply with
environmentalists. Given genetic science's
infancy, which has been plagued repeatedly by
controversy, biotech -- with its thrust towards
profit -- has continued to promote its art as a
magic bullet solution. But there's always the
risk of misfire. And now that trees have been
loaded into the barrel, environmentalists, those
involved in forestry, indigenous peoples and
scientists have worked to raise the alarm.

"Forests are crucial to us," says Alexander
Evans, research director at the Forest Guild
http://www.forestguild.org/, which promotes
responsible forestry in America, noting how they
are one of the most valuable and
little-understood ecosystems in the world. "When
it comes to GE, the potential risks are not well
understood, so why go into it? We're not into the
quick-return model -- there are too many hidden
costs. There's simply no reason to take the risk."

The risks, in fact, are numerous. Genetically
modified trees have been engineered to exhibit
unnatural traits such as herbicide tolerance,
insecticide production, reduced lignin content,
the substance that makes trees strong but must be
removed to make paper, and finally, sterility.
Many of these qualities have already proved
problematic. For example, herbicide-resistant
trees are meant to reduce the quantity of
herbicides applied to tree plantations, yet
experience shows that farmers who converted to
herbicide-resistant, genetically modified crops
used just as much herbicide as their
counterparts, according to the World Wildlife
Fund http://www.worldwildlife.org/.

Or take sterility, also known as terminator
technology and by far the most controversial. In
GE crops, this strategy was used to prevent
farmers from saving and replanting seeds, thus
compelling them to buy from dealers -- a highly
lucrative move for the multinational/agrochemical
seed industry. With trees, however, the
technology is meant to act as a biosafety control
to prevent contamination as trees, large
organisms with a long life span, have enormous
potential for gene flow.

So far, engineering persistent sterility has been
impossible. But its success would be worse,
creating sterile trees that would produce no
seeds, pollen, fruit or flowers, sources of food
for thousands of species of birds, insects and
animals. Instead, sterile trees would comprise
forests akin to silent green desserts, devoid of
life.

"From a scientific perspective, we haven't got a
clue what the response (in GE trees) will be.
There's real arrogance in saying that we do,"
says Steinbrecher. "Genome scrambling isn't like
moving Lego blocks. It's introducing a number of
mutations into the plant's DNA, and the side
effects are not something we can predict."

The U.S. approves GE trees
Back in the States, however, major transgenic
tree projects are in the works. On July 16, APHIS
(Animal Plant Health Inspection Service), a
subsidiary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
approved a request by forestry giant ArborGen
http://www.arborgen.com/ to let a field of
genetically modified eucalyptus trees flower and
produce seeds -- a monumental move that has
alarmed environmentalists worried about GE trees
interbreeding with wild ones.

"The USDA has basically been rubber-stamping
things without doing a thorough environmental
assessment," says Petermann of the Global Justice
Ecology Project, critical of the USDA's decision
to give the green light to ArborGen, a $60
million venture between International Paper, the
world' largest forest and paper company, and
Westvaco, another huge U.S. multinational forest
products company. "Trees live for decades, so to
do a thorough study, you have to study them for
decades," she says.

Not that USDA approval counts for much these
days. The pro-GE department has strong ties to
biotech, going so far as to sue other nations
before the World Trade Organization over bans on
genetically engineered crops grown in the United
States. Such political cronyism these days is
rampant, leaving the fox guarding the henhouse.

ArborGen has invited serious criticism on several
fronts: In its permit application, the company
classified certain genes as confidential business
information, meaning even the USDA could not
assess their impact; its field trial site in
Alabama is prone to severe storms that could blow
eucalyptus seeds much farther than the mere 100
meters the USDA anticipated.

And there's also the choice of trees. Eucalyptus,
a fast-growing, high-yield hardwood, is notorious
for colonizing native ecosystems. The species has
become so successful in California, it's now
listed as a plant pest by the state's Invasive
Plant Council. The tree additionally depletes
ground water, exacerbating drought conditions,
and is extremely flammable, potentially causing
massive wildfires, an ongoing issue for the
American South, where ArborGen is headquartered.

By far, the largest threat ArborGen poses,
however, is gene drift. Trees are perennial
plants that can spread seeds and pollen for
hundreds of miles, or even further. According to
new research from Duke University's Center on
Global Change http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/cgc/,
which has studied pollen from GE conifer trees,
the pollen from transgenic pines can spread more
than a thousand miles, leading to "substantial
... subsequent colonization."

Gene drift in agricultural crops has already
occurred rapidly. Take, for example, StarLink
Maize, a GM variety approved only for animal
feed, which entered the human food chain in the
United States, Canada, Egypt, Bolivia, Nicaragua,
Japan and South Korea.

With trees, contamination is more worrying
because they are long-living, complex organisms
that are key to the planet's ecosystem. China's
Nanjing Institute of Environmental Science has
already reported contamination of native poplars
-- what's to stop this from spreading elsewhere?

"There's no way to experiment safely in the open
with this technology. Companies say it's very
safe and that they have testing protocols, but
it's an illusion to think, once contamination
starts happening, that it's somehow going to be
regulated," says Lohmann. "That depends on the
assumption that you know what could go wrong."

Steinbrecher, too, finds the promise of halting
GE contamination and thus interbreeding with wild
trees a "scientifically meaningless argument
that's unsatisfactory and unconvincing."

"You cannot design a biological system that's 100
percent fool-proof," she says. Data backs her up.
According to the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO), even at
a 95 percent success rate, it is nearly
impossible to control gene flow through pollen
and seed dispersal.
"Contamination is inevitable and irreversible,"
says Petermann. "Regulations need to be put in
place now to properly address and assess the risk
from these trees because the industry is getting
them out there without public debate. Once it's
too late, it really is too late."

Industry's spin
To pacify these concerns, projects such as the
European Union-funded Transcontainer scheme have
been created. A three-year, 5.38 million Euro
research project, Transcontainer is aimed at
developing technology to allow the coexistence of
GE and non-GE crops, as well as GE trees, through
technology that reverses sterility -- what
critics refer to as zombie seeds. In other words,
seed fertility can be recovered, possibly with a
chemical application, which critics fear would
create a new monopoly for the seed industry.

"This is not a viable solution. No molecular
technology exists for biocontainment -- and if it
doesn't prevent 100 percent gene flow, it's not a
workable option," says Hope Shand, research
director of ETC Group, an organization that
supports socially responsible technology. "Why
should taxpayers, farmers and society be asked to
accept the burden of defective technology and
then accept an even riskier technology to fix it?
You really have to look at it in this light. This
technology is not safe. It shouldn't be used."

But according to Piet Schenkelaars, a Dutch
biotech consultant for the Transcontainer
project, research is still in its infancy.
Schenkelaars agrees the technology isn't failsafe
at the moment -- that's exactly why research is
being conducted. "In a couple of years, we can
deploy the technology for more commercial
purposes if it works as it should -- but that's
something we don't know at the moment," he says.

Asked why, in the face of great public rejection
of GE crops, Europeans were being asked to
support similar research, Schenkelaars responded
that public opposition was questionable. "Whether
people reject GE is doubtful. Surveys on public
attitudes within Europe show different levels of
acceptance," he says.

However, substantial public resistance to
genetically modified crops does exist. In Europe,
the most recent Eurobarometer, a survey conducted
since 1991, indicated that most Europeans
remained skeptical of genetically modified crops,
expressing moral objections about potential risks.
Or closer to home, take Quebec. A survey
conducted for Quebec Science found that more than
75 percent of the province's residents would
rather pay extra for organic food than buy GM
foods at lower prices. And in America, studies by
the International Food Information Council
http://www.ific.org/ and the Pew Initiative on
Food and Biotechnology http://pewagbiotech.org/
found nearly an identical lack of awareness of GM
foods among consumers. But when respondents were
told how pervasive GM foods are in the United
States, they were outraged.

Says Schenkelaars, "I think we should develop our
options as much as possible and keep our minds
open. Indeed, this technology is very complex. We
need to proceed with caution."
On that most critics would agree but find the
very existence of Schenkelaars, a public
relations consultant fronting questions for
biotech, troubling.

"This is boiling down to a PR battle. There are
two things research has shown are the industry's
biggest concerns: contamination and public
opinion," says Orin Langelle, co-founder of
Global Justice Ecology Project. "The industry is
going to pull out their wallets to convince the
public this is good, but it's our job to broaden
the debate. We don't have money for big ad
campaigns, but I guarantee the other side does."

One thing that's missing in the current dialogue
is discussion of natural alternatives, such as
hemp. Hemp does not need pesticides or herbicides
and yields three to four times more usable fiber
per hectare per year than forests. But growing
hemp remains illegal in the United States, where
the DEA has taken a hard line on the crop as a
result of the war against its psychoactive
cousin, marijuana, even though hemp contains only
trace amounts of THC. In terms of biofuels, hemp
is capable of producing 10 tons of biomass per
acre in four months --10 times more methanol than
corn, according to the Hemp Industries
Association http://www.thehia.org/.

Clearly, as this issue garners wider attention,
alternatives should be sought and public debate
welcomed. Says Shand, "Research continues to be
done on something that has been repeatedly
rejected by the public, so why not put that money
into researching something more sustainable? We
keep hearing the argument that technology, like
sterility in trees, is safe, but safe for whom?
Is it safe for companies introducing huge
monoculture plantations, or is it safe for the
trees? You have to look at the larger impact."

Dara Colwell is a freelance writer based in Amsterdam.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/58477/
--
Orin Langelle
Co-Director/Global Justice Ecology Project
P.O. Box 412
Hinesburg, VT 05461 U.S.
+1.802.482.2689 ph/fax
+1.802.578.6980 mobile
mailto:langelle@globaljusticeecology.org
http://www.globaljusticeecology.org

The STOP Genetically Engineered Trees Campaign is
a Program of Global Justice Ecology Project
http://www.stopgetrees.org

Global Justice Ecology Project is the North
American Focal Point for Global Forest Coalition
http://www.globalforestcoalition.org

Global Justice Ecology Project Mission Statement:
Building local, national and international
alliances with action to address the root causes
of social injustice, economic domination and
environmental destruction.