- Resistance is fertile: Protests against GM trees

Forestry scientists working on GM trees often point to the number of field trials of GM trees worldwide as evidence that the technology is increasingly accepted. In fact the reverse is true. As the number of experiments increases so does the strength of the resistance against GM trees.

Much of the media attention on protests against GM trees has focussed on a handful of actions by small groups of activists calling themselves names like Reclaim the Seeds or the Genetix Goblins. In the past six years, activists have destroyed 12 GM tree trials, in Britain, Canada and the US. In the US, the Earth Liberation Front has burned down offices and research laboratories.

Industry and scientists responses to destruction of GM trials and property focus on the damage caused and portray the protesters as irresponsible, ignorant vandals. Their responses tend, predictably, to play down the risks that their research might inflict on people and their environments.

In 1999, protesters in England cut down 152 GM poplars at agrochemical company Zeneca’s Jealot’s Hill research station. Zeneca spokesperson Nigel Poole appeared almost tearful. “The bark has been stripped from the trees. These poor things are now dying a slow death,” he told The Times newspaper. Apparently Poole had forgotten that Zeneca planted the trees in order that they could be chipped, boiled, pulped and made into paper.

When some of his GM tree trials were destroyed in March 2001, Oregon State University’s Steven Strauss tried to reassure the public that “It’s all regarded as highly safe. These people pronouncing it dangerous lack expertise and are uninformed.”

“The violent guys just don’t understand the science,” Strauss told Associated Press.

Many people and organisations are involved in other types of activities against GM trees. Protests against GM trees have taken many forms and have included banner hangs, press conferences, meetings, letters to newspapers, petitions, articles, campaigns to persuade companies not buy products from GM trees, research into the companies and institutions involved, and campaigns for GMO free zones.

Probably the first alliance of NGOs formed to oppose GM trees was the GE Free Forests Coalition (GEFF), formed in Britain in April 1999. Three months later, GEFF organised a demonstration at IUFRO’s Forest Biotechnology ’99 conference in Oxford.

Steven Strauss commented, “The scientists at the meeting scratched their heads and wondered how science and ‘society’ could be so out of whack in Europe.” Meanwhile, ordinary people were wondering how long the scientists must have spent locked away in their laboratories to be surprised that genetic modification was a controversial issue.

Resistance to GM trees continues to grow. In the US, around 80 NGOs have signed on to a statement titled: “A Common Vision for Transforming the Paper Industry”. The Common Vision emerged from a November 2002 meeting of more than 50 NGOs working on paper, pollution and forest issues. The Common Vision includes a demand to the paper industry: “Stop the introduction of paper fiber from genetically modified organisms, particularly transgenic trees and plants with genes inserted from other species of animals and plants.”

Several countries have placed outright bans or moratoria on GMOs, including Algeria, New Zealand, Peru, El Salvador and Australia (except Queensland and the Northern Territory). In addition, several regions in Europe and three counties in the US have voted in bans on GMOs. Thailand has banned 49 GM plants.

Around the world environmental and social justice organisations are campaigning for legislation to ban GMOs from their countries, provinces, states, towns or counties. GM free zones have appeared all over the world, including the US. In November 2004, Marin County, north of San Francisco, joined California’s Mendocino and Trinity counties in banning GMOs.

In December 2003, the Austrian province of Kärnten passed a law which stated that GMOs cannot be planted within three kilometres of natural and cultural areas that are worthy of protection. Approximately 20 per cent of Kärnten’s land is organically farmed. On the grounds that organic farming is worthy of protection, in practice the authorities will give no permits for planting GMOs.

In Britain, 14 million people live in areas with a GM-free policy. Twelve counties have passed GM-free resolutions in addition to more than 30 towns, cities, districts and national park authorities. In France, more than 1,250 mayors have issued GM free declarations for their towns. Friends of the Earth Europe is running a GMO-free Europe campaign, aimed at supporting regions to go GM-free (for more information, see http://www.foeeurope.org/GMOs/gmofree ).

People opposing GM trees are linking up with organisations around the world: with networks that have opposed the spread of GMO crops in their countries; with organisations working on climate change; with anti-globalisation activists; with human rights activists and indigenous peoples; with local communities and organisations that are resisting industrial tree plantations and other forms of industrial forestry. The resistance to GM trees is growing!

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

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- Forestry corporations and GM tree research

GM trees are not a result of evolution. They are the result of decisions taken at institutional and corporate levels for their development and deployment. Companies, research institutions and universities work together closely on this. Companies fund university research departments, and influence what type of research is carried out.

Although there are numerous actors working on GM trees, some are clearly more important than others. Most of the research is being carried in a relatively small number of countries, among which the most prominent are the USA, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, United Kingdom, and China.

Some of the major forestry corporations are directly involved in the research. For instance, three giant forestry companies (International Paper, Westvaco and Fletcher Challenge) formed in 1999 a joint venture with Monsanto called ArborGen, which became the world’s biggest GM tree company. Monsanto pulled out of ArborGen six months after it was formed. In January 2000, Genesis Research and Development, New Zealand’s biggest biotechnology company, joined the joint venture. Genesis and Fletcher Challenge had been working together for five years on herbicide tolerant GM eucalyptus, poplar and pine. In 2001, Rubicon (a New Zealand company) bought Fletcher Challenge’s biotechnology operations and took over its commitments to ArborGen. Westvaco has since merged with Mead Paper Company to form Meadwestvaco. In April 2003, Genesis announced a new plant science subsidiary, AgriGenesis Biosciences, which takes over Genesis’ involvement in ArborGen.

ArborGen currently has 51 field trials of GM poplar, eucalyptus, pine and sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) in the US. ArborGen’s scientists have genetically manipulated trees to have less lignin, to grow faster and straighter, to be sterile or to be resistant to disease or herbicide.

Another important company involved in GM trees is New Zealand-based Horizon2 which was formed in March 2003 from a merger of Carter Holt Harvey Forest Genetics and Rubicon’s Trees and Technology. Carter Holt Harvey is a New Zealand timber firm, which is 50 per cent owned by International Paper.

Chilean-based company GenFor is a joint venture between Chilean technology think tank Fundación Chile and Cellfor (Canada). The company was partly financed by the Chilean Development Agency and has established research agreements with Chilean forestry industry giants Arauco and Mininco. The companies provide GenFor with their top specimens, GenFor supplies the technology to "improve" them and earns the right to market the results of the research.

GenFor’s main research focus is GM radiata pine which makes up 80 per cent of Chile’s plantations. GenFor’s researchers aim to create a GM pine resistant to the European shoot-tip moth (Ryacionia buoliana), a pest which is seriously affecting the 1.5 millions hectares of Radiata pine plantations in that country.

GenFor's partner Cellfor has entered into collaborations with a series of universities, including Oxford, Purdue, British Columbia, Alberta and Victoria. Cellfor has also worked with the Institute of Molecular Agrobiology in Singapore and SweTree Genomics in Sweden.

In addition to its research on insect resistant GM radiata pine, GenFor is working on increasing the level of cellulose and reducing the amount of lignin in radiata and loblolly pine (Pinus taeda).

In the U.S. several pulp and paper companies, including Weyerhaeuser, International Paper, MacMillan Blodel, Aracruz Cellulose and Potlatch Corporation have funded research at Oregon State University’s Tree Genomics, Biotechnology, and Breeding Programme, which is working on GM trees for herbicide tolerance, sterility, resistance to fungus and insects and reduced lignin.

Some forestry companies also carry out their own research. Such are the cases of Aracruz Cellulose in Brazil and Japanese companies Oji Paper and Nippon Paper Industries.

Aracruz, the world top producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp produced from its huge plantations in Brazil is currently carrying out GM tree laboratory research but, according to company officials is not yet conducting either field trials or commercial plantations.

Nippon Paper, Japan’s largest paper manufacturer has developed a GM salt-tolerant eucalyptus tree. It is also working on GM poplar trees which would be resistant to polluted environments. In 1995, Nippon signed an agreement with Zeneca to work on modifying lignin in pulp trees and in 2001 had developed a GM eucalyptus tree which produced 20 per cent less lignin, 10 per cent more cellulose and five per cent more pulp than non-GM eucalyptus trees.

Oji Paper is one of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world. The company has an active research programme into GM trees. Oji Paper’s scientists are working on GM trees with reduced lignin, GM trees which can tolerate salty soils and GM eucalyptus that can grow in acidic soils.

All the above illustrates forestry companies' involvement in GM trees. They want to be able to plant trees in any type of environment and to ensure their fast growth; they want to accommodate plantation wood to their industrial processes (e.g. with less lignin for pulp production); they want their monocultures to be insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant; they want them to be sterile. In sum, their aim is to manipulate nature to adapt it to their long-term economic objectives, regardless of the uncertainties and risks that this involves.

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- International Legislation and GM Trees

In spite of the risks posed by genetic modification of trees, there is no international legislation specifically relating to GM trees. Instead, legislation has been produced with GM food crops and seeds in mind, and does not necessarily cover the problems presented by long-lived GM plants such as trees.

International law covering GMOs is at present focussed on issues relating to trade. There are two institutions which provide rulings covering international trade in GMOs: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The member countries of the CBD adopted the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in January 2000. The Protocol provides regulations for transboundary movements of GMOs and is based on the precautionary principle.

Although three major exporters of GMOs (USA, Canada and Argentina) have not ratified the Cartagena Protocol, the Protocol recognises a government’s right to ban imports of GMOs when insufficient information is available to carry out an assessment of the risks. The burden of proof of safety is thus pushed back to the country exporting the GMOs.

However, under the WTO, governments can be penalised for putting in place legislation, such as a ban on GMOs, which the WTO rules is a barrier to international trade.

The WTO also has an Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) covering food safety and animal and plant health regulations. In setting their laws, to comply with the SPS Agreement, governments must assess the risks involved, rather than use the precautionary principle.

Mariam Mayet, director of the African Centre for Biosafety in South Africa, points out that the Cartagena Protocol skips the issue of whether it takes precedence over WTO rules, by stating that the two should be “mutually supportive”.

That the two sets of legislation are not mutually supportive was illustrated in May 2003 when the US, Canada and Argentina filed a complaint with the WTO about the European Union’s legislation on GM foods.

Tewolde Egziabher, Director General of the Environmental Protection Authority in Ethiopia, was one of the architects of the Cartagena Protocol. In response to the US complaint to the WTO he wrote, “We in African countries, who have fought long and hard for the agreement and ratification of the Biosafety Protocol, feel that US actions are intended to send a strong and aggressive message to us: that should we choose to implement the Protocol and reject the import of GM foods, we may also face the possibility of a WTO challenge. We cannot help but perceive that US actions are a pre-emptive strike on the Biosafety Protocol and developing country interests.”

Forestry scientists are clear that genetic pollution from GM tree plantations is inevitable. “Genes will eventually get out” as Oregon State University’s Steven Strauss puts it.

Apart from the ecological risks involved, the prospect of GM trees crossing with wild relatives, resulting in feral GM trees containing patented genes growing outside plantations, raises a number of legal questions. Will the company that owns the patent on the gene have ownership rights (or any other rights) over any trees which contain this gene? Might forest owners find that the trees on their land in fact belong to International Paper or Meadwestvaco because they contain the company’s patented genes?

Who will be liable, if gene pollution proves to have damaged trees in forests? Will it be the plantation manager, the company that sold the GM tree seedlings, the company that developed the GM tree using the patented gene, or will it be the owner of the patent on the gene?

How is “damage” to trees in forests to be determined? Who will decide what constitutes damage? Trees and forests are sacred in some cultures and although superficially there may appear to be no harm done, changing the genetic makeup of wild trees could be considered to be genetic vandalism.

Tree pollen can travel huge distances. Seeds can be (and are) easily smuggled across borders. No legislation in the world will prevent this from happening. If GM trees were to become weedy and start invading forest ecosystems as a result of smuggled seeds, who would be liable?

In May 2004, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that Monsanto had the right to prosecute farmers who have crops containing Monsanto patented genes on their land. Pat Mooney, director of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, explains the implications of this ruling: “They can now say that their rights extend to anything its genes get into, whether plant, animal or human. Under this ruling spreading GM pollution appears to be recognized as a viable corporate ownership strategy.”

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- Genetically Engineered Trees and Global Warming

On October 22, 2004 Russia ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement created to begin addressing the problem of global warming. Russia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol now gives the agreement a high enough level of participation by the countries most responsible for the world’s carbon emissions for the agreement to go into effect, even without the United States’ 25% of worldwide annual global carbon emissions.

Within days of Russia’s announcement, carbon trading in Europe tripled. The carbon market is expected to be the world’s largest ever, projected to reach US$60 billion by 2008. The carbon market is included as part of the Kyoto Protocol. It was created to enable corporations to buy the right to continue emitting carbon dioxide while purporting to address global warming—a profitable commodity indeed. The carbon credits are purchased from countries or corporations that have in some way reduced carbon emissions—by, for example, converting a coal burning plant to natural gas, or by planting trees to soak up carbon emissions.

Last December in Milan, Italy the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which oversees the Kyoto Protocol, agreed that genetically engineered trees could be used in industrial tree plantations developed to soak up carbon emissions. These plantations will likely be mainly developed in the Global South, with subsidies from the World Bank, to offset emissions from the industrial North.

This UN agreement coupled with the World Bank subsidies provide huge new incentives to advance GE trees technology through the creation of this profitable carbon market. Meanwhile, the Kyoto Protocol does not contain provisions to effectively protect existing carbon-absorbing native forests.

Scientists argue that trees can be genetically engineered to sequester even more carbon than they do already, to enhance the ability of plantations to offset industrial carbon. Unfortunately, there remain several difficulties with this plan.

First is the problem of where these plantations will be located. Studies at Duke University in the US have found that when trees are subjected to increased carbon dioxide in the air, they will only increase their carbon storage if soils are rich in nitrogen. Trees in poor soils did not increase their carbon storage. This means that plantations developed specifically to store carbon will need to be located on fertile soils. Scientists at a Duke University conference on GE trees suggested these plantations could be located on abandoned agricultural lands. But this raises the question of where all of these abandoned fertile agricultural lands exist? They must be a very well-kept secret. No, in reality these plantations will be concentrated in the Global South where they will likely displace communities, either by directly taking over their agricultural lands for plantations, or by logging native forests and replacing them with plantations, with all of the resultant impacts plantations bring—from loss of fresh water and biodiversity to contamination with toxic chemicals.

Additional concerns about carbon storage plantations include the issue of protecting the plantations from any activity that would release the carbon—such as logging or fire. Some have suggested that carbon offset plantations would have to become virtual “human exclusion zones” where all human activity is prohibited—a development that would almost certainly lead to the displacement of forest dwelling communities.

The above problems are inherent in any carbon offset forestry plantation, genetically engineered or not. Inclusion of GE trees in these plantations, however, adds an entirely new layer of problems.

In addition to engineering trees for higher carbon absorption, scientists are engineering trees to be resistant to insects and herbicides, grow faster, and be sterile.

Nutrient-intensive monoculture tree plantations rapidly drain water tables and deplete the soil. Trees genetically engineered to grow even faster will exacerbate this problem. Satellite images from the 1980s have revealed that vast expanses of land where native forests once stood have now been converted to tree plantations. These plantations have been found by the US Environmental Protection Agency and World Resources Institute to sequester only 1/4 the carbon of their native forest predecessors. Faster growing GE tree plantations that deplete soils and water will cause additional deforestation as native forests are cleared to replace the land denuded by the previous plantations. This process of native forest conversion to plantations greatly contributes to global warming by simultaneously releasing the carbon stored in the native forests, eliminating the natural ability of native forests to regulate the Earth’s climate, and by replacing them with plantations that store carbon at a dramatically reduced rate.

Industry asserts that trees genetically engineered for the above traits will be sterile—preventing contamination. Sterility researchers have admitted, however, that achieving 100% guaranteed sterility in trees is not likely, due to the fact that trees can live for hundreds of years and have genomes longer even than the human genome. In addition, tree pollen has been documented to travel for 600 km or more. GE tree pollen is likely to contaminate vast expanses of native forests with a wide variety of destructive traits, destroying the delicate ecological balance of native forests and causing increased forest mortality—and additional releases of CO2 greenhouse gas.

GE tree plantations have no place in sustainable forest management practices that maintain healthy forest ecosystems. They certainly have no place in the fight to stop global warming. Proposals by the United Nations and the World Bank for projects—such as GE tree plantations— allow corporations to continue polluting and magnifying global warming at the disproportionate expense of peoples and ecosystems in the Global South.

GJEP has a global campaign to stop genetically engineered trees. To get involved, contact them at info@globaljusticeecology.org , http://www.globaljusticeecology.org or write GJEP, PO Box 412, Hinesburg, VT 05461 USA

By: Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project

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- Does the World Bank have a position on GM trees?

Perhaps I’m being naïve, but I really thought that the World Bank would have a position on GM trees. The first field trial of GM trees was in 1988. Surely, I thought, 16 years is long enough for the Bank’s policy experts to come up with something. When the Bank’s shiny new forest policy came out two years ago, it did so after a “stakeholder consultative process” which was “supported by extensive analytical, technical and economic studies, some commissioned by the World Bank and others done by independent institutions and NGOs on a wide range of subjects,” according to the Bank. Surely the new policy has something to say on GM trees?

Er, no. The World Bank’s Forest Policy makes no mention of GM trees. Neither does the World Bank’s Forest Strategy, a 99-page report (plus appendices) which the Bank claims “provides nuanced guidance on the different actions that should be considered in different circumstances”.

The Bank’s Forest Policy does state that the Bank will only fund plantations that are “environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable.” This would, in a just and fair world, exclude any GM tree plantations as they are neither “environmentally appropriate” nor “socially beneficial”. But some of those experts at the World Bank have some pretty strange ideas about what is “appropriate” and “beneficial” for rural communities living thousands of miles from Washington DC.

The World Bank, through its Carbon Finance Unit is keen on financing carbon projects, including tree plantations as carbon sinks. Since December 2003, the Kyoto Protocol allows plantations of GM trees as carbon sinks to be included under its clean development mechanism. So far no GM tree carbon sink plantations have been established but scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, for example, are working on producing carbon storing GM trees.

I was curious to find out whether this meant that the World Bank might be funding GM tree carbon sinks in the future, so on 21 July 2004, I wrote to Jason Steele at the World Bank’s Carbon Finance Unit to ask a few questions about GM trees. A week later he told me he was “still trying” to find the answers.

A couple of months later, when I’d still not heard anything, I thought I should jog his memory. I wrote again, told him I was working on an article, the deadline was mid-November and I’d like an on-the-record response. Steele responded immediately, but only to pass me on to the Carbon Finance Unit's Senior Communication Officer, Anita Gordon.

I asked Anita Gordon the same questions I’d asked Jason Steele two months earlier. Gordon also responded immediately, but only to pass me on to the Carbon Finance Unit’s Stakeholder Relations Specialist, Charles Cormier.

I met Charles Cormier in June 2004 at the World Bank organised Carbon Expo in Cologne, Germany. I asked him for an interview about Plantar, an industrial tree plantation project in Brazil funded by the World Bank’s Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF). In terms of the amount of carbon emissions the project is supposed to save, Plantar is by far the largest project on PCF’s books. Cormier turned down my request for an interview. “I don’t know anything about Plantar,” he said.

PCF’s contract with Plantar requires that Plantar is certified as well managed by the Forest Stewardship Council. If the FSC certification is withdrawn for any reason, PCF will stop the payments to Plantar. FSC standards state that the “use of genetically modified organisms shall be prohibited”. So, at least in Plantar’s case, the World Bank will not fund GM tree plantations.

“Charles Cormier will get back to you on your query,” Anita Gordon promised me back in September. I still haven’t heard from him. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised.

I looked up the “Who’s Who” page of the World Bank’s Forests and Forestry web-site and wrote to the 18 Bank staff listed on that page to ask them about the World Bank’s policy on GM trees. I even clicked on a little button and sent an e-mail to the Bank’s “Advisory Service”. The Bank’s web-site describes these people as “experts and specialists”. They should, at least in theory, know the World Bank’s position on important forestry issues like GM trees. But apart from four “out of office” automatic replies, I haven’t heard anything from any of them.

For the record, here are the four questions that I would like someone at the World Bank to answer:

1. Does the World Bank have any guidelines on funding projects which include GM trees?

2. In a question and answer sheet on its new forest policy, the World Bank states that “The strategy does not commit the Bank to any such activities [i.e. carbon forestry and carbon trading] unless these are specifically allowed under the Clean Development Mechanism or Joint Implementation mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol . . . .” Since GM trees are included in the Kyoto Protocol, does this mean that the Bank can fund GM tree plantations as carbon sinks?

3. Does the Prototype Carbon Fund (or any of the other World Bank carbon financing mechanisms) have any guidelines on funding projects which include GM trees? If so, please provide details.

4. If there are World Bank documents which clarify the Bank’s position on GM trees, could you please send me copies?

I’m sure I can’t be the only one who would like to know the answers to these questions. So, if anyone in the World Bank is reading this, I’d be delighted to hear from you.

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

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- Pollen from pine plantations generates problems - what if in addition they were transgenic pines?

Plant pollination takes place in different ways. One way is done by bees, butterflies, humming birds and bats. Another type of pollination is caused by wind blowing through plants that have their reproductive cells in open flowers. This happens with coniferous trees (for example, pines). For fecundation to be effective, these trees have to produce an enormous amount of pollen that the wind blows away and distributes, passing it from plant to plant and covering great distances.

Pollen can produce allergic reactions, such as conjunctivitis, hay-fever, asthma and general malaise. The symptoms of irritation and a watery secretion in eyes and nose announce the arrival of spring because in general they appear when the mucous comes in contact with environmental pollen transported by the wind. Seasonal hay-fever is suffered by 1 in 6 of the industrialized world’s inhabitants.

Although pine pollen has been considered to cause a low degree of sensitivity, the counts during pollination are usually very high. Allergenic proteins have been found in a study carried out with the pollen from Pinus radiata, very abundant in the atmosphere in New Zealand, and tests have been carried out for cross reactivity with the pollen of a species of grass (Lolium perenne). Recently, other authors have found a considerable increase in the allergenic properties of this pollen due to the effect of air pollution.

Furthermore, the increase in levels of carbon dioxide associated with the warming of the earth’s atmosphere may be causing an increase in allergies. Researchers have affirmed that in an atmosphere with twice the amount of carbon dioxide than there is now, there would be 61 per cent more pollen.

In this scenario two factors further increasing the problem are introduced: large-scale pine plantations and additionally, the project to convert them into transgenic pine plantations.

Regarding large-scale monoculture pine plantations, it may be inferred that the phenomenon related to pollination would be increased, one could say in an exponential way. For example, in Chile, the area covered by pines is over one and a half million hectares. It is not hard to imagine what size the clouds of pollen could be from such an enormous quantity of trees of the same species, generally close together and covering vast spaces. The evidence from neighbours in the Community of Lumaco in the Traiguen Commune, IX Region, reports that “in October, the pollen from the pines leaves the fields all yellow. Health problems arise. The market garden gets covered in yellow and the leaves of the plants have to be watered to enable them to survive.” “(…) really nobody knows what happens with pine pollen. Perhaps it is causing us harm. We hear about contamination and how water has to be to be able to drink it, but finally one consumes what one has handy.” Last August even the press recorded a phenomenon called “Yellow rain” a layer of yellowish-green powder that covered pavements, streets and cars and turned out to be pine pollen.

Something similar happened in Japan, where since 1950 there has been a policy promoting plantations of practically a single species of fast growth conifer (Cryptomeria japonica), which two years ago covered 10 million hectares. Now, each spring, a great cloud of pollen descends on Japan, leaving 2 out of 6 inhabitants affected by allergy. In Tokyo over the past ten years, the proportion of affected population has increased from 7 to 20 per cent (see WRM bulletin 60).

Furthermore, concerning genetic manipulation of plant varieties, indications of possible cases of allergy to transgenic maize pollen have been observed. In July 2003, in Mindanao in the southern region of the Philippines, various people from a rural population living in the proximity of a transgenic Bt maize plantation (manipulated to exude the Bacillus thuringensis toxin) suffered from fever, head-aches, nausea, respiratory and intestinal disorders, general weakness and skin problems. The situation coincided with the flowering season of transgenic maize in the zone and persisted over several weeks. This led the Social Action Centre to ask for help from various organizations and local NGOs, such as Searice and Masipag, to try to identify the cause of the symptoms and to find a solution.

The Director of the Norwegian Institute for Genetic Ecology, Dr. Terje Traavik, carried out blood tests and followed up on the case. Dr. Traavik stated that the antibodies present in the blood showed that the persons affected had been exposed to the Bt toxin over the past few months. That is to say, that the blood tests indicated that the symptoms were the result of having inhaled pollen from GM maize.

In an extrapolation using common sense and prudence, the following question arises: what would happen if, to the already problematic disorders of massive pollen counts from commercial pine plantations are added those of the uncertainty and risk of unknown effects from transgenic pollen from pine trees that have been genetically manipulated for purely commercial purposes? Perhaps this is yet another element to say a resounding NO to transgenic trees?

Article based on information from: testimonials gathered by Ricardo Carrere during a visit to the IX Region of Chile, Comuna Traiguén, Comunidad Lumaco, in June 2004; “Preliminary Results of Study Show Immunological Reaction to Bt Toxin”, Gentech-news 91, http://www.blauen-institut.ch/Tx/tM/tm_nov/tm0913.html ; “La invasión de las plantaciones forestales en Chile”, José Araya Cornejo, Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales, http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Chile/invasion.pdf ; “"Lluvia amarilla" es polen de pino”, http://www.australtemuco.cl/site/edic/20030819023407/pags/20030819025615.html ; “Pinos”, http://www.uma.es/Estudios/Departamentos/BiolVeg/02Aer/00HAer/PolPin.html ; “La producción de polen crecerá significativamente en 50 años”, http://www.diariomedico.com/edicion/noticia/0,2458,129561,00.html