GM Pharm and industrial crops contain biologically active compounds intended for use in medicines and industrial products.  These chemicals are not intended to escape into the environment or contaminate the animal or human food supply.  ‘Growing’ GM medicine and industrial crops in the open environment presents almost insurmountable containment problems with respect to protecting the ecosystem - and because GM medicines are grown in the same type of crops used to grow food for human consumption and feed for animal consumption (maize, soya, barley, etc.) they pose inevitable risks to human and animal health.

The technology used to genetically modify plants for use as pharmaceutical and industrial crops is imprecise (see GM TECHNOLOGY AND GMO’S) with the result that ‘foreign’ genes inserted into GM plants are present in all parts of the plant – pollen, seeds, stems, leaves, roots.  This means that all parts of a GM medicine and industrial plant have the potential to contaminate the environment:

POLLEN:  GM pollen flow can occur not just by wind, but also by insects, birds, wild animals, domestic animals and the movement of human beings who maintain and harvest GM crops. The pollen from GM plants can transfer genes to weeds and wild relatives (plants that are related to the GM plant), which will cause these infected plants to behave differently in the environment and could be toxic to wild insects and animals. The distances pollen can travel have been greatly underestimated by the biotech industry – as demonstrated by the large-scale GM contamination problems in America and Canada. (See THE ENVIRONMENT.)

SEEDS:  Seeds are dispersed not only by wind, birds and animals but also by human beings (in clothing, cars and belongings of employees who work in the fields, storage and processing units), and by the machinery, equipment and transport vehicles used to harvest, process and distribute GM seeds. GM seeds that spread into the wild have the potential to grow and multiply endangering all forms of insect, bird and animal wildlife. GM seeds from one year’s crop fall into the soil and often reappear the following year. These ‘volunteer’ crops then contaminate the new season crop – which may be a crop intended for food or animal feed. GM seeds can become mixed with conventional seeds by farmers who grow both kinds of crops and who save seeds to plant the next year. Seed mixing can contaminate not only a farmer´s own crops but those of other farmers he may give or sell seeds to.

CROP RESIDUES:  Those parts of a GM crop which are left in the fields after harvesting need to be disposed of in a way which will prevent them from being eaten by domestic animals and wildlife or from contaminating the soil. Crop residues have the potential to contaminate the land if left to rot, or if used as compost, or if rotated back into the soil.  

SOIL MICROBES:  Microbes and other animals present in the soils of GM crop fields will be exposed to the compounds produced in these crops via  ‘rhizosecretion’ -  the process by which plants secrete gene protein products from their roots into the soil. These secreted proteins (if stable, e.g. Bt-toxin) can spread into the water table and then into rivers lakes and seas, especially in climates with heavy rainfall.

BIOACCUMULATION:  Plants used to grow proteins for use in medicines and industrial products may have physiochemical properties that could make them persist in the environment or cause them to accumulate in living organisms.  This would dramatically increase their potential to contaminate ecosystems and their capacity to make their way into the human and animal food chains.

(See www.ucsusa.org.)