Rebecca Nesbit's Blog, page 2

May 2017 – news round-up

New from around the web:

DEFRA approves GM potato trials in Norwich

The work at The Sainsbury Laboratory is led by Professor Jonathan Jones, who was really interesting to interview for my forthcoming book (Is that Fish in your Tomato?)

The Changing Global Diet

What we choose to eat will have a huge implication on food security, particularly as diets shift towards more meat and dairy. Explore this with infographics.

Geneticists enlist engineered virus and CRISPR to battle citrus disease

To combat a citrus disease, scientists have used the CRISPR genome editing technique not just on orange trees but also on a harmless strain of a virus. It is hoped that trees infected with this virus will be protected against the disease. CRISPR isn’t subject to the lengthy GMO regulation, so this may allow its creators to leapfrog the GM orange trees which have been in development for years.

General election manifestos fact checked

Nothing to do with GM crops, but everything to do with evidence. The full fact website is fascinating, and useful for anyone who’s skeptical about the accuracy of politicians’ claims (oh, OK, that means useful to everyone!).

How to change someone’s mind

This new video from Wellcome is so relevant to the GMO debate: ‘How to be convincing: 5 tips for the next time you’re trying to change someone’s mind’.

Watching it is 0:45 seconds very well spent, but I can summarise the message as approach a debate from the other person’s perspective and not your own.

This was created as part of Wellcome’s ongoing #ExpertDebate about whether we have really had enough of experts. Join in on Twitter.

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Does ‘ethical omnivore’ beat ‘vegetarian’?

There are many reasons to reduce our meat consumption: the extra land needed to produce livestock rather than crops, the impact of meet on climate change, the poor conditions livestock are often kept in… This has prompted many people to go vegetarian, but have they really found the answer?

As a teenager, vegetarianism interested me. However, this interest was dealt a blow when I learnt of the contribution of cheese production to climate change. Vegan maybe?

Diets in the western world are high in animal products, often at an unhealthy level, and this has negative environmental consequences (this Nature Communications paper has an interesting discussion of how reducing animal products could allow us to feed the population without deforestation). Seems like a vote for veganism.

However, I know that I will never have the discipline to be a vegan, though I admire people who do. I have also sometimes wondered what people are achieving with a 100% strict vegan diet – I have seen vegan friends let food go to waste rather than eat something with animal products in.

Today I spotted an article on Twitter which struck a chord with me: Why It’s More Important To Be An Ethical Omnivore Than A Vegetarian. Some vegetarian foods can be just as bad for the environment as meat/dairy products. And sometimes mixed farming systems with livestock and crops have environmental benefits.

It’s definitely worth a read, but it reveals how difficult the choices are. Whilst the premise is an important one, I disagree with some of her assessment of alternatives. For example, she points to tofu as a choice which isn’t necessarily better for health or the environment because it is often made using glyphosate-resistant soy (no space to go into this now, but it’s a big topic in my book!).  Also, the article appears on OrganicLife, and as we’ve already discussed, organic isn’t necessarily best for the environment.

Choosing an ethical diet is hideously complex, and can sometimes mean you have to make value judgements – if one food item is better for animal welfare and another for environmental impact, which do you choose? Rules such as no meat would be easier, but all meat is not created equal, and all vegetarian products are not created sustainably.

And, let’s not forget that being vegan 98% of the time is 98% as good as being vegan all the time. Even if we only change one meal a week from beef to lentils, we’re doing our health and planet a favour.

News roundup: April 2017

The best piece of advice I heard this month came from Professor Jessica Fanzo. Her tip for anyone concerned about corporate control of the food system was to give up fizzy drinks. These are generally produced by some of the largest companies who promote very unhealthy products. You can watch the video of her thoughts on this any many other food topics.

And in the headlines we have: 

Seedless tomatoes developed using gene editing

Made using the genome editing technique CRISPR, these tomatoes don’t need bees to pollinate them. This is one way to ensure food security in a time of pollinator declines, and no doubt it will be a controversial one.

Whole Foods’ claims about slow-growing chickens casts doubt over its sustainability credentials

Geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam examines the organic retailer’s claims that slow-growing chickens are ‘better’ than newer fast-growing breeds. She gives an interesting insight into the effect of genetic improvements on farmed chickens.

Sustainable diets: rational goal, irrational consumers?

Sustainable food systems will require changes in consumer behaviour. Tim Lang, whose research focusses on policy aspects of sustainable aspects of sustainable diets, discusses whether researchers can do more good by reaching politicians or the wider public.

Sweden’s new dietary guidelines include sustainability

Sometimes nutritional guidelines are at odds with sustainability, whereas in other situations the messages are closely aligned (too much red meat is bad for both health and the environment for example). This interesting analysis summarises Sweden’s advice and looks at the criticism, particularly from the dairy industry.

Pesticide residues on foods are mostly within legal limits

In 2015, 97% of food samples collected across the EU were within legal limits for pesticide residues, with just over 53% free of quantifiable residues. The samples were analysed by the European Food Standards Authority, who also found that 99.3% of organic samples were residue-free or within legal limits.

Podcast: paying for nature’s services

Another one from me. Enjoy!

Book club: lobbying through fiction

Novels about scientists can give an insight into a life in science. But if the insight is unrealistic, is there potential for damage?

This post is neither about genetic modification nor about my novel. Instead it is about two of my related pet topics: scientists in fiction and neonicotinoid pesticides.

This week we read Coffin Road by Peter May at my Fiction Lab book club (free and open to all at  London’s Royal Institution – please join us) which told the story of a scientist studying the effect of neonicotinoids on bees.

I’m reviewing the book for lablit.com, and wanted to provide extra information here. It’s a debate I’ve been following for the last few years, and I’ve blogged about my early involvement. It’s time for an update though, as the reality still isn’t reflected in popular debate.

Coffin Road certainly played to the popular narrative. At the risk of a spoiler alert, the premise is that honeybees are in danger because of neonicotinoids, and if only our protagonist can finish one experiment without being murdered by a big corporation then governments will have no choice but to ban these pesticides.

The reality is that the honeybee is a domestic species which is thriving thanks to humans (see the graph above produced from FAO data).

The alarming stats you hear about percentage declines aren’t net losses. A character in Coffin Road states that ‘between thirty and fifty percent of the bee population of the United States alone is dying every year’ (he means honeybees not bees). This would be catastrophic is it were a downward trend. However, beekeepers have ways of founding new colonies to replace the ones they lose. Nobody likes to give stats about how many colonies are founded each year. The losses are still a concern for beekeepers though, and the causes are complex.

There’s increasing evidence that neonicotinoids are amongst the factors negatively affecting populations of wild bees (a big conservation concern). For this reason, certain neonicotinoids are banned in the EU.

Evidence in the field is extremely hard to collect due to the many factors which affect insect populations. Unlike the story in Coffin Road, no single study could produce sufficient evidence to warrant a ban.

This complexity of the evidence is one of the reasons the ban is controversial. Another reason is that farmers and chemical companies don’t like it. However, whilst I’ve blogged before about possible biases from industry science, the intimidation and, er, murder suggested in Coffin Road are very far from the truth.

Of all the evidence of the effect of neonicotinoids on bee populations, a recent study from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology is amongst the most persuasive. Their results suggest that sub-lethal effects of neonicotinoids could scale up to cause losses of bee biodiversity.

They conclude that restrictions on neonicotinoid use may reduce population declines. In terms of the current ban, however, I thought there were wise words from the study’s lead author, Ben Woodcock:

“When you grow oilseed rape you can’t do it without pesticides, there’s an underlying reality to this.

“Just because you say ‘don’t use neonicotinoids anymore’, the likelihood is that another pesticide is going to have to be used to compensate for that. That is going to have impacts on runoffs into waterways and on other species that you can control for.

“It needs to be taken in a very holistic perspective, you can’t just say as long as we can save the bees everything else can go to hell, that’s not where you want to be at.”

Amongst the missing evidence in the neonicotinoid debate is the effect of neonicotinoids on yield. Conservation charities have challenged reports stating that yields have taken a big hit as a result of the EU neonic ban. There’s also some evidence that neonics don’t consistently increase farmer profit.

If farmers are sustaining yields without neonics, we have to ask how. It seems that the answer is at least in part that they use other pesticides. This needs more research, and it’s not clear how these alternative pesticides will affect bees.

If we want to ban anything that harms insects we need to ban agriculture (organic farming definitely included). However, I for one am keen to eat. We therefore need to use the best available evidence to work out how to feed the global population with minimum damage to biodiversity.

It would be very convenient to blame evil corporations for bee declines, as Coffin Road does. It’s comfortable to think of a single fix which will come from somewhere else. Sadly, the reasons for the decline are complex, including habitat loss and climate change. So we might want to think about our own behaviour, including how much food we throw in the bin.

Attitudes to technology – cultural differences revealed by my mango juice

On my recent trip to India I was told, quite rightly, that the mango juice was delicious. The bottle also turned out to be enlightening, and revealed a difference in attitude across the continents.

I was disappointed, though not surprised, to see that the juice was a product of Coca-Cola – the global power of soft drinks companies is clear to see. What did surprise me was the note about new technologies increasing yield:

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There was a URL on the bottle to find out more. This told me mostly that Ultra High Density Plantation grows more mangoes per acre, is sustainable and is a very good thing. Once I’d read a few quotes from people confirming that this is a very good thing, I finally managed to discover something about what it involved:

grafts of commercial mango varieties planted close to each other
pruning, drip irrigation and ‘growth promotion’ (whatever that might mean)
special care for nutrition management and pest control

Drawing attention to agricultural technology is strikingly different to advertising in the UK, which often focusses on ‘natural’. Even if people choose a soft drink which is far less natural than the free alternative of water, they often want to know that it has natural flavours and preservatives.

In the UK, if you’re going to drink coconut water you need to be reassured that it is natural…

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I’ve been pondering why the difference, and how the advertising influences opinion.

Is it because we have lost our connection to farming, so more food per acre is of no interest to us? Is it because we want a shortcut to being healthy and perceive that natural=healthy? Is it that people increasingly appreciate the value of nature, or is it more sinister – that we have substituted a real connection with nature for something that can be bought in a supermarket?

As always, I’d love to hear your views.

Does industry funding corrupt GMO research?

Mistrust of businesses is at the core of many people’s fear about GM (and if we’re honest, much of this is directed at Monsanto). This of course spills over into mistrust of academic scientists, especially those who are funded by industry or collaborate with industry.

Whilst many of the claims made against scientists funded by industry are false, and often offensive, it is an important topic. We need to understand any biases created by industry involvement and work to minimise them. Studies on this are disturbingly rare, so I was very pleased to be sent a new paper about conflicts of interest.

This looked specifically at Bt crops, both at the efficacy (do they work) and the durability (does this last). The outcome of studies on Bt crops was compared to whether these studies had any ties to industry, either industry funding or an author from industry.

The authors found that a higher proportion of papers with a conflict of interest had outcomes favorable to the GM crop company, compared with papers with no conflict of interest.

Although concerning, this doesn’t necessarily mean that industry funding affects results. Correlation, after all, isn’t the same as causation.

It could be, for example, that if studies had unfavourable results then industry scientists would ask not to be on the authorship. The study would still be published, but we have no way of identifying that industry was involved.

In specific instance of Bt crops, studies on efficacy were more likely to be positive than studies on durability. Companies may promote research on efficacy rather than durability, so indirectly increasing the frequency of favorable outcomes for papers with industry connections.

There is also the worrying possibility that unfavourable outcomes are less likely to be published if there is industry involvement. We know it’s a problem in the pharmaceutical industry, with clinical trials going unreported if they don’t show the desired result. More research would be needed before we could draw this conclusion for GM crops.

The authors discuss the limitations of the study (it’s just on one particular area, it doesn’t take other biases such as ideology into account etc). But they also believe that, whilst the details may differ, the link between conflicts of interest and the outcome of the study would remain. This is unsurprising, given that it has been found in industries such as pharma, sugar and tobacco.

The answer is definitely not ‘get rid of industry ties’. It’s appropriate that industry scientists publish their results, and also that industry should make financial contributions to academic research (on this point another article also sent to me by @HStiles1, the librarian that every researcher should know, is worth a read).

The authors of this study presented an idea which, whilst it wouldn’t solve the problem, could be of enormous benefit. Instead of directly funding individual research projects, businesses could pay into a common pot along with other stakeholders such as NGOs and government. This funding would get allocated by an independent agency. Bring it on!

Guillemaud, T., Lombaert, E., & Bourguet, D. (2016). Conflicts of Interest in GM Bt Crop Efficacy and Durability Studies PLOS ONE, 11 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0167777

What if we don’t grow more food?

The figures vary, but predictions about how much food we will need to produce in the future show an increase. This is largely due to population growth and changing diets. We won’t just have more people to feed, we will have more middle class people to feed. People tend to eat more meat and dairy products when they have more money at their disposal. If we feed crops to cows not people, we need to grow more crops.

But what happens if food production doesn’t increase? Do wealthy people have to go without meat, or do poorer people have to go without food? 

This question doesn’t have a simple answer; it just prompts discussions about inequality and food justice.

I was struck by the relevance of a recent article by Ian Boyd, Defra’s chief scientific advisor.

He pointed out the need for demand-side innovation as well as supply-side innovation. Take energy saving lightbulbs. The supply-side innovation was fantastic: lightbulbs are now far more efficient. However, energy consumption still went up as we used more lightbulbs. We lacked the demand-side innovation to, for example, change behaviour.

In the case of food production, the supply-side innovation includes high-yield crops and farming systems. My question above instead relates to the demand side, and I look forward to these innovations.

The stories we tell

Today I came across an interesting news story about high-yielding wheat. The second sentence of the article pulled me up:

“The new plant application… could help to solve the issue of increasing food insecurity across the globe; 795 million people are undernourished and this year’s El Nino has shown how vulnerable many countries are to climate-induced drought.”

I don’t doubt these facts, but can’t stop dwelling on the productionist outlook, and whether we alienate people with this approach. 795 million people are undernourished in a world which produces enough food – we can turn people off by implying that the link between yield and food security is a simple one.

The growing population and changing diets mean we do need to increase yields, and resistance to drought will certainly be essential. But I can imagine someone reading that sentence and thinking ‘fools, don’t they realise that yields aren’t the issue here’, and therefore discounting the research.

The recent discussion of a ‘post-truth world’ on Radio 4 helped me understand why most conservative Americans deny climate change. I recommend a listen, but in summary the conservatives heard that those godless liberal scientists had got together with the greedy wall streeters to come up with a new tax on carbon.

The issue here isn’t the facts. The conservatives are told about climate change by people they don’t trust using language which they aren’t comfortable with. The story is what’s important.

There’s a valuable lesson in here about communicating agricultural science. Are we telling our story in a way which will elicit mistrust? Do we fail to see how other people’s starting point is different to ours?

I was also a little unsure about ‘solve the issue’ – when there are so many solutions needed, any talk of solving can appear narrow minded (In my fiction writing I’m eliminating unnecessary words – maybe I’m over sensitive!).

Increasing yields and improving access to food aren’t mutually exclusive. Most people discussing yields understand that we need both approaches, and they can adjust their language to reflect this.

The nitrogen fix

We rely on high yields to feed a population of 7 billion, and these are made possible by our ability to create an ideal environment for the crop. Ironically, the methods used to do this can create conditions which are increasingly unsuitable for growing crops in.

To combat drought we add water, causing problems such as water shortages and soil salinisation. To ensure that a crop’s nutritional needs are met we add fertilisers containing nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus.

Fertilisers have direct impacts on the local environment, with nitrogen leeching leading to  a loss of wildlife. In addition to nitrogen which is lost to the environment, a small percentage is converted to nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential about 298 times that of carbon dioxide.

The contribution of nitrogen fertilisers to global warming doesn’t end there: the Haber-Bosch process used to create them is energetically expensive, and is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions from agriculture. The same is true of the farm machinery used to spread fertiliser on the field.

Nitrogen use has risen dramatically in recent decades, but this can’t continue. Estimates suggest that without the Haber-Bosch process global food production might only be able to support about half of today’s population, yet we need a more sustainable approach to providing food for a growing population in an increasingly uncertain climate.

There is a growing interest in using agroecology to reduce the need for synthetic fertilisers and other inputs, along with a focus on creating plants which are resilient to stresses such as nitrogen shortages.

The complexity of creating a plant which uses nitrogen more efficiently means that many scientists have turned to genetic engineering to attempt this. Trials have taken place in a variety of crops using different genes, and there have been many experimental successes over recent years. In 2007 field trials, for example, GM canola plants maintained yields even with 40% less nitrogen than is normally applied.

In 2016, Professor Mechthild Tegeder created soybeans which fixed twice as much nitrogen as their conventional counterparts. Soybean is a legume, so bacteria in its roots turn nitrogen from the air into a form which is available to the plant. By engineering soybeans to increase the flow of nitrogen from the bacteria into the seed-producing organs, Professor Tegeder and her colleagues increased yields in their glasshouse experiments.

These are just two examples of successes in experiments designed to increase nitrogen use efficiency. However, one problem faced by many of the promising studies is replication. Nitrogen pathways in plants are complex and not fully understood, so it is perhaps unsurprising that results can be unreliable in field conditions. Whilst these studies are encouraging, it will be a long road to commercialisation, and the road towards nitrogen efficient crops which benefit poorer farmers might be even longer.

New genome editing techniques have allowed some research groups to set their sights even higher, creating cereals such as rice or wheat which can use nitrogen from the air so it doesn’t need to be added to the soil. This could either be done by modifying the cereal plant to encourage bacterial symbiosis, as happens in legumes, or by adding a nitrogen fixing enzyme from bacteria into the plant itself.

Such crops could theoretically bring great environmental benefits where nitrogen fertiliser  is currently applied, and yield benefits in parts of the world where access to fertiliser is limited. For now, however, there are many technical, regulatory and commercial barriers to be overcome.