Subj: Press Release demanding halt GE trees field tyesting
Date: 3/11/2005 3:12:40 PM Central Standard Time
From:    [log in to unmask] (Jim Diamond)
Sender:    [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
Reply-to: [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
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Please copy this to media and other lists -- or feel free to contact Neil for further info regarding GE trees.  

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 10, 2005
4:13 PM
CONTACT: Global Justice Ecology Project
<http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/>  
Alyx Perry, Southern Forests Network, 828-277-9008
Anne Petermann or Orin Langelle, Global Justice Ecology Project,
802-482-2689

Neil Carman, Sierra Club, 512-472-1767
 
Campaign Demands USDA Halt field releases of Genetically Engineered
Trees
 
WASHINGTON -- March 10 -- Following a national strategy meeting to
address the problem of genetic engineering of trees, the Stop GE Trees
Campaign reaffirmed its commitment to calling for a ban on the release
of GE trees into the environment including the removal of all field
releases of genetically engineered forest plants. The Stop GE Trees
Campaign is an alliance of grassroots organizations and leading
environmental groups in the US and Canada committed to ending the
genetic engineering of trees.

"The information that has come out in the past year since our last
national meeting makes the need for a ban on the release of GE trees
into the environment more urgent than ever," stated Neil Carman, a plant
scientist with the Sierra Club's Genetic Engineering Committee.

"Traits being engineered into trees include insect resistance, herbicide
resistance, reduced lignin, sterility and faster growth, among others,"
stated Anne Petermann, Co-Director of the Vermont-based Global Justice
Ecology Project. "When these traits escape into native forests, which
they inevitably will, native forests will be irreversibly devastated,"
she continued.

"The genetic engineering of annual crops has rapidly led to the
widespread contamination of non-engineered crops with GE traits like
insect resistance," said Brian Tokar, Director of the Biotechnology
Project at the Institute for Social Ecology. "GE trees can live for
decades, are very closely related to their wild relatives and can spread
their pollen for hundreds of miles. The potential for global
contamination of native forests by GE trees is extremely dangerous. They
must not be allowed into the environment," he continued.

"Most of the current field tests of GE trees in the U.S. are occurring
in the South, which is where we expect future production efforts to be
focused. Forestland owners and our solid wood products industry will be
the big losers when genetically engineered trees contaminate woodlots.
Because GE trees are being specifically engineered for low lignin
content, they are useless for saw timber. Once those genetic
characteristics spread, the South will lose its edge as the world's
largest timber producing region, and the destructive trend of increasing
pulpwood production will continue to plague forestry in the South," said
Alyx Perry, Coordinator of the Southern Forests Network.

There are currently hundreds of open-air field trials of GE trees around
the United States, mainly in the Southeast, Northwest, and upper
Midwest. Because the research is focused on native tree species, any of
these field trials may lead to the contamination of native forests,
which will themselves become contaminants in a never-ending cycle.

Members of the Campaign agree that a ban on the release of GE trees into
the environment--including test plots--is the only way to ensure that
this endless cycle of contamination can be prevented.

The Stop GE Trees Campaign includes the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action
Network, Dogwood Alliance, Polaris Institute, Global Justice Ecology
Project, WildLaw, Southern Forests Network, Institute for Social Ecology
Biotechnology Project, ForestEthics, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center,
Forest Stewards Guild, Northwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering
and GE Free Maine.


FACTS ABOUT GE TREES


* Corporations and scientists are engineering trees with no regard
to the dramatic impacts that they will have on ecosystems, society, and
private landowners.

* There has been an unscientific lack of rational debate about the
fundamental questions involved in engineering organisms. Scientists have
not made a case that there is a pressing need for this technology.

* Gene drift in agriculture has occurred rapidly. A recent study
by the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded that seeds of traditional
varieties of corn, soybeans, and canola are pervasively contaminated
with low levels of DNA sequences derived from transgenic varieties.
Transgenically derived DNA was detected in 50 percent of the corn, 50
percent of the soybean, and 83 percent of the canola varieties tested.
These crops have been in production for less than a decade.

* Gene drift in forests can be expected to occur more rapidly
because tree pollen travels on a much larger scale and trees permeate
the landscape at higher frequency than farm crops. Modeling done by Duke
University has indicated that pollen from trees can be expected to
travel up to 1,000 kilometers. As soon as these trees start producing
pollen, there's no way to stop gene drift from occurring.

* Engineered traits such as sterility, lack of lignin, and
pesticide production in pine and poplar trees will result in long-term
impacts in the wild. Gene drift will lead to irreversible changes in
forest ecosystems and will affect forests ability to support wildlife,
provide clean air and water, and produce valuable forest products.

* There have been cases in which GE plants still in trial stage
have caused contamination.

* U.S. courts have decided that when a landowner's property is
contaminated by GE seed or pollen that the affected crop becomes the
property of the corporation that developed the crop

* Contamination of forests will have extreme consequences for
forest land owners because it will lead to the violation of property
rights and economic losses.

* GE in native tree species is focused on reducing the production
of lignin (the material that makes timber strong and rigid). This makes
GE trees easier to use for papermaking, but useless as sawtimber, which
provides the most profitable market for landowners. Genetic
contamination will make some forests incapable of producing marketable
timber, while impairing trees' natural defenses against insects and
disease.

* Farmers of GE crops (or anyone whose land has become
contaminated) cannot save seed for next year's planting. Will
corporations seek to own the processes of natural regeneration in the
forest?

* GE trees will result in increased corporate control and
concentration in the forest products industry, and will add to the
decline in the economic and social benefits that landowners, workers,
and communities reap from our forest industry.

* The industry argues that we will and should be increasing
consumption of paper a
* There is a lack if scientific honesty about the unavoidable
occurrence of gene drift, the true impacts of GE in agriculture, and the
impossibility of assessing the long-term impacts of gene drift. In fact,
there has been only negligible effort to even begin documenting the
risks associated with this technology.

* The public's interest is last on the agenda for the industry. GE
trees are already growing in the field, and the industry has now arrived
at the question of how to "sell" this technology to the public and
landowners. There has been no genuine effort to address what is best for
society as a whole.

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