Outstanding series of GMO articles from the Sacramento Bee

[Guest guest]

" News Update from The Campaign "

Outstanding series of GMO articles from the Sacramento Bee

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 05:39:00 -0500

 

News Update From The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods

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Dear News Update Subscribers,

 

This week, the Sacramento Bee ran an in-depth five-part series of articles

about genetically engineered foods called " Seeds of Doubt. "

 

Posted below is the fifth article of the series titled " Grocery Quandary -

For U.S. Shoppers, A Lack of Labels Limits Choice On Biotech Foods. " It is a

lengthy article with several related stories posted below it.

 

For your convenience in accessing all the articles in this exceptional series

at the Sacramento Bee web site, we have set up links that will auto-forward

to the introduction and all five parts of the series:

 

Seeds of Doubt Introduction:

http://www.thecampaign.org/sacbee0.html

 

1) Mali's People Reap No Reward For Cloned Wild-Rice Gene:

http://www.thecampaign.org/sacbee1.html

 

2) Globe-Trotting Genes - Welcome Or Not, Modified Strains Pop Up In Crops

Near And Far:

http://www.thecampaign.org/sacbee2.html

 

3) Biotech Industry Funds Bumper Crop Of UC Davis Research:

http://www.thecampaign.org/sacbee3.html

 

4) Scattered Efforts - California Plays Little Part In The Patchwork That

Oversees Biotech Crops:

http://www.thecampaign.org/sacbee4.html

 

5) Grocery Quandary - For U.S. Shoppers, A Lack of Labels Limits Choice On

Biotech Foods:

http://www.thecampaign.org/sacbee5.html

 

Our hats are off to the reporters at the Sacramento Bee who put this series

together. It is the most comprehensive coverage of genetically engineered

foods that any newspaper in the United States has done. Plus, a great deal

of attention was paid to presenting this material on their web in an attractive

and artistic manner as you will see if you visit any of the links above.

 

Craig Winters

Executive Director

The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods

 

The Campaign

PO Box 55699

Seattle, WA 98155

Tel: 425-771-4049

Fax: 603-825-5841

E-mail: label

Web Site: http://www.thecampaign.org

 

Mission Statement: " To create a national grassroots consumer campaign for

the purpose of lobbying Congress and the President to pass legislation that

will require the labeling of genetically engineered foods in the United

States. "

 

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Grocery Quandary - For U.S. Shoppers, A Lack of Labels Limits Choice On

Biotech Foods

 

By Edie Lau -- Bee Staff Writer

 

Sacramento Bee

Published Thursday, June 10, 2004 -- Last of five parts

 

Grocery shopping was going smoothly until Lori Brennan stopped for soy milk.

 

Studying the shelves at a natural foods market in Grass Valley this spring,

Brennan found her options mind-boggling. Some of the drinks carried the

organic seal, some did not. All but one new variety were sweetened. A brand

on sale caught Brennan's interest, but it bothered her that the package said

nothing about whether the soy was genetically modified.

 

Brennan, a 57-year-old registered nurse with a zeal for eating healthfully,

sighed. " It's not easy to be a consumer, " she said.

 

Not long afterward, in the aisle of a London grocery store, Sylvia Slark

picked up a plastic container of seedless grapes and dropped it in a basket.

A label on the container clearly read: " Naturally contains no GM products. "

 

" I'm fussy about what I eat, " said Slark, an office manager for a nightclub.

" Choice is important to me. "

 

A decade since the debut of gene-spliced food, biotechnology is a dominant

presence in world agriculture. But the distribution of biotech foods is

uneven. Dancing around deeply divided opinions over the technology's health

and environmental safety, and over its social and economic effects, the

global food industry approaches genetic engineering with a double standard.

 

In much of Europe and parts of Asia, where consumer mistrust is greatest and

labeling is required, food manufacturers take pains to eliminate genetically

engineered ingredients as much as possible.

 

In the United States, a land of seemingly infinite grocery choices, food

purveyors rarely make distinctions between what's genetically engineered and

what's not. People who want to avoid biotech foods are left trying to sort

it out on their own.

 

" I'd like to...be able to make an informed decision; at this point, I

can't, " said Jeff Dawson, curator of gardens at Copia, a museum and cultural

center in Napa that celebrates food and wine. " I feel some personal

freedom's been taken away from me. "

 

No labels required

 

The U.S. government maintains that the act of gene splicing doesn't

significantly change a food. As long as an engineered food is nutritionally

the same as its conventionally grown version - and has undergone a company

analysis to rule out the presence of allergens - the government says labels

aren't necessary.

 

Rejecting mandatory labeling sets the United States apart from most of the

world's industrial countries.

 

More than 40 countries have labeling requirements, according to Colin

Carter, a University of California, Davis, agricultural economist. In

addition to the 25 countries of the European Union, they range from

Australia to South Africa, Taiwan to Thailand - and even China, which spends

the most public money of any country on biotech crop research.

 

Britain, for one, has made consumer information a priority when it comes to

biotech products.

 

" The government is neither pro nor anti, " said Sharima Rasanayagam, science

and technology consul in the British Consulate in San Francisco. " We want

decisions made on sound science; we want to protect the environment as much

as possible; and we want to protect consumer choice. "

 

Some of the same companies that resist mandatory labeling here, arguing that

it's costly and unnecessary to segregate crops, provide their overseas

customers with non-engineered products.

 

Sarah Delea, a spokeswoman for Kraft Foods Inc., explained it this way: " In

Europe, the regulations are evolving, and consumer acceptance of

biotechnology remains lower than, say, in the United States. Therefore, in

Europe, we do not use biotech ingredients. In the United States, the

regulatory system has reviewed and assessed and approved the safety of

biotech ingredients, and consumer interest in it remains stable. "

 

Even the makers of genetically engineered organisms play both sides of the

fence. DuPont, a leading developer of biotech crops, is part-owner of a

non-engineered soy business called Solae.

 

The reason is simple, said Paul Tebo, corporate vice president of safety,

health and environment at DuPont: " Where there's a market demand for

products, we produce the products. "

 

It may make perfect business sense, but Corey Nicholl finds it offensive. A

stocker at a natural foods grocery in Berkeley who this past year has

researched genetic modification and the food industry, Nicholl said the

attitude seems to be, " Americans will eat anything, right? (So) they sell

their trash here. "

 

British food and drink makers studiously avoid the products of genetic

engineering, to the best of their ability. " The UK food and drink

manufacturing industry does not (use) GM ingredients for its products, as

they would not sell, " said Kate Snowden, a spokeswoman for the British Food

and Drink Federation.

 

By contrast, the Grocery Manufacturers of America estimates that 70 to 75

percent of processed foods sold in the United States may contain genetically

engineered ingredients.

 

The reason is not that so many sources of food are genetically engineered.

So far, no engineered animals are sold as meat, and very few commercial crop

types are bioengineered. Just four commodities dominate the biotech

farmscape - corn, soybeans, canola and cotton - but they are valuable

commodities broadly used in countless products. Corn and soy are ubiquitous

in processed foods.

 

They show up on ingredient labels as high-fructose corn syrup. Corn syrup

solids. Soy protein isolate. Soy lecithin. Corn oil. Soybean oil. Or

generically, " vegetable oil. " There's also canola oil and cottonseed oil.

 

Common but invisible, these ingredients are produced by an expanding acreage

of crops with engineered DNA that, in most instances, enables the plants to

produce their own insecticide or withstand certain herbicides.

 

Because everyone eats, the shift affects everyone. Yet the revolution has

happened largely unnoticed by the American public. Here, ignorance about

genetic engineering in food is the norm.

 

Little knowledge

 

A survey in January commissioned by the International Food Information

Council - a public relations arm of the food, beverage and agriculture

industry - found that 63 percent of adults had heard or read little to

nothing about food biotechnology.

 

Talk to shoppers outside the Natomas Raley's supermarket and you'll hear a

similar refrain.

 

Among a handful of people interviewed there by The Bee this spring, half

said they knew nothing about food biotechnology, genetic engineering,

genetically modified organisms or " Frankenfood, " the nickname popular among

opponents.

 

Debra Hilton, a 27-year-old living in Rio Linda, said working three jobs

leaves her too busy to pay attention to such things.

 

" They should have to label it, " said Angie Dickson, a 29-year-old, who at

the time was an expectant mother on leave from her job at an insurance

office. Dickson said she habitually reads the fine print on packaging to

avoid hydrogenated oils and other unhealthy ingredients.

 

The absence of labels for bioengineered ingredients and low consumer

awareness are inter.twined. Without labels, consumers tend not to know about

the issue, so they are unlikely to press for labeling.

 

Efficiency lost

 

The standard food and biotechnology industry argument against labeling is

that segregating biotech from conventional crops is too expensive. But

segregation is happening anyway, driven by overseas regulations and the

demands of foreign buyers.

 

The system for producing products in this new, awkwardly named category of

" identity-preserved non-GMO " does cost some money. But it's nominal in the

grand scheme of things, according to David Bullock, an associate professor

specializing in agricultural and consumer economics at the University of

Illinois.

 

Bullock said the greatest expense - and one that's hard to quantify - comes

from lost efficiency. Now there are two streams of soy products and two

streams of corn products where once there was one of each. All of a sudden,

storage containers, whether silos, grain elevators or the holds of ships,

are too big.

 

" The infrastructure is not right, " Bullock said. But, he added, " It's not an

economic disaster. "

 

The real barrier to labeling biotech crops in the United States may be more

formidable than upfront cost: fear. The food industry fears that mandatory

labels would act as scarlet letters, driving away fearful shoppers.

 

Bugles are a case in point.

 

The crunchy, salty snack shaped like a horn is made from corn by General

Mills. In the United States, at least some of the corn likely is

bioengineered. In Europe, the company pays extra to be sure the corn is not

genetically modified, so the Bugles don't have to be labeled.

 

Ron Olson, General Mills vice president for grain operations, said he

doesn't know what would happen if Bugles were labeled " contains GM " in the

United States. Nor does he care to find out.

 

" At this point in time, " he said, " we're not willing to risk the brand. "

 

Shelf sleuths

 

On Gilman Street in Berkeley, a health-food store so small it doesn't have a

parking lot is plotting a revolt against what its employees consider the

force-feeding of genetically engineered foods in America.

 

It began when the telephone rang at Berkeley Natural Grocery shortly before

Christmas 2002. The caller was a woman who regularly buys nutritional

supplements, including soy lecithin, a form of fat believed to improve brain

health. In Los Angeles, she'd seen a brand of lecithin labeled " non-GMO. "

Couldn't the Berkeley store carry something similar?

 

Elizabeth Donsky got right on it. A vegan with a degree in holistic health

from San Francisco State University, Donsky is in charge of vitamin sales.

She shared the customer's concerns.

 

Donsky contacted suppliers. Sure enough, most of the lecithin was

engineered.

 

Within a week, she found a lecithin without modified genes. It even cost

less than some of the other brands.

 

The customer's request was satisfied, but now Donsky wasn't. Neither were

some of her co-workers. They approached the owner. " We want to look into

what in the store has GMOs, and we'd like them to be gone, " they said. " Gone

or labeled. "

 

The issue was a natural for Berkeley, where food and politics go together

like carrots and peas. Store founder and President Bob Gerner agreed to take

action. He allowed three employees - Donsky, stocker Corey Nicholl and

Roxanne Seraphin, a cashier - to each spend two hours a week on the project.

 

They became biotech sleuths, examining the shelves item by item, reading

packaging for " hot " ingredients: corn, canola, soy or cottonseed oil,

mostly, plus dairy products - which they reasoned could have come from cows

treated with genetically engineered growth hormone.

 

A crunchy corn cereal made with canola and/or sunflower oil? Put it on the

list. Chocolate with a touch of soy lecithin emulsifier to keep ingredients

from separating? Check it out, too.

 

The job took months. Finally, arms aching from clutching clipboards, the

team took to the computer. They logged 720 products onto a spreadsheet and

began searching for contact information on the 300 companies that made the

products.

 

Next, the team wrote to 6,000 health food stores and cooperatives

nationwide, asking if they would like to sign letters to the manufacturers

asking them to avoid biotech ingredients. By April, 161 stores were signed

on and the letters went out.

 

" The main objective is to get information to the consumer, " Nicholl said,

" so that they can make a real choice. "

 

Not so simple

 

Larger stores are struggling with the pro- or no-biotech issue, too. Coming

under pressure from environmental and organic advocacy groups, Trader Joe's,

for example, announced in March 2003 that all store-brand products would be

made with non-engineered ingredients.

 

In doing so, the popular chain followed a trend set five years earlier in

Britain. A medium-sized grocery chain, Iceland, was the first to announce it

would not use engineered ingredients in its brand. By 1999, other

supermarkets in Britain and elsewhere in Europe followed. Grocery companies

even eliminated meat and dairy that came from animals raised on

bioengineered feed.

 

But ousting genetically engineered ingredients completely is not as simple

as just saying no - in the United Kingdom or the United States or anywhere

else.

 

Randy Erickson learned that lesson in a most frustrating way.

 

Erickson is vice president of manufacturing and innovation at Clif Bar, a

private Berkeley company founded by his brother, Gary. When he joined the

energy bar maker in 1999, Erickson pressed for avoiding biotech ingredients.

To him, it was not a matter of doubting the safety of the technology as much

as rejecting the system that produces bioengineered products.

 

" I think it's a lie that's been perpetrated on us by big companies for the

wrong reason, " Erickson said. " I'm not one that believes, 'Oh, Frankenfood'

and all this other stuff.... (But) we're not feeding one person more because

of this (technology). No lives have been saved. ... We've got it whether we

want it or not, and we were never given the choice. "

 

Trying to wrest back that choice, he arranged for Clif Bar to buy certified

non-engineered soybean ingredients. The company printed on its packages that

Clif Bars contained no GM soy. Erickson and crew ordered DNA testing of the

bars to verify the claim.

 

Results came in by e-mail and fax. Negative. Negative. Negative. Positive.

Uh-oh.

 

" Damn low levels, " Erickson said. " But damn low levels ain't none. "

 

Where did it come from? Was somebody, the staff wondered suspiciously,

slipping in ingredients they hadn't asked for? Or had they neglected to

specify " GM-free " for an ingredient?

 

Clif Bar sent out individual ingredients for testing, trying to pinpoint the

problem. They all came back negative. Was the science of testing a mess?

After all, no uniform standards exist for biotech analysis. Or did the

sample that tested positive happen to be made with a stray modified soybean?

 

About that time, Clif Bar got publicly dinged.

 

The Wall Street Journal hired a lab to test an assortment of foods claiming

to be " GM-free. " It reported in 2001 that many of those foods weren't free

of biotech ingredients, Clif Bar among them.

 

Anxious that the company not be seen as deceptive, Erickson faxed the

Journal documents showing how doggedly Clif Bar had tried to eliminate the

engineered ingredients. The company could even cite the lot number of the

seeds from which its soy was grown.

 

Then, Clif Bar removed the claim on its packaging. After spending tens of

thousands of dollars in tests, Erickson resigned himself to tolerating low

levels of biotech genes.

 

" We kind of have a limit where if it's under 1 percent, we really don't

worry about it, " he said. " I'm still mad that I can't buy perfect GMO-free

stuff. Why am I forced to do that? I should be able to get what I want. "

 

Clif Bar is shifting toward organic ingredients, which have become the

refuge of biotech skeptics. By definition, organic foods cannot be produced

using genetic engineering. But even they may not be totally " GM-free. "

 

That's because transgenes - the genetic material biologists insert into

engineered organisms - don't stay put. They travel on the wind or hitch

rides on insects' feet. They slip out on mis.labeled seeds. Biotech corn

kernels or soybeans mix in silos or on shipping containers with conventional

corn and soy. The system is full of leaks.

 

Every day, Frank Spiegelhalter sees how readily DNA roams. Spiegelhalter is

executive vice president of Gene.Scan USA Inc., a leading laboratory

offering biotech gene testing. Based in Louisiana, GeneScan USA is owned by

a German company with labs on every major continent, reflecting the growing

demand for analysis of genetic modification.

 

" There will always be a few GM beans in what is considered conventional or

organic, " Spiegelhalter said. " It could be just one GM bean and 10,000

(regular) soybeans, but the product still tests positive. "

 

And if you wanted to peddle only GM-free products? Spiegelhalter gave a dry

chuckle and said, " You would have nothing left to sell, basically. "

 

Nothing has ever been 100 percent pure in agriculture, according to Val

Giddings, a vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization and a

former branch chief for biotech science and policy coordination at the U.S.

Department of Agriculture.

 

" There's always, you know, rodent feces, (or) a little bit of grass seed

here or there, " he said.

 

Moreover, with biotech genes, no fail-safe way exists to guarantee their

absence. Even if every food were tested, which is neither practical nor

affordable, some products of genetic engineering would escape detection.

Oils extracted from corn, canola, soybeans and cotton seeds, for instance,

contain little to no DNA. Without the genetic material or telltale proteins

produced by the engineered genes, a food's relationship with biotechnology

is invisible.

 

A voice for choice

 

The debate about genetically modified organisms usually is cast in

scientific terms. Are engineered foods safe to eat? Will they harm the

environment? But science addresses only a sliver of what concerns its

critics.

 

It fell to Andrew Light to deliver that message to scientists last autumn in

Mexico City.

 

An environmental ethicist at New York University, Light was invited to a

conference about biotech corn and " gene flow, " the tendency of genes to

migrate. Sequestered for two days in a hotel, Light listened as scientist

after scientist talked about the world outside - about the taming of corn

from the wild, about corn biology, about ways to detect biotech genes.

 

When it came time for Light to speak, it was as if someone had thrown open a

door and invited in a gale wind.

 

World opinion, said the slender philosopher, seems intractably divided over

biotech foods. " If we want to get anywhere in terms of overcoming some of

the big divides that exist over this issue, I don't think that the right

approach is to say, 'Well, that perspective is not a scientific perspective,

so we shouldn't listen to it.' ... If everyone had a scientific perspective,

the world would be incredibly boring. "

 

Light spoke in jest, but the crowd wasn't laughing.

 

He kept going. People, he said, have fundamentally different beliefs about

what's natural and unnatural; no amount of scientific data will change that.

 

 

" If people simply don't want to ingest these materials, we ought to respect

their autonomy in making that choice, " he said.

 

Finally, Light concluded, popular resistance to genetically modified foods

is not just about biotechnology. Instead, it's " about how people have felt

excluded from making decisions....If you don't like that, " he chided, " then

fundamentally you don't like the democratic process. "

 

Luke Anderson could be the embodiment of Light's democratic world. He's a

veteran of anti-biotech activity from Europe to Russia, Australia to Mexico.

 

A Briton living in Northern California, Anderson may be the guy carrying the

picket sign, but he's also often in the background giving pep talks,

teaching protest strategy, dispensing data.

 

Anderson has made it his mission to study the social implications of

biotechnology. So his mind plunges into the future, where he foresees people

looking back on the early 21st century as a pivotal time for biotech.

 

Our descendants, he imagines, won't dwell on whether today's citizens were

too busy to learn about genetic engineering or too distracted to form an

educated opinion about whether it's good, bad or indifferent.

 

" They will say, " Anderson said, " these were the years, these were the

decades, when people had the opportunity to make a choice. "

 

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Related Story - A profit from picky consumers

 

In Japanese soybean buyers' objections to biotech soy, Connell Brothers in

San Francisco saw an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

 

Connell Brothers is the international trading division of Wilbur Ellis, one

of the largest distributors of agricultural products in the United States.

Company staff in Japan suggested finding growers who would plant

conventional soybeans and make special efforts to keep those beans separate

from engineered beans. From that idea, a niche market was carved.

 

Today, Connell Brothers specializes in soybeans known as " identity-preserved

non-GMO. " By keeping a detailed record of their beans' origin and transport,

the company promises buyers 99 percent non-biotech purity. In turn, their

beans fetch a higher price. The premium fluctuates, running in the range of

20 percent to 40 percent per bushel, according to Kevin Hack, Connell

Brothers corporate marketing manager for specialty grains.

 

A few of the shipments go to Europe, Hack said, but the majority are bound

for Japan for use in miso, tofu, fish cakes and baby food.

 

Japanese people's wary reaction to genetically engineered food stems in part

from a strong sense that what they eat reflects who they are. " Japanese food

culture is our identity, " said Ryoko Shimizi, who studies biotech issues for

the Seikatsu Club Consumers' Cooperative Union in Tokyo. " So food is not

just nutrition. "

 

Shimizu said co-op members, who number 250,000, worry about the safety of

biotech foods over the long term. " We didn't know the risk of pesticides or

herbicides (right away), but we know now, " she said.

 

That attitude has induced a major change in the buying habits of Japanese

tofu makers, said Kim Nill, technical issues director of the American

Soybean Association. They've moved " upscale " - buying identity-preserved

non-GMO soy or even more expensive organic soy. That shift affects not only

Connell Brothers but the whole U.S. soybean industry.

 

" The real impact for my members, " said Nill cheerfully. " They make more

profit. "

 

- Edie Lau

 

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Related Story - Labeling debate

 

The food industry generally balks at labeling genetically modified foods in

the United States, saying the logistics would be a nightmare. But a model

already exists, in those little labels you find stubbornly attached to your

fruits and vegetables.

 

The Produce Electronic Identification Board years ago established a code for

biotech produce, believing at the time they would bring a higher price.

 

The code is part of a system known as PLU, for " price look-up. " Shoppers

encounter the PLU every time they try to peel off those tiny stickers

affixed to individual apples or tomatoes. The PLU is meant to help checkout

clerks charge the correct price. Each type of produce is assigned a 4-digit

number.

 

Organic versions of the same fruit or vegetable start with the numeral 9.

And, under the system set up by the produce board, biotech versions can be

preceded by the numeral 8. So a conventional banana is coded 4011, an

organic banana 94011 and an engineered banana would be 84011. Theoretically.

 

In practice, no produce bears the coding for genetic engineering. For one

thing, very little fresh commercial produce is genetically engineered right

now. For another, use of the code is entirely voluntary.

 

" It isn't a matter of, do we want to tell you, or do people want to know, "

said Dick Spezzano, who was chairman of the Produce Electronic

Identification Board when the coding for genetic engineering was adopted in

the mid-1990s. " (It's meant for) those who want to market differently. They

could use the regular ... code. They're not obligated. "

 

In fact, Spezzano said Hawaiian papayas that have been genetically modified

to resist a particular viral disease are coded just like conventional

papayas. They're sold for the same price, so vendors have no incentive to

make a distinction.

 

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Related Story - Changing farm life

 

On the outskirts of Dixon, a 33-year-old farmer named Erik Freese grows

alfalfa, sunflowers, wheat, a type of hay called Sudan grass, beans and

corn. A graduate of the University of California, Davis, with a degree in

agriculture management and economics, Freese began in 2001 to experiment

with biotech corn.

 

He started with 70 acres, planting in an area where neighboring farms grow

mostly tomatoes. Today, Freese is up to 1,000 acres a year of

herbicide-resistant corn. He sells it as cattle feed. And he loves it.

 

Because he can kill weeds using the herbicide Roundup - which the biotech

corn is created to withstand - Freese doesn't need to weed by plowing. That

means he runs fossil-fuel burning, dust-raising farm machinery less often,

and saves at least $20,000 a year in labor expenses.

 

He does pay more for seeds - the patented products cost about 10 percent

more than conventional varieties. But bottom line, biotech corn saves Freese

money.

 

The benefits are not merely financial.

 

" I am a fifth-generation farmer, and if this Roundup Ready corn wasn't

available, I would be hard-pressed to stay in this industry, " said Freese,

who has one child and another on the way. " I don't want to be the one that

couldn't maintain this legacy. "

 

As important, Freese has more time now for his family. He has the luxury of

taking his 3-year-old son to preschool in the morning, or picking him up in

the afternoon. He can be home in time to eat dinner with the family.

 

" I have the opportunity to be a husband and a dad and all that good stuff

that goes along with life, other than being married to my job, " he said.

 

- Edie Lau

 

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Related Story - Former biology researcher Els Cooperrider, who runs a Ukiah

organic restaurant and brew pub, relaxes at her cabin, which has no phone or

electricity. She masterminded the ballot initiative that outlawed growing

genetically modified organisms in Mendocino County.

 

Household term: GMO

 

Filling the information void in her community was what Els Cooperrider had

in mind when she dreamed up a ballot initiative to outlaw growing

genetically modified organisms in Mendocino County.

 

To her amazement, the measure passed in March, making Mendocino the nation's

first community to ban genetically modified organisms - GMOs.

 

" I wasn't thinking we could pass such a thing. I was just thinking about

educating the public, " said Cooperrider, the snowy-haired matriarch of a

family-owned .organic-foods restaurant and brew pub in Ukiah.

 

A former biology researcher who has watched the use of DNA splicing spread

since its genesis in the 1970s, Cooperrider mistrusts the technology.

 

" You take a piece of DNA and forcibly insert it, " she said, " you're going to

mess something up. "

 

Early on, people were mystified by the " GMO Free Mendocino " signs posted

along roadsides and in shop windows. Campaign volunteer Adam Gaska remembers

being asked, " What the hell is a guh-MOE? "

 

Gaska sagged. If residents of Mendocino, which prides itself on being

socially progressive, don't know the ABCs of food biotechnology, he thought,

what about the rest of America?

 

Over the next three months, Gaska and other volunteers by the scores spread

out across the lush hills and valleys of the community, talking to their

neighbors, hoping to tap the independent spirit that draws people to the

North Coast. The fight was hot. The industry-supported opposition outspent

proponents of the ban 5-to-1. Radio airwaves overflowed with advertisements.

By the end, the combined letters G-M-O had become a household term. And, for

56 percent of voters, an unwelcome concept.

 

- Edie Lau

 

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Related Story - Too early to tell about safety

 

The first thing most people want to know about genetically engineered foods

is, are they safe to eat? The question may be obvious, but the answer isn't.

 

The U.S. government says there's no evidence that existing biotech food

products are any riskier to eat than conventional foods. Skeptics say that

lack of evidence isn't proof.

 

A few scattered studies and incidents over the years have raised alarms. But

many scientists have disputed the findings.

 

In the best-known of the studies, researchers in Scotland fed young rats an

experimental potato engineered with a flower gene to make it resist insects

and nematodes. The rats ended up with suppressed immune systems and stunted

growth. The results were published in 1999 in The Lancet, a respected

journal, but the study widely was dismissed by other scientists as

incomplete and sloppy.

 

More recently, a Norwegian scientist investigating illnesses in more than 30

people living near fields of engineered corn in the Philippines found that

the people may have had an allergic reaction to the corn's insect-killing

toxin. Those preliminary findings were issued in February and have not yet

been confirmed.

 

You might expect the government to settle the score. But the U.S. Food and

Drug Administration does not independently test any food - including biotech

food - for safety. It relies upon analyses conducted by the companies that

make the products. A 2002 report on the process by the U.S. General

Accounting Office noted that the FDA could improve its evaluation by

randomly verifying the companies' test data.

 

People in the past worried about the safety of frozen foods and about

microwave ovens, worries that time didn't seem to support. On the other

hand, it took decades for science and society to recognize the health

dangers of some new technologies, such as chemical pesticides and

hydrogenated fats. In that context, it may be too soon to tell how

genetically engineered foods will play out.

 

- Edie Lau

 

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Biotech terms

 

Biotechnology: Any technology involving living cells or organisms. In

general use, and in this series, it refers to gene-splicing technology.

Synonyms: bioengineering, genetic engineering (GE) and genetic modification

(GM).

 

Bt: Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium that produces toxins lethal to

certain insects, but is considered safe for humans and other mammals. When

the bacterial gene responsible for the toxin is put into crops, the plants

make their own pesticide.

 

Clone: Genetically engineered replica of a DNA sequence. " Cloning a gene "

means isolating and making copies of a gene, typically using engineered

bacteria. (The more common use of " clone " means an organism derived from the

DNA of a single " parent. " )

 

Gene: DNA segment that is the basic unit of heredity, containing

instructions that cells need to make proteins, the workhorse of cell

activity.

 

Genetically modified organism (GMO): An inexact term that refers to a life

form changed through genetic engineering.

 

Genome: All the genetic information in an organism.

 

Organic foods: As defined by the U.S. government, organic animal products

come from livestock that are not given antibiotics or growth hormones, while

organic crops are grown without genetic engineering, ionizing radiation,

synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge or most conventional pesticides.

 

Processed foods: Foods altered from their raw state, typically resulting in

changes in appearance, culinary characteristics, nutritional value, shelf

life and structure. Examples: canned goods, cereals or crackers.

 

Roundup: Trade name for herbicide glyphosate made by Monsanto. Kills plants

by inhibiting an enzyme made in plants but not in mammals, fish, birds or

reptiles. Crops are " Roundup Ready " if they are genetically engineered to

survive exposure to Roundup.

 

Transgene: Genetic material transferred from one organism to another through

genetic engineering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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