Fear of Pharming

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Re: Fear of Pharming

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Wed, 22 Sep 2004 13:08:30 +0100

 

 

http://www.gmwatch.org

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Here are the comments of EPA toxiologist Suzanne Wuerthele, writing in

a personal capacity, on pharma corn. For the original Sientific

American article, Fear of Pharming, see:

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4360

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How quickly the discussion of GE pharmcrops has turned to tolerances -

allowable amounts of drugs in our food. What we are talking about

here is countenancing a new class of food contaminant.

 

While it is true that there are certainly levels of drugs which are not

pharmacologically active and therefore " safe " , that does not mean that

setting tolerances for drugs in food will prevent toxicity to humans

and wildlife or contamination of the environment. Consider pesticide

tolerances in food:

 

1) The actual tolerances to set are argued vigorously by the pesticide

manufacturers' scientists and lobbyists and they are not arguing for

lower levels. Imagine a drug company with millions of dollars to send

scientists and lobbyists to federal regulators' offices, and to take

Congresssionals and political appointees out to dinner to argue for a

higher level of a hormone in corn. Imagine environmental groups sending

grad student volunteers to lobby for lower tolerances.

 

2) Risk/benefit analyses determine how much pesticide is ultimately

allowed in food. Those who bear the risks don't always get the

benefits.

Imagine routinely ingesting a drug in your breakfast cereal because the

probability of harm for you is judged to be low, and it allows drug

manufacturers to make millions by cornering the market for that drug in

Europe. Imagine being exposed to experimental compounds which never

become drugs and never help anyone, so that pharmaceutical companies can

save money on development costs.

 

3) Pesticide uses are curtailed and sometimes pesticides are cancelled

as new toxicity data emerges. Imagine learning that the levels of

hormone legally allowed in your child's food for the last 10 years were

three times higher than they should have been.

 

4) With few exceptions, no one can predict the additive effects of

multiple pesticide exposures. Now imagine you have been diagnosed

with an

unusual disease. You've probably been ingesting legal and " safe " doses

of dozens of different drugs at different times in different foods.

How will you find out if they could have, in concert, contributed to your

condition?

 

5) Pesticides are found in our soil, water, air and wildlife because

they move from farm fields to the wider environment. Imagine

discovering that you live next door to a pharmcrop field (the

locations are kept

secret) and you've been exposed to an unknown amount of an unnamed

(it's confidential business information) drug just by breathing crop

dusts

created during harvest. Imagine being a farmer whose irrigation water

comes through that field and who will have to pay to

have his crop tested for a drug which he can't identify. Imagine

fishing downstream from that irrigation flow. Imagine your drinking

water

provider taking water downstream from it. Imagine eating a duck or

deer you shot that had been feeding in that field.

 

6) Pesticide applicators make honest mistakes, like applying the wrong

amount of chemical to a crop. These can and have caused human illness.

FDA can monitor only a tiny percentage of foods for above-tolerance

amounts of pesticides. Now imagine the honest mistakes that can cause

above-tolerance amounts of drugs to get into your food from pharmcrops:

Seed mixups. Seed spills. Unanticipated pollen drift... Imagine that

thanks to an honest mistake, and the inability of FDA to

test all foods, your family has been exposed to an over-tolerance

amount of a potent drug.

 

7) It happens. A few pesticide applicators, and even manufacturers

cheat. They don't follow the rules, with negative health and

environmental consequences. Imagine a biotech company which plants

its pharmcrop

too close to a crop with which it can cross pollinate. Imagine a

company which doesn't check for volunteer plants. (Oh, wait, that

actually

happened). Imagine a company which intentionally plants an extra

" event " in a permitted field so it can get extra data and a drug even

USDA

doesn't know about gets into food...

 

8) After 9/11 we learned that some of the terrorists were learning to

fly planes used for aerial pesticide applications. If there are

tolerances for drugs in food, FDA will have to estimate exposure based

on location and size of pharm crops. Now imagine someone stealing

pharmcorn and intentionally planting it all over the seed production

areas.

 

The Union of Concerned Scientists has it right: the tolerance for

drugs in foods has to be Zero, and the only way to get there is to not

manufacture drugs in food crops in an uncontrollable outdoor

environment.

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" Corn is the world's worst organism for this, " says Norman Ellstrand, a

plant geneticist at the University of California at Riverdale and

director of the Biology Impacts Center.

 

" When I heard about this, my first thoughts were, 'What were they

thinking?' "

 

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4360