Franken Foods: Mommy, Is Aunt Sally In The Rice Puffs?

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ubject: GMW: Mommy, Is Aunt Sally In The Rice Puffs?

" GM WATCH " <info

Tue, 10 May 2005 20:04:30 +0100

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

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" When Grandpa is spliced into a pollinating plant, he just keeps

blowin' in the wind forever. His DNA becomes part of the diet of all

who eat

the plant. Unlike exploding gas tanks, Grandpa's genes can't be

recalled. "

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Mommy, Is Aunt Sally In The Rice Puffs?

by Don Fitz

http://www.swans.com/library/art11/dfitz01.html

 

(Swans - May 9, 2005) Would it be worse to find a finger in your chili

or guzzle human DNA when you down a beer? In the recent furor over the

potential for " pharmed " rice to destroy Missouri's rice growing

industry, something is being downplayed: corporations are proposing to

put

human DNA into plants whose neighboring cousins could end up being eaten

(or drunk) by people.

 

Ever since Ventria Bioscience announced its intentions to plant

genetically engineered rice, it faced strong opposition from

environmentalists

and local rice farmers. " Pharming " is an experimental method of

inserting human or animal genes into plants so they will become

biofactories

for producing pharmaceuticals. Ventria claims that its pharmed rice

would produce the proteins lactoferrin and lysozyme, which would go into

medicines for dehydration and diarrhea. But Friends of the Earth

spokesperson Bill Freese says that Ventria is just as likely to use

its rice to

make granola bars, yogurt or poultry feed.

 

In 2004, Ventria's application to pharm 120 acres of rice in California

was turned down. Seeking a state with even less environmental concern

than that governed by Arnold, the company looked to John Ashcroft's

Missouri. Its politicians readily promised support and $30 million in

subsidies.

 

The Missouri project would allow up to 204.5 acres of such rice to be

grown. It would not only be the largest pharmed crop in the world - it

would dwarf the typical pharmaceutical crop of less than an acre.

 

Rice farmers are not at all happy with the idea of such a large field

being planted next to theirs. If the pharmed rice spreads, it could

contaminate their fields. Pharmaceutical rice could be spread by

cross-pollination, floods, rice-eating birds, rice grains in farm

equipment, or

human error in distribution. Risks from pharmed rice include allergic

reactions, aggravation of bacterial infections, and autoimmune disorders.

 

Farmers might be less nervous if Ventria had liability insurance. But

instead of purchasing enough insurance, Ventria has its public relations

artists spin the yarn that dangers are too little to worry about. " It

can't happen here " is the essence of its message.

 

But it has happened. The StarLink corn incident of 2000 led to a $1

billion recall. In 2002, a half million bushels of soybeans in Nebraska

had to be destroyed. Iowa burned 155 acres of pharmaceutically

contaminated corn.

 

As Ventria was touting the pharming of its rice as risk-free, on the

other side of the globe Greenpeace campaigner Sze Pang Cheung announced

the illegal release of genetically contaminated rice in China. That Bt

rice that could cause allergic reactions in people.

 

The gnawing question remains. Doesn't Ventria's arguing that accidents

never happen instead of showing that it has insurance to cover

accidents suggest that the company doesn't believe its own press releases?

 

The Missouri chapter seemed like it might be over when Anheuser-Busch

announced on April 12 that it would not buy Missouri rice if genetically

engineered rice were grown in the state. Like Monsanto, Busch is

headquartered in St. Louis. Busch is both the largest brewer and the

biggest

purchaser of rice in the country.

 

As soon as the beer threat hit the news, Missouri politicians repeated

their act of falling over each other while rushing to serve the genetic

engineering industry. Just three days later, Governor Matt Blunt

announced that a deal had been brokered between Busch and Ventria. The

beer

giant would drop its threat to boycott Missouri rice and Ventria would

promise that its pharmed rice would be grown at least 120 miles from

other Missouri rice fields.

 

As the politicians patted themselves on the back, Missouri rice growers

maintained their doubts. The rumor went out that Ventria plans to get a

field near Mark Twain's home town of Hannibal in the northern part of

the state. But it might not be as easy to pharm rice in northern

Missouri as it is in the boot heel, the state's southernmost region.

Farmers

have a strong suspicion that once Ventria gets its foot in Missouri's

door and the controversy is out of the news, the corporation will slither

down the Mississippi to the state's prime rice-growing fields.

 

There is a deeper side to this story that is being sidestepped: Why

would sales plummet if pharmed rice genes got into regular rice? Part of

it is the risk to public health. But reporters are not asking people who

eat rice (virtually all of us), " Do you want to have human genes in

what you eat and drink? "

 

Perhaps beer drinkers are not the only ones who don't want to taste a

little bit of Uncle Fred. Maybe mommies don't want to give their

darlings wee morsels of Aunt Sally in their rice puffs before waving

them off

to school.

 

This brings to mind a problem which plagued the meat packing industry a

century ago. Upton Sinclair wrote in The Jungle that sometimes

packinghouse workers

 

" fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never

enough of them left to be worth exhibiting -- sometimes they would be

overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the

world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard! "

Most people would see gobbling up a finger in a bowl of chili as

cannibalism. But what about the tip of a finger? If you eat food

cooked with

lard which includes fragments of a slaughterhouse worker, is that

cannibalism?

 

Is it cannibalism to eat food with one human gene? What about 50 human

genes or an entire human chromosome?

 

To use the language of the genetic engineering industry, we could say

that human DNA in rice is " substantively equivalent " to human flesh in

hamburger meat or human remains in Durham's Lard. Of course, there are

differences. Genes are incredibly small in comparison to boiled human

flesh. But those human genes would be present in every cell of every

contaminated plant you put into your mouth.

 

This is not something that suddenly arose with Ventria rice in

Missouri's boot heel. Genetic engineering researchers have been

putting human

genes into animals for years for medical purposes, such as trying to

make pig hearts human-compatible. Gen Pharm bioengineered Herman, the

first transgenic dairy bull, for siring cows that produce milk with a

human

protein.

 

Scientists with the US Department of Agriculture put human growth

hormone genes into pig embryos to produce faster growing hogs. The

project

did not stop because its originators woke up at night pondering the

morality of what they were doing. Rather, it was abandoned because the

resulting pigs were so deformed that some could not support their own

weight.

 

But other laboratories could well overcome these failures and

successfully implant even more human material into plants and animals.

If one

gene worked pretty well, could 20, 100 or 1000 genes work even better? In

1997, Japanese researchers reported inserting a complete human

chromosome into mice to produce human antibodies.

 

How much human material spliced into a living organism makes its

products " essentially human? " This ethical dilemma is deafening by the

silent

treatment it is given.

 

Imagine that you doze off one night while watching Buffy slay the bad

guy. You wake up thinking you heard an ad for " Angel Beer " that is

fortified by inserting genes from human blood into rice that's sold to

the

brewery. It might be hard to tell if it was a nightmare or the latest

biotech venture into Missouri's boot heel.

 

Eating food with human genetic components would certainly run counter

to the moral or religious beliefs of many people. Even those who do not

share their views are likely to defend their right to practice their

beliefs. Clearly, all genetically contaminated food should be labeled so

that those who choose not to consume it can do so. But the last thing

you are likely to see on any bottle of beer, box of rice puffs,

pharmaceutical, or lard is a statement that " This contains human

by-products or

genetic material. "

 

What this means in the realpolitik of pharming is that if the biotech

industry gets its way, there may soon be human DNA in every rice product

on the shelf. Once human genes get into a plant, they become a

permanent part of that species. When Grandpa is spliced into a

pollinating

plant, he just keeps blowin' in the wind forever. His DNA becomes part of

the diet of all who eat the plant. Unlike exploding gas tanks, Grandpa's

genes can't be recalled.

 

 

 

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