GMW: Extent and seriousness of contamination unknown, warns former EPA scientist

[Guest guest]

GMW: Extent and seriousness of contamination unknown, warns

former EPA scientist

" GM WATCH " <info

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 15:46:31 +0100

 

 

 

GMW: Extent and seriousness of contamination unknown, warns former EPA

scientist

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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When news broke late Friday about Bayer's unapproved GM rice

contaminating the US food supply, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns

released a

statement saying that the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) and the US

Department of Agriculture (USDA) had concluded there are " no human

health, food safety, or environmental concerns associated with this GE

rice. "

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome?contentidonly=true & contentid=2006/08/030\

7.xml

 

They had reached this conclusion, he claimed, after they reviewed " the

available scientific data. " But the key word here is " available " .

 

As Bill Freese of Friends of the Earth (USA) points out, they don't do

any independent tests of their own so any " available data " would

typically come entirely from Bayer: " USDA and FDA are relying

completely on

Bayer's assessment. This is what they do even for formal approvals, of

course, but here it's even worse because public interest groups and

independent scientists haven't had a chance to look at whatever info

Bayer

may have shared with FDA-USDA. "

 

Below Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman - a former US Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) biotech specialist and now a Senior Scientist with the

Center

for Food Safety - explains how there are a number of reasons for

serious concern raised by this latest contamination incident, quite apart

from Johanns' reliance on the industry's testing and data on safety.

 

Dr Gurian-Sherman notes, in particular, that no one has any idea of the

real extent to which surrounding crops or the US food supply are being

contaminated by experimental genes from field trials. This is because

no testing occurs to assess this despite the huge number of trials

taking place across the US.

 

As he notes, " There are roughly 1000 field permits or notifications

approved by USDA every year, often with several test sites per approval,

for many crops and many genes. " Some of these trials, of course, even

involve the production of industrial and pharmaceutical products in food

crops.

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[This is in an author-edited version of a response forwarded to the GM

Free Africa list]

 

In response to your question, USDA typically does no independant safety

testing (just as with the other US regulatory agencies). In the press

conference with USDA and FDA officials, and in a subsequent conference

call, there was only discussion of company-performed testing data.

 

In the conference call, a question was asked about compositional

analysis of the unapproved rice " event " LL601, because every separate

transformation event can have different unintended effects (which is

why all

regulatory agencies regulate by tranformation event). The question was

asked because in the press conference, the agencies repeatedly talked

about the safety of the GE protein - which is in addition to the safety

issues of the rest of the GMO plant. FDA's response was that the company

had submitted data on the plant composition, but then decided not to

pursue this transformant. It was not clear whether all of the data was

submitted on LL601 as with the two events that were approved.

 

It is unclear why Bayer dropped this event, and only pursued the other

two. It is possible that there was some red flag concerning unintended

safety effects, but it could also have been that there were unintended

effects regarding agronomic properties (like yield or grain quality)

that have nothing to do with safety, or the efficacy of the transgene -

or something else entirely.

 

Most revealing was that this shows up years after the last (as far as

we know) field trial. And the fact that detectable levels are showing up

from contamination from field trials is also, frankly, fairly shocking.

Field trials are only carried out for a few years, and even the large

ones are much smaller than the commercial acreage of the crop. This

suggests that the most likely explanation is that experimental seed with

the LL601 trait was mixed with supposedly non-GE seed, and may have

been planted, unwittingly, all along (cross pollination from mostly

self-pollinating rice, from one or more field trials, is unlikely to have

caused levels of contamination that would have been detected - although

that can't be ruled out yet). When (if) USDA presents more data on levels

of contamination and how widespread it is, that should become more

clear. In the conference call, we requested assurances of

transparency, and

that the company should not be able to call any of this confidential

business information - which would allow them to withhold the information

from the public. Anything short of thorough testing to determine how

widespread this contamination is, how it occurred, and the levels of

contamination, would compromise the agencies even more.

 

Although the safety of the particular gene is always the first thing

people think about, I think this misses (even detracts from) the bigger

question, which was also missed by all of the journalists covering this

so far - what about contamination from all of the other field trials?

There are roughly 1000 field permits or notifications approved by USDA

every year, often with several test sites per approval, for many crops

and many genes.

 

For the many very small field trials (an acre or less) conducted by

non-commercial researchers, the risk is probably very low for getting

into

the food supply (although we need to remember the incident at

University of California at Davis, where undetected GMO tomato seeds were

distributed to researchers around the world). But companies that

produce GE

and non-GE seed may have a much higher possibility of mix-ups. The

current example is reinforced, in that context, by the Bt10 incident not

long ago. This is especially troubling if it occurs with breeder's

seed or

foundation seed - which are amplified to produce certified seed sold to

farmers - because the level of contamination could be higher than would

occur at a later stage of seed production.

 

There is almost never any actual testing of surrounding crops or the

food supply to see if they are contaminated by experimental genes from

field trials (it took some persistent to get USDA to admit this during

the phone conference). Although this gene (for glufosinate herbicide

resistance) happens to be one that has gone through the regulatory

process,

many others have not, and have had little or no safety testing. Since

no one is looking, we don't know how many of these might be in our food.

 

Doug

 

 

 

 

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