Genetically Modified Outcome

[Guest guest]

Genetically Modified Outcome

Drifting Pollen May Settle Debate Over Transgenic Food

 

Karen Charman is an investigative journalist specializing in

agriculture, health and the environment.

 

Just as Americans are becoming aware that much of the food on

supermarket shelves is spliced with genes from foreign species, debate

about whether our food should be manipulated in this manner is on its

way to becoming a moot point.

 

The reason, as crudely put to me by a U.S. Department of Agriculture

staffer more than five years ago, is this: " plants have sex. "

 

Corn wantonly tosses its gene-laden pollen to the wind in search of

nearby mates. Soybeans and canola are somewhat more sexually bashful --

they depend on insects to spread their pollen. All this is nature's way

of distributing genes and ensuring reproduction. We humans are powerless

to limit such a primal and eternal process.

 

Humankind has, however, learned to change the genetic makeup of crops in

ways that nature never would. Genetically modified ( " GM " or

" transgenic " ) strains of just four crops already account for nearly a

third of the farm acreage under cultivation in this country. A multitude

of other transgenic varieties not yet commercialized are also being

grown in field trials in the open environment.

 

The problem is that the natural process of plant sex is taking over,

spreading manipulated genes everywhere, beyond test plots, beyond the

fields of farmers who have chosen to plant them. If we decide for

whatever reason that GM crops are undesirable or discover that certain,

or perhaps all, transgenic foods are dangerous, we will be stuck with

them.

 

Consumers have a choice, right? If they don't like GM foods, they can

buy food that meets strict organic food standards, which do not permit

genetic engineering.

 

But Janet Jacobson, a North Dakota organic farmer and president of the

Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society, says that after just

six years of commercial production of gene-spliced crops, organic food's

non-GM safe haven is rapidly disappearing.

 

" Organic producers can no longer produce organic corn. I don't know any

organic farmers that can grow canola, because there's so much GM canola

around, " she laments. " There are also organic farmers who have had

soybeans rejected because they were contaminated with GMOs. "

 

Besides drifting pollen, some of the genetic contamination has resulted

from GM seeds getting mixed into the conventional seed stocks that

farmers use to plant their next year's crops.

 

Many biotech food opponents have suspected for some time that genetic

pollution is a deliberate strategy of the biotech industry and its

minions in state and federal government.

 

In January 2001, Don Westfall, a food industry consultant formerly with

Promar International, an American company that advises large food

corporations on industry trends and marketing strategies, told the

Toronto Star exactly that: " The hope of the industry is that over time

the market is so flooded that there's nothing you can do about it. You

just sort of surrender. "

 

Westfall's remarks were made in the context of an interview about

genetic contamination of the food supply in light of the StarLink

debacle. In the fall of 2000, StarLink, a transgenic variety of corn

that was not approved for human consumption, was discovered in Taco Bell

taco shells and eventually hundreds of other foods that contain corn.

More than 300 products were recalled from supermarket shelves, export

markets were lost, and hundreds of farmers got stuck with their

contaminated crop, leading to a quagmire of litigation that will take

years to settle and may well cost a billion dollars before it's over.

 

In April 2002, Dale Adolphe, former head of the Canola Council of Canada

and current executive director of the Canadian Seed Growers Association,

told Canadian canola growers at their annual meeting that despite

growing public opposition and new regulations intended to control GM

crops, their increasing acreage may eventually end the debate.

 

The Western Producer, a Canadian agricultural paper, quoted Adolphe:

" It's a hell of a thing to say that the way we win is don't give the

consumer a choice, but that might be it. "

 

If these views don't represent industry strategy, they might as well,

considering that new biotech varieties continue their silent march out

into the open environment with, in most cases, virtually no prior

environmental assessment or monitoring once they are released.

 

Why should we care?

 

Biotech promoters like to say that opponents and critics rely on raw,

scientifically unsubstantiated emotion to whip the public into a frenzy

of fear. (Actually, some of the most emotional outbursts I've personally

witnessed came from biotech supporters, whether it be Iowa Governor Tom

Vilsack railing against the use of the precautionary principle, or the

Hudson Institute's Dennis Avery thundering to a largely pro-biotech

crowd that GM food is on its way out because the activists -- " organic

frenzies " -- have won.)

 

However, a growing chorus of scientists is starting to question the

wisdom and safety of this technology.

 

Biotech supporters claim that GM food is no different than food derived

from conventional breeding techniques and that the technology of genetic

engineering simply enables scientists to improve crops more quickly and

with greater precision. Credible scientists question both claims.

 

Biotechnologists have no control over where the genes they are inserting

end up in the modified species' genome, leading one geneticist to dub

the technology " genetic randomeering. " The location is important,

because where the gene ends up -- actually it's a package of several

genes, because several different genes are needed to make the technology

work -- will determine whether toxic byproducts or allergens are

created, or whether the nutritional value of the modified food is

altered. The placement of foreign genes can also disrupt the normal

functioning of the modified organism.

 

David Schubert, a cell biologist at The Salk Institute for Biological

Studies in San Diego, says there is no way to predict these outcomes in

advance. He points to one particularly tragic incident to illustrate

what can go wrong with genetic engineering. In the late 1980s, Showa

Denko, a Japanese chemical company, began producing the amino acid

L-tryptophan with genetically engineered bacteria. Unfortunately the

modified bacteria also produced a novel amino acid that turned out to be

highly toxic, killing 37 people, permanently disabling 1,500 and making

more than 5,000 sick.

 

Now GM plants that produce pharmaceutical and industrial compounds are

spicing up the mix. According to the USDA's Animal Plant Health

Inspection Service (APHIS), the government agency with chief

responsibility for regulating field trials of bioengineered crops, 30

sites totaling some 100 acres are now testing such crops in the open

environment. But it is impossible to find out where or what is being

tested, because the identity of the compounds is considered

" confidential business information. "

Leake, a conventional wheat farmer from the Red River Valley in

North Dakota who opposes GM crops, says corn and soybeans that produce

veterinary vaccines or contain antibiotics have already been field

tested. If they proceed to commercial production, he believes

contamination will be impossible to prevent.

 

" So your kids will be eating, say, gastroenteritis vaccine with their

cornflakes and cattle antibiotics in their bread, " he said. Leake might

have added that also applies to the rest of us.

 

Transgenic agriculture turns food into intellectual property, giving

profit-driven business corporations the ability to manipulate the entire

genetic heritage of civilization's cultivated crops to their advantage.

Do we really want to give any corporation such power over us?

 

That's a question members of a democracy might like to debate while

there is still a chance to influence the outcome of such an

unprecedented experiment. But as long as the secret research trials

continue and biotech acreage expands, our ability to make a choice --

whether it is based on informed debate or not -- diminishes by the day.

 

Published: Aug 12 2002