Renewed fears over possible risks from modified foodstuffs

February 2
East African Standard

Kenyans have been consuming imported foods that were long banned without their knowledge. Many supermarkets in Kenya have stocks of these banned foods, also known as genetically modified (GM), and the Government is helpless because it does not have the capacity to test and detect if the food is unnatural.

"They operate from the principal of do they know--do they need to know?" said an official of a non-governmental-organisation who is involved in distributing some of the foods to famine-stricken parts of Kenya.

Genetic modification of a crop involves extracting a gene from something that is alive, like a laboratory rat, and transferring the gene into seed crops like maize.

In the case of maize, a "good" bacteria bacillus thuringiensis (BT), which can be found in soil, animals and humans but not plants, was extracted and inserted into maize plants to make it kill insects that feed on the crop. Other genetically modified foods that can be found in Kenyan shops include the soy saurce derived from BT soybean.

The head of KARI Biotechnology center said it was impossible to tell the difference between GM crops and non-GM, or organic, because they look and taste the same.

Even before KARI can start its research into the BT maize early this year, importers are already smuggling the grains from South Africa or the US through the ports of Mombasa for milling and selling in the local supermarkets.

The most consumed GM food comes into Kenya from import food markets like South Africa and the US. The South African brokers sell maize bought by some local millers because of the low price compared to locally grown maize.

Questions are being raised on whether the US Agency for International Development distributes such maize in the form of relief aid through the UN’s World Food Programme. WFP information officer Katharine Hodgson was, however, unable to respond to queries.

She, however, pointed out that WFP had recently spent US$10 million buying Kenyan maize, which was presumably non-GM.

The biosafety law, crafted along the Catagena Protocol for European Union countries, dictates that all GM foods must be labelled in such a way that consumers can make a choice, and that it can be traced to its origin so that if it pollutes the environment or harms a consumer, the supplying company can be sued.

Nonetheless, the Ministry of Agriculture’s head of Food Crops, Ms Anne Onyango, said the Government’s position was still "no to GM foods" until a law governing such new technologies was implemented.

Interestingly, she says the ministry was unaware that there were any people importing GM foods and that those doing so were under obligation to declare to the Government. It is understood that, in the event that such a declaration is made, the Government would be compelled to either destroy or impound the supposed GM foods.

But the problem for the government is that, should importers fail to be candid enough as to admit that they are bringing in GM foods, the government has no capacity for detecting such falsity, that is, whether or not the food has been genetically modified.

This seems to add to the growing fears that unscrupulous importers are taking advantage of the legal and technology vacuum to flood the industry with GM foods either as ordinary merchandise or as famine relief. In which case, it would mean that the country’s perennial food shortages could be all the excuse the importers need to bring the GM foods. The import of this would be that the coming few months could prove tricky for the authorities as far as GM foods importation is concerned. This is because the ministry’s head of Early Warning and Information Systems, Mr James Oduor, said there was a looming food shortage in Kenya from March 2004 because of failure of the expected short rains, and the Government would be compelled to waive duty on grains so that importers of food can help correct the expected shortfall.

A Kenya Food Security Report indicates the shortfall is critical with only 27,000 metric tones of maize in the Strategic Grain Reserve as at December against a requirement of 270,000 metric tones. There are those who argue that, if only the government could make effort to avert food shortages, it would have made long strides towards the prevention of the importation of GM foods.

Yet a farmer we found pleading to have his grains accepted outside the gates of Unga Limited said the shortfall was artificial because the Government’s purchasing price for a bag of maize was much lower than the market price.

"We have a lot of maize that can feed the whole country, but we are stuck not knowing where to sell it. I may as well sell it on by the roadside because government price cannot even compensate the amount of money I spent in growing and harvesting the maize," the farmer said. This is a situation that the country faced four years ago when farmers chose to sell their produce across the border, thus denying the Government the much—needed stocks for its food reserves. The effect has been that, in a short—while, the Government eventually has had to resort to food importation and increasing the risks of GM foods flooding the market.

Francis Hiuhu Kiriro, the Ministry’s head of Special Programme for Food Security, named the districts that suffer severe food insecurity where an enhanced WFP pilot programme had been launched as Bondo, Nyando, Homa Bay, Busia, Teso, Vihiga, West Pokot, Nandi north, Nadi south, Kilifi and Kwale, Nyandarua, Kiambu, Marsabit, Makueni, Tharaka, Chuka and Garissa.

He said food shortage was affecting 70 of Kenya’s districts with an average of 56 per cent of the people in need of food aid. It was not clear whether farmers in these areas had also been provided with GM maize seed.

Showing The Big Issue a Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) GM lab with modified potatoes under controlled study, Bramwell Wanjala, a lab technician, pointed out that the crop did not germinate from soil but a synthetic transparent jelly-like substance before being planted.

KARI had the capacity to multiply one single potato plant, pioneered by Dr Florence Wambugu, to an infinite number of plants in the laboratory. The institute had already manufactured and destroyed its first harvests because, he said, the potato had to be subjected to a rigorous scientific process before it could be released to farmers.

The WFP has been supplying food rations to families, schools and breastfeeding mothers to boost their nutritional intake. The WFP board has already approved a US$83,246,873 for a four-year period from 2004 to be used in the organisation’s Kenyan operations.

However, the WFP, who recently quarreled with the Zambian government for allegedly sneaking GM maize into the country under the guise of food aid, started distributing the crops to Kenya after the 1999 drought that struck the country through to 2001.

Gene engineering showing results

Researchers have been putting human genes into plants to develop disease treatments

February 1
London Free Press

Research involving putting human genes into tobacco plants in a bid to develop disease treatments is showing promising results, according to the London-based scientist leading the project. "We have had fairly positive results and we now want to repeat them to make sure they are right," said Jim Brandle of the Southern Crop Protection and Food Research Centre, based at the University of Western Ontario.

The concept behind the research is that genetically engineered plants could be a low-cost source of pharmaceuticals.

Brandle and his team have been genetically engineering tobacco plants to produce interleukin 10, used to treat Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disease.

The modified plants have been fed to mice that have a similar inflammatory disease.

"We have got some early positive indications and now we are following up on them," Brandle said.

Research in this field has been gaining momentum in North America. Last month, Dow Chemical Co. announced a four-year, $5.7-million US research agreement with the National Institutes of Health to develop plant-based vaccines.

"It is at a critical point," said Brandle. "Somebody needs to come up with a product in order to demonstrate the system is a good idea."

Besides the work on Crohn's disease, local research scientists are trying to produce human antibodies in tobacco plants that would be used to fight infections acquired during hospital stays.

And in another application, they are using tobacco plants to produce spider silk, an extremely strong fibre.

"Think about a spider web and how strong it actually is and then you can think about industrial applications," Brandle said.

"You can use it for everything ranging from surgical sutures all the way up to bulletproof vests," Brandle said.

The scientists are using tobacco plants in their experiments because they are not food plants, they grow well and they have no wild relatives that could be contaminated with the engineered genes.

Biotechnology dines together, but GM off the menu

February 1
Scotsman

THE life sciences community will get together for Scottish Enterprise’s biotechnology dinner in Edinburgh next week with a few interesting morsels on the menu. Jack Perry, below, on his first official outing as SE chief executive, is likely to have his ear bent on subjects such as irrational opposition to science and the need to promote Scotland as a forward looking place.

Among the gathering is likely to be a few working in the food science arena. Strange, then, that the company supplying food at the venue, Compass Group, has a strict policy against using genetically modified food. In fact, the catering giant goes further, pushing meat suppliers to ensure their animals are not fed on GM food. Something for the delegates to chew on.

Frankenfish spells carp's doom

February 1
Sunday Tasmanian

SCIENTIST Ron Thresher looks nothing like Frankenstein as he peers into a beaker full of tiny fish.

But he has to wear the image in his line of work.

Dr Thresher is a genetic engineer.

The fish in the beaker are, as British media love to dub them, Frankenfish. They have been genetically engineered.

Fish like these have been likened to Frankenstein's monster, which escaped from the laboratory and created mayhem in Mary Shelley's classic horror story.

Dr Thresher's fish seem far less violent than the storybook monster, but some fear they have the potential to do just as much damage.

The 2cm-long mosquito fish are part of world-leading research being conducted at the CSIRO's Marine Research Division laboratory in Hobart.

CSIRO scientists have taken a strand of the fish DNA, reversed it, and replaced it in the fish genome.

The research is being done under licence from the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator.

It is microscopic work but the impact is enormous.

The tiny critters, known as terminator fish, produce only male offspring.

It is hoped the GE technology, once it is perfected in the mosquito fish, will be adapted to the European carp and be used to eradicate the introduced species.

Carp was introduced into Australia more than 100 years ago and now dominates the Murray-Darling Basin.

It comprises more than 90 per cent of the fish biomass in sections of the river system.

In 1995 the carp was found in Tasmania's highland lakes, threatening some of the world's best trout fisheries.

Two lake trout fisheries closed.

New Zealand also has a problem and fears its fisheries will be choked by the fish.

Carp are incredibly hardy.

They tolerate salinity as high as one-third sea water, they like hot or cold water and can survive in muddy terrain with little oxygen.

They are the rabbit of the water -- a female can carry a million roe twice a year and can live for 40 years.

Tasmanian carp eradication officer Chris Wisniewski said: "Once they've eaten all the food, they start eating the aquatic plants, it degrades the whole system.

"The ability for the fish to dominate an ecosystem is infamous."

The idea of controlling pests such as carp by altering sex ratios in a feral population has been kicking around in the CSIRO since the 1960s.

The genetic determinant of sex in fish is relatively simple compared with mammals or more complex creatures.

Fish all start in the egg as male and an enzyme later turns some female.

Known as the "hairpin" gene-silencing technique, the CSIRO technology switches off a gene for an enzyme called aromatase, which normally converts testosterone to the feminising hormone oestrogen in developing female embryos.

"It's a matter of blocking the enzyme which turns the fish female," Dr Thresher said.

The result would be what has become known as "daughterless carp".

The CSIRO started experimenting with zebra fish and it appeared to be working.

But researchers struck difficulty assessing the sex of the fish -- which was virtually impossible to determine with the naked eye.

Last year, the Hobart researchers won a $3 million grant from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission to continue the research and target carp.

The hope is to drop the GE doomsday carp into the pest population and wipe it out.

Facilities required to study the carp, a large fish, were too big to contain in the lab, so the researchers decided to focus on the smaller Japanese rice fish.

"At birth, the fish has a pigment spot on the males, so it's easier to tell the difference," Dr Thresher said.

Work has also been conducted on mosquito fish -- another introduced pest in Australia.

Six scientists, including a bio-security officer, conduct most lab work under the microscope.

The lab is medium-security with keycard access and features a sterilising water system that drains into a single catchment.

It is one of the most advanced aquarium research facilities in the world, he said.

"Really, the biggest problem we'd face is if someone came in and stole the fish," Dr Thresher said. "But it'd die anyway."

The researchers are using two techniques to re-arrange the fish genome.

They inject the reversed DNA into the egg in some cases and use a chemical to transport it in others.

The fish's own defence system kills the inserted DNA in many cases.

"We're trialling different techniques to see what gets the best results," Dr Thresher said.

Fish with successfully inserted DNA are then bred.

A first generation of fish appeared to be carrying the inserted gene, he said. Four or five more generations would be examined.

Researchers in the US, Japan and New Zealand are watching the results with interest.

"Nobody else in the world is doing this research," Dr Thresher said.

Dr Thresher says the GE technology, which gained provisional patents two years ago, should easily modify to other pest species.

He predicted it would be used against pests such as the northern pacific seastar, which has invaded Hobart's Derwent estuary, Port Phillip Bay and threatens to move into the Great Australian Bight.

Queensland's cane toad population could also be targeted.

The lab is already conducting preliminary experiments with similar GE technology on one of the world's most invasive weeds, known as death weed.

The seaweed has invaded the Mediterranean and recently turned up in NSW and Victoria.

But there are concerns with the GE technology. A chief concern is that some countries in the northern hemisphere, such as Israel, farm carp. GE fish could infiltrate the commercial fisheries.

They could also invade wild carp stocks in their native habitat.

Dr Thresher says a handful of GE carp dropped into a population would have negligible impact.

When, and if, the doomsday carp is released against the Australian invader, large numbers would have to be repeatedly put into the population to get a measurable effect.

Another concern is GE carp could breed with related fish and hand the altered gene to other populations.

The carp is a member of the family Cyprinidae, which contains about 1500 species, including goldfish and tench.

Carp can breed with goldfish.

"The chances of the gene being expressed are virtually non-existent, that's what the theory says, 99 per cent sure," he said.

These concerns would be fully tested before field trials, he said,

Dr Thresher predicts the GE technology has potential not just to control or manage pest carp but to eradicate it.

"We think it will cause the whole population to crash quickly," he said.

Field experiments are not expected for some years.

Farmers shun biotech wheat

Roundup Ready spring wheat was supposed to help farmers in North Dakota. But most growers fear being stuck with a product

February 1
Chicago Tribune

DICKINSON, N.D. -- Terry Wanzek, a farmer and politician, promotes genetically modified wheat as a potential savior for North Dakota's sluggish farm economy. But that position damaged his political career: Wanzek lost his state Senate seat to an opponent who ran on an anti-biotech-wheat platform.

The lonely wheatfields of North Dakota have become the front line in an escalating international debate over genetically modified wheat, a new product from agricultural giant Monsanto that is being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration.

The battle has pitted farmer against farmer, with proponents of the new technology arguing that biotech wheat will pull the grain growers out of years of malaise and opponents worrying that it could contaminate their fields and scare off foreign customers who are wary of genetic modification.

"As a farmer, I take food safety and consumers' concerns very seriously," said Wanzek, a fourth-generation farmer and the former head of the state Senate's Agriculture Committee.

"But I ask: Can we afford to take the risk of maintaining the status quo? I wouldn't have wanted to be the one who stopped Louis Pasteur or Thomas Edison, and just look at the opposition they faced."

The biotech wheat debate even reached the Statehouse in Bismarck, where the North Dakota House of Representatives passed a moratorium on biotech wheat that later was defeated in the Senate.

Some North Dakota farmers say they will refuse to plant the crop.

"I can't envision why we want to do this," said Jim Bobb, the grain division manager for Southwest Grain in Taylor, N.D. "Europe is opposed to this. (South) Korea doesn't want it. There are very few customers who have said they will take it."

An added protein in Monsanto's biotech wheat makes it tolerant of Roundup, the company's popular herbicide, which means the weeds are killed and the wheat remains intact. Monsanto says this would give farmers a significantly higher yield.

Genetically modified wheat is controversial in other states as well but nowhere as much as here. North Dakota is the largest producer of hard red spring wheat, the modified version of which Monsanto hopes to market.

The argument has been slow to develop in Kansas, where demand for herbicide-tolerant wheat is slight.

"We've been slow to move on this because we see it happening in spring wheat first," said Brett Myers, executive vice president of the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers.

"It's also been less of an issue here because we don't need a lot of grass control in winter wheat. Chemical use is far more of an issue in spring wheat."

Myers said he expects the issue of biotech wheat in Kansas to heat up when Monsanto creates other biotech genes, notably one for drought tolerance.

"People will be more interested when it is a trait that will benefit Kansas," he said.

"At any rate, I don't see any growers associations anywhere making a decision on this until we are sure that consumers will accept the technology and our export customers accept it."

More than three dozen projects are under way to develop genetically engineered wheat plants, but Monsanto is the first to seek regulatory approval, hoping to replicate the success it has had with genetically modified corn and soybeans.

But while those crops have been accepted with relatively little controversy, the debate over genetically engineered wheat has been far more intense, mostly because so much of the American crop -- nearly half -- is sold abroad, where biotech crops often have received a chilly reception.

Consumers in Japan, South Korea and Europe, some of America's biggest customers for wheat, have indicated they do not want a bioengineered version.

Just how much international markets matter to U.S. agriculture was underscored by the discovery of mad cow disease last month. Within a week, 90 percent of export markets closed their doors to U.S. beef.

Food manufacturers and retailers are weighing the value of producing biotech products that make many Americans uneasy and that large parts of the world may refuse.

"The food industry, I think, continues to believe in the ultimate potential value of biotechnology in food," Keith Triebwasser, manager of product safety and regulatory affairs for Procter & Gamble, said at a biotech seminar last fall.

But, he added, "as we look at the data, we just don't get a lot of reassurance about consumer acceptance."

FDA officials, meanwhile, are reviewing the application for Monsanto's Roundup Ready wheat. They provided no deadline for making a decision.

At Monsanto's research headquarters outside St. Louis, company officials emphasize that they will not introduce genetically modified wheat into the market until they have received approval from U.S., Canadian and Japanese authorities and until export markets that will buy the wheat are identified.

The stiff resistance has forced Monsanto to take a softer, slower approach than it has in the past, when the company has been criticized for pushing biotech products to market without addressing consumer concerns. Monsanto's campaign to attract wheat growers emphasizes that the technology could jump-start an industry hard hit by years of low prices and foreign competition.

Michael Dona, a soft-spoken Kansas native who grew up on a wheat farm and now spearheads Monsanto's campaign for Roundup Ready wheat, said the company is pushing for a "positive and responsible introduction for the technology" that emphasizes openness about the company's intentions and respect for other views.

"We want to demonstrate that this technology can coexist with opinions that are different than ours," said Dona, director of industry affairs, adding that the company also plans to share its technology with poor nations.

Monsanto contends that biotech wheat would be good for farmers and the environment because it would increase yields by 10 percent and reduce the overall need for herbicides. The company also argues that markets already exist for the new wheat, including Egypt and Latin America, and there likely will be more once the product is approved.