April headlines

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Polish farmers don't want transgenic corn

April 30
Cropchoice News

The union has also warned authorities at Gdynia port that much of the corn imported as normal Argentine varieties is transgenic. Inspectors will analyze samples of the corn to verify this.

No more market for GM sugarbeets

April 30
Cropchoice News

The stand that the two companies are taking to appease consumers shows that the market for transgenic sugar is limited. It's hurting sugarbeet breeders who spent millions of dollars to produce seed that they can't sell.

Joe Dahmer, president of Minnesota-based Betaseed Inc., told the Wall Street Journal: "We'll probably end up having to discard a lot of seed. We don't see any prospects for selling it in 2002 or anytime soon." The company engineered its breeding beet lines with pesticide resistance.

The biotech debate: The monarch butterfly

April 27
BBC

Entomologist John Losey could hardly have imagined the furor that would ensue when he happened to wonder, during a field trip one summer, whether dustings of pollen on milkweed growing in a Bt-cornfield might harm the monarch butterfly.

This curiosity, the lifeblood of any scientist, sparked one of the biggest environmental debates of the decade - could butterflies like the monarch be at risk from genetically-modified (GM) crops?

As with any big scientific question, arriving at an acceptable conclusion is an uphill slog.

Nearly two years after Losey and co-researchers at Cornell University, New York, showed that monarch caterpillars died in the laboratory after eating pollen from genetically engineered corn, experts are still divided over whether monarchs are at risk in the wild.

Meanwhile the monarch, the state symbol of Minnesota, has become an emblem of the struggle between environmentalists and industry over the changing face of farming.

Hazard warning

The first alarm bells were sounded in spring 1999, when a letter by the Cornell team appeared in the leading scientific journal Nature. Their laboratory study showed that consumption of large amounts of Bt-pollen is hazardous to monarch larvae.

Further evidence in support of these findings came in August last year. Researchers at Iowa State University said they had found monarch caterpillars were seven times more likely to die when they ate milkweed plants dusted with pollen from Bt-corn rather than conventional corn.

But demonstrating what happens in the real world is more contentious. In theory, for butterflies to be at risk, they would have to be present in the cornfields at the time that pollen was shed. They would also need to be exposed to enough pollen for it to be harmful. In an attempt to resolve the question of risk, independent and industry-sponsored scientists headed to the field to study the butterfly in its natural habitat.

The monarch butterfly leads a fragile existence. In the winter, it hibernates along the coast of southern California or in the fir forests of central Mexico. Come the spring, it heads northwards in the most spectacular migration of any insect. By the time the monarch reaches its breeding ground, the vast American cornbelt, it may have flown as far as 4,800 kilometers (3,000 miles).

The monarch faces many threats to its survival. A snowstorm in 1995 killed 5 to 7 million monarchs during their incredible journey north. Prey to predators like ladybugs and lacewings, less than 5% of the caterpillars survive to adulthood, even on standard corn.

But human activities pose perhaps the biggest threat. The mountain forests of central Mexico are vulnerable to logging and the coast of southern California to development. At the monarch's breeding grounds, pesticides destroy milkweeds, the sole food source for the caterpillars.

Any added risk from Bt-corn, say environmentalists, could tip the delicate balance too far. But that stance has been attacked by some scientists as over-hyped.

"The kinds of things that are blown up out of proportion are that monarchs are going to be gravely endangered," says Dr Robin Yeaton Woo of the Ceres Forum, Center for Food and Nutrition Policy, Washington DC.

"Frankly as an insect developmental biologist, that's a real half story, there's no way when you look at broad-spectrum pesticides that monarchs are even in as great a danger with Bt-corn as they are when airplanes fly over dusting whole crops with poison."

Lobby groups

Since the Cornell study was published, environmental lobby groups opposed to GM crops have used the monarch butterfly as a focus for their attacks on the biotech industry.

Industry soon hit back, seizing on data, announced at a symposium organized by a consortium of biotech and pesticide companies, which suggested that most Bt- corn pollen was shed within a cornfield rather than outside of it. Any risk to the butterflies would be small, said an industry spokesman, if, as was then thought, monarchs seldom ventured into cornfields.

But last summer, researchers led by Dr Karen Oberhauser of the University of Minnesota discovered that cornfields act as a haven to monarchs. They found large numbers of monarch caterpillars between the rows of corn. Debate now centers on whether pollen levels present at the time the monarchs breed is enough to do the larvae any harm. Preliminary results suggest not.

"A lot of work has been done on how much pollen actually gets on milkweed leaves in a cornfield," says Mark Buckingham, a spokesman at the biotechnology company Monsanto's headquarters in St Louis, Missouri.

"This is work in progress but it looks like in the field, even for the single day in the season when pollen shed is at its greatest, which is obviously only a very small fraction of the pollen of the monarch breeding season, does pollen shed get up to one-third of the level necessary to damage monarch butterflies."

But not everyone is convinced. "We don't have a clear picture of the overall risk yet, however we're a lot closer," says Dr David Andow, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota who has been monitoring the developments.

And there are further complications. It seems that monarch caterpillars may be particularly vulnerable to the toxic pollen at a stage of development when they start feeding on the outside, rather than the underside, of the milkweed leaf, where pollen is more likely to scatter.

In an attempt to calm public anxiety, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) called for all registrants of Bt-corn plant pesticides to submit data on the effects of Bt-corn pollen on non-target species, particularly the monarch butterfly, by March 2001.

Although the EPA said in a draft report on GM crops last September that the risk to the butterflies ranged from low to very little, insiders acknowledge that "the jury is still out" on the issue.

And Dr John Losey says that resolving the risk question will take a substantial commitment of resources, from industry or government agencies.

"It doesn't seem like there's an immediate catastrophic risk to monarchs," says Dr John Losey. But he warns that any long-term risk to the butterflies may be more subtle and harder to measure.

Dr Losey's team originally estimated that it would cost between $2m and $3m to solve the monarch question. Two years on, there is still a long way to go. It is a measure, perhaps, of how difficult it is to resolve some of the big environmental questions posed by biotech crops and the financial resources needed to do so.

Biotechs target activists

April 27
Guardian (UK)

The biotechnology industry last night published an "election manifesto" calling for sweeping new restrictions on the right to protest, in an attempt to subdue violent animal rights activists.

The BioIndustry Association demanded the creation of a new law making it an offence to "organize a campaign purely to attempt to  cause the demise of a legitimate business".

Other suggestions include the creation of a "soft loans scheme" to aid start-up businesses and liberal patent law to avoid "discrimination" against genetic research.

Paul Drayson, chairman of the association, said: "Britain started this industry in the early 1980s. My vision for 2005 is for the UK to be the life sciences hub of Europe, and the bridge between the European and  US healthcare markets."

The association's call for a further crackdown on animal rights activists is a direct response to the continuing campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences, which has lost clients, shareholders and bankers as a result  of sometimes violent protests.

But the scope of the suggested law is sure to be controversial, as it appears to rule out almost any boycott or protest against a law-abiding corporation.

Greg Avery of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, which says it opposes violence, said: "The way the Human Rights Act stands, they haven't got a chance of this. The industry is always saying they don't oppose legitimate protests - this shows that they obviously do."

The government has promised extensions to harassment legislation to target animal rights groups, which are accused of provoking violence by posting the home addresses of Huntingdon Life Science's staff and shareholders on the internet.

A spokeswoman for the BioIndustry Association said: "Companies like Huntingdon are mandated by the government to conduct animal testing work.

"The fact that a small group of people can target them, and jeopardize that work, is something that should be stopped."

Concern in Canada over biotech wheat

April 27
Financial Times

North American wheat producers are expressing concern that the introduction of genetically-modified wheat varieties could result in a loss of exports. 

Nowhere is this concern greater than in Canada, which exports about  85 per cent of its wheat production, making it the second largest player in the global market. 

The Canadian Wheat Board, the marketing organization that controls about 95 per cent of Canada's production, advocates a "better safe than sorry" approach.

The CWB is worried that once GM wheat was commercialized, it would be virtually impossible to prevent it from contaminating conventional wheat stocks. 

Also, since several overseas customers have already rejected GM food products, the board fears they might stop buying Canadian wheat if Ottawa allowed GM varieties to be produced.

Crunch-time is approaching fast: GM wheat varieties that are pesticide-resistant are currently being trialed by Monsanto, the US life sciences group, and could be ready for commercialization between 2003 and 2005.

But already, says Earle Geddes, CWB vice-president for farmer relations, some customers in Europe and Asia have said they will go elsewhere if Canadian farmers start planting genetically modified wheat. 

Algeria, which buys more than 40 per cent of Canada's durum wheat production, recently banned all GM foods. Meanwhile, Thailand is concerned that food it produces using US and Canadian wheat, such as biscuits, could be denied export access to European markets.

"The mere fact that Canada would grow it would mean we wouldn't be shipping it [to certain customers]," says Mr Geddes.

Concern over how GM wheat might be received has also surfaced in the US. US wheat acreage has declined in recent years, but export markets remain important for the diminished number of US growers. Almost half the US crop is exported and in some states, such as Idaho, the proportion is around 80 per cent. 

US Wheat Associates, the industry's export market development arm, says several Asian and Middle Eastern countries have already requested assurances that produce is GM-free - a demand that currently can be met by a US

Department of Agriculture letter stating that biotech wheat is not  grown in the US. That would no longer suffice once GM wheat was commercialized. 

So wheat producers and exporters are scrambling to come up with solutions. The Canadian wheat board is lobbying Ottawa to make market acceptance a factor when deciding whether a GM product should receive regulatory approval. 

Mr Geddes says that would prevent the commercialization of a crop that has no "customer pull".

Meanwhile, the US wheat industry's big trade associations have drawn up six principles that they believe should govern the introduction of GM wheat.

These include support for customer choice; an insistence that a viable identity-preservation system (a production and transport structure that separated GM wheat from conventional crops) and testing program be in place before any biotechnology products are commercialized; as well as a general agreement on a "reasonable threshold" for accidental inclusion of biotechnology traits in supposedly non-GM supplies.

Some growers have also pushed for more stringent restrictions. Motions to declare a moratorium on biotech wheat have been introduced in the Montana and North Dakota state legislatures, for example, although both have failed to make much headway.

Monsanto acknowledges wheat producers have legitimate concerns, but argues that they are "pure conjecture" at this point. Still, in an  effort to address the worries, it has outlined a process under which it would move to commercialize pesticide-resistant wheat.

First, it would not commercialize the product until it had demonstrated agronomic benefits to farmers and received regulatory approval in Canada, the US and Japan. Second, it would ensure there was a  guaranteed market for limited GM wheat production. Finally, it would wait until there was an adequate "identity preservation system".

However, Monsanto rejects the Canadian Wheat Board's idea that market acceptance should be a criterion in determining whether a crop variety receives regulatory approval. "That would give everyone outside Canada a say in how Canada runs its business," says spokeswoman Trish Jordan.

The CWB counters that it would not be cost-effective to segregate GM wheat.

Based on current technology, the board says testing Canada's entire production would cost its wheat farmers hundreds of millions of dollars.

A bigger concern to the wheat board is that it would not be able to provide an iron-clad guarantee that Canada's conventional crops were  not contaminated by GM varieties.

Concerns over the adequacy of segregation arrangements have mounted since last year's Starlink debacle in the US, when GM corn approved only for animal consumption reached the human food chain.

Monsanto acknowledges it would be impossible completely to segregate GM and conventional wheat if both were transported on the same vehicles or were stored in the same facilities.

"Nobody can guarantee zero tolerance. If that's what people want, then nobody can deliver it," says Monsanto's Ms Jordan.

Green group urges EU ban on Aventis gene corn

April 27
Reuters

BRUSSELS - Friends of the Earth (FoE) called on Friday on the European Union to ban one of the few gene-modified (GM) food products allowed to be used in the bloc, claiming it had not been proven to be safe.

The environment group said a pesticide-resistant maize strain manufactured by Franco-German group Aventis should never have been permitted for cultivation and use in the EU because scientific tests were insufficient to show it posed no risk to health or the environment -- a claim denied by Aventis.

FoE said the maize, marketed as a feed crop, had only been fed to chickens during testing and not cows and pigs, which are the most likely to be fed the corn and which have very different digestive systems. 

A study at Britain's Bristol University, commissioned by FoE, found the chicken test to be scientifically unsound. FoE said other research  submitted by the company when it applied for authorization was equally unconvincing. 

FoE campaigner Adrian Bebb told Reuters, ``Consumers have had a gut feeling that things are not right and this confirms that they have been right about GM foods.''

Aventis rejected FoE's claim, saying the studies cited by the group were only a small part of the evidence it provided to show its maize was safe. Tests on ruminants had shown the feed was no different from conventional maize strains, it said.

``They (FoE) drew their conclusions from a selective part of the documents we supplied to the authorities,'' Aventis spokesman Gerhard Waitz told Reuters. ``As their objective is to ban GM foods they interpreted it in favor of their arguments.''

The maize was granted market authorization by the EU in 1998 -- one of just over a dozen GM plants that have ever been allowed for use in the 15-country bloc which is skeptical of the new technology that the United States has embraced.

The Aventis maize was one of the last GM products to be granted approval before the EU imposed an informal moratorium on new permits three years ago, pending new, tougher legislation on GM authorizations.

Italy, Austria and Germany have since then banned a number of GM products cleared by the EU because of fears over possibly unreliable evidence. FoE said it would push all EU countries to follow suit over the Aventis maize.

Monsanto recalls canola seed

April 27
Cropchoice opinion

Monsanto has voluntarily recalled thousands of bags of its Quest canola seed, grown on 12 million acres in Canada last year, after the discovery of small amounts of an alternate version of the genetic trait that gives the plants resistance to the herbicide Roundup.

Problem is, Japan and the United States, who together accounted for C$1 billion in canola seed, oil and meal purchases last year, have not registered this version of Roundup Ready canola. 

"Only" 500 tons of the seeds have made it through distribution and onto farms, according to Monsanto. Nonetheless, if the Quest licensees performing the recall fail to find all the seeds and farmers plant them, financial problems could sprout. Not only might foreign markets where the version is not registered balk, but also the plants' genetic makeup could end up, through cross pollination, in other canola varieties. This would magnify financial problems for farmers if they couldn't sell their contaminated canola crop.

This situation and the StarLink debacle, which the Bush administration might "solve" by allowing a tolerance for the unapproved transgenic  corn, illustrate the near impossibility of segregating and tracking transgenic crops. Yet, knowing this, Monsanto is allowed to push forward with plans to commercialize its Roundup Ready wheat sometime between 2003 and 2005.

StarLink corn is export headache worldwide - US

April 27
Reuters

WASHINGTON - U.S. corn exports are under a cloud "literally all over the world" because of foreign refusal to buy grain that may contain traces of a biotech corn variety banned in food, an Agriculture Department official said this week.

"We face a problem literally all over the world," Mattie Sharpless, acting head of the Foreign Agricultural Service, told the House Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture.

"StarLink corn is the major issue we are finding."

The session was punctuated by complaints from Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, the Democratic leader on the panel, of an unduly light schedule of hearings with no witnesses outside of government officials. The panel will not have enough information to do its job, she said.

"I will welcome the (agriculture) secretary (Ann Veneman) tomorrow but frankly she is not enough," Kaptur responded when chairman Henry Bonilla, Texas Republican, defended the schedule as appropriate.

Japan and South Korea, two leading markets for U.S. exports, have balked at buying corn without assurances it was StarLink-free. China and Argentina could benefit if U.S. sales were damaged.

A U.S.-Japan protocol on testing corn shipments for StarLink contamination, Sharpless said, should maintain sales. "Once we get that settled...the positive aspects will be felt in other places," she said.

"We are working to get our corn exports back into some European countries," she added.

Afterward, Sharpless said FAS was pressing for China to release a shipment of soft white winter wheat that has been held in an official warehouse in Shenzhen for several months.

Genetics altering the way we eat

Long-term effects worry critics

April 25
News Press (Florida)

What’s for dinner tonight?

Odds are part of the meal is a food with genetically engineered ingredients.

Such ingredients are now found in up to 70 percent of the items on supermarket shelves.

Polls show American consumers are largely ignorant of the fact.

In the meantime, the safety of genetically engineered food is a topic being hotly debated by scientists, governments and consumers worldwide.

So hot an issue the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Monday that it was spending $20 million to buy up genetically altered corn seeds to keep them from getting into the food chain.

Still, FDA officials say people shouldn’t worry. Genetically engineered foods are safe.

In response to rising public concern, the FDA developed proposed rules regarding genetically engineered foods.

The rules are up for public comment until May 3.

“It’s a huge issue,” said Ron George, 60, of Bonita Springs.

George is an athlete who exercises up to three hours a day. He also likes to eat well. That’s why he recently became concerned about genetically engineered foods.

“I don’t know that much about it, but I know it’s going to affect everybody’s lives,” he said.

Genetically engineered crops are created when scientists take genes from one organism and insert them into another.

The genes being inserted can come from an entirely different species than the host organism.

For example, scientists may insert a gene from an animal, bacterium or insect into a vegetable.

In many cases, insertion of the gene allows a plant to become resistant to a specific herbicide or to produce its own internal pesticide.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which promotes genetically engineered crops, claims they produce higher yields and are needed to feed an exploding world population.

The department claims the crops need less pesticide and herbicide protection, meaning fewer chemicals will be sprayed into the environment.

Critics say there has been no long-term testing of the technology. They worry insects will become resistant to plant-produced pesticides.

They also say genetic engineering can cause unexpected mutations. The result can be toxins or allergens dangerous to humans.

Once introduced into the environment, it is impossible to contain or recall them, critics say. The effects are irreversible.

The FDA argues that genetically engineered foods are not “substantially” different in composition than conventional foods.

So the agency does not require them to be regulated or labeled any differently than conventional foods.

The FDA’s position is that pre-market testing will stop genetically engineered foods not suitable from human consumption getting into the human food chain.

But in September 2000, it happened.

StarLink corn somehow showed up in some Taco Bell Home Originals taco shells and some other products on supermarket shelves.

The corn, genetically engineered to produce its own insecticidal protein, had been approved for use only in animal feed because U.S. regulators saw that it could possibly be allergenic to humans.

A national recall of the products ensued.

But StarLink corn has not gone away.

On Monday, the USDA announced that nearly 80 seed companies have found corn seed contaminated with traces of StarLink.

The USDA has agreed to buy the contaminated seed so it doesn’t get planted — at a cost to taxpayers of about $20 million.

A matter of choice

The 70 percent figure for the amount of foods with genetically engineered ingredients in supermarkets comes from Peter Cleary, spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers of America.

Genetically engineered ingredients found in supermarket foods are mostly derived from genetically engineered corn, soybeans, wheat, canola, potatoes and cotton.

George, who eats mostly organic foods, said he doesn’t know if eating genetically engineered foods is safe.

He’s angry these foods have saturated the American market without the public knowing about it.

“It just boils me,” George said. “What happens when they start splicing and cutting and changing? Absolutely no one can say what the results are going to be. I’m an athlete. I make mistakes too. At least I choose to make them. Here we don’t have a choice.”

New rules proposed

Jeanette Glew, an FDA environmental scientist, said the new rules were proposed to keep public confidence in the food supply and let people access the review process at the beginning. “They wanted to know what was happening before it was a done deal,” she said.

The proposed rules mandate that food developers have to tell the FDA 120 days before they market a genetically engineered food or animal feed.

The proposed rules also mandate companies to provide information to demonstrate that the genetically engineered food is as safe as its conventional counterpart.

But labeling a food as genetically engineered is still voluntary.

The Monsanto Company of St. Louis, Mo., the largest manufacturer of genetically engineered foods in the world, supports the proposed rules, said spokesman Bryan Hurley. “First and foremost, it makes an already strong and rigorous regulatory process more accessible to the public.”

Cleary, whose agency represents food manufacturers, not grocery stores, said the proposed rules will make sure people have all the information available they need.

Critics say the rules lack teeth and do nothing more than formalize steps that the companies making genetically engineered crops were already taking voluntarily — and those steps were not enough.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, blasted the proposed rules. He is preparing to re-introduce his Genetically Engineered Right to Know Act to Congress.

The same bill had 56 co-sponsors in the last Congress.

“This is essentially meaningless notification and consultation. There’s no assurance the food is safe,” Kucinich said. “It gives the industry the right to avoid consumer concerns about health and safety.”

The FDA action demonstrates the need for Congress to pass a bill establishing mandatory labeling and safety testing, he said. “Right now it looks like what the FDA is doing is protecting the profits of biofood companies.”

The right to know

The FDA states that under current law, foods, including those that are genetically engineered, do not require special labeling unless:

• A known food allergen has been introduced.
• The food’s nutritional content has been changed.
• The product’s composition has been substantially changed.

Craig Culp, Greenpeace spokesman, is disappointed in the proposed FDA rules. He said the issue is the public’s right to know.

“We see the labeling as an important step to informing the public and that an informed public will reject those foods,” Culp said.

The Grocery Manufacturers of America thinks labeling the foods will cause consumers to reject them, not because they will become informed, but because they won’t understand, Cleary said.

U.S. retailers are afraid that customers will see mandatory labeling as a sort of warning label, Cleary said.

“People have much more important things to worry about in their lives than technical terms. Every study has found that biotech foods are substantially the same as foods derived by conventional methods and are just as safe, if not safer.”

Monsanto echoes that view on its Web site: “For more than half a decade, hundreds of millions of people all over the world have been consuming food products from biotech crop plants without any adverse consequences.”

The stuff of life

Critics say the bottom line is that there hasn’t been adequate testing to ensure that taking a gene that has a certain function in one plant or animal is going to have the same function if it is inserted into a different species.

“We know very little about DNA. We know very little about the body,” said Dr. Jaan Suurkula, who founded the Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Application of Science and Technology. The independent group of about 500 scientists from 40 to 50 countries is based in Sweden.

While the scientist can choose the gene to be inserted from one organism to another, there is no way to direct the insertion of the gene, the group’s Web site claims.

Where the gene becomes attached to the DNA of the host organism is a matter of pure chance. Depending on where it becomes attached, the gene could change the properties of a protein so that in the worst case, it becomes toxic or allergenic. If the protein is an enzyme, the result could be the creation of a new and, in the worst case, toxic or allergenic substance.

Suurkula said the views stated on the Web site are written by members. However, the statements are not signed, because so many scientists are dependent on industry and grants for their work, he said. They fear retribution if their names become known.

“Scientists have spoken out and gotten into difficulties,” Suurkula said.

The implications of genetically engineered food are much more profound than anyone ever thought, Kucinich said. “We’re changing the basic stuff of life. For the first time there’s a sense in which man is using science not just to complement nature, but to supplant nature and to redesign the work of creation. This has moral and ethical implications which precede health and safety implications.”

Mike Rodemeyer, head of the independent Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology in Washington, D.C., hopes his organization can reduce the polarized nature of the debate.

“This is an important public decision that has to be made,” he said. “It either seems biotechnology will save the world or destroy the world. In fact, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.”