The Campaign: News Updates

December headlines

Governments look to new biotech rules as scientists push for more study

December 19
CNN

A panel of U.S. and European Union biotech experts recommends new rules for genetically modified crops -- and possible mandatory labeling for biotech food items -- just days after scientists released one of the first full-scale reviews of the state of biotech crops.

"Consumers should have the right of informed choice regarding the selection of what they want to consume," said the 20-member U.S.-EU panel, which included scientists, farmers, consumer advocates and industry officials.

The panel said Monday that participating nations should set "content-based mandatory labeling requirements" for foods that contain "novel genetic material," a term Europeans use for ingredients in genetically modified or GM foods.

GM crops hold risks and benefits

The United States and EU members currently do not require the labeling of products with gene-altered ingredients, but proposals are being considered. In the meantime, the EU has gone ahead and set a moratorium on the approval of new GM crops.

Release of the governmental recommendations comes on the heals of Friday's status report, published in the journal Science, that found GM crops have potential for both risks and benefits. Scientists still don't know, though, just how much ecological havoc they could wreak by altering the DNA of world crops.

"A review of existing scientific literature reveals that key experiments on both the environmental risks and benefits are lacking," wrote LaReesa Wolfenbarger, an ecologist and co-author of the Science study. The other is Paul Phifer, a conservation biologist who, along with Wolfenbarger, is on fellowship at the Washington-based American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest nonprofit scientific federation.

"The complexity of ecological systems presents considerable challenges for experiments to assess the risks and benefits and inevitable uncertainties of genetically engineered plants," the authors wrote. In other words, new assessments of GM crops are likely to be complex -- with risks varying even among certain crops planted in certain regions -- and the data-gathering may be time-consuming and difficult.

Such an evaluation is "still in its infancy," concluded the study, published in Friday's editions. The researchers called for more tests to be able to detect the accidental creation of pesticide-resistant "superweeds" or to measure chemical changes in crop soils.

Human risks still unknown

The analysis involved 35 different studies, Wolfenbarger said, and included only those that other scientists had determined were of high enough quality to merit publication. The report did not look at studies on whether GM crops are safe for people to eat, in part, because so little data on such human risks have been documented.

Concerns about scientific uncertainty were also part of the U.S.-EU discussions last week, which could lead to new legislation to reassure consumers about the safety of GM crops. EU officials and members of the European Parliament announced Friday they would release recommendations on GM crop rules and labeling.

At issue behind the proposals and the Science report is the impact on consumer confidence in the wake of concerns that a GM corn called StarLink could have triggered allergic reactions in humans. StarLink was responsible for a nationwide recall of taco shells earlier this year after regulators discovered the GM corn -- which has not been approved for human consumption -- made into its way into some corn products.

Experts have also vowed to revise existing rules on crops, seeds and food products.

What price progress?

Possible benefits of gene-altered crops include better yield, the need to use fewer pesticides and herbicides and, perhaps, higher nutritional value.

Those promises remain unproven, the Science study said, because existing studies have fallen short of pinpointing actual GM crop benefits.

"How we document the benefits is critical," the authors said.

Disease-resistant calf cloned in Texas

December 18
UPI

COLLEGE STATION, Texas - Texas A&M University researchers Monday trotted out a cloned calf they said is resistant to diseases such as brucellosis and tuberculosis and could change livestock breeding around the world.

he month-old bull was cloned using cells that were frozen for 15 years, which the researchers said was the longest time that genetic material had ever been maintained by cryopreservation, thawed, and then successfully used in cloning.

"The impact of cloning disease-resistant cattle is potentially monumental," said Dr. Garry Adams, one of the Texas A&M researchers. "For example, in countries where they are unable to pasteurize milk to kill the bacteria or process meat appropriately, breeding disease-resistant cows could greatly contribute to a safer food supply, especially pre-harvest."

Adams and Dr. Joe Templeton, both with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Science, conducted the breeding research program.

The calf, named 862 (86 squared) due to his exponential genetic potential, was born three years after the death of Bull 86, his genetic donor. Bull 86 was found after the researchers tested hundreds of cattle to find one that was naturally resistant to brucellosis, and under laboratory conditions, to tuberculosis, and salmonellosis, they said.

In 1985, cells from the tip of Bull 86's ear were frozen for future genetic study. Fifteen years later, Drs. Taeyoung Shin and Mark Westhusin, also with the Texas A&M research program, were able to clone Bull 86. A DNA analysis showed that Bull 862 was a genetic clone of Bull 86.

Bull 862 is believed to be the first animal specifically cloned for disease resistance, the Texas A&M researchers said.

Brucellosis, tuberculosis, and salmonellosis are infectious bacterial diseases that can be transmitted from one herd to another and even to humans. Although nearly eradicated in the United States and Canada, brucellosis and tuberculosis are widespread elsewhere in the world and could find their way back to U.S herds.

"Brucellosis and tuberculosis are prevalent in Mexico and could easily be brought into the United States by stray cattle that swim across the Rio Grande, or by any of the approximately one million cattle that are imported annually from our neighbors under the NAFTA treaty," said Templeton.

The potential for breeding disease-resistant cattle is important for the world because vaccinations, testing, quarantine, and even destroying infected herds have not been 100 effective in controlling the diseases, he said.

"This research will benefit ranchers in many countries who cannot afford to vaccinate or test their herds for these diseases. These unprotected cattle are a potential reservoir for re-infection of herds in the United States and specifically in Texas since most imports pass through Texas," Templeton said.

The experiment station and veterinary college at Texas A&M are believed to be the only institutions currently using cloning technology to clone disease resistant animals.

A golden opportunity for planet

December 17
San Francisco Chronicle opinion by Debra J. Saunders

IMAGINE that you have worked for years to develop a strain of rice that contains Vitamin A in a world where an estimated 100 million children under age 5 suffer from Vitamin A deficiency. This deficiency can prevent diarrhea, which kills 2.5 million children a year, and measles, which kills some 1 million children a year. So you've offered to give the seeds to poor farmers in India, where many children are raised on a rice-centered diet.

You rightfully could expect to be lauded as a hero.

You would not expect to be shouted at by angry students or have to place your rice in a fortified grenade-proof greenhouse. Yet as the New York Times has reported, that is exactly the situation for Dr. Ingo Potrykus of Switzerland and his "golden rice."

You see, the rice is genetically modified, which offends the sensibilities of self-styled environmentalists, who argue that genetically-modified foods will endanger biodiversity. They call a strain of rice that could save millions of children "Frankenfood." And they are especially incensed at golden rice because they see it as a "Trojan horse."

Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland-based Institute for Food and Development explained that golden rice "is being used by biotech companies as the silver bullet to end Vitamin A deficiency, which causes night blindness. For us at the institute, it shows a blindness to other alternatives."

There are other alternatives that, Mittal argued, can be used immediately and cheaply. For example, UNICEF fights Vitamin A deficiency by giving high- dose capsules to children twice a year. The cost: two cents per pill. (If you want to send a check for the Unicef Vitamin A project, call 1-800-FORKIDS or try unicefusa.org. You might save a few lives.)

Mittal also suggested injecting more green leafy vegetables in the Third World diet. And: "We need to have the political will to end hunger."

That's a nice agenda, but hunger won't end tomorrow, and green leafy vegetables don't grow on trees in Calcutta.

UNICEF adviser Werner Schulting isn't anxious to scoff at a product that could save lives. He said of golden rice, "I think it is in principle a great development which could potentially contribute significantly to a reduction in Vitamin A deficiency." If children don't have enough Vitamin A, he said, they risk a 20 percent higher chance of dying in early childhood.

Gary F. Barton of Monsanto, which has developed a "golden mustard" that will yield Vitamin A-rich cooking oil for the Third World, is taken aback by the venom at genetically modified foods. To Mittal's criticism that there are other ways to address vitamin deficiency, he responded, "Why aren't they doing it? No one's stopping them."

Golden rice "is going to lead to further concentration of wealth and control by corporations," critic Mittal argued.

"They're afraid it might work and provide benefit to people," Barton added. "I don't understand that."

It is hard to understand.

Of course there is a need for safeguards to keep bioengineered foods from contaminating other plant life. Ditto studies that use objective criteria to measure the effects of genetically modified foods.

That said, there also should be a sense of urgency to push for these foods to reach the Third World in order to spare countless children from blindness, sickness and death.

And America is silent. The anti-bioengineered food people have managed to frame the debate as one between the good people, who want to protect the purity of our food, and the bad people, who want to use evil science to alter it.

The good people who want to save the environment so that Twinkies will be safe for "our children" versus the bad people who develop seeds that allow farmers to use fewer pesticides. (Which just happens to be good for farmworkers, but forget that.)

Today, sensibilities trump sense. The modern person sneers at Marie Antoinette's famous remark, "Let them eat cake." He sneers happily oblivious to the 21st century American equivalent: Let them eat green leafy vegetables.

Threat that never was

A laboratory study which suggested that GM crops harmed butterflies provoked protests across Europe. Now environmentalists are having to backtrack

December 14
Times of London

The monarch butterfly has a fragile and fascinating existence. Every year, the brilliant orange, black and white insects migrate from Mexico to the corn belt of the USA and Canada, where they lay their eggs. Though many die en route, the butterflies still reach their destination in such numbers that they have become a regional icon � the monarch is a state symbol in Minnesota. Their popularity, and sensitivity to their environment, has made them a �touchstone� species for conservation. So when a 1999 laboratory study suggested that monarchs could be killed by a common form of genetically modified maize, it attracted a furious reaction from environmentalists and the public. A team led by John Losey, an entymologist at Cornell University, fed butterfly larvae with pollen from maize engineered with its own pesticide. It stunted the larvae�s growth. After eating the pollen for four days, 44 per cent were dead.

The impact was devastating and was one of the catalysts for the popular protests against GM food that ignited across Europe in 1999. An issue that had been simmering for months rapidly acquired the shape of a political crisis. Supermarkets declared themselves GM-free, the Prince of Wales proclaimed his concerns and the Government approved a tough new labeling policy for GM products. Now, it turns out, the panic was unjustified. The episode serves as a warning for those wading into controversial areas, where quick answers appear to be prized above accuracy.

After the Cornell study, anti-GM campaigners called on governments to ban similar crops immediately. The European Commission quoted the findings when it delayed the process to approve GM maize for sale in Europe. Even in the US, where consumers had been relatively untroubled about GM food, the apparent threat to monarch butterflies made waves.

In August, another study, at Iowa State University, claimed to have confirmed the effect. The campaigners� message, repeated mantra-like by figures such as Lord Melchett of Greenpeace, was clear: GM maize kills butterflies. And it has largely stuck.

The science, however, is not quite that simple. Few specialist researchers believe that the Cornell or Iowa State studies prove anything of the kind. Even as his work was published, Dr Losey himself sounded caveats. New research into the actual effects of GM maize on monarchs in the wild has now cast further doubt on the environmentalists� claims. Yet while Dr Losey�s 1999 study was reported on front pages, the latest findings have barely had a hearing in Britain.

The Cornell research, published in the prestigious peerreviewed journal, Nature, never actually made the claims attributed to it by some campaigners against GM food. It was never intended to replicate the actual conditions in which monarch butterflies might experience GM pollen. This fact was conveniently overlooked as the storm broke.

The experiments tested the toxicity of pollen from maize engineered with genes to produce a bacterial insecticide, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). The insecticide is commonly used by organic farmers to control the European corn borer, a voracious pest which, despite its name, regularly devastates North American crops. As the monarch is closely related to the corn borer, most scientists expected it to be affected by Bt, even though the insecticide is harmless to other insect groups and larger animals, including humans.

To test the hypothesis, butterfly larvae were fed milkweed leaves � their usual food in the wild � dusted with high concentrations of pollen from Bt maize. The effects, as expected, were clear: when fed exclusively on the modified pollen, the monarchs, like their cousins, were poisoned.

A cause for alarm? Not necessarily, according to Dr Losey. In his Nature paper, he pointed out explicitly that his findings applied only to the laboratory. The butterflies were fed exclusively on a food they would not normally eat, with no choice in the matter: they had to eat toxic pollen, or not eat at all. The doses of pollen were eight times the level likely to be found in the wild. Dr Losey urged caution: �We can�t predict how serious the risk is until we have a lot more data.�

That data is now starting to pour in, and it is not to the environmentalists� liking. At the end of last month, entymologists from universities across the US and Canada gathered at a conference in Chicago to discuss the first results of field trials launched in the wake of the Cornell study. The message was strikingly different from Lord Melchett�s.

In separate experiments conducted in cornfields in Minnesota, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan and Ontario, researchers from different universities found no significant differences between butterfly survival in areas planted with GM maize, and those planted with conventional crops. �If there are any differences out there, they aren�t very profound,� said Richard Hellmich, an entymologist from the US Department of Agriculture, attached to Iowa State University.

The Minnesota study, indeed, showed that monarchs were actually more plentiful at the edges of one GM cornfield than in a nearby wooded area. A lack of predators in the GM field seemed to offer a better habitat to the butterflies, according to William Hutchison, an entymologist at the University of Minnesota at St Paul. In Iowa, Dr Hellmich�s team found that found that pollen rarely collected on milkweed at anything like the concentration that could be toxic to butterflies: even the small quantities which did land on the monarch larvae�s food were normally washed or blown away.

An experiment at the University of Maryland found that monarchs did much better in fields of Bt sweetcorn, which are not sprayed with pesticide, than in conventional sweetcorn fields, which are.

John Foster of the University of Nebraska, said the risk from Bt corn was insignificant compared to that of habitat destruction in Mexico, the spraying of pesticides and the mowing of meadows and roadside verges that are rich in milkweed.

The findings remain preliminary, and await peer review and formal publication. Even so, Eldon Ortman of Purdue University in Indiana, the conference chairman, said that though no one could rule out risk, the overall picture was starting to become clear: �This is not a very big issue,� he said.

As Guy Poppy, a leading British entymologist, says: �The Cornell study just identified that Bt corn could be hazardous to monarch butterflies: if a monarch has no choice and eats Bt corn, most will die. What is really important, though, is quite how widespread the hazard actually is in nature. We now have a string of studies that suggest the hazard is remote. But as the first study was the worst case scenario, it is the one everyone remembers.�

Three more GM scares

Allergenic soya beans

The seed company Pioneer attempted to engineer a high-protein soya bean by adding a gene from a Brazil nut. Laboratory safety tests found the gene had also transferred a known allergen, and research on the plant was abandoned long before it was ever eaten by humans. Even so, anti-GM activists continue to cite the case as an example of the risks of GM foods rather than as an example of the rigor with which they are tested.

Toxic GM potatoes

Arpad Pusztai, a scientist at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, claimed potatoes modified with a gene from snowdrops to produce an insecticide were poisonous to rats, and that the genetic modification process made the toxic effects worse. Though the potatoes were never intended for human consumption, he said the public were being treated as �human guinea pigs� over the technology. He was sacked after his superiors pronounced the study misleading.

Though Dr Pusztai became something of a cause c�l�bre among anti-GM campaigners, his work has been repeatedly criticised by independent scientists, including the Royal Society which found the experiment was �flawed in design, execution and analysis�, and lacked detailed controls.

The potatoes studied by Dr Pusztai were modified to contain lectin, a substance known to be toxic to most animals. Many scientists pointed out it was thus not surprising that lectin-producing potatoes were toxic to rats, and certainly no indictment of the GM process.

The work was eventually published in The Lancet, but only alongside a commentary insisting that the results �do not allow the conclusion that the genetic modification of potatoes accounts for adverse effects in animals�.

GM superbugs

Most GM products contain a gene for antibiotic resistance, which is used as a marker for scientists to spot which plants in a laboratory batch have taken on new genetic features. Activists against transgenic crops often claim that this gene could �jump� to stomach bacteria when it is consumed, leading to superbugs against which common antibiotics are useless.

Even if such genes can �jump� from one organism to the other � and the consensus is that it is very difficult for them to do so � the notion may be less worrying than it sounds. The vast majority of such genes used in current crops confer resistance to antibiotics such as kanamycin, which are hardly used in modern medicine because most bacteria are already resistant to it.

Genes protecting against one antibiotic with a clear clinical use � ampicillin, used to treat gonorrhea � are used in some GM crops. Scientists have largely accepted that the risk of this gene being passed on, however small, is too great to accept, and are phasing out its use.

Did genetically engineered foods reach India?

December 14
Economic Times

AFTER the brouhaha over cheap Chinese imports, the focus has now shifted to genetically modified foods.

Stung by the criticism that genetically engineered foods may have "unknowingly" found their way into India as part of US aid and relief to the Orissa flood victims, the government has begun the process of looking into the issue.

As a result, the commerce ministry has been directed to prepare a note on GM foods, which may figure as part of the deliberations on Agreement on Agriculture, scheduled for review in March.

The good and ill effects of GM foods have been debated endlessly without any sign of a consensus emerging either globally or at home. While there is a strong lobby opposing even the setting up of a working group on biotechnology at WTO � issues that make it to the working group level normally become acceptable as heads of negotiation under the WTO � there is also a strong group which believes that India should not oppose the US, Canadian and Japanese move.

So also is the issue of GM foods. However, recent allegations by experts like Vandana Shiva, director, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, that GM foods have clandestinely found their way into the country, have once again raised the specter of Frankenstein Foods.

It is Dr Shiva�s contention that the US has used even a mega disaster like the Orissa cyclone - which killed 35,000 people - to dump "unlabelled" soya and corn on a predominantly rice-eating population.

Medical professionals at AIIMS too have alleged similar things, which has resulted in forcing the government to examine the issue.

Part of the allegations stem from the fact that about two-third of the food ($4.5 million out of the $6.5 million US aid and relief for Orissa), which was imported for the victims was not "labeled", � at a time when UK, EU and several other countries have closed their doors to GM foods � is being interpreted as these foods being "rejects" which found their way into India.

Similar allegations also surround the genetically engineered Vitamin A rice. Here, it is being alleged that government and quasi government agencies are being roped in by seed companies under the pretext of blindness alleviation to popularize and market the new product.

While these are issues which are likely to be settled only by scientists, doctors and biotechnologists, some facts remain. At the peak of the GM food wave, seed companies like Monsanto invested heavily in biotechnology R&D.

Modified seeds are the end result. These companies are undoubtedly on the prowl, looking for new markets to reap a return on their investments.

It is also true that propaganda against Frankenstein Foods (GM foods) has reached feverish pitch in the West. Everybody starting from Prince Charles to Paul McCartney (ex-Beatle) have spoken against GM foods.

The EU, which is the biggest importer of food stuffs, has indicated that it would like to renegotiate the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Systems Agreement to permit the use of trade restrictions on grounds of consumer preference.

As a result of EU�s position on GM Foods, the US has fallen out as a trading partner. The last two years, particularly 1999, have seen a reversal of GM food�s fortunes, with at least half a dozen companies and retail chains publicly promising to shun GM foods.

Some of the big names include Mark and Spencers, Sainsbury, Carrefour, Irish Superquinn, Tesco, Unilever, Nestle, Cadbury, McDonalds and Blake Brothers in UK and EU. Iceland has taken the whole debate a step forward by becoming the first company to ban GM Foods in its feedstock.

The US government has consistently opposed the labeling of GM foods. At Seattle, US President Bill Clinton made no bones about the US government�s support to biotechnology and biofoods.

US commitment to GM Foods stems from the fact that it is the foremost country which has put large tracts of land under GM Food cultivation, followed by Canada, Australia, Argentina and Japan, to a small extent. Its companies are the largest investors in novel foods.

The emerging opinion is that if at all India does decide to provide access to genetically engineered foods, that it should do so consciously rather than open its doors to clandestine entry.

In that case, India would have would have to join hands with other countries to push for labeling of at least those GM foods, which have been substantially altered in order to allow consumer choice.