February headlines

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GM rice promoters 'have gone too far'

February 10
Guardian (UK)

The project, which has been used worldwide by supporters of genetically modified crops as a justification for the technology, appears likely to generate only a fraction of the additional vitamin A intake it once promised. Vitamin A helps prevent eye disease.

If consumers were on a diet of 300g (11oz) of the GM rice a day - the average consumption of an Asian adult - it would provide only 8% of the required daily intake of the vitamin, according to independent scientists.

An adult would, in effect, have to eat 9kg of cooked rice (the equivalent of 3.75kg of uncooked rice) a day to satisfy the required intake and a pregnant woman would need twice that amount.

The Rockefeller Foundation says that the public relations campaign based on golden rice has "gone too far".

Syngenta, the agribusiness company which owns many of the patents on the rice, has in the past claimed that a single month of marketing delay would cause 50,000 children to go blind.

The main deficiency problem is found in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines where the lack of vitamin A in a rice diet causes childhood blindness and up to 1m deaths a year. Adding beta-carotene to rice, which the body turns into vitamin A, turns it yellow, hence the name golden rice.

The rice's development has provided a powerful propaganda tool for the GM industry. The then US president Bill Clinton said last year: "If we could get more of this golden rice, which is a genetically modified strain of rice especially rich in vitamin A, out to the developing world, it could save 4,000 lives a day, people that are malnourished and dying."

A number of bio-tech firms, including Syngenta and Monsanto, were credited with licensing patents on golden rice which would allow the technology to "be made available free of charge for humanitarian uses in any developing nation".

Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace said: "It is clear that the GM industry has been making false claims about golden rice. It is nonsense to think anyone would or could eat this much rice, and there is still no proof that it can provide any significant vitamin benefits anyway.

"Our view is that the billions of pounds that has been spent developing this rice and the false hopes it has raised has diverted valuable resources away from more sensible ways of tackling VAD deficiency.

"Far from saving children's sight, 'golden rice' is preventing other more certain methods being developed."

In response to a report by Vandana Shiva, an Indian campaigner against GM foods, Rockefeller Foundation spokesman Gordon Conway said: "First it should be stated that we do not consider golden rice to be the solution to the vitamin A deficiency problem. Rather it provides an excellent complement to fruits, vegetables and animal products in diets, and to various fortified foods and vitamin supplements."

He said that for poor families lacking, for example, 10%, 20% or 50% of the required daily intake of vitamin A, golden rice could be useful, although even the best lines of rice produced by the bio-tech companies, reported in the journal Science, could contribute only 15% to 20% of the daily requirement.

He added: "I agree with Dr Shiva that the public relations uses of golden rice have gone too far.

"The industry's advertisements and the media in general seem to forget that it is a research product that needs considerable further development before it will be available to farmers and consumers."

Mr Conway added, however, that he still thought that golden rice has the potential to make an important contribution to reducing vitamin A deficiency.

StarLink corn events result in little consumer action

February 10
AgJournal

Despite the media blitz on StarLink corn, most U.S. consumers have not altered their food-buying behavior at all, continuing to place top priority on taste, value, nutrition and convenience. That was the conclusion of a survey of a representative sample of U.S. adults conducted days after the news broke of Starlink corn, approved for animal feed but not human use, in taco shells, said Dr. Thomas Hoban, the North Carolina State University sociologist who conducted the survey on behalf of the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

Sixty-seven percent of consumers answering the survey said they would continue to consume biotech products that had been engineered to resist insects, and only 3 percent said biotechnology was their most serious concern about food safety.

"StarLink did not change U.S. consumer attitudes toward genetically modified (GM) corn," Hoban told a February 1, 2001, conference on genetically modified organisms at the University of Minnesota. "Although 53 percent had heard about it [the StarLink incident], 95 percent took no action." Of the 5 percent who did, in most cases the action was seeking more information about GM food.

Survey interviewers were trained to try and draw out comments about biotechnology without influencing the answers. However, the issue was seldom mentioned, Hoban said. Interviewers were even instructed to treat any reference to avoiding tacos or taco shells as evidence of the controversy's impact without much measurable result.

The survey results are consistent with a series of studies on public attitudes toward GM foods that Hoban has conducted on behalf of various organizations over the past 10 years. Generally, U.S. consumers favor the use of biotechnology to improve medicines and to create crops with built-in protection against insects. Approval ratings fall sharply, however, in regard to genetically engineering disease-resistant animals and faster-growing fish. Only a minority of Americans favors these applications of biotechnology, even though disease-resistant animals are really the equivalent of insect-protected crops. In past research Hoban found U.S. and European consumers hold different attitudes toward plant and animal life, possibly because animals are more like humans. The idea of genetic experimentation on animals, therefore, makes people uncomfortable because it is too close to experimentation on humans.

Of course, in Europe public attitudes toward GM crops are negative as well and disapproval seems to be growing rather than fading away. Europe shows the most popular resistance to GM crops of any region in the world, although attitudes in Africa and Australia are relatively negative as well. In addition to the United States, a majority of consumers in Asia and Latin America also has positive attitudes toward biotechnology.

"In response to the query, 'Biotechnology will benefit people like me within the next five years,' the nations with the highest numbers of positive responses were China, Thailand and the Philippines," Dr. Hoban said.

Dr. Hoban compared the controversy over GM crops to similar controversies that greeted other technological innovations.

"When microwave ovens were first introduced, some people wouldn't use them because they were afraid of radiation," he said. "And there were all these signs warning people with pacemakers of the presence of a microwave oven." At one time, Dr. Hoban added, Massachusetts banned pasteurization of milk because pasteurization was supposed to destroy important nutrients in the milk.

Meanwhile, a report from 13 of the nation's leading agricultural and commodity organizations and the Council for Biotechnology Information (CBI) indicates the recent controversy that has swirled around StarLink corn has done little to dampen farmers' enthusiasm for biotechnology. In an on-line survey by AgWeb.com, conducted the week of November 17, 2000, farmers were asked how the recent controversy surrounding biotechnology would affect their seed corn selections for 2001. Results showed that 45 percent would plant either the same or a greater percentage of biotech corn for the coming year. In comparison, 29 percent said they would plant a reduced percentage or no biotech corn in 2001.

"The publicity surrounding StarLink hasn't shaken our confidence in the value of biotechnology one bit," says Ron Heck, who grows corn and soybeans near Perry, IA. "Our farm is located very close to the western Corn Belt, where corn borers can be a real problem. Bt corn provides a safe, economical and environmentally friendly option for controlling these pests." Seed company sales figures confirm this trend.

"Our biotech products are an important part of our business," says David Thompson, director of marketing communications with Stine Seed in Adel, IA. "Our sales grew last year and we're anticipating they'll grow again this year. Farmers have been very pleased with products of biotechnology and that certainly has been reflected in our sales figures."

Scott Beck, vice president of Beck's Hybrids in Atlanta, IN, says sales of Roundup Ready soybean seed are up 8 percent over last year. Roundup Ready varieties, he adds, account for 94.5 percent of the company's soybean seed sales.

The adoption of biotech products in the cotton industry over the past few years has been rapid and widespread. Annual USDA Cotton Varieties Planted Reports show plantings of biotech varieties have increased from 13 percent of total cotton acreage in 1996 to 70 percent in 2000.

"Looking ahead to the 2001 growing season, we're again seeing increased sales of biotech varieties," notes Steve M. Hawkins, president of Delta and Pine Land Company.

Colorado legislator proposes GM food label law

February 10
Knight Ridder

DENVER--A Boulder lawmaker has picked up the cause of store labeling of genetically engineered food after an aborted attempt to put the issue on Colorado's ballot last year.

Democratic Sen. Ron Tupa has introduced SB146, scheduled for a Senate Business, Labor and Finance Committee hearing next Monday, to require labels informing grocery shoppers of genetically engineered ingredients in packaged food products.

Tupa's bill exempts food served in restaurants and prepared for immediate consumption.

Essentially, grocery stores would be responsible, subject to misdemeanor charges for misbranding foods, for enforcing the proposed law.

Even though agricultural producers would not be held accountable for labeling, Colorado Farm Bureau President Alan Foutz issued a statement sharply opposing the measure.

"The extreme environmental groups who are behind this bill want to restrict some of the most promising technology in history," Foutz said.

"Agricultural biotechnology gives farmers another tool to not only produce the food and fiber for a growing world, but also the means to help provide medical breakthroughs. Alienating Colorado citizens by requiring state-specific labeling will only create havoc."

On the other hand, Tupa's SB146 was endorsed by Rocky Mountain Farmers Union President Dave Carter and Patrick West, whose Consumer Coalition for Food Labeling led the failed attempt to get the issue to a statewide vote in the last election.

"Genetic engineering is a radical new technology that inserts genes from bacteria, viruses, animals and even humans into common foods," added the Sierra Club in a statement supporting the bill.

The Sierra Club asserted that genetically altered vegetables and other ingredients find their way into 60 percent of all processed food on supermarket shelves.

Even if the food advertised on the package has not been altered, according to environmentalists, many of them contain corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, tomatoes or sugar beets that have been genetically engineered.

"None of these foods are labeled 'made with genetically engineered ingredients' because the Food and Drug Administration considers, for example, corn which contains a bacterial gene and which makes a bacterial pesticide " `substantially equivalent' to natural corn," according to the Sierra Club's Suzanne Wuerthel of Denver.

The FDA does not require testing of such foods, she said.

The Colorado Farm Bureau countered that the FDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency all review foods on "stringent nine-point criteria" for whether they are natural or genetically engineered.

Go-ahead for GM insect release

February 9
BBC

The first release of a genetically modified insect is expected to take place in the United States this summer.

A moth has been engineered to contain a gene from a jellyfish in the first stage of a genetic experiment designed to eradicate the cotton-destroying pest from the wild.

A total of 3,600 of the moths will be set free under a cage within a one-hectare (three-acre) cotton field in Arizona.

The experiment is likely to raise concern among environmental groups.

But the researchers behind it say there is "minimal" risk of the genetically modified insects escaping. As an added precaution, the insects have been sterilized.

Pink pest

Thomas Miller of the Department of Entomology, University of California, told BBC News Online: "It is very important for us that the public understands what we're doing and why. We are not trying to create something that causes more trouble than we already have.

"We have plenty of trouble with pink bollworm. It's an absolute nightmare and it's caused a lot of people to go bankrupt.

"There's two things about this release. Number one, we're only going to use sterilized insects in the first go around. Even if they get out, there's no chance of them breeding.

"Second of all, they are going to be in field cages. The people who are going to do this work have years of experience working with these field cages.

"They know what is involved in maintaining them and the only way an enclosed population is going to get loose is if a hurricane comes through and rips the field cages to shreds. There hasn't been a hurricane in Arizona in these areas in living memory.

"One thing we do know: the native population is a champion at survival. It has so far resisted any attempts to eradicate it except in central California.

"Our ultimate plans are to insert conditional lethal genes that will fight against this enormously successful tendency to survive and infest cotton."

Approval pending

US regulators have yet to give the greenlight to the release but Professor Miller says he is optimistic the field trials, planned for the summer, will be given the go-ahead in the next few weeks.

The pink bollworm, a major pest of commercial cotton in the southwest, is not native to the US but hitched a ride there in the 1920s, probably in cotton shipments from India.

The larvae are tiny white caterpillars with dark brown heads that burrow into cotton bolls causing devastation to the crop. They grow into grayish-brown moths.

The engineered moths contain a genetic marker, a green fluorescent protein (GFP) derived from the jellyfish, which makes caterpillars inheriting the gene glow green under fluorescent light.

In the first stage of the experiment, the scientists plan to release the moths under a seven-meter (24-foot) long cage in a small test site remote from commercial cotton fields.

Insect control

The field trials could pave the way for the first attempt to eradicate insects from the wild by releasing genetically modified laboratory strains. By inserting an inherited lethal trait into the moth the scientists believe they might be able to "get rid of the pink bollworm" from the US altogether.

Similar research is focusing on the disease-carrying mosquito. Researchers from the US and Taiwan have modified the yellow fever mosquito to make it produce a powerful antibacterial protein, limiting its ability to transmit disease.

If such insects were ever released in the wild, they might supplant infected natural populations, helping in the fight against human disease.

Besides insects, a number of other transgenic animals are on the way. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently deciding whether to allow a fast-growing genetically modified salmon on to American dinner plates. Scientists believe genetically modified carp may already be in commercial use in China while genetically modified tilapia may be in use in Cuba.

Other examples of aquatic GMOs include transgenic channel catfish, modified Pacific oysters and hybrid striped bass.

Genetically engineered 'golden rice' is fool's gold

February 9
Greenpeace press release

Manila/Amsterdam: Genetically engineered "Golden Rice" containing provitamin A will not solve the problem of malnutrition in developing countries according to Greenpeace. The Genetic Engineering (GE) industry claims vitamin A rice could save thousands of children from blindness and millions of malnourished people from vitamin A deficiency (VAD) related diseases. But a simple calculation based on the product developers' own figures show an adult would have to eat at least twelve times the normal intake of 300 grams to get the daily recommended amount of provitamin A.

Syngenta, one of the world's leading genetic engineering companies and pesticide producers, which owns many patents on the "Golden Rice", claims a single month of marketing delay of "Golden Rice" would cause 50.000 children to go blind.

Greenpeace calculations show however, that an adult would have to eat at least 3.7 kilos of dry weight rice, i.e. around 9 kilos of cooked rice, to satisfy his/her daily need of vitamin A from "Golden Rice". In other words, a normal daily intake of 300 gram of rice would, at best, provide 8% percent of the vitamin A needed daily. A breast-feeding woman would have to eat at least 6.3 kilos in dry weight, converting to nearly 18 kilos of cooked rice per day.

"It is clear from these calculations that the GE industry is making false promises about "Golden Rice". It is a nonsense to think anyone would or could eat this much rice, and there is still no proof that it can provide any significant vitamin benefits anyway," said Greenpeace Campaigner Von Hernandez in the Philippines, where the first grains of the genetically engineered rice had been delivered to the International Rice Research Institute last month for breeding into local rice varieties. "This whole project is actually based on what can only be characterized as intentional deception. We recalculated their figures again and again, we just could not believe serious scientists and companies would do this."

In addition, one of the main sponsors of "Golden Rice", the Rockefeller Foundation, has told Greenpeace the GE industry has "gone too far" in its promotion of the product. While upholding its principal support for the project, Rockefeller Foundation President Gordon Conway, wrote to Greenpeace: "[…] the public relations uses of Golden Rice have gone too far. The industry's advertisements and the media in general seem to forget that it is a research product that needs considerable further development before it will be available to farmers and consumers."

"The European markets have resoundingly rejected GE products, consumers worldwide don't want them in their food, and the industry is desperate for alternative markets. "Golden Rice" has been presented as a quick fix for a global problem. It isn't, and the cash-driven propaganda about the product is swamping attempts to enforce existing effective solutions, and carry out further work on other sustainable, reliable methods to address the problem," added Hernandez.

North Dakota, Montana consider moratoriums on Roundup Ready wheat

February 9
Cropchoice News

This action comes amid declarations by major U.S. wheat customers that they don't want to eat biotech wheat.

Tsutomu Shigota, senior managing director of the Japan Flour Millers Association, earlier this month told Dow Jones: "Under the circumstances, I strongly doubt that any bakery and noodle products made from genetically modified wheat or even conventional wheat that may contain modified wheat will be accepted in the Japanese market. World wheat supply has been abundant in recent years, and I don't see why we have to deal with modified wheat...I believe the production of modified wheat at this time will be a very risky challenge for U.S. producers."

On Jan. 5, Algeria, which imports large amounts of durum wheat from the United States, announced that it would not import any genetically modified wheat. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are taking a similar tack with respect to wheat.

Apparently, the strength of this resistance is not lost on legislators in North Dakota, the country's top producer of spring wheat.

Terry Wanzek, chairman of North Dakota's Senate Agriculture Committee, told Reuters: "Our major wheat customers say they won't accept any wheat that has genetically enhanced characteristics, and we're listening to our customers."

Monsanto, which is pressing ahead with plans to commercialize its Roundup Ready wheat sometime between 2003 and 2005, has promised to work with the National Association of Wheat Growers and U.S. Wheat Associates to develop a system to segregate genetically modified wheat from its non-transgenic counterparts, a company spokesman said. Monsanto also wants to build acceptance of Roundup Ready wheat in foreign markets.

Many wheat farmers aren't convinced that Monsanto or the wheat industry can do this, perhaps in part because of the StarLink corn debacle. Iowa farmers planted 1 percent of their 2000 corn crop as StarLink, a genetically engineered corn approved only for animal consumption. By harvest time, almost 50 percent of the crop tested positive for StarLink. After environmental organizations found the corn in taco shells, a slew of product recalls ensued. Later, Japan was upset when it detected StarLink in its U.S. corn imports.

Wheat farmers don't want a repeat of this fiasco.

To that end, lawmakers in North Dakota are considering moratorium on the introduction of transgenic wheat seed in the state until at least August 2003.

Two other bills are also working their way through the legislature. One would limit the rights of companies with patents on genetically modified seed. The other, SB 2235, would establish a seed and crop verification program for farmers who grow and market non-genetically modified wheat.

Meanwhile, the Montana legislature considers a two-year moratorium on the cultivation of genetically modified wheat.

Colorado state senator introduces bill to label genetically modified foods

February 9
Cropchoice Opinion

In Colorado, both might happen.

The Colorado House Agricultural Committee yesterday approved a bill that would mandate food labels based on country of origin.

Earlier in the week, Sen. Ron Tupa, D-Boulder, introduced legislation requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods and foods containing transgenic ingredients.

The Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, which represents 22,000 farmers statewide, supports both bills.

"We need to tell customers how their food is produced and where it's coming from," said Dave Carter, president of the Union. He believes that labeling will help consumers to make informed choices.

GMO conflict seen

February 8
Western Producer (Canada)

The close relationship between the federal government and the companies that produce genetically modified food leads to a number of perceived, potential or real conflicts of interest, an eminent group of scientists told the government last week.

In a report made public Feb. 5, a panel of scientists created by the Royal Society of Canada at the request of the government to study the regulation of GM foods, said the credibility of the system depends on the government remaining at arm's length from the companies.

Instead, there is an apparent conflict because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and its parent department Agriculture Canada both regulate and promote products of biotechnology.

Possible bias

On the research side, instead of government funding for research that challenges some of the assumptions about GM food safety, most research money is joint government-industry funding and the presence of industry puts a chill on the possibility of independent study.

"We take this issue of conflict of interest very seriously," Brian Ellis of the University of British Columbia, co-chair of the expert panel, told a news conference.

At a later news conference, CFIA biotechnology official Bart Bilmer insisted his agency does not promote the products or the industry but merely makes sure the products are safe.

However, that is not how the scientists saw it during their year-long study of the system.

"CFIA has engaged in active media campaigns promoting agricultural biotechnology and seeking to allay public fears about risks associated with GM foods," said the 245-page report.

"If the same government agency that is charged with the responsibility to protect the public health and environmental safety from risks posed by technologies also is charged with promotion of that same technology and if its safety assessments are, by official policy, balanced against the economic interests of the industries that develop them, this represents … a significant conflict of interest."

The panel recommended that government officials involved in regulation make a greater effort "to maintain an objective and neutral stance with respect to the public debate about the risks and benefits of biotechnology…."