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Aventis fires top managers in wake of StarLink episode

StarLink has become an embarrassing lesson

February 12
Wall Street Journal

Aventis SA fired the head of its U.S. crop-science division and two other top managers, according to people close to the company, the first such ousters at the company after traces of its genetically modified StarLink corn, not yet approved for human consumption, were discovered in taco shells and other food products late last year.

COMPANY OFFICIALS confirmed that Maurice Delage, president of Aventis CropScience USA, left the company Friday, along with Ed Makowski, vice president of market development, and Karen Weiner, general counsel. While the company wouldn’t attribute their departures directly to the StarLink episode, people close to the company said Alain Godard, chairman of Aventis CropScience world-wide, asked for their resignations to “restore confidence” in the wake of debacle. “This is an opportunity to move forward with new management,” a spokeswoman said.

Once considered a potential blockbuster for Aventis CropScience, StarLink has become an embarrassing lesson in how difficult it is to regulate genetically modified products. U.S. regulators allowed Aventis to license the technology to seed companies, even though it wasn’t yet approved for human consumption, on condition that it be used only for livestock or industrial purposes. But somewhere along the commercial chain that includes seed distributors, farmers and elevator operators, small amounts of StarLink became mixed with the U.S. food-corn supply, triggering recalls of taco shells by food producers, a drop in U.S. corn exports and the withdrawal of StarLink from the U.S. market.

The blunder already has cost Aventis 100 million euros ($91.9 million) — the amount it set aside in the fourth quarter of last year to buy up last year’s StarLink crop to prevent further contamination and fund other measures. But company officials say the amount could be several times that much. Last month, Aventis’s U.S. crop-science division signed a binding agreement with 17 state attorneys general to reimburse farmers who lost money growing the corn.

Reached at his home in Morrisville, N.C., near Aventis CropScience’s U.S. headquarters, Mr. Delage declined to comment on his departure from Aventis CropScience. A former executive at Agrevo, Hoechst AG’s agricultural-sciences business before it merged with Rhone Poulenc to form Aventis last year, Mr. Delage had been with the company for more than 20 years. Ms. Weiner also declined comment. Mr. Makowski couldn’t be reached for comment.

Three officials leave Aventis

February 12
AP

The president of Aventis SA's U.S. crop-science division and two other top-level officials have left the company that created a genetically modified corn that ended up in the food supply, a company spokeswoman said Monday.

The spokeswoman declined to confirm reports the three company officials were fired.

``It's an opportunity to move forward with new management,'' she said.

Maurice Delage, president of Aventis CropScience USA, left the company on Friday, along with Ed Makowski, vice president of market development, and general counsel Karen Weiner, the spokeswoman said.

Delage, who had been with the company for more than 20 years, was replaced by Esmail Zirakparvar, who comes over from the U.S. division's parent company, she said. She did not know if the other two positions had been filled.

They are the first high-level departures at the company after traces of its StarLink corn, not yet approved for human consumption, were discovered in taco shells and other food products late last year.

StarLink, a genetically modified corn, was approved for industrial use and as animal feed, but it was never licensed for human consumption because of questions about whether it can cause allergic reactions.

Some of it was mixed with other varieties of corn in 1999 and again last year. StarLink was withdrawn from the market last fall and taco shells were recalled nationwide.

The company has agreed to pay millions in compensation to farmers and grain elevators across the country. Estimates of the cost to Aventis CropScience range from $100 million to $1 billion.

Last month, an agreement was announced between Aventis and 17 states that calls for the company to pay farmers up to 25 cents per bushel for tainted corn and reimburse them for other losses.  

An option for growers of non-transgenic crops?

February 12
Cropchoice News

This proposal comes amid concern from export markets over Monsanto's introduction of Roundup Ready wheat sometime between 2003 and 2005. North Dakota is one of the nation's top wheat growing states.

"Establishing a framework for this program will give us enough time to be out ahead of any kind of genetically modified wheat," said Ken Bertsch, North Dakota state seed commissioner. "We've achieved our goal if it produces additional profit for farmers." He noted that the state already operates many components of this type of a verification program for growers of specialty soybeans.

The seed verification bill, SB 2235, passed the Senate Agriculture Committee and the full Senate, Bertsch said. Now, it goes to the House of Representatives.

Were it to pass, participating farmers would finance the program from fees for services. The state Seed Commission would test their seed and then their crop at various points for specific genetic traits. The commission would then issue a stamp of approval.

Bertsch thinks this program could help North Dakota farmers in overseas markets where worries about genetically modified foods are growing.

Unless the markets changes, some aren't sure that farmers would receive enough of a premium to make planting non-genetically engineered varieties profitable for them.

Doug Jorgenson, a certified professional agronomist with the Agronomy Center in Park Rivers, ND, has first-hand experience trying to grow and market without biotech.

A year ago, he and a friend bid 95 cents over market value to grow non- genetically engineered corn. The winning bid was 45 cents: unprofitable, Jorgenson says.

He remembers a survey that the National Corn Growers Association took of its members two years ago about what kind of premiums they'd need to grow and market non-genetically modified corn. Most answered 5 cents.

"That's just not realistic," says Jorgenson, adding that the respondents probably thought that all they would have to do is grow the corn in a separate field and dump it in a separate bin.

The reality is that non-biotech growers must test and document the seed source, ensure that their ground is free of genetically engineered material, segregate the field from the possibility of out crossing, test the field again at harvest since lots of pollen floats around at that time, place the material in bins that have never had genetically engineered corn and market it through a segregated system (meaning that they can't take it to a grain elevator).

When you add up all this, he says, farmers would have to receive at least $1 a bushel over the market price.

"In time," he says, "a non GMO market will develop and this will give farmers their premium." In his opinion, for all crops to be free of biotech, consumers will have to pay up to 50 percent more for their food.

Industry mobilizes to modify Mexico's labeling measures

February 12
Cropchoice News

The U.S. agricultural industry is pressuring Mexico not to implement mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.

The Mexican Senate added a provision to the country's general health code that would require such labels. The Mexican Chamber of Deputies will review and act on the measure next month.

Possibly fearing that consumers in yet another market might not buy its transgenic fare, 20 U.S. agriculture groups sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell in which they asked that President Bush air their concerns when he visits Mexico in March.

French rebel Bove to fight on against GM food

February 12
Reuters

MONTPELLIER, France - France's favorite rebel farmer, Jose Bove, vowed on Friday to continue his struggle against genetically modified  food after the prosecution in his latest trial asked for him to be jailed for three months.

On his second day in court for destroying bioengineered rice plants, the anti-globalization protester best known for trashing a McDonald's restaurant as part of an anti-fastfood protest said a prison sentence could not derail his campaign.

"Ours is the struggle of the future and we're the ones who are right," the walrus-mustachioed militant declared. "So we'll continue to fight against GM food and globalization."

Arguing for a clear punishment, prosecutor Olivier Decout said: "One cannot systematically use violence against scientific progress."

Michel Zaoui, lawyer for the Cirad research institute where Bove and two partners destroyed the rice plants in 1999, said the protest had caused four million francs ($558,600) of damage.

"During these hearings, Cirad was made to look like the guilty one and treated as if it aimed to damage the planet and make the poor even poorer," he complained to the court. 

The trial, which spilled into a second day because of the complex scientific arguments involved, was due to adjourn later on Friday. The  verdict would be announced in a few weeks.

ROBIN HOOD REPUTATION

Bove, who won a Robin Hood-like reputation after the McDonald's incident, and his two co-defendants proudly admitted to breaking into the Cirad laboratory in this southern French town in June 1999 and destroying the GM rice plants.

The accused theoretically risked up to five years in prison and a fine, but three months in jail would be a normal sentence for such a political protest that did not involve bodily harm.

Two months after the Cirad attack in 1999, Bove and his supporters sacked a McDonald's in the southern town of Millau to protest against "la malbouffe" (lousy food) and US tariffs on French delicacies such as Roquefort cheese and foie gras.

The 47-year-old sheep farmer was sentenced to three months for that protest, but has only served three weeks. He was due to return to court next week for a further hearing on that sentence, which prosecutors have appealed against as too soft.

Last month, Bove joined poor Brazilian farmers in uprooting rows of genetically modified soybeans at an experimental farm owned by US-based Monsanto during a giant anti-capitalism forum in Porto Alegre in Brazil.

Bove, head of the Confederation Paysanne farmers' union, also played a prominent role in protests at the 1999 World Trade Organization trade liberalization talks in the US city of Seattle that were abandoned in the face of violence.

In its defense, Cirad said France needed a public research agency to provide an unbiased scientific view on genetically modified food and an alternative to research by companies.

Cirad Director General Bernard Bachelier told reporters that his laboratory had developed ways to trace altered genes in GM products, making the Bove raid all the more misguided. 

Opponents of GM crops fear they may spread modified genes, with the risk of harming insects and humans, and the creation of pesticide-resistant superweeds. Supporters say they are needed to develop hardier crop types to help feed the world's poor.

Britain faces new harvest of GM crops

February 11
Sunday Times (UK)

This week the European parliament is likely to end a three-year moratorium which has blocked all new attempts by manufacturers to get licenses. Fourteen applications for new GM crops are already pending and manufacturers are thought to be planning to submit many more.

The move coincides with revelations from scientists involved in trials of GM crops in Britain that they appear to be having a damaging impact on wildlife. The full results will not be published until the trials conclude in 2003.

Among the new crops for which licenses are being sought are tomatoes modified to have a thicker skin - so they do not burst during transport - and potatoes that produce extra starch.

There are different types of maize, some with two genetic modifications enabling them to resist herbicide and also to produce their own insecticide to kill pests trying to eat them. Others include beet, oil-seed rape and cotton that all resist herbicides and chicory that is engineered not to produce flowers.

Environmentalists say such crops promote the use of toxic chemicals, destroy the weed plants and insects on which much wildlife feeds, and risk spreading artificial genes into wild plant populations with unforeseeable consequences.

The moratorium was put in place while the European parliament considered amendments to strengthen outdated laws controlling new crops.

The proposals will be voted upon on Wednesday and, whether they are accepted or rejected, the moratorium will then come to an end. This will lead to pressure from the companies behind the applications who have spent billions of pounds creating GM crops that they cannot yet use in Europe.

David Bowe, the Labor MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber who has piloted the amendments through parliament, believes that widespread use of GM crops is inevitable and wants a tough new regulatory regime.

His proposals include forcing companies to assess the environmental impact of GM crops, make them renew their licenses every 10 years, label all products containing GM ingredients and establish public registers showing what GM work they are carrying out and where.

A spokesman for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions said manufacturers and farmers could theoretically start planting GM seeds next year.

One ecologist involved in assessing the trials said that destroying all the weeds and insects that normally live alongside crops would damage wildlife. "The early results confirm it is not a question of whether there is an impact, it is how big it is," he said.

EU expected to tighten rules for GM organisms

February 11
Earth Times

EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström has said she will propose new plans to improve traceability and labeling of GMO products. The initiative, she added, will also include a new legislative framework for genetically modified seeds- to be concluded by the first quarter of 2001.

"The EU needs to establish a legal framework and the necessary instrument for risk assessments on a scientific basis,” she said. "It is one of my responsibilities to develop a safe authorization system for GMO products."

The Commissioner has set herself a difficult task. In the wake of the renewed crisis over bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE), the so-called mad cow disease, public sentiment is running high against food experiments that carry potential health dangers. A study by the London School of Economics shows that some 95 percent of the population in 14 of the 15 EU member states is skeptical of GMO products. To counter public concerns, Wallström wants to improve people's choice.

"It is important to make sure that consumers have the possibility to decide for themselves whether they want to buy gene products or not. To make this possible, proper labeling and the provision of information is crucial," Wallström said, adding that the Commission has initiated a number of conferences to stir a public debate on that matter among all relevant groups—industry, consumers, governments and nongovernmental organizations alike.

Wallström said she is seeking a balanced approach on genetically modified products, urging governments and consumers to focus not only on risk but also on the opportunities deriving from this new technology.

"Biotechnology and especially gene technology create an enormous leap forward,” she said. “Our society must be able to draw on the benefits of this modern development. It is a technology which carries risk as well as opportunities."

In the past, however, Wallström's GMO policy has been subject to much controversy. Health and environmental groups criticized the commissioner for being too technology-friendly. The Green party in the EU Parliament even went so far as to accuse the Commissioner of representing the interests of the biotech industry. The critics say Wallström seems largely concerned with one issue: She says she wants to lift the existing bans on GMOs—by nations and communities—as soon as possible to prevent threatened legal action by the industry.

"When the proposals and revised directives are on the table,” she said, “we will decide on the next steps to take. The Commission hopes that we can then tackle the issue of the moratorium and pending approval of products."

Since October 1998, the 15 EU member-state representatives on the regulatory committee have put a hold on the EU's approval proceedings. As a result, it has failed to take action on 14 pending applications from industry to place living GMOs on the market and nine applications for other genetic products. Some member states have invoked the so-called "safety clause" to allow a temporary ban on genetically modified corn and rapeseed oil within their borders. France, Austria, Luxembourg, Greece and Germany have introduced such moratoriums, which Wallström says she wants to see terminated as soon as possible.

The Commission is under considerable pressure from industry to lift these existing bans. Some biotech companies have already waited for more than two years to get their products approved. Wallström says she is well aware of this problem.

"It is my task to take care that existing environmental regulations are implemented and enforced,” she said. "Our credibility would suffer if we implement some parts of EU rules but not others."

But member states are not yet ready to give in to Wallström’s demands and lift the ban. In the wake of the BSE crisis, they are eager not to compromise too easily on public health. EU ministers say they want to see a new, comprehensive control and information system established soon. They have therefore put pressure on the Commission to speed up the reform process. They are urging the Commissioner to present the new legislative proposals for GM products as soon as possible. Otherwise, they say, the ban is not likely to be lifted.

The EU's reform process is already well under way. More than a year ago, the EU Parliament and the 15 member states were able to reach a political agreement on some controversial GMO issues. In a conciliation meeting, it was agreed that existing rules—the EU directive 90/220/EEC—should be tightened. According to the accord, living GMOs, such as corn, soy and tomatoes could be used—whether for research purposes or placed on the market—for only a limited period of time. Also, stricter rules for labeling and traceability were agreed for living GMOs.

Increasing the pressure for reform of the GMO regulation is the rapid expansion of biotechnology over the past few years. Just between 1998 and 1999, farming of GMO crops expanded by 44 percent, to 100 million acres.

Because of this rapid growth, particularly in the US, it has become increasingly difficult for the EU to maintain control GM products. Experts from Germany and Britain have found that about 1 percent of imported seeds are genetically altered—even though they are not labeled as such.

Author rethinks biotech

ISU religion professor offers qualified support

February 11
Des Moines Register

The Iowa State University professor of philosophy and religious studies was a fervent critic of biotechnology and genetically modified crops, until a decade of intellectual tussle led him to embrace parts of the new technology.

"I opposed genetically modified crops when I first started to think about them," he said during an interview at his office in Iowa State's Carrie Chapman Catt Hall.

His recently released book, "Vexing Nature? On the Ethical Case Against Agricultural Biotechnology," is a series of essays that traces his thinking on the subject.

The first three chapters, written from 1988 to 1992, detail Comstock's opposition to bovine growth hormones, herbicide resistant crops and transgenic animals.

Bovine growth hormones are genetically modified proteins that increase a cow's milk production.

The dairy hormones were "the most suspect of early (genetically modified) products," Comstock wrote, because they "seemed destined to single-handedly bankrupt large numbers of family dairy farmers and indirectly to cause various other disruptions in the social fabric of rural communities."

An appointment to the National Rural Studies Committee in 1989 gave Comstock an opportunity to immerse himself in the brave new world of genetically engineered crops that are resistant to herbicides. After considerable study, he ended up with a "qualified opposition" to the new technology.

When it came to injecting human genes in hogs and developing hairless mice, Comstock took a hard line.

Bio-tinkering with animals is wrong, he concluded.

Comstock's beliefs led him to become a vegetarian.

It's OK to use hogs for medical purposes to save human lives, he concluded. But "it's not right to sacrifice a hog to satisfy my hankering for an Iowa chop."

By the mid-1990s, Comstock became aware of new, different types of bio-technology.

He met Roger Beachy, director of the Plant Science Institute in St. Louis, who was working on genetically modifying cassava, a staple in the diet of poor Africans.

Comstock, as an environmentalist, said he also has come to believe that developing transgenic crops that produced their own pesticides would result in the use of fewer poisonous chemicals. It would also mean more food could be grown on less land.

Comstock welcomes the public debate initiated by biotech crops like StarLink corn, which turned up in human food although it had been approved only for use as livestock feed.

One of the reasons Comstock came to Iowa State in 1982 was to take part in the ethical debate over agriculture.

Raised in the Chicago suburbs, his grandparents farmed near Nora Springs, where his aunt and uncle farm today.

One of the classes he teaches is an ethics class to graduate students in molecular biology. The students are the future leaders of the biotechnology revolution. For many, Comstock's class is the first time they have had to confront ethical issues.

Gene cures 'will not help Third World'

February 11
Guardian (UK) column by Robin McKie

This record number of treatments - for heart disease, multiple sclerosis, hepatitis, Alzheimer's, epilepsy and cancers - poured out of the biotechnology giants of America. There has never been a better time to be ill - if you are American. For the world's richest people, things can only get better.

But for the rest of the planet, fears are growing that others may have to pay the price for this meteoric rise in medical knowledge. The concerns of the US biotechnology industry are sweeping aside everything in their path.

This point was starkly underlined at the BioVision 2001 life science forum in Lyons last week. International health officials, drug company chiefs and doctors all expressed alarm that the US genetics juggernaut has become so powerful it threatens to force its products on the world, whether it likes it or not. At best the consequences will be wasteful; at worst, it will be dangerous to health.

In most African countries new heart drugs are useless in towns and villages where most people die before middle age. In Europe drug regulatory problems and political opposition have led its biotech industry to the brink of extinction at American hands.

As Dr Tikki Pang, of the World Health Organization, put it: 'There is a simple question to consider: will current advances in genomics help the developing world, and the answer is that they will not.'

The world needed mosquito nets, cheap re-hydrating drugs, and condoms to combat its three main killers - malaria, diarrheal illnesses and Aids - not hi-tech drugs to alleviate the symptoms of old age, he added. Pang warned that the health of Africans and Asians could worsen, thanks to the rise of the US genetics industry.

The example of malaria, which kills more than a million people a year, most of them children, was illustrative, he said. 'It is attractive to think that sequencing its genes will lead to new drugs and insecticides. It is more likely, however, that any such discoveries will be patented and only developed at prices unaffordable to those who need them most.'

Other controversial bio-technology forays include Syngenta's 'golden rice', normal rice that has been genetically modified to make vitamin A. This, it is claimed, could save thousands of Third World lives. Some scientists even claim that a month's delay in marketing golden rice could cause more than 50,000 children to go blind through vitamin A deficiency. But Greenpeace research suggests a person would have to eat more than 20lbs of rice a day to get a sight-saving dose of the vitamin.

Even within the West, a dangerous split has emerged. Conference delegates heard that 506,794 gene patents have now been made by scientists, and of these more than 9,500 cover patents for the human body, the richest vein for medical researchers. In addition, tens of thousands more patents are likely to follow, and from these the medicines of tomorrow will emerge: better targeted vaccines, drugs, and improved diagnostic tools. As Dr Dan Detmer, of Cambridge University, put it: 'There is a biological land rush going on now and everyone is trying to stake a genetic claim.' Crucially, the vast majority of these gene patents are being taken out by US companies.

Even in the US industry, this causes concern. 'We don't actually ask what people want from us,' said Dr Goran Ando, head of the Pharmacia Corporation. 'We tend to do what we can do, not what people want.'

Ando pointed to recent cancer drugs. 'These keep people alive for longer, which sounds great. But does it actually make lives better? There is no use in extending life if you don't extend its quality.

As one delegate put it: 'We are getting what is scientifically and financially feasible. Not what is needed.'