February 2000
headlines and summaries

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Scientist in GM safety row calls for more probes

February 28
Reuters

EDINBURGH - Scientist Arpad Pusztai, who triggered concerns about genetically modified food last year, said on Monday he was convinced more needed to be done to ensure the technology was not harmful to animals and humans.

He called in an interview with Reuters for international collaboration to examine GM products.

"That conviction has been growing," said Pusztai, attending an international conference in Edinburgh on GM foods.

"In the United States there are 42 genetically modified foodstuffs, so there is plenty to look at. We ought to do it as soon as possible."

Pusztai said industry must also be involved in the effort but in an indirect way because consumers would have no confidence otherwise in the research.

"There will always be suspicions that money speaks. We have to evolve some sort of system whereby we would be able to get money indirectly, for example GM and biotechnology companies could put money in a trust and then the trust would deal with it, rather than direct involvement," he said.

Pusztai said scientists from the United States and the European Union should be involved.

GM food conference

Some 400 scientists, regulators and environmental and consumer activists are attending a three-day conference on GM food set up by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The meeting followed a request from the Group of Eight (G8) industialised countries for more information.

The OECD has said it hopes the meeting will provide a constructive debate about GM food and the way forward. The findings will be presented to the next G8 meeting in July.

Pusztai said he stood by his original claims based on research on rats that GM food might directly harm human health.

He found that rats fed potatoes modified to produce an insecticide appeared to have immune response and growth problems.

He was criticised for voicing his concerns in a television documentary before his research was published in a peer-reviewed journal and was fired from his job at the Rowett Research Institute in Scotland.

The research has since been printed in The Lancet medical journal but its validity is still questioned.

Professor Zhangliang Chen, vice president of Beijing University in China, told the conference that similar research he had conducted using GM sweet peppers and tomatoes had no adverse impact on rats.

Pusztai said he had not seen the Chinese research but it was important to continue studies into the safety of GM products.

"At least he (Chen) did try to show whether it is safe or not," he told Reuters. "Dr Chen did not say how he did the experiment. It is extremely important to know how it is done."

Mowlam defends GM policy

February 28
BBC

Cabinet Office Minister Mo Mowlam has denied the UK Government's policy on genetically-modified (GM) foods is inconsistent, after the prime minister acknowledged they could have the potential to do harm.

Dr Mowlam, speaking at a conference on GM foods in Edinburgh, said: "Our position has remained consistent.

"What we have always said is that there are potential harmful effects.

"There is always an element of risk. What is important in this issue is that the public have knowledge of the risks.

"We hope that by labeling and the research being done that that will be the case," she said.

The minister was the keynote speaker at a three-day conference in Edinburgh that is discussing the science, safety and regulation of GM foods.

It is being organized by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and will report back to the G8 summit of major industrial nations in July.

In a newspaper article at the weekend, Tony Blair said GM foods are potentially damaging to human health and the environment.

'Government is panicking'

This contrasts with the "frustration" he expressed a year ago at the outcry over genetic modification, and said he was sufficiently confident about the safety of GM food to eat it himself.

Conservatives have leapt on the prime minister's comments, claiming that the government was in "panic".

But the prime minister's official spokesman denied policy on GM foods had changed.

He said: "The prime minister has always said that we have to proceed cautiously.

"It is not a question of the government being pro or anti the GM industry, but ensuring that the UK does not lose out and consumer safety is secured."

Earlier, Dr Mowlam said the government had a neutral stance towards GM foods.

She told the BBC: "What the PM said in the article is what he and I have been saying all year.

"We have said consistently that we are neither for nor against GM. We are pro-public safety, pro-health and we are pro the industry."

Mr Blair was acknowledging the potential for both harm and benefit, said Dr Mowlam.

The government's position was to allow the public to make a choice on the basis of scientific research.

"He is of the view that GM foods are safe personally, he eats them," she continued.

'I eat GM'

"Others are of the view that there are still question marks. What we have done as a government is to keep a neutral stance because there are people of many different views on this.

Dr Mowlam said: "I presume I eat GM foods now. I'm quite easy on food but whether I do or not is not the question for me as the minister responsible."

Tory agriculture spokesman Tim Yeo said he believed that the prime minister had been driven by "an apparent wish to see Britain as the GM capital of the world".

"There has been panic inside the government after a year of confusion about their policy and the scale of public hostility towards GM crops," he claimed.

Liberal Democrat David Heath said he believed the government had been put under pressure by the US Government and businesses to enter the GM market.

"The lesson is that almost every time the prime minister has personally intervened in policy areas he's made a mess of it," he added.

"That should be worrying for the government."

Genetic foods could bring health benefits

February 28
Reuters

The three-day meeting in Edinburgh is the first international forum bringing together scientists, regulators, environmentalists and consumer activists in the hopes of reaching a consensus on safety standards for GM food.

Activists have staged high-profile protests, trashing experimental GM crops and last week boarding a ship laden with GM soya, forcing it to abandon attempts to unload in Britain.

But scientists said the technology could save lives.

"Edible vaccines and GM foods will cause a healthcare revolution in countries not as well off as my own," said Professor Marc Weksler of Cornell University in the U.S.

GM vaccines and food could prevent measles, which kills one million children a year, he said. They could also help to overcome vitamin deficiencies linked to blindness, cancers and immune system functions and to eliminate allergies.

"GM foods offer tremendous opportunities to prevent infectious disease, certain cancers and malnutrition," he added.

Critics say the effects on people, animals and the environment should be studied before the technology is used in food and released into the environment.

Tread Carefully

Professor Hans Gunter Gassen, of Darmstadt Technical University in Germany, said scientists should tread carefully although he knew of no claims that GM products are unhealthy.

"I am not saying this is dangerous. I'm saying we should be careful," the professor of biochemistry warned.

Others were more enthusiastic.

"Nature has been doing genetic engineering since the beginning of life," said Professor Francisco Bolivar Zapata, the president of the National Academy of Sciences in Mexico.

"I believe these tools are natural and extremely important for the production of healthy food," he added.

GM technology is already used in 100 vaccines and pharmaceutical products.

"There is no doubt that when we get a vaccine for HIV/AIDS it is going to be genetically engineered. My claim is that genetically engineered rice will bring similar benefit," said Professor Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation in the United States.

Outside the conference, opponents of GM foods staged protests and accused U.S. regulators of ignoring health risks.

"The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has deliberately unleashed a host of potentially harmful foods onto American dinner tables in blatant violation of U.S. law," said Steven Druker, an American attorney who is suing the FDA to obtain mandatory testing and labeling of GM food.

The Edinburgh meeting is being broadcast live on the Internet at www.oecd.org/edinburgh.

Organizers accused of tinkering with genetic engineering conference

February 28
CBC News (Canada)

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - The largest conference ever held on genetically modified organisms is underway in Edinburgh. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is hoping to shed light on both the potential benefits and drawbacks of GMOs.

Advocates say genetically-altered products can be used to create sustainable crops in the developing world. Opponents say that may be at the expense of human health and the environment. The OECD says the arguments of both sides will be heard.

Dr. Andrew Mackie, an Edinburgh scientist, says public concern over food safety is high right across Europe in the wake of food scares such as mad cow disease in the United Kingdom and the dioxin scandal in France and Belgium.

"This has influenced public opinion into being quite concerned about changes to food that have come along that they perceive as perhaps not being natural," says Mackie.

Opposition to GMO technology has traditionally been stronger in Europe. The biotech industries that promote the technology fear that opposition could spread to North America where GMO products are already widely marketed. It's led to fierce debate between environmentalists and consumer groups on one side, and the biotech firms marketing gene altered products on the other.

The conference is a professed effort to introduce balance and clarity into an often emotional debate. But it's been shrouded in controversy from the beginning, with allegations that the conference is stacked with pro-GMO participants.

An American lawyer, Stephen Druker, backed by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, charged that many of the scientists participating here are also consultants to biotech companies."If those ties are not disclosed, the document that purports to be from objective university researchers may instead be from people who have substantial financial interests in biotech," says Drucker.

Conference organizers are quick to deny the allegations and point to the inclusion of anti-GMO scientists such as Arpad Pusztai, whose experiments on feeding GM potatoes to rats first raised alarm bells in Britain about safety.

But even pro-GM participants admit that differences within the scientific community itself confuse the general public.

Professor Alan McHughen, from the University of Saskatchewan, has generated thousands of genetically modified plants. "Consumers are confused because they depend on scientists for a lot of information. You've just heard Dr. Pusztai telling us about his experiments with the potatoes, Professor Chen comes along and says he's done a similar study in China and had contradictory results," says McHughen.

Most participants say they don't expect any new evidence on the safety of GM food products one way or the other. That suggests there will be little more on offer than a retrenching of positions already well established.

GM food conference opens amid controversy

February 28
Reuters

EDINBURGH - A major international conference on genetically modified food opened on Monday amid protests about the safety of the controversial new technology.

The three-day conference is the first international forum bringing together scientists, regulators and environmentalists and consumer activists in the hopes of reaching a consensus on safety standards for GM food.

Environmentalists have staged high-profile protests against GM foods. Experimental GM crops have been trashed and protesters last week boarded a ship laden with GM soya, forcing it to abandon attempts to unload in Britain.

Concerns about GM foods have provoked a public outcry in Europe. Opponents of the technology have called for a moratorium on planting GM crops -- dubbed ``Frankenstein foods.''

Britain sought to play down reports that it had abandoned its earlier enthusiasm for GM foods by stressing it was important to keep an open mind.

Cabinet Office Minister Mo Mowlam said at the start of the conference in Edinburgh that Britain supported sound scientific research on GM foods.

As a small group of skeleton-clad demonstrators protested outside the convention center, Mowlam told the meeting that Britain's Labor government was neither pro- nor anti-GM food.

Need To Keep And Open Mind

``We need to keep an open mind,'' she told the 400 delegates at the conference sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

``There may be potential benefits in terms of cheaper, more nutritious and healthier food, and benefits to the environment.''

But it was still too early to tell if GM technology could achieve its potential and in the meantime human health and the environment should not be put at risk.

``Which means proper regulation...but it also means recognizing that science alone cannot answer all the concerns that the public has about genetic modification,'' she added.

Mowlam's comments followed accusations that Prime Minister Tony Blair, an early supporter of GM food, had made a U-turn when he admitted there were safety concerns.

``There is cause for legitimate public concern,'' Blair said in a newspaper article on Sunday.

Mowlam denied the government had changed its policy but environmental groups leaped on the comments as justification of their demands for a go-slow in GM technology.

The Edinburgh meeting is one of a series of meetings organized by the OECD following a request by the Group of Eight (G8) big powers for more information on GM food.

Sir John Krebs, head of Britain's independent Food Safety Agency, who is chairing the meeting, will present a report on its findings to the next G8 meeting in July in Japan.

Demonstrators, including a person dressed as a chimera with a cow's head, pig's body and chicken's leg, said the conference was just a talking shop for the biotech industry.

``It's a farce in there. Inside, we've got 400 delegates and 95 percent represent the biotech industry, Out here, we are speaking for the voiceless,'' Scott Armstrong, head of Scottish Genetics Action, told Reuters.

Genetic food fallout

February 28
Chicago Sun-Times

Several major food companies and a supermarket chain have sworn off genetically modified food, and biotechnology opponents are hoping for a domino effect.

Gerber and Heinz say their baby foods won't have genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Frito-Lay has told its corn growers that it doesn't want GMOs in its corn and tortilla chips. Seagram said its wines and spirits are GMO-free.

Whole Foods Market, a natural foods supermarket chain with seven Chicago area stores, said it is eliminating GMOs from 600 private-label products. Farmers who planted genetically modified corn last year plan to reduce such plantings by 16 percent this year, the American Corn Growers Association said.

The moves come in response to Europe's rejection of GMO foods, the U.S. news media's increasing coverage of the anti-biotechnology movement and efforts in Congress to require labels on GMO food.

Nevertheless, food companies say that unlike Europeans, most U.S. consumers aren't concerned about GMO foods.

"The level of interest is in the activists and news media," said Kellogg Co. spokeswoman Chris Ervin. "We don't get a lot of calls."

Biotechnology companies have spliced foreign genes into corn, tomatoes, potatoes, soybeans and other crops used in hundreds of supermarket foods. 

Last year, about one-third of the nation's corn contained bacteria genes that make the crop poisonous to insect pests. About half of the soybeans contained a petunia gene that enables the plant to withstand pesticides. 

Food companies generally haven't trumpeted their GMO phaseouts. "We choose to not make it a marketing issue," said Gerber spokesman Sheldon Jones. "We wanted to eliminate the concern, not cause it."

Unlike many processed foods, which contain GMOs from corn or soybeans, baby foods have few GMO ingredients. Eliminating GMOs "has not been a huge deal for us," Jones said. A Heinz spokeswoman said its non-baby food products still may contain GMOs.

Whole Foods said it plans by this summer to eliminate GMOs from private-label brands comprising 12 percent of the stores' products. For example, a pasta sauce manufacturer switched from GMO canola oil to non-GMO olive oil. An ice cream maker switched from GMO corn syrup to non-GMO sugar. And a veggie burger maker is specifying its soybeans must be GMO-free. 

Food companies eliminating GMOs represent "only a handful of products compared to the vast amount of food and beverage companies in the United States," said Brian Sansoni of the Grocery Manufacturers of America. "Biotechnology is not the center of the radar screen for most consumers."

The biotechnology industry predicts GMO crops will make food better tasting and more nutritious. Opponents fear genetic engineering could increase natural toxins or decrease nutrients.

There's little evidence to support such fears. But opponents note the industry isn't required to test GMO foods on animals or people.

A House bill introduced last year would require labels on GMO foods to state, "This product contains a genetically engineered material or was produced with a genetically engineered material." Among the bill's 44 sponsors are Illinois Democrats Luis Gutierrez (Chicago), William Lipinski (Chicago) and Jan Schakowsky (Evanston).

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Noting that European countries require such labels, Boxer said, "It is only fair that American consumers be given similar information."

Biotech lobby got billions from Ottawa

Public cash used to alter image

February 28
Montreal Gazette

The federal government has handed out nearly $6 million in the past six years to the major lobby group for Canada's biotechnology industry.

Publicly available documents on Industry Canada's Web site show that between 1994 and 1999, BIOTECanada and its predecessor, the Canadian Institute of Biotechnology, received annual grants of as much as $1.1 million under Industry Canada's Technology Outreach Program.

Industry Canada provides funding to many different business groups. What's different here is that part of the public money went directly to changing public perceptions of the biotechnology industry.

"The government is acting as both the protector and the regulator of this industry," said Angela Rickman, deputy director of the Sierra Club of Canada. "They don't even feel they need to pretend to look impartial."

Biotechnology has been much in the news of late. It holds the undeniable promise of medical advances, but many scientists fear that its genetic transformations of life's building blocks pose severe risks to the environment and perhaps to human health. Greenpeace's controversial campaign against "frankenfoods" has crystallized those fears.

BIOTECanada is a coalition with more than 115 members. It brings together universities like McGill and Universite de Montreal, company groups like the Quebec Bio-Industries Association, and major corporations like Bayer, Monsanto, Novartis and Merck Frosst.

On its Web site, BIOTECanada now calls itself "the national organization dedicated to promoting a better understanding of biotechnology and the many ways it contributes to improving the quality of life of all Canadians."

But the self-description it gave Industry Canada on its most recent lobbyist registration form has a different emphasis: "BIOTECanada is the voice for biotechnology in Canada that fosters the growth, profitability and long-term viability of the Canadian biotechnology industry."

As recently as last fall, BIOTECanada's Web site also gave the following information:

"An Industry Canada-funded study was carried out to examine the biotechnology communications strategies and outreach activities undertaken by the Canadian biotechnology community since 1992. The goal was to provide recommendations for the improvement of public awareness about biotechnology."

In other words, the federal government paid the biotechnology industry to spruce up its beleaguered image. The quotation in the above paragraph is no longer publicly available on the Web site.

Besides paying for some of BIOTECanada's work, Industry Canada is also an official member of the organization. This means, in effect, that Canadians are paying for one branch of the government to join an industry association whose mission involves lobbying other branches of the government.

This year, BIOTECanada registered four official lobbyists.

Danielle Gauthier, a communications officer for BIOTECanada, said the $5.17 million given under the Technology Outreach Program went "to the broader biotechnology community at large for the areas of communications, technology transfer, human resources and information and networking."

This money is independent of the $55 million in federal spending that, as Finance Minister Paul Martin announced in the 1999 budget, is earmarked for biotechnology research.

Biotechnology firms are also eligible for grants under other lavish programs run by Industry Canada, such as the $150-million Technology Partnerships scheme.

In promoting the Canadian Biotechnology Strategy, Industry Canada says that "these new technologies are expected to have a dramatic impact on industrial competitiveness, economic growth and society itself."

When asked to explain his department's spending on BIOTECanada, John Jaworski, a senior industry development officer with Industry Canada, said that "the funding was providing ongoing funds to the Canadian Institute of Biotechnology, focusing on getting the research community better organized."

"The money was there to promote networks and linkages."

But less than an hour after speaking to The Gazette, an embarrassed-sounding Jaworski phoned back to say, "I've been talking with people in admin., and they've suggested very strongly that I not wind up doing this discussion with you.

"They've asked me to get the communications people involved. É Whatever it is, it looks like it's pretty sensitive," Jaworski said.

Patrice Miron, a spokesman for Industry Canada, said that "we never provided direct funding to BIOTECanada. We provided funding, under a program that doesn't exist any more, to the Canadian Institute of Biotechnology, which was eventually converted into BIOTECanada."

But the Industry Canada Web site shows that while federal financing to BIOTECanada has slowed, it has not stopped.

In its latest lobbyist registration form, effective Feb. 11, BIOTECanada disclosed that it has been funded to the additional tune of $150,000 from CIDA, $34,000 from IDRC, and $52,000 from "Industry Canada - projects."

BIOTECanada was officially formed in February 1998, when the Canadian Institute of Biotechnology, or CIB, merged with the Industrial Biotechnology Association of Canada.