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Law to save organic crops from GM fallout

May 13
Independent (UK)

New laws to protect organic farms from contamination by GM crops are being drawn up by the Government in the wake of last week's disclosure by The Independent on Sunday that Europe's biggest research center for chemical-free agriculture is threatened by an official trial.

Michael Meacher, the Environment minister, told MPs at a private meeting last week that producers of GM crops could be made liable for any organic or other farms damaged by their activities. The revelations in the IoS caused a storm of protest. Campaigners staged a vigil to stop GM seed being planted at a farm near the Henry Doubleday seedbank in the Midlands.

The MPs were told by the minister that legislation to enforce "produce liability" was being drafted. Mr Meacher was said to be angry that neither he nor the official Scientific Steering Committee ­ which approved the inclusion of the site in the GM trails ­ knew that the farm at Wolston lay within two miles of the national organic seedbank.

The scientific committee, GM seed producers Aventis and Scimac (the industry body overseeing the trials) were urged by Mr Meacher to abandon the trial. Committee members are to give their reaction tomorrow, but their chairman, Professor Christopher Pollock, is resisting the minister's request.

That could lead to a trial of strength this week, putting Mr Meacher's job on the line. Tony Blair has made it clear he believes that scientific advances should not be stopped. Although he has insisted he is not "anti-GM", Mr Meacher has publicly called for legislative powers to force GM producers to inform neighboring farms before they go ahead with seed trials.

The Soil Association, which certifies organic farms, has written to the Henry Doubleday center warning that it will withdraw its license from any fields contaminated by GM pollen.

The new measures being considered could dramatically shift the balance of power against GM firms. Jackie Lawrence, the Labor MP for Preseli, Pembrokeshire ­ where two trials were abandoned after local complaints last week ­ said: "Seed producers and farmers will think very carefully indeed about whether or not they are going to plant GM crops if they are going to have to pay."

Monsanto denies sale of illegal seed

May 11
Reuters

"To say that we sold (the seeds) is absolutely ridiculous. We would never do something like that," Carlos Popik, president of the Argentine unit of the U.S.-based biotechnology giant, told Reuters in an interview.

"A company of our size, with our level of investment, does not have the flexibility to act incorrectly, to do anything illegal," he added.

The Agriculture Department released a statement Tuesday saying it had found and destroyed a batch of unauthorized seeds and had opened an investigation to determine who was responsible for illegally distributing them.

The statement did not provide any further details.

The Argentine office of international environmental organization Greenpeace Wednesday said Monsanto sold its Roundup Ready (RR) corn seed, which has not been approved, at an agricultural exposition some months ago.

Farmers admire Monsanto's products for cutting costs and boosting efficiency, but environmental groups allege they hurt biodiversity and food safety. The company has been trying to expand markets for its Roundup Ready crops, genetically engineered to resist the company's Roundup brand of herbicide, the No. 1 selling weed killer.

In Argentina, authorities have approved RR seeds for soybean and cotton but not for corn, an important export.

ARGENTINA AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

Though biotechnology companies say genetically-modified seeds increase efficiency, the products have remained controversial, especially in Europe and Asia, where many question their safety for human consumption.

Argentina is one of the world's biggest users of genetically-modified products, which must be approved by the government.

The country has authorized various genetically modified seeds made by the Swiss company Novartis, the Franco-German company Aventis and Monsanto.

The government has approved an insect-tolerant corn seed from Novartis and a herbicide-tolerant corn seed from Aventis.

After passing field and toxicity tests, the government held up approval of Monsanto's RR corn on concern it would hurt exports to Europe, especially to Spain and Portugal, where the country sent 1.75 million tons of the grain in 1999/2000.

According to the government, this strategy helped Argentina wrest European market share from the United States, where RR corn is approved.

MONSANTO'S RR SOYBEANS

Monsanto is the market leader in Argentina for genetically modified seeds.

The company's RR soybean seeds have been approved for use in Argentina since the 1996/1997 campaign. The seeds account for nearly 90 percent of soy planted, according to the Argentine Association of Seed Producers.

Popik estimated the RR soybean seeds lower production costs by $50-$60 per hectare.

This year, farmers planted a record 10.43 million hectares with soy and the government forecasts record production of 25.5 million tons. Popik said the RR soybean helped make that growth possible.

"I think that if RR soy hadn't been available and (producers) had only used conventional soy, today the area planted would be 6 or 7 million hectares rather than 10.4 million," he said.

Popik added that biotechnology could play an important role in boosting overall crop production levels in Argentina by making it possible to grow crops in areas where they could not be grown before.

"The land under production can grow in terms of numbers of hectares and also in terms of productivity," he said. "We are going to support Argentina, the government, in every way possible so that we can arrive at an 80-million-tonne (total) harvest by 2004."

Getting the athletic edge may mean altering genes

May 11
New York Times

For three decades, the International Olympic Committee has been engaged in a game of chemical cat-and-mouse. Athletes use drugs to enhance their performances, scientists devise tests to identify those drugs, then the athletes move on to more sophisticated doping techniques.

Now, the rules of the game may be changing, leaving the Olympic committee even further behind.

Concerned that athletes would soon employ genetic engineering in attempting to run faster, to jump higher and to throw farther, the I.O.C. and the affiliated World Anti-Doping Agency are about to convene inaugural meetings on the subject. "For once we want to be ahead, not behind," Dr. Patrick Schamasch of France, the I.O.C.'s medical director, said.

Genes serve as a script that directs the body to make proteins. It seems fantastic today to think that injecting a gene could result in more fast-twitch muscle fibers, enabling a sprinter to run 100 meters in six seconds instead of just under 10. Or injecting a gene that could increase oxygen-carrying capacity so that a marathoner could run 26.2 miles in one and a half hours instead of just over two. Some scientists and Olympic committee officials believe genetic engineering in sports is a decade away. Some believe it may appear in two years. Still others believe crude forms might already be in use, at great health risk to athletes.

"I think certain methods could have already started," said Johann Olav Koss, the 1994 Olympic speed skating champion from Norway who is a member of the I.O.C. and a doctor.

Medical applications of gene therapy — efforts to cure or prevent disease — are at a very rudimentary stage, with only one form of gene therapy having been shown conclusively to work. Little is understood about the implications of introducing genes into a human body, so any use aimed at improving athletic performance would now be considered dangerous and unethical.

But the human genome has been mapped out and the technology, however immature, is evolving rapidly. Athletes, who are often eager for an edge in competition, are not very likely to wait for science to perfect gene therapy. Inherently, athletes are risk takers. And there is enormous financial pressure and reward to win, to produce records and to keep up with other athletes who are succeeding through illicit means.

Genetic engineering in sport will foster not only a greater potential health risk for athletes than does conventional doping, but also a greater potential for performance enhancement, said Dr. Jacques Rogge, a Belgian surgeon who is an I.O.C. delegate and vice chairman of its medical commission. Instead of repeatedly ingesting pills or taking injections, an athlete may be able, with a single insertion of genetic material, to sustain bulked-up muscle mass or heightened oxygen-carrying capacity for months or even years. Such genetic manipulation would be extremely difficult, if not virtually impossible, to detect using current methods, scientists said.

At the coming meetings of the Olympic committee and the anti-doping agency, officials will discuss the potential benefits and risks of genetic engineering and the potential detection methods, and they will face a number of ethical questions. Should genetic manipulation be banned entirely in sport? Should it be allowed for athletes healing from injury or recovering from disease? If the technology can be made safe, do healthy athletes have the right to engineer themselves like race cars to push the boundaries of achievement? Will two classes of competition be needed?

"What if you're born with something having been done to you?" Maurice Greene of Los Angeles, the Olympic champion at 100 meters, said. He wondered, would manipulation of an egg or an embryo be considered cheating? "You didn't have anything to do with it," he said.

The Olympic committee scheduled a meeting for June 6 on genetic engineering only after the anti-doping agency announced plans for its own gathering in September, an apparent political gesture to appear out front on the issue, said Dr. Arne Ljunqvist of Sweden, who is an I.O.C. delegate and chairman of the anti-doping agency's medical, health and research committee.

The second meeting is considered the more significant of the two; the agency hopes to gather three dozen athletes, sports scientists, genetics experts, ethicists and policy officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.

"For the first time, a substantial group of people involved in sports administration, sports science and genetic science will sit around the same table and discuss a common potential problem," Dr. Ljunqvist said.

The concerns range from the pragmatic to the philosophical. Do the Olympic committee and other sports organizations have the willpower or financial resources to combat the use of genetic engineering? The total cost of conventional drug tests are already about $1,000 each.

Ultimately, at the heart of the issue will be a profound question: what is a human athlete?

"What are the endpoints of manipulation?" said Dr. Theodore Friedmann, director of the gene therapy program at the University of California at San Diego and a member of the anti-doping agency's health and research committee. "Is the hope to incrementally sneak up on the one-and-a-half-minute mile? Or six seconds for 100 meters? Is the question, How fully can we engineer the human body to do physically impossible things? If it is, what do you have at the end of that? Something that looks like a human, but is so engineered, so tuned, that it's no longer going to do what the body is designed to do."

Anything for an Edge?

Athletes, scientists and sports administrators agree that someone will attempt genetic engineering, if they have not already. Concern over health and safety issues has not been a strong deterrent to the epidemic use of conventional performance-enhancing drugs.

In a 1995 survey, nearly 200 aspiring American Olympians were asked if they would take a banned substance that would guarantee victory in every competition for five years and would then cause death; more than half answered yes.

A recent seminar on teenage steroid use, held in New York City, revealed these desperate efforts to boost athletic performance: A female basketball player asked a doctor to break her arms and reset them in a way that might make them longer; pediatricians were being pressured by parents to give their children human growth hormone to make them taller and perhaps more athletic; doctors were being asked by the parents of football players to provide steroids so their sons might gain college scholarships.

A molecular scientist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in an interview that a foreign exchange student staying with the scientist's family was approached at a swimming pool by a stranger and was told, "You are absolutely beautiful; I'll give you $35,000 for one of your eggs." The student accepted the offer. It is not inconceivable that some parent looking to create an elite athlete would offer far more money for such an arrangement with, say, Marion Jones, the world's fastest woman.

"In theory, you could do in vitro fertilization, stick in a gene for x, y or z and you've built a kid," the scientist said. "It's been done in mice. But I'd consider that brave new world stuff. It's not happening with humans."

Other techniques now being tested on lab animals seem much less futuristic. For instance, the gene that codes for the hormone erythropoietin, or EPO, has been identified. Produced by the kidneys, EPO regulates the production of red blood cells. A synthetic version can serve as a wonder drug for patients suffering from anemia, AIDS or cancer. Because it enhances oxygen-carrying capacity, EPO is believed to be in widespread use in such endurance sports as cycling and distance running.

Conventional illicit doping measures require athletes to be injected at regular intervals with EPO to maintain the endurance benefit. The insertion of a gene, however, could theoretically turn the body into an EPO factory. Last year a study by Dr. Steven M. Rudich, a transplant surgeon then at the University of California at Davis, indicated that a single injection of the EPO gene into the leg muscles of monkeys produced significantly elevated red blood cell levels for 20 to 30 weeks.

"An athlete would be out of his mind to want to use this," Dr. Rudich, who is now at the University of Michigan, said. Ruefully, he said about genetic engineering in sports, "I bet it exists."

Muscular Mice

Genetic material can be delivered to the body by several methods. Dr. Rudich took a weakened virus, inserted a snippet of EPO gene, then injected it into the monkeys' thigh muscles. Each gene consists of DNA, the ladder-like structure that serves as a genetic carpenter, instructing the body what to construct. In this case, the DNA signaled the muscles to produce EPO, which stimulated the production of red blood cells.

Other hormones and proteins that can be used in gene therapy for performance enhancement are human growth hormone and a protein called insulin-like growth factor-1, or IGF-1. Growth hormone can be used to treat dwarfism in children and to prevent muscle loss in the aging process. IGF-1 is critical to the repairing of muscle tissue. Both substances are believed to be used illicitly now by athletes using conventional methods to increase muscle size and strength.

Ten years ago, Dr. Helen Blau of Stanford demonstrated that a gene could be introduced into a mouse to stimulate production of normal levels of human growth hormone in the bloodstream for as long as three months, compared with 10 minutes if the drug were taken directly. Recently, she and others showed that oral antibiotics could be used as a switch to turn the gene on and off.

"In theory, it is possible that an athlete could be genetically engineered to have a gene so you could increase muscle strength, train with it and shut it off when you want to, which would make drug testing more difficult," said Dr. Blau, chairwoman of the department of molecular pharmacology at Stanford Medical School. "Whether it's happened, I have no idea. In theory, it's possible. It's something to keep an eye on. It could be a future concern for the Olympics."

A 1998 study by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard involving IGF-1 used gene therapy in mice to halt the depletion of muscle and strength that comes with old age. Older mice increased their muscle strength by as much as 27 percent in the experiment, which suggested possibilities for athletes as well as for preserving muscle strength in elderly people and increasing muscle power in those who suffer from muscular dystrophy.

"We called them Schwarzenegger mice," said Dr. Nadia Rosenthal, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the study. It has since been demonstrated that mice enhanced with the IGF- 1 gene continue to gain size and strength when exercising on a wheel without any apparent adverse health effects, she said.

"I'd be totally surprised if it was not going on in sports," Dr. Rosenthal said, speaking generally of crude attempts at genetic engineering. "Those with terminal cancer and AIDS want to know, `What will keep me alive?' Athletes want to know, `What will make me win?' "

Hidden Dangers

The danger in attempting genetic engineering now for athletics, Dr. Rosenthal and other researchers cautioned, is that experiments with mice and monkeys might not work the same way in humans and might lead to negative side effects.

If a gene for producing EPO cannot be shut off properly, the blood will begin to thicken with excessive red blood cells and that could cause strokes and heart attacks.

If the gene for human growth hormone is not regulated, muscles might grow until they outstripped the blood supply or overwhelmed tendons and ligaments. Misuse could also lead to heart and thyroid disease and cause the size of someone's head, jaw, hands and feet to increase dramatically.

The entire process of genetic engineering remains imprecise. Dr. Thomas Murray, president of the Hastings Center, a biomedical ethics research institute in Garrison, N.Y., likened it to firing at the bull's-eye of a target with a spray of shotgun pellets. It is not known exactly where the virus and DNA go when injected, how they get where they are going or what the body's immune response will be.

An attempt to strengthen the shoulder muscles of a javelin thrower, for instance, might lead inadvertently to an enlargement of the heart muscle. Or worse. A teenager died in 1999 during a therapeutic study at the University of Pennsylvania, apparently in reaction to the virus carrying genes intended to treat a metabolic disorder.

"We don't know the technology well enough even to be sure what's happening in a therapeutic setting," Dr. Friedmann of California-San Diego said. "We certainly don't know the technology well enough to know how safe a gene is going to be to an athlete."

Before athletes are fitted with designer genes, the next advance may be to create more synthetic versions of drugs like EPO and growth hormone that mimic the effects of genetic engineering, scientists said. But genetic manipulation of the human body for sport is sure to come. The question is, to what extent?

Michael Johnson, the Olympic sprinting champion, said he thought the health risks would scare off many athletes. Werner Franke, a German molecular biologist who helped bring to light the systematic doping of athletes by East Germany, said he was not particularly worried about genetic engineering because chemical footprints left by the inserted virus and DNA would facilitate detection.

"I think it will be mostly science fiction," Mr. Franke said. He accused the I.O.C. of "purposely barking up the wrong tree" in an attempt to camouflage its lack of commitment to catching athletes who cheat by conventional methods.

Many scientists, however, disagree with Mr. Franke's assessment of the potential ease of detecting altered genes. With available technology, they say, scientists would have to know exactly where the gene was inserted in order to identify it, which would most likely require muscle biopsies.

"No athlete in his right mind is going to allow himself to be probed here and there for evidence of a virus," Dr. Friedmann said.

Eventually, some noninvasive detection methods might be developed, like chemical markers or a chip that could be encoded with the sequence of a specifically altered gene. But some researchers believe that only a change in cultural attitudes will curb genetic engineering, just as a cultural shift has led to an intolerance for smoking.

"We have to change the fundamental mind-set about doping," Dr. Don Catlin, who operates the Olympic drug-testing lab at U.C.L.A., said.

There appears to be little fear that human cloning will have a significant effect in sport. If say, Michael Johnson were cloned, the result would almost certainly not be the same world record-setter as the original, researchers say, because environmental, nutritional and motivational factors also play significant roles in developing athletes.

"If I'm the clone of Michael Johnson, I've got to bend myself into all sorts of shapes to run, because genetically that's what I'm destined to be," Dr. Friedmann said. "I run and run and run, and I can't ever get anywhere. Then what am I? I'm a Michael Johnson who can't run. That's a nobody. That must be a crushing experience to learn you're not what you're genetically destined to be."

Moral and Athletic Limits

Cloning aside, many athletes and sports officials say they would abhor genetic engineering in sport. "It is supposed to be a test of human capability, not a chemical war or a genetic war," Brandi Chastain of the American women's soccer team said.

If genetic engineering is used, "then sport is dead," said Dr. Bengt Saltin, director of the Center for Muscular Research at Copenhagen University in Denmark.

Yet, American society tolerates other types of enhancement, from the caffeine stimulation of coffee to breast enlargement to erectile function. And although there has been an outcry about genetically engineered corn, there was mass celebration when Mark McGwire broke the major league home run record in 1998 using androstenedione, a steroid precursor that is banned by the Olympics and many professional sports.

"Nobody cared about what McGwire was using," said Jon Drummond, a member of the victorious American 4x100-meter relay team at the Sydney Olympics. "They just wanted to see him break the record."

If genetic engineering can be made safe, with fewer side effects even than conventional methods of doping, it may grow increasingly difficult to find supportable arguments against using gene alteration to achieve excellence in sport, Dr. Friedmann said.

"Our society has already decided partly that maybe there isn't a lot wrong with it, and that we can build ourselves, change ourselves, as much as we'd like, consistent with safety and medical ethics," he said. "If a weight lifter makes massive muscles and with a flinch of the finger can lift a few hundred pounds, what's wrong with that ethically? I'm not sure you'll get good answers to that."

Not all athletes will have equal access to genetic engineering, but not all of them have equal access today to the same nutrition and training facilities. Not every distance runner, for instance, can train at altitude. Should sea-level athletes be allowed to take EPO to match the oxygen-carrying benefits for those who live at altitude?

The most effective argument against genetic enhancement may be that it will coerce others to alter their fundamental makeup, perhaps at great risk, if they want to compete.

"The argument in favor of allowing people to do this is based on our American tradition of giving individuals a huge amount of autonomy over their own bodies," said Dr. Eric Juengst, an ethicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "The limits on that kind of freedom are interpersonal. Once your actions cross the line of affecting just yourself and begin to affect other people, we have license to step in."

That right to set moral limits, however, will inevitably clash with a desire to break athletic limits. Anyone who could run 100 meters in six seconds "has no place in sports," said Mr. Greene, the world record- holder at 9.79 seconds. But, he added, "If anyone can run the 100 in six seconds, I'd like to see it."

Column: Mutant foods overrun world market, ecosystem

May 10
Daily Bruin (UCLA)
By Mitra Ebadolahi

LOS ANGELES - Let's play a game. When I say a word, you say the first thing that comes to mind. Then we'll repeat. Ready?

Summer? Vacation.

Beaches? Picnics.

Bananas? Antibiotics.

Wait a minute! Antibiotics don't have anything to do with bananas!

Oh, don't they?

At this very moment, scientists are working to create a new "antibiotic banana" that may help humans fight infectious diseases. If their endeavors are successful, we may soon be able to skip the doctor's office and go straight to the grocery store to cure our ailments.

Sound too good to be true? Well, maybe it is. How, for example, could antibiotic banana plants impact monkey, bird and insect species?

In just 10 years, biotechnology has become one of the fastest growing industries in the United States. With endless possibilities for profit, biotech firms are scrambling to pump billions of dollars into research and development schemes, touting the "gene revolution" as the solution to everything from environmental degradation to global hunger.

Many genetically modified organisms have already been developed, including corn, cotton and soy plants that produce their own pesticides. According to researchers, these varieties are more environmentally-friendly and economically efficient, requiring fewer chemical pesticides and producing bigger, more "perfect" crops.

Unfortunately for the planet's consumers, these corporations have forgotten their own capitalist maxim: "you don't get nothing for free." As GMOs infiltrate our diets, specialists warn that the new "Frankenfoods" may permanently damage our health and ecosystem, regardless of biotech's claims to the contrary.

Ecologically, the possible impacts of biotechnology have not been adequately researched. One biotech giant, Aqua Bounty Farms, has developed a new salmon that can mature four times faster than normal fish. Biologically, female fish are attracted to larger males, which are assumed to be the fittest and most capable of the species. As geneticist William Muir notes, "fish just 25 percent larger will get 400 percent more matings than a fish of average size." ("Harvest of Fear" www.pbs.org) Yet these "artificial" salmon produce the lowest number of offspring. The introduction of Aqua Bounty salmon into the wild could rapidly decrease or even wipe out this endangered fish species.

GMOs can never be recalled once they are released from corporate labs, since they are living organisms capable of reproduction. If we are truly concerned about the possible ecological implications of genetic engineering, we must conduct serious research before these living technologies are incorporated into the natural life cycle.

Consuming inadequately-researched GM products may seriously harm human health and expose millions of people to unknown dangers. Under present FDA policies, GM products do not have to be labeled and do not undergo the same rigorous safety tests other foodstuffs must pass before being released to consumers. Consequently, if a gene from a peanut is spliced into soy beans, people with peanut allergies may have severe reactions to unlabeled GM soy, even though they might consider soy safe.

Because American farmers mix GM and non-GM crops during harvest and storage, it has become virtually impossible to separate modified varieties from natural grains. Separate storage facilities and accurate food labeling systems cost a pretty penny; as a result, agribusiness lobbyists have pressured the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to allow companies to continue marketing unlabeled GM products. The FDA recently voted to maintain these inadequate policies, allowing biotech corporations to continue to exploit unsuspecting consumers.

To make matters worse, GMOs permeate the typical American diet. When was the last time you had a Coke? Most sodas contain corn syrup, derived from GM corn. Like ketchup on your French fries? Heinz and Del Monte use GM tomatoes in their pastes. Had any Frosted Flakes lately? Kellogg's thinks GM corn flakes are grrrreat! Salad dressing? Chocolate? The list of GM foods, produced by manufacturing giants like Nabisco, Quaker, Hershey's and Campbell's, goes on and on.

In other parts of the world, GMOs have been restricted. In 1998, massive protests led European Union officials to place a moratorium on the commercial growing and import of GM crops. Recently, the World Trade Organization and other free trade avengers have pressured the EU to rescind this ban, but manufacturers are still required to clearly mark all GM products with standardized labels. Throughout Europe, high levels of consumer resistance have led many corporations to abandon the use of GMOs altogether.

Here in the United States, polls indicate that 88 percent of consumers support more pre-market testing of GMOs, and 85 percent want GM foodstuffs to be clearly labeled. So much for the democratic process (www.greenpeace.org).

Finally, multiple arguments refute the biotech industry's claims that GMOs will solve global poverty or hunger. Economically, GMOs can force farmers to become dependent on biotech corporations. Since GM seeds are a business venture, they are patented and sold for profit. Because "self-fumigating" plants produce pesticides indiscriminately, pest toxins are emitted constantly throughout the growing process, regardless of actual pest levels. Ironically, flooding fields with these insecticides can help bugs develop resistance more rapidly than normal evolution allows. Resistance renders old pesticides useless, forcing farmers to replant fields with new GMOs producing different pest repellents.

Farmers must then purchase new seeds, and the entire cycle repeats. Poor farmers in developing countries have virtually no access to these technologies, and the "perfect" GM crops they compete with drive their own meager incomes down even further.

Biotechnology is a multibillion dollar industry, and there is an intense, competitive pressure among corporations to maximize profits and minimize costs. Consequently, critical (but expensive) tests are eliminated while new GMOs continue to be patented and sold to farmers.

Ironically, the realities of biotech clearly show how expensive industrialized agriculture and the unequal access to capital worldwide collaborate to keep peasant farmers trapped in cycles of poverty and dependency. In order for world hunger to truly be eradicated, sustainable, local farming practices must be promoted and human wealth must be more equitably distributed.

The most basic assumption of biotech corporations like Monsanto and AgrEvo are that humans can and should freely manipulate living organisms in order to produce new products for human consumption. According to this view, natural resources exist solely for the benefit of humankind, which grants people free reign to exploit, plunder and alter nature.

In a parallel universe, there are many who believe that humans are simply one part of an incredibly complex and fragile ecosystem, which, if damaged, is irreparable. If GMOs are not carefully researched, we might never know their possible consequences until it is too late. In order to safeguard our environment, and develop feasible alternatives to industrial agriculture's shortcomings, we must exercise our consumer power to hold biotech corporations accountable. If complacency won't kill us, Frankenfoods just might.

A better breed of fish?

FDA petitioned to halt release of bio-engineered salmon

May 9
ABC News

A group of scientists and environmentalists today asked the government to delay approval of a genetically engineered salmon to be sure it poses no threat to salmon produced by Mother Nature, or to people who eat it.

The petition comes as Aqua Bounty Farms, a company based in Canada and Waltham, Mass., is seeking FDA approval for a salmon that was created by inserting a growth hormone gene from another fish. It grows 10 times faster than natural salmon, and would be the first genetically engineered animal approved for human consumption.

The petitioners say that not enough study has been done on what effect the genetically engineered fish would have on wild populations, should they escape from the ocean pens where they would be raised, or on what health hazards there might be for people.

Andrew Kimbrell, the executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, referred to a Purdue University study that found that if 60 transgenic salmon entered a wild population of 60,000, the fish would be extinct in 40 generations.

The reason, he said, is that the male engineered fish would have a breeding advantage over wild salmon because they would be bigger when they reach sexual maturity, but at the same time have a one-third higher mortality rate than their wild counterparts.

He pointed to recent incidents off the coast of Maine, when 300,000 fish escaped from an ocean pen, and in Washington state, when 115,000 escaped, as evidence that there is no way to be certain that the transgenic salmon would be kept separate from native fish.

"The only way this could work would be on-shore tanks where they would breed these fish," Kimbrell said. "I think the problem there is that with the low cost of salmon it's not cost-effective."

Salmon, Just Rearranged

Elliot Entis, the president of Aqua Bounty, said the critics have completely misunderstood what the company is proposing.

"If you start with the wrong premises, you end up with the wrong conclusion," Entis said.

He said that though the salmon developed by his company grow faster, they are the same size if not smaller at sexual maturity than native fish, which would give them no breeding advantage. And he said that the entire female population would be sterile.

Regarding concerns about the health threats to consumers who eat the fish, Entis said there is nothing to fear from genetically engineered fish.

"There is nothing in our salmon that is not in the salmon you already eat, except a gene from another fish," he said. "We have simply rearranged things so that the salmon can make better use of its own growth hormone. We've made great pains to have this be a fish-to-fish transfer."

A Precedent Setter?

According to the petitioners, not enough study has been done to determine the long-term effects of genetic engineering on organisms. They say it is not known whether new allergens or toxins could be created in a food, or whether a plant or animal could be degraded at the cellular level by genetic engineering, eventually making it less nutritious.

Kimbrell said that Aqua Bounty's request for approval points up the lack of adequate legislation regarding genetically engineered foods. The FDA is treating the salmon as a "new animal drug" because it has no regulations in place for the fruits of bio-technology, he said.

With 35 other transgenic fish being developed, the matter must be dealt with, he said.

"This is really the precedent-setting case for all genetic engineering," he said. "The threat here is not just to wild salmon."