The Campaign: News Updates

LA JOLLA, Calif. - A computer jockey named Michael Richards punches a keyboard to search a database of chemicals kept at a biotechnology company here. With a few keystrokes, he calls up one of the more unusual inventory lists in corporate America.

"Harsh but sweet, floral-hay odor; sweet cherry-berry taste," reads the entry for a chemical called 1-acetyl-4-methyl benzene. "Fruity, floral, weak, vanilla-like odor and taste," says another entry, for 4-methoxybenzyl acetate.

The chemicals at Senomyx Inc. are part of new genetic research that is attempting to unravel the human senses of taste and smell. The start-up company is one of several around the country that hope to use that knowledge to come up with flavors and fragrances that effectively create new foods and other products.

It's part of a new discipline that might be called "consumer genetics." There are plans to create seasonings to make vegetables more palatable to young children by blocking specific tastes that overwhelm their palates. Some companies foresee additives that precisely mimic the taste and feel of rich foods without the fat, or room deodorants that temporarily block the ability to perceive nasty smells. Some are interested in developing artificial sweeteners that can survive cooking, as some of today's popular ones cannot.

In the near term, scientists envision medicines, diet sodas and coffee that have no bitter aftertaste because they would contain compounds that momentarily block the tongue's perception of bitterness. The first product from the industry might well be a cough syrup that babies can stand.

The scientists believe that they can eventually not only make ordinary products better but also -- starting with compounds like those in the Senomyx stockroom -- use the tools of genetics to create smells and tastes never before encountered by the human race.

Researchers foresee a time when genetics can explain precisely why one steak tastes better than another, why some people hate broccoli but others love it, and why most of humankind goes crazy for chocolate. They envision a day, moreover, when those responses can be precisely manipulated by adding smells or tastes or suppressing old ones.

As word spreads of the potential of this work, start-up capital is flowing, and genetics companies that previously focused entirely on disease are making deals to use their knowledge in service to the new field.

Some groups that monitor food safety worry that the discipline will spur greater industrialization of agriculture and food production, separating consumers even further from real food grown on real farms. And they say new ingredients produced by molecular techniques will face major safety concerns.

Paul Grayson, chairman and chief executive of Senomyx, is optimistic that such concerns can be allayed. "We want to make healthy food taste better or make good-tasting food healthier," he said.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington publishes lists of food additives, deeming some of them safe and desirable and advising people to avoid others. Its executive director, Michael Jacobson, said he could see some potential benefits from the new technology, such as the ability to make more palatable milk or meat substitutes, reducing the environmental impact of large-scale farming.

But he also expressed concern that, over time, the technology could harm people's diets.

"Companies love artificial flavors and colors because it's cheaper to add them than it is to add, say, strawberry juice to soda pop," he said. "The additives are more economical than the real food, and they can replace the real food. Many people's whole diets are made of fake foods. It seems like this would open up new avenues to facilitate the production of these foods."

Research into food additives has been going on for decades. A vast industry located in factories along the New Jersey Turnpike supplies flavor and odor ingredients by the ton to companies that make consumer goods.

The usual way of finding new ingredients often involves sophisticated chemistry in the early stages but then runs into a bottleneck. New compounds have to be screened by human panels. Hours of tasting or sniffing can overwhelm the senses, and the panels can screen only so many compounds. Many of the additives begin as extracts from plants or animals, and patenting them is difficult or impossible, limiting their profit potential.

The new gene-based companies are devising a much faster and potentially more lucrative way of approaching the problem. As they learn the precise structure of proteins in the tongue or nose that detect taste and smell, they can copy those proteins. The copies can be used to build robotic testing systems that can screen tens of thousands of new chemical compounds a day. If a new compound binds tightly to taste or smell proteins, it's a clue that the compound might elicit a strong sensory perception.

The system is similar to the screening methods that pharmaceutical companies use to find new drugs. Human taste or smell panels would get involved only after much of the drudgery has been handled by machines, and only to sample the most promising compounds. Because they can be created from scratch and not extracted from plants or animals, such additives probably could be patented -- and sold at higher prices than traditional additives.

The most visible company in the field is Senomyx, which has raised about $33 million in start-up money, hired 70 employees, filed for an initial public offering of shares and secured control of an extensive set of patents. Most notably, Senomyx has licensed patents believed to cover virtually all the human genes that permit detection of bitter tastes and it has filed for patents on many of the hundreds of genes involved in smell.

Grayson, the Senomyx chief executive, said the company's research method will resemble that of a pharmaceutical company, but product development should be far easier. Pharmaceutical companies must not only test their products to ensure safety, they also must put them through lengthy trials to determine whether they are effective. For Senomyx, once a compound passes safety tests, proving that it works should be a simple matter of tasting or smelling it.

The company would make much of its money by collecting royalties on products whose sales increased with Senomyx ingredients -- a radically different business model from that of the traditional flavor and fragrance companies.

The technology could, in principle, be used to alter the genetics of plants or animals to make them tastier. But Grayson, noting the rising public concern about genetically modified food, said Senomyx does not plan to do that. "We're not trying to replace food," he said, just create new ingredients to make existing food taste better.

The concept is unproven so far, but big consumer-product companies are interested. Senomyx has signed major research deals with Kraft Foods Inc., the nation's largest packaged-food company, and with Campbell Soup Co., which owns such brands as Pepperidge Farm, Swanson and V8.

Other companies are also pursuing such research. A smaller company, Linguagen Corp. of Paramus, N.J., controls key patents and is busy devising compounds, including a "bitter blocker." Smaller start-up companies are in the early stages.

Some huge consumer companies, notably Procter & Gamble Co. of Cincinnati, have started genetics programs. P&G, which sells $40 billion worth of consumer products every year, confirmed that it is buying gene-analysis devices from a California company, Affymetrix Inc., but would not reveal the goals of its research except to say they do not involve food or beverages. P&G sells many products that depend on odor ingredients.

One of the leading scientists in the field, and a founder of Senomyx, is Charles Zuker, a biologist at the University of California at San Diego. Many of the proteins that detect bitter tastes were discovered in his laboratory, which licensed patents on them to Senomyx.

In an interview, Zuker expressed excitement about the potential of the field. "I hate drinking diet soda," he said, lauding the prospect of an additive that could block the aftertaste of artificial sweeteners. But he also noted that many foods and drinks are very complicated mixtures of chemicals that scientists won't be able to emulate with artificial ingredients anytime soon.

"It's going to be a while," he said, "before you take a poor bottle of wine and turn it into a wonderful Petrus or Cheval-Blanc."

Given the stunning pace of genetic research and recent advancements, there's lots of confusion and concern out there about the stuff that makes us what we are and what we're putting into our bodies.

Despite that, however, most people give the thumbs-up to genetic research for preventing disease and starvation.

Those are the findings of "Public Awareness in the Age of Genomics," a nationwide random survey of 1,000 people conducted by the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The survey found that a surprisingly large percentage of adults have some knowledge of basic genetics, but they are less informed about the extent of recent ground-breaking developments like the Human Genome Project.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents correctly identified a gene as a basic unit of hereditary information, and 50 percent knew genes are composed of DNA.

Yet only 29 percent had heard of the Human Genome Project and only 36 percent had heard, seen or read anything about genetic research in the past three months.

Rob DeSalle, a curator at the museum, attributes such low levels of awareness to the fact that genetics has yet to be linked to a major event or a specific cure.

"I think it's because you don't see these genome guys walking on the moon. People knew about the Manhattan Project [which produced the Atomic Bomb] because of the potential destruction. And they knew about the space program because they could actually see people going into space and walking on the moon," he says.

"Genetics, however, is a much more subtle area. It's so broad that it's hard to bring under a single 'poster child.' I think when something like cancer is cured, that's when it will really get more attention."

Many people were aware, however, of one of the most controversial areas of genetic research -- cloning. And they were less than enthusiastic: Ninety-two percent said they would not approve of cloning to reproduce a favorite person, and 86 percent said they wouldn't support the cloning of a favorite pet.

There were also reservations about genetic tinkering with food, although the respondents did express conditional support in some situations.

Only half reported being somewhat comfortable eating genetically modified food. And only 43 percent of respondents thought it was appropriate to use genetic technology to grow better-tasting food.

But 79 percent were willing to support the genetic engineering of food to prevent starvation.

Genetically altered foods have been treated with genes for reasons that range from promoting resistance to pests to increasing crop yield.

Seventy percent said that, as far as they knew, they had never eaten genetically modified food.

"Probably everyone in the United States has at one point in time eaten some genetically modified food. The fact is, soy products, canola, corn -- all are potentially genetically modified. And between 40 and 60 percent of all the seed in United States plantings last year were genetically modified," he says.

The conflicting views expressed in the survey about genetically modified foods underscore the widespread confusion about the topic, says Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

"There's a real disconnect between what people perceive and what is reality in terms of what they consume," Kahn says. "There's also mistrust, and the perception that there are all kinds of secretive things going on with the production of bioengineered food. It really stems from the basic fear of fooling around with nature."

"Some have even dubbed bioengineered foods 'franken-food.' But the fact is, we've been fooling around with nature since Biblical times. It's not new; it's just more precise," he adds.

The strongest support for genetic research came in terms of its potential ability to produce technologies and therapies that would enhance human health and well-being. Ninety-seven percent said they believe the knowledge gained from such research will be used to discover new and effective methods of treating diseases, and 88 percent believe that will enhance the quality of life.

But 92 percent of the respondents also felt that genetic research must be "at least somewhat" regulated.

At the same time, the State Food Authority (EFET), said preliminary tests had found that 12 percent of 241 food samples containing soya or corn included GM products.

But EFET did not specify whether the content of offending ingredients - which were not mentioned on the products' packaging - had exceeded 1 percent, the legal limit above which companies must advertise the presence of GM products.

"Keeping public opinion informed is a very serious business that lies in the hands of the state, and is not suitable for exercises in publicity-drawing, nor yet for actions which, objectively and irrespective of any good intentions, are detrimental to Greek companies," Development Minister Nikos Christodoulakis said yesterday.

On Thursday, the Greek branch of Greenpeace presented a list of food products, including yogurt, ice cream, tinned food, pasta and potato chips, that it said might contain GM products of soya or corn.

The brands named are produced by Greek companies that either refused to fill out a Greenpeace questionnaire asking whether they could guarantee that their products contained GM ingredients, or responded in the negative.

"Companies are obliged to respond to and accept inspections carried out by the accredited state bodies," he said. "Nobody has the right, just because someone did not answer a question, to automatically suspect them of making products that break Greek and European health guidelines."

The Federation of Hellenic Food Industries (SEVT) said the list was misleading and scare-mongering.

"Greenpeace used questionable methods that led to conclusions which just mislead consumers," a SEVT statement said yesterday. "Despite the fact that all the genetically modified food in circulation has been approved by the European Union... and is therefore considered safe for consumption, the food industry respects consumers' feelings concerning its use in the food chain. That is why it is in favor of labeling, and implements current Greek and EU legislation."

Tokyo - A nationwide recall of potato snacks by a Japanese food maker has rekindled concerns over unapproved gene-spliced StarLink corn, prompting importers once again to shun U.S. grain, traders said on Friday.

The Health Ministry on Thursday ordered Osaka-based House Foods Corp to recall some of its snack products, called O'ZACK, after the ministry found traces of unapproved genetically modified (GM) NewLeaf Plus potato in the products.

The recall is Japan's first after the imposition of stricter rules for imports of biotech products in April, when the ministry introduced checks for unapproved GM crops in food imports at unloading ports and in food products on the domestic market.

The new rules established zero tolerance for imports containing unapproved gene-altered products and required mandatory labeling for approved GM products.

NewLeaf Plus, developed by leading U.S. agricultural biotech firm Monsanto Co to protect potatoes from insects and the potato leafroll virus, has not been approved in Japan. In 1998, Monsanto's Japan unit applied for approval of NewLeaf Plus in Japan.

``It's a shock,'' a trader with a major trading house said. ``We'd thought about the possibility of a food recall following the new rules against GM crops, but now it has happened for real.''

The recall, reminiscent of the StarLink furor late last year, has again hit Japanese appetite for U.S. corn, which had been picking up as the controversy died down, another trader said.

Japan imports four million tons of corn for food use each year and another 12 million tons for feed use.

The discovery of StarLink in food products last October by a consumer group had prompted Japan, where StarLink is not approved even for animal feed, to cut its U.S. corn buying. It also drove importers to find alternative supply sources.

StarLink, developed by Franco-German biotech firm Aventis SA to fight a destructive pest known as the European corn borer, has not been approved by U.S. regulators for human consumption because of concerns over potential allergic reactions.

On Friday, House Foods said it had halted production and sales of the snack products until it could secure raw ingredients that were confirmed as safe. The company decided to delay the launch of new O'ZACK products that had been set for June.

``We started removing two O'ZACK items following the government order and one Cheddar cheese item voluntarily from domestic store selves,'' a spokesman said.

Sales turnover for O'ZACK snacks was about three billion yen in the year to last March, against total sales of 180 billion yen. The products are House Foods' second-biggest earner among its snack range, he said.

House Foods imported ingredients for O'ZACK snacks from three suppliers in the United States and one in Canada with certificates that showed non-GM products, he said.

House Foods shares closed up 0.36 percent at 1,385 yen after falling 50 yen to 1,330 earlier.

Tokyo - Japan's health ministry on Thursday ordered food and spice producer House Foods Corp to recall snack products that contained genetically modified potatoes, the food producer said.

``They said that the ingredients are approved in the United States, but not yet permitted in Japan,'' a House Foods spokesman said.

However, the Jiji news agency said some 60,000 products will be recalled and will cost the company about 400 million yen ($3.3 million).

In April, the government introduced stricter rules to guard against imports of unapproved biotech products.

The new rules set zero tolerance for imports containing unapproved gene-altered products and require mandatory labeling for approved GM products.

American scientists have already inserted a silkworm gene into embryonic Thompson seedless grapes and are now working on Chardonnay grapes. The modification does not affect the flavor but protects vines against Pierce's disease, which kills the plant by attacking a key part of its circulatory system, called the xylem.

The disease has cost Californian wine growers millions of dollars a year since 1995, when it spread to the region from south eastern American states. After years of selective breeding failed to produce a resistant variety of vine, Dennis Gray of the University of Florida in Gainesville discovered that the silkworm gene produces a protein called cecropin, which protects the vine from the disease.

Alexander Purcell, a University of California plant scientist who has been working on ways of fighting the epidemic, said: "If this works, it really is a major breakthrough." Protecting vines against Pierce's disease would increase the quantities of wine produced.

This would bring down the price of better quality Chardonnay and other grape varieties. Dr Gray inserted the cecropin gene using a virus common in plant bacteria. Cecropin sticks to the cell membranes of Pierce's bacterium and punctures them, killing the cell.

The cecropin gene is present throughout the vine and its grapes, but Dr Gray hopes that in his work on the Chardonnay grape he will be able to keep the gene out of the human food chain by selecting a variety where the gene is limited to the xylem.

Dr Gray said this may not be possible. If not, cecropin could raise safety concerns because melittin, a related protein found in bee stings, can cause analphylactic shock in some people. No one knows whether cecropin will cause similar problems, according to a report in New Scientist, as cecropin does not bind as tightly to mammalian cells as melittin.

Dr Purcell said he would like to know how much of the protein ends up in the wine before it goes on sale. He said: "Regardless of what scientists think, there's going to be reluctance for consumers to accept this, particularly in a high-price wine."

A new research has confirmed that genetically modified crops survive no better that their traditional counterparts.

The 10 - year study on the performance of modified crops conducted by the Imperial College in England allays fears that the genetically altered crops could stray from the farm fields and invade other natural inhabitants where they are not grown.

The research sampled four generically modified crops: maize, potato, oilseed rape and sugar beet. The researchers say they modified these four crops to equip them with the ability to resist or withstand insects and herbicides.

The trial seedlings were planted in 12 habitats in Britain, ranging from woodlands to Coastal areas. The study found out that neither the traditional nor the modified plants increased in numbers beyond their first plantings and the modified plants never lasted significantly longer that the traditional ones.

According to a Monsanto-Kenya publication, Kuza: "All the genetically engineered corn, oilseed, rape and sugar beet died out within four years. The modified sweet potato died too." says the publication.

The research also published in the authoritative scientific journal, NATURE says that the research was financed by a consortium of biotechnology multinationals including Monsanto Co. and Zeneca Ag products Inc, to find out: -

Whether the genetically engineered plants would crowd out natural species, cause health risk in humans and pass on traits such as herbicide resistance to weeds.

The research conducted by ecologist Michael J. Crawley also investigated the possibility of genetically engineered crops killing beneficial insects.

Crawley, the head of the team is quoted in the journal as saying "problem plants have attributes that are totally different from Crop plants. No matter what you do, an oilseed rape or wheat plant, it won't become a problem.

"This research, although concentrated more on the co-existence of genetically modified crops with the traditional plants, paying little attention to effects on human health, will be a milestone towards re-assuring countries skeptical of the safety of G.M crops that all is okay," says Dr. Hezron Kimani, an Agrobiologist.

"What is needed is further research on effects of G.M. to human health and African natural habitat. Again. The scientists modifying crops should work more on strengthening the survival of G.M. crops and more yields, because if the results from their study is anything to go by: "They survive no better than their traditional counterparts" adds Dr. Kimani.

Kenya is also trying G.M. crops. Last year, Kenya Agriculture Research Institute (KARI) collaborating with Monsanto launched the first ever genetically modified sweet Potato.

The transgenic sweet potato is said to have a protein coat that boasts its resistance to diseases and virus. If the trial goes on well, the virus resistant tubers are scheduled for distribution to farmers as soon as bio-safety is guaranteed.

Saskatchewan farmer ordered to pay Monsanto damages

May 24
CBC

REGINA - The Federal Court of Canada has ordered Percy Schmeiser to pay $20,000 in damages to biotech company Monsanto.

The $20,000 represents the profits Schmeiser made from his canola crop in 1998. The court has also ordered him to deliver up any canola seeds or plants that contain the Round-up Ready gene.

The judge has given lawyers for Schmeiser and Monsanto 30 days to make arguments on what those costs should be.

St. Louis - A group of former Monsanto Co. executives and scientists have started a venture capital fund to finance medicinal and nutritional biotech food research, heeding a call for consumer-oriented technological advances in food.

Auxyn Bioscience Ventures is seeking $200 million to invest in entrepreneurial biosciences firms and hopes to fill an area left open by the large biotech agricultural companies, according to its chief scientist Ganesh Kishore.

While firms like Monsanto are focused on biotech advancements in agricultural production, Auxyn will concentrate on consumer-oriented research, Kishore said in an interview Tuesday at the World Agricultural Forum's World Congress in St. Louis.

``Big companies can only afford to focus on a few things,'' he said. ``Our goal is to create value in areas where the big companies aren't interested.''

That means research into how genetically modified food can be used to treat diseases including cancer and conditions such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, Kishore said.

Auxyn was formed in January by Merisant CEO and former Monsanto executive Arnold Donald, along with Kishore and others formerly associated with Monsanto.

Monsanto merged last year with Pharmacia & Upjohn to form Pharmacia Corp. It restructured and streamlined its research operations, eliminating most projects dedicated to nutritional and medicinal advancements in food, said Kishore, who was Monsanto's president of nutrition and chief biotechnologist.

Monsanto's industry-leading biotech advancements include herbicide-resistant corn and soybeans that allow farmers to spray Monsanto's Roundup Ready weed killer over fields without damaging plants.

Food safety and environmental concerns surround the spread of genetically modified foods, and some farmers are reluctant to use GM seeds because they fear the loss of export markets.

Some in the industry advocate giving consumers a direct benefit from biotech foods, a concept discussed at the St. Louis forum.

``Consumer response to new food technologies is determined by the benefits produced and whether their safety is assured,'' said Julian Edwards, director general of Consumers International of London, in a presentation to the World Congress on Tuesday.