TITLE: Altered States

AUTHOR:

PUB: Feed Magazine

DATE: Febauary 2, 2001

Humans have always tampered with nature to produce genetically altered life forms. Virtually every crop we eat has been "modified" from its original state over hundreds of years by farmers and scientists in search of desirable traits. Not one dog species alive today would exist without human intervention in breeding. But cross-pollinating or crossbreeding within a species -- or even among two closely related species (which generally leads to infertile offspring, like the mule, which is bred from a horse and a donkey) -- involves selecting from the genetic traits that already exist within a species's gene pool. "A breeder who wants a purple cow would be able to breed toward one only if the necessary purple genes were available somewhere in a cow or a near relative to cows," explains Union of Concerned Scientists. "A genetic engineer has no such restriction. If purple genes are available anywhere in nature -- in a sea urchin or an iris -- those genes could be used in attempts to produce purple cows." Whether it's slow-ripening tomatoes or seedless watermelons, crops that can grow in unfavorable conditions or a cheap, practical alternative for farmers who can't afford pesticides, genetically modified foods are at the center of our agribusiness industry and coming under massive attack. In the following round-up, FEED editors Amanda Griscom and Hillary Rosner brief you on the companies, the commodities, the reasons, the methods, and the consequences behind the bio-tech food industry. Our primary sources for the following information were Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, USDA, Biotechnology Industry Organization, The New York Times series "Redesigning Nature," and Jeremy Rifkin's The Biotech Century. THE COMMODITIES Nearly two-thirds of the products on American supermarket shelves contain genetically modified ingredients. American farmers grew seventy million acres of bioengineered crops last year, the bulk of which comprised corn modified to resist devastating fungus and Roundup Ready soybeans modified to resist a common herbicide. That number will decrease this year, due to widespread resistance to genetically modified food in Europe. U.S. export of soybeans to Europe dropped from $305 million in 1996 to $1 million in 1999. Corn exports fell from $2.6 billion to $1 billion. Biotech seed accounts for thirty-six percent of American corn, fifty-five percent of our soybeans and forty-three percent of our cotton. Bioengineered food either currently available or in the research stages includes corn, soybeans, rice, canola, squash, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, peppers, peas, grapes, cantaloupe, strawberries, chicory, papaya, sunflowers, peanuts, and milk from cows given a genetically engineered growth hormone. THE REASONS Crop control The most common genetically engineered crops contain modifications that make the plants resistant to certain diseases and herbicides, or allow them to produce their own pesticides, thereby eliminating or reducing the need to spray. So-called "Bt corn," for example, contains a gene resistant to the harmful mycotoxin fungus. LibertyLink corn and canola are immune to the widely used herbicide Liberty. DeKalBt Insect-Protected Hybrid corn contains built-in protection from the deadly European corn borer. Nutrition A team of Swiss and German researchers announced in January that they'd developed a strain of bio-tech rice known as Golden Rice because its modification alters its color. The rice contains genes that produce beta-carotene, which the body breaks down into Vitamin A. According to Donella Meadows, a professor of environmentalism at Dartmouth, "thousands of poor children in Asia, who eat little but rice, go blind or die for lack of vitamin A. The 'golden rice' could solve that problem." Meadows says that when an expert was explaining this product to a class, a student asked: "Why not just splice the beta-carotene gene into the child?" The expert said, "Within five years that could be possible. Fasten your seat belts." Shelf life In many parts of the world, poor refrigeration means that large percentages of crops often spoil on the way to market. Biotech researchers hope to cut costs and increase food supply by controlling ripening to create foods that stay fresh longer. Some examples: The FreshWorld Farms Endless Summer tomato is engineered to have a shelf life of ten to fourteen days. Endless Summer bananas and pineapples are also in development. High Oleic Peanuts are high in oleic acid, resulting in longer life for nuts, candy and peanut butter. Climate control Scientists have introduced genes to help adapt plants to unlikely terrain - salty, dry, or frosty. In one case, according to information written for Greenpeace by Luke Anderson, author of Genetic Engineering, Food and Our Environment, scientists selected a gene that leads to the production of a chemical with antifreeze properties from an arctic fish (such as the flounder) and spliced it into tomatoes or strawberries to make them frost resistant. Cost For farmers in countries that often cannot afford herbicides and pesticides, nor the tools and workforce to keep crops dusted, genetically modified crops can, supporters say, offer a cheap way to control insects, weeds, and bacteria. Biotech companies also intend to decrease consumer costs: AquaAdvantage salmon, tilapia, trout, and flounder, now in developmental stages, grow rapidly, reaching "market size" in about a year and a half -- half the time it takes a fish to grow naturally. According to the biotech trade group Bio, "this new salmon could make fish more plentiful, decrease overfishing of wild salmon, and lower consumer costs." Taste Researchers are currently developing and evaluating crops -- including tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, and potatoes modified to taste "better": For example, a pepper currently being tested contains an extra gene for sweetness. THE COMPANIES Scientifically altered seeds already account for huge parts of the United States cotton, soybean, and corn crops, but European restrictions and naturalist demonstrators have been raising consumer awareness about modification practices. Nevertheless, the titans of agrochemical field crops like Cargill Inc., Archer-Daniels-Midland, and DuPont's Pioneer Hi-Bred International have formed a line of defense against the opposition by promising farmers that they will buy their gene-altered grains. Executives say it may be too late to abandon genetically modified crops, for that would entail creating a more costly and cumbersome system to separate the two kinds of produce. Another biotech bigshot, Monsanto, has been slammed with such a heavy smear campaign by demonstrators for blatantly supporting genetically modified products that it's showing signs of retreat: As part of its merger with Pharmacia & Upjohn, the company will sell off almost twenty percent of its agricultural division. Similarly, Switzerland-based Novartis, a leader in bioengineered foods, has announced a merger with AstraZeneca. They will spin off the combined agricultural divisions, in part because of the consumer backlash against genetically engineered food and a resulting decline in stock prices. The resistance is indeed mounting: Frito-Lay, a unit of PepsiCo, told the farmers who grow about ninety-five percent of the corn used in the company's Doritos, Tostitos and Fritos not to use genetically engineered seed for this year's planting. Lynn Markley, a spokeswoman for Frito-Lay, told reporters it was "a prudent business decision now that the FDA has renewed its interest in biotech and we are hearing from our consumers that there is confusion." She says next year the company will tell the farmers who grow potatoes for its Lay's and Ruffles potato chips not to plant genetically altered potatoes. Likewise, McCain Foods Ltd. of Canada, a huge potato producer and a leading supplier of French fries to Burger King, says it will steer clear of gene-altered potatoes. Seagrams has announced it will no longer use genetically modified ingredients in its wine and beverage products, and both Heinz and Gerber have said that they won't use bio-tech crops in their baby food. (But at the time of the announcement, Gerber's parent, Novartis, was one of the world's largest producers of genetically modified seed.) Nestlé, the world's biggest food company, has stopped buying any grain from genetically altered seed for its European products. Other major companies, like McDonald's, Kellogg's, Kraft Foods, and Quaker Oats sell gene-altered foods in America, but not overseas. THE METHODS Recombinant DNA techniques use biochemical "scissors" called restriction enzymes to cut the strings of DNA and select the required genes, which are inserted into circular pieces of DNA (plasmids) found in bacteria. The bacteria reproduce and soon thousands of clones can be made of the gene. A "ferry" made with genetic material taken from a virus or a bacterium infects the plant, smuggling the gene into the plant's DNA. Electro- and Chemical Poration methods create pores or holes in the cell membrane to allow entry of the new genes. Cells are either soaked in solutions of special chemicals or subjected to an electric current. Bioballistics is a projectile method that uses metal slivers coated with genetic material to deliver the genes to the interior of the cell with a shot gun. The slivers pass through a perforated metal plate and into the living cell, where the genetic material finds its way to the nucleus and incorporates itself among the host genes. Microinjection, which involves simply injecting genetic material containing the new gene into the recipient cell, is the dominant method for creating genetically engineered animals and fish. Where the cell is large enough, as many plant and animal cells are, the injection can be done with a fine glass needle. THE CONSEQUENCES Last week, The National Academy of Sciences said there's no evidence to suggest bioengineered or transgenic foods are unsafe, but called for increased research into the potential risks to humans, wildlife, and the environment. Most of the risks currently associated with genetically engineered organisms are unique to the organisms themselves: the creation of new toxins or allergens and changes in nutritional value in foods, for example. Some overlap those posed by non-engineered organisms: genes from herbicide-resistant cotton, for instance, could get into weeds, creating "superweeds." Scientists are as concerned about the possibility of genetically modified plants pollinating natural plants in their surroundings as they are about their unintended effects on benign insects and animals. The biotech corn known as Bt corn, for instance, became especially controversial last year after a Cornell University study suggested it could be killing monarch butterflies. "It is not true that all genetically engineered foods are toxic or that all released engineered organisms are likely to proliferate in the environment. But specific engineered organisms may be harmful by virtue of the novel combinations of traits they possess," says a representative from the Union of Concerned Scientists. "This means the risks of genetically engineered organisms can differ greatly, depending on the particular gene-organism combination, and must therefore be assessed case by case." Very little is known at this point, but one thing's for sure: randomly splicing foreign genes into an organism may well have effects that are impossible to predict or control. When a gene coding for red pigment was transferred from a maize plant to a petunia, the flower didn't just change color, it grew more leaves and shoots, a higher resistance to fungi and suffered lowered fertility. An ecologist who sits on a USDA panel that approves the release of genetically engineered crop plants came to discuss recent case studies with the students of Donella Meadows. Of the seventy-one applications currently pending, he explained, one is for the implantation of the gene by which scorpions make their toxin. If the gene is spliced into a plant, anything that consumes the leaf, from monkeys to worms, will die. People who eat the plant will die too, so there must be a package of genes to turn the scorpion gene on in the roots and leaves and stems, and off in the flower and fruit. Students asked: What happens to the poison when roots or leaves decompose in the soil? What happens if the turn-off gene doesn't work? The ecologist had no answer. END top