Well Fed Network

Posted by Marc Rumminger on Growers & Grocers.

Sunday’s news feeds brought two interesting articles about genetically- engineered crops to my RSS reader. The first was a piece entitled How to confine the plants of the future? by biotech expert Denise Caruso (author of Intervention). Caruso’s article focuses on pharmaceuticals derived from genetically-modified plants and the challenge of keeping them separated from non-modified plants.

Caruso’s specialty is risk assessment, and she is concerned that neither the developers of these “biopharma” projects nor the regulators (at USDA and FDA) fully understand what can happen in the wild. The whole article is worth reading, but this part jumped out at me:

For starters, the “system” under discussion is nature, and despite our best efforts it always manages to elude our puny attempts at controlling it. The containment practices used by developers assume an ability to control living and propagating organisms, which scientific evidence does not support.

One scientist familiar with some of the issues raised by pharma crops is Norman C. Ellstrand, a professor in the department of genetics at the University of California, Riverside, and director of its Biotechnology Impacts Center. Professor Ellstrand is known as a fair and credible critic of various aspects of agricultural biotechnology.

He is deeply skeptical that efforts to confine biopharma genes in open fields will work.

“I don’t think that engineering plants for pharma is a bad idea, with two caveats,” Professor Ellstrand said. One, he says he thinks that planting should be done in greenhouses rather than in open fields. “The other issue is food,” he said. “Why do we have to do this in food crops? It doesn’t matter what you’re squeezing the compound out of. It could be a carnation, a corn plant or a castor bean.”

There might be value in engineering plants to produce drugs for humans, but I completely agree with Professor Ellstrand: don’t use human or animal food crops to make the drugs. We have already seen several examples of genetically engineered (GE) rice and corn being accidentally introduced into food. The presence of GE material makes the product unacceptable for Japanese and European export markets, and if the material contains a pharmaceutical, it could conceivably cause severe reactions in parts of the population (or in cattle, poultry or pork if the plants are animal feed). If the FDA and USDA strictly forbid use of food crops for “biopharma” applications, opposition to genetic engineering would be reduced.

The second article is about liability and freedom. Written by Steve Johnson of the San Jose Mercury News, it explores some of the legal issues around GE crops. In California, state and local officials are not informed when genetically modified organisms are planted — that information is shared only with the USDA and kept confidential because it is seen as proprietary business information. But the USDA only tracks early testing of the crops, not routine planting. A member of the State Assembly has introduced a bill (AB 541) that would change that by requiring notification of county agriculture officials when GE crops are planted. In addition, it makes the planter of the GE crops liable for damages to other fields, like if an organic farmer’s crops are contaminated by pollen from nearby farms with GE crops and thus ineligible for organic certification.

Cross-contamination has the potential to be a significant problem and I imagine that legal experts are trying to figure out how the law should apply. If an organic farmer’s crops are ruined by GE contamination, should the farmer who planted the GE crops be liable? Or perhaps the seed company? Does a farmer have a right to grow organic food?

The bulk of the article is an overview of the promise and peril of GE crops, and some of the recent legal troubles around GE crops. In 2007 alone, there have been three major setbacks for GE crops: contamination of long grain rice seed with an unapproved GE strain, a federal court’s temporary hold on planting a GE alfalfa seed, and a ruling against manufacturers of a GE turfgrass.