OP-ED: HOW TO CONFINE THE PLANTS OF THE FUTURE?

[Guest guest]

Rachel's Democracy & Health News #908

" Environment, health, jobs and justice--Who gets to decide? "

 

New York Times, Apr. 8, 2007

[Printer-friendly version]

 

 

OP-ED: HOW TO CONFINE THE PLANTS OF THE FUTURE?

By Denise Caruso

 

 

A new generation of genetically engineered crops that produce drugs

and chemicals is fast approaching the market -- bringing with it a new

wave of concerns about the safety of the global food and feed supply.

 

The plants produce medicinal substances like insulin, anticoagulants

and blood substitutes. They produce vaccine proteins for diseases like

cholera, as well as antibodies against tooth decay and non-Hodgkin's

lymphoma. Enzymes and other chemicals from the plants can be used for

a range of industrial processes.

 

As in past debates over genetically modified crops, biotech developers

say that the benefits outweigh the risks, and that the risks are

manageable. Critics question the benefits, and say the risk of a

contaminated and potentially toxic food supply is untenable.

 

In the middle, balancing economic benefit and public safety, are our

appointed arbiters of risk, the government regulators.

 

Controversies over biotech risk are caused by a crisis in " official

scientific expertise, " according to Jerome Ravetz, an associate

fellow at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at

the University of Oxford.

 

The crisis, he said, stems from the conflicting roles of government.

On one side, businesses provide regulators with scientific evidence

about the risk and safety of their product innovations. On the other,

suspicious citizens demand that regulators challenge that evidence.

 

The side whose expertise is accepted as " official " calls the shots.

 

So far, the business sector has tipped the scales in its favor.

Despite science-based concerns voiced by farmers, environmentalists

and even its own researchers, the United States Department of

Agriculture has approved more than 100 applications to grow so-called

biopharma crops of corn, soybeans, barley, rice, safflower and tobacco

in the United States.

 

Developers say these crops are the best way to achieve the economies

of scale and cost savings that will let them meet rising demand for

drugs like human insulin.

 

They acknowledge that growing pharmaceutical crops is riskier than

making drugs in factories. They know that the plants contain

potentially toxic drugs and chemicals, and because they look like

ordinary crops, they can be mistaken for food, both before and after

harvest.

 

The most important thing, then, is to keep biopharma plants, pollen

and seeds confined to the fields where they are planted. Otherwise,

they may contaminate other crops, wild relatives and the environment.

 

Developers say they have worked with the Agriculture Department to

develop containment procedures for biopharma crops.

 

" Under our system, the degree of oversight is commensurate with the

risk of the crops, " said John Turner, director of the policy

coordination program for the agency's Biotechnology Regulatory

Services. " We take extraordinary measures to make sure these pharma

and industrial crops are kept separate and confined. "

 

To this end, some developers use plants like rice and safflower that

self-pollinate, reducing the risk of contaminating nonpharma plants by

wind and insect pollination.

 

They also provide regulators with data on the potential health and

environmental effects of the special chemicals in their crops.

 

For example, SemBioSys, a Canadian company, has applied to the

U.S.D.A. for permits to grow safflower-based human insulin. It is

already field-testing safflower crops in the United States and Chile

that produce carp growth hormone for aquaculture feed, to bolster the

weak immune systems of farmed shrimp.

 

The company's chief executive, Andrew Baum, says " categorically " that

the insulin derived from its plants has no biological effects while in

plant form, and is activated only after processing. And the evidence

his company has gathered indicates that its carp growth hormone

affects only shrimp.

 

The new methods, Mr. Baum said, can cut capital costs by 70 percent,

and " reach levels of scale easier than any other system. "

 

But there is some scientific evidence not acknowledged in biopharma

risk assessments that casts a dark cloud over this silver lining.

 

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. "

 

Professor Ellstrand also said that self-pollination does not eliminate

gene flow between plants, and that cross-pollination is not the only

way that pharma crops can escape confinement. Once harvested, seeds

can move easily, accidentally or deliberately, across and beyond

borders. As a result, valuable biopharma crops may well end up growing

in fields far from the controlled environment on which developers

depend for safety. And what happens from there is anyone's guess.

 

Once the rogue seeds are replanted, could the plants thrive in their

new home and possibly overtake native varieties or wild relatives?

Could the pharma trait increase in frequency and concentration, until

it reaches a " dose " that causes health effects in those who consume it

unwittingly? The probability for any one of these situations may be

low, Professor Ellstrand said, but the scientific answer to each

question is yes.

 

What is most worrisome is that the Agriculture Department seems to

reject such reasonable, science-based public safety concerns. Agency

policy allows developers to withhold data on pharma crops from the

public as confidential business information, and the public is not

allowed to comment on biopharma planting applications until after an

official risk evaluation is completed.

 

Such behavior has raised the hackles of many farmers and food

producers who are concerned about biopharma crops. Rice farmers, in

particular, know what happens when a food crop is contaminated with

unapproved genes. The U.S.D.A has presided over two such scares in

less than a year, and the rice industry has suffered greatly as it

tries to purge contaminants from crops.

 

At the end of March, the Agriculture Department approved a permit

allowing a California biotech company, Ventria Bioscience, to plant

its pharmaceutical rice in open fields in Kansas.

 

Ventria's pharma rice is engineered to produce two of the human

proteins found in breast milk and other body fluids. Once harvested,

the proteins will be used in treatments for diarrhea and infections,

as well as in nutritional supplements.

 

In a public comment demanding that the Agriculture Department withdraw

the Ventria approval, the U.S.A. Rice Federation wrote: " If Ventria's

pharmaceutical rice were to escape into the commercial rice supply,

the financial devastation to the U.S. rice industry would likely be

absolute. There is no tolerance, either regulatory or in public

perception, for a human gene-based pharmaceutical to end up in the

world's food supply. "

 

So whose market is more important: the farmers' or the drug makers'?

Whose health matters more: people who need drugs or people who eat

food?

 

Scientists often dismiss the idea that people without technical

knowledge can help them make risk assessments. As a result, biotech

scientists and regulators have long made safety determinations from

within an opaque system of their own design, using only the evidence

they accept as valid.

 

But scientific evidence is not a constant, like the speed of light or

pi. Especially in biology, where we still know so little, " evidence "

is often just a small circle of light surrounded by the darkness of

the unknown. Decisions about risk cannot safely be made in a private

club that accepts only its members' notions of scientific evidence.

 

The best research on risk declares the opposite to be true: that risk

evidence is particularly subject to distortion by conflicting

interests, and that the best foil for such distortions is to ensure

that the people whose fate is at stake participate in the analysis.

 

We need a new policy framework for scientific evidence that is built

on this foundation. If developers want to sell their products, they

must subject their inventions to the helpful scrutiny of people

outside the club -- before radical technologies like biopharma are

brought to market.

 

==============

 

Denise Caruso is executive director of the Hybrid Vigor Institute,

which studies collaborative problem-solving.

E-mail:dcaruso.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Denise's article is an important reminder for all of us to closely

consider our food choices.

I recently watched a powerful movie on the effects of food and seed

engineering. I highly recommend that anyone who eats food watch the

movie and share the wisdom of asking ourselves good questions...

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

To your health,

Geffen

__________________________

 

Geffen Rothe, MA.,LMT

The Bodywork Institute

170 17th Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94121

415-668-9558

www.thebodyworkinstitute.net

www.hendricksonmethod.com