Agbiotech Controversy Spreads in USA

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
February 28, 2002

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD:
As biotechnology spreads, questions grow, too

BY: JEFF NESMITH

Cox Washington Bureau

If Mexican politicians are concerned about genetically modified corn,
Michael Hansen has an even more alarming possibility for them to
contemplate.

Hansen, a research associate with the Consumers Union, says a California
company wants to splice into corn the gene for an enzyme that kills human
sperm. The enzyme was found in certain women who are unable to conceive
because their immune systems attack sperm and kill it.

The goal would be to use corn to turn out huge, pharmaceutically pure
quantities of the enzyme for use in producing a male birth control drug,
Hansen says. He does not suggest that the seeds of male sterility will be
released into the wind by pollen from spermicidal corn. Yet, he says,
indications that foreign genetic material from the United States has
migrated into native Mexican corn through cross-pollination --- despite
efforts by the Mexican government to prevent it --- are evidence enough
that what can go wrong often does.

"All of these companies that are talking about using plants to produce human
drugs say they'll keep them separate from the environment and make certain
none of the pollen escapes into other plants," Hansen said, "but look what
happened in Mexico."

Hansen is a leader of a campaign to force U.S. grocery manufacturers to
apply disclosure labels to food products that contain genetically modified
organisms.

So far, he has been unsuccessful. The Food and Drug Administration has
ruled that since it has certified the inherent safety of bioengineered food
products, it has no grounds to require manufacturers to apply disclosure
labels that might "stigmatize" the food.

The agency has suggested voluntary labels on which companies that wish
to might declare something like "This product is not grown using
biotechnology."

Acreage expanding

However, some surveys have shown that up to half of products with that sort
of label do contain food with genetic modifications. Overall, the Grocery
Manufacturers of America estimates about 70 percent of grocery store food in
America may have been made with biotechnology crops.

Slightly less than half of the corn, cotton and soybeans grown in the United
States contain some type of foreign gene --- primarily a bacterial
transplant that makes them resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. This
allows farmers to use more of the herbicide to control weeds without harming
their crops. There are no restrictions on the sale of the herbicide.

Last year, American farmers planted about 35 million acres of bioengineered
soybeans and 25 million acres of bioengineered corn.

Labeling requirements and other restrictions have hindered the acceptance of
genetically modified crops overseas.

Yet, the acreage devoted to transgenic crops has grown dramatically.
According to figures provided by Monsanto, genetically modified organisms
were grown on approximately 4 million acres of cropland worldwide in 1996.
Four years later, the figure was more than 100 million acres.
Monsanto said farmers planting corn, cotton and soybeans "improved through
biotechnology" will be able to reduce annual pesticide use by 57 million
pounds between 2000 and 2009, due to new insect-resistant seed. And in 1998
alone, U.S. soybean growers saved more than $220 million on herbicides by
planting Roundup-resistant varieties, which lessened the use of other weed
killers, the company says.

Other defenders of the emerging technology say it will translate into
increased yields and reduced costs for farmers in poorer nations.
Still others say the appearance of foreign genes in Mexico's native corn
varieties or American fast-food taco shells is not a sign that human health
or the environment is in any danger.

"There has been extensive testing by several U.S. entities, and there is no
evidence anywhere that this is any more dangerous that what's already on the
market," said Robert S. Zeigler, a professor of plant pathology at Kansas
State University.

"Future products will have to be tested on a case-by-case basis," he said.

"The tests will become even stringent probably, and some of them won't pass.
But there is nothing inherent in overall technology that would lead us to
believe it is more risky than other technologies."

Loren Wassell, a spokesman for Monsanto, said genetically modified food
crops are subjected to unprecedented regulatory scrutiny before they are
released. Genetically modified seeds have to be approved separately by the
U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and the
Food and Drug Administration before they can be sold.

Legal issues up in air

Jeremy Rifkin, director of the Washington Foundation on Economic Trends and
a longtime critic of genetic engineering, helped launch an antitrust lawsuit
that accuses Monsanto of conspiring to use its genetically engineered crops
to gain control of the global food market.

He thinks pressures on the industry will lead to a "third generation"
approach to plant engineering.
Instead of transplanting foreign genes, like the sperm-killer, Rifkin
believes plant breeders will use genetic mapping techniques to improve and
accelerate the selection of powerful genetic traits already present in food
and fiber crops.

But Percy Schmeizer, a Saskatchewan, Canada, canola farmer, is not sure that
will do much to improve his legal problems.

Several years ago, Schmeizer's neighbor planted a variety of canola that
contained Monsanto's Roundup-resistant gene.

Schmeizer says some of the seed blew over to his 700-acre canola field and
spread, contaminating with foreign genes seed he had been saving since he
started producing the crop in 1947.

Moreover, Monsanto sued him, claiming he was violating its intellectual
property rights for growing a kind of rapeseed that contained its patented
gene for Roundup resistance.

Schmeizer said Monday that a provincial court had ruled for the company,
declaring that regardless of how the gene found its way onto his land,
Canadian patent law provides that he is violating patent rights by growing
it.

"My case has become a focal point for the whole world," he declared. "We're
appealing it, and I'm also suing them for ruining the canola seed that I've
spent a half a century developing."

ON THE WEB: Foundation on Economic Trends: www.biotechcentury.org Consumers
Union: www.consumersunion.org Monsanto Co.: www.monsanto.com