Photo Credit: Thomas Bethge/ Shutterstock.com
June 6, 2013
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Of the four major crops grown in the U.S., genetically engineered
(GE) seeds are available for three: corn, soybeans and alfalfa. But a
farmer growing the fourth major crop, wheat, could not (legally) plant
GE seeds even if he wanted to. The biotech giant Monsanto did develop a
variety of GE wheat years ago, but never sold it commercially because
the wheat industry felt its customers did not want it.
In theory, the last of this GE wheat ever
planted in Oregon,
where Monsanto carried out some of its field trials, was in 2001. But
an Oregon farmer just discovered that same wheat growing in his field
this year.
The discovery of the unauthorized wheat has thrown the industry into chaos. Japan and South Korea
suspended their wheat imports from the Pacific Northwest. A Kansas farmer is
suing Monsanto
for harming the entire wheat industry with its negligence. What no one
can explain is how the GE wheat got into the farmer's field – although
Monsanto assures us that this is an “isolated event.”
But is it?
The
discovery of genetically engineered wheat in Oregon poses an important
question: Can humans control and contain genetically engineered crops?
Jack
Heinemann, a professor of molecular biology at the University of
Canterbury in New Zealand and the director of the Center for Integrated
Research in Biosafety, says we can’t. “I think there is a way for humans
to determine if [genetically engineered crops] are safe enough to be
used, which is different from saying that they can be contained,” he
says. “There’s no evidence that they can be contained, and there is
considerable evidence that we cannot contain them.”
With that, he lists several famous incidents of GE crops popping up where they are not supposed to, like the incident with
Liberty Link Rice, a GE rice variety that showed up in rice exported to France in 2006 even though it was never commercialized. Or there’s the
StarLink Corn fiasco,
when a type of GE corn unapproved for human consumption was found in
Taco Bell taco shells. And genes from rogue GE corn have even reached
the birthplace of corn:
Mexico.
Heinemann
is familiar with Monsanto’s escaped GE wheat. Anticipating it would
commercialize the GE wheat within a few years, Monsanto had applied to
the governments of Australia and New Zealand to approve it in their
countries back in 2004. Heinemann worked on a risk assessment for the
wheat in New Zealand, until Monsanto withdrew the application. Monsanto
ended field trials for the wheat in 2005, and no safety determination
was ever made on the wheat.
Here in the U.S., the
FDA concluded
that Monsanto concluded its GE wheat was safe. Yes, you read that
right. (According to the FDA “It is Monsanto's continued responsibility
to ensure that foods marketed by the firm are safe, wholesome, and in
compliance with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.”) But
now that the escaped wheat has come to light,
Monsanto assures us
that “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) confirmed the food
and feed safety of Roundup Ready wheat more than a decade ago.”
Clearly, a more honest statement would be “We told the FDA that our wheat was safe and they believed us.”
After
the field trials for the GE wheat ended, “This thing should have gone
away,” says Heinemann. “For it to appear in Oregon years after
[Monsanto] pulled it from development is concerning. Because it says we
don’t know how many field trials – and there have been thousands of
field trials of genetically modified crops that have never come to
market – that might be circulating in the food supply.” Nor do we know
if they are safe.
Before farmers can plant any GE crop, the crops
undergo years of field trials. If the field trials are successful and
the company wishes to go forward, it applies for deregulation –
legalization – of its crop. The U.S. government has deregulated a little
over 100 varieties of genetically engineered crops. And only a fraction
of those are actually grown commercially and sold into our food supply.
But these 100 or so deregulated crops represent only a fraction of the
genetically engineered crops that are field-tested.
Following the
end of field trials, unless a GE crop is destined for commercialization,
it is supposed to go away. If Monsanto had intended to take its GE
wheat to market, it would have had to develop a test kit to test for the
presence of its genes in wheat, and the government would have assessed
its impact on the environment and the risk that the wheat could become a
“plant pest.” The European Union even requires companies to develop a
monitoring plan for crops that are grown commercially. But when a
company decides to call it quits on a crop it is field-testing, none of
these steps are taken. The crop, essentially, disappears.
Heinemann
is worried about the presence of these
field-tested-but-never-commercialized GE crops in our food supply. As
far back as 2002, a
study
from the Canadian province of Saskatchewan reported, “Industry sources
estimate that in 2000 in the Saskatchewan region of Canada alone, more
than 300,000 acres of wheat were planted with unregistered or obsolete
plant varieties. Exports by volume are composed of some varieties that
have not been, or are no longer, approved for release in Canada.
Regionally across western Canada, wheat exports contain 0.6-2.4% of
these unregistered or obsolete varieties.”
“Who is monitoring the
safety of these products, or the unanticipated crosses that they may
make during their long period of recycling in the agroecosystem?”
Heinemann asks.
The GE wheat was easy to find because it was
engineered to be “Roundup Ready.” That is, it can survive being sprayed
with Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup. In fact, the farmer discovered it
because he sprayed it with Roundup and it did not die.
“In the
case of something like Roundup Ready, the trait is an obvious one that
we can detect because we can use a herbicide on it to see it,” says
Heinemann. “But in the case of pharma crops [engineered to produce
pharmaceuticals] or crops that have been genetically engineered to
produce an industrial compound that could be toxic or a crop that was
designed to be nutritionally altered, those products are not obvious and
you can't detect them and probably would not be obvious until they were
causing harm."
Elaborating on his concerns about pharma crops, he quotes a 2007 article in
Nature, calling it prophetic. It reads:
“Since
1991, the USDA has approved nearly 400 field tests of crops that
produce pharmaceutical and industrial compounds, leaving many concerned
that future escapes could have severe consequences for human health. A
close call came in 2002, when stalks of corn designed to produce a pig
vaccine were found mixed with $2.7-million worth of Nebraska soya beans
destined for human consumption. Prodigene, the corn's maker, was fined
$250,000 and forced to buy and destroy the soya beans."
Can you believe we were that close to having corn laced with a pig vaccine in our food supply?
Heinemann
feels that “a variety that produced a pharmaceutical or industrial
compound, or had an alteration to its nutritional qualities that were of
concern to some people, would likely never be detected prior to causing
harm. And if they were to cause harm, the diagnoses of the cause would
likely remain a mystery because of how difficult it would be to both
detect the genetically engineered crop and then link it with the
effect.”
As history has shown, laws cannot contain GE crops. “They
can only punish people for having failed to follow the law,” Heinemann
says. “And you can't punish a wheat plant or a corn plant, so the laws
don't necessarily have a biological relevance.”
What should we do
about the potential for escaped, undetected GE crops? Practically
speaking, Heinemann encourages concerned citizens to continue focusing
on efforts to require labeling of genetically engineered crops. That
won’t solve the problem of containing GE crops grown in field tests, but
Heinemann is a pragmatist. “I'm not trying to defend these field
trials. But if the community is not focused on one big important
project, nothing get accomplished.”
However, in a perfect world,
he would recommend suspending field trials “until companies and
governments revise their biosafety laws.” The laws, he feels, “are not
sufficiently transparent and the risk assessments are not sufficiently
robust to achieve the kinds of solutions that have been claimed by the
regulators.”
In other words, unless the laws are improved, we’ll continue finding – or not finding – unapproved GE crops in our food supply.
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