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Processors: edible crops need protection (Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002 -- CropChoice news) --
Atlanta Journal and Constitution: Washington - Genetically engineered crops must not be used to grow
pharmaceuticals and other products unless there will be absolutely no
contamination of the food supply, grocery manufacturers said Tuesday.
"We live in a world of zero tolerance," declared Rhona Applebaum,
executive vice president of the National Food Processors Association.
"Perception is reality on the part of consumers. If you cannot confine
these crops to the extent that it cannot get into food, then you should
not use these crops." Insistence on a zero tolerance policy by the
powerful grocery industry demonstrated the complicated tangle of interests
at play in the issue of how much freedom pharmaceutical manufacturers,
biotechnology companies and others will be given in using genetic
manipulation in producing nonfood products on the farm.
It also is another setback for the biotechnology companies, which have
been on the defensive since last month, when 500,000 bushels of soybeans
were destroyed in Nebraska, allegedly contaminated with an artificial gene
that had been used to produce an unidentified drug.
Corn contain ing the gene had been provided to an Iowa farmer by
ProdiGene, a College Station, Texas, bioengineering firm. After growing
the experimental crop on a small plot last year, the farmer rotated the
plot to soybeans. But some of the corn also sprouted this year, and stalks
were inadvertently mixed with the harvested beans.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which quarantined, then destroyed the
contaminated soybeans, refuses to say what product had been growing in the
engineered corn. There are reports that it was a protein to be used to
treat or vaccinate for diarrhea, either in humans or hogs.
ProdiGene has agreed to pay a $250,000 fine and as much as $3 million for
the soybeans. Appearing with Applebaum and others in a forum to debate
whether "pharming" can be done safely, a representative of the
Biotechnology Industry Organization said ProdiGene had violated clear
rules and that the industry was eager to develop additional procedures to
protect food from contamination.
The BIO official, Michael J. Phillips, disagreed with recommendations that
only nonfood plants be approved for use in producing pharmaceuticals or
industrial materials, such as plastics. Aside from tobacco, very few
nonfood crops have been even tested as possible hosts for genetically
engineered industrial and pharmaceutical products, industry officials
said.
Corn reportedly is used 70 percent of the time when farm plants are
bioengineered to produce nonfood substances. He said that "from a
scientific perspective, corn is a miracle crop for biotechnology."
But Allison Snow, a biology professor at Ohio State University, said it is
not practical to try to prevent escape of foreign genes from engineered
food crops grown on a commercial scale. "I recommend that we separate the
food crops from the pharmaceutical crops," she said, "and do not use the
same species for both."
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