RE: [pf] Risks, imposed or chosen

by David A

18 December 2000 01:39 UTC

tully wrote:
> If this is really the case, that separation is next to 
> impossible, then I would think that this argues more for the 
> outlawing of gm production than it does for not labelling.  Again, 
> Starlink as case in point.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56807-2000Nov25.html

Tacogate: There Is Barely A Kernel of Truth
  
By Thomas Hoban
Washington Post
Sunday, November 26, 2000; Page B02

It's been amazing to watch the chain of events unfolding since StarLink, 
a genetically modified variety of corn used in animal feed but not yet 
approved for human consumption, was found in American-made taco shells. 
Domestically, thousands of the shells have been stripped from store 
shelves in a recall that was widened last week to include more than 1.4 
million pounds of corn flour and other baking ingredients. Overseas, the 
Japanese government has reported with alarm that the corn has been found 
in imported American products.

With all the hue and cry, you'd think a dangerous, if not deadly, 
ingredient had been introduced into the U.S. and international food 
supply. But what's the startling discovery the alarm-raisers have made? 
Hold onto your seats, folks: Our corn, it seems, has been contaminated 
by--corn!

For all its ominous overtones, the StarLink incident has very little to 
do with science and safety. Instead, it's the latest skirmish in an 
ongoing conflict between environmental groups and the biotechnology 
industry. Mediated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which 
has questionable credentials for regulating food safety, it has 
frightened consumers, placed undue burdens on farmers and caused a 
needless, and ultimately irresponsible, uproar.

StarLink, developed by the French-based drug company Aventis, is really 
no different from other corn, except for the addition of a gene that 
produces an insect-fighting protein. Corn had already been dramatically 
modified from the "natural" plant originally found in the wild. Those 
ancient ears of corn were the size of your little finger and looked more 
like grass than modern yellow corn. Over the ages, crossbreeding and, 
more recently, forced mutation, has produced the ear of corn we eat 
today. StarLink, with its one gene added to the approximately 60,000 in 
this modern ear, represents a very modest, precise change by comparison.

StarLink has not been approved for human consumption because of concern 
that its new protein may cause human allergies. Food allergy specialists 
have questioned this, pointing out that it's virtually impossible for 
anyone to have an existing allergy to a protein that would be completely 
new to the human diet, and that the corn, planted on only 1 percent of 
U.S. corn acreage, would be present in food products at extremely low 
levels. Steve Taylor, head of the University of Nebraska's department of 
food science and technology and a leading expert on food allergens, 
believes "there is virtually no risk associated with the ingestion of 
StarLink corn in this situation."

But fear of allergenicity is the reason the EPA has limited StarLink to 
use as animal feed. It has become the crux of the battle over StarLink, 
and the justification for the scare campaign that led to the recent 
product recalls. Yet it's unclear why the EPA, rather than the Food and 
Drug Administration, is calling the shots on StarLink's allergy-causing 
potential.

The original discovery of StarLink corn in taco shells produced by Kraft 
Foods was no accident. It was the result of a fishing expedition by a 
coalition of environmental groups, led by Greenpeace and Friends of the 
Earth, that aim to discredit the regulatory system and damage consumer 
confidence in the biotech industry. These groups, which oppose most 
modern agricultural methods, hired a testing company to analyze more 
than two dozen processed foods specifically for traces of StarLink. The 
taco shells were the only place where they found what they were looking 
for.

These protest groups have been waging an aggressive fear campaign 
against multinational biotechnology companies for years--first in 
Europe, now in North America. Their main strategy for preventing 
biotechnology from reaching the market is to attack the food industry. 
They call for consumer boycotts of food companies and supermarkets. But 
these rarely materialize because, as research shows, most Americans 
support new developments in science and technology.

I've studied the social impact of biotechnology for more than a decade. 
My own research and that of others has documented that between 
two-thirds and three-quarters of U.S. consumers support agricultural 
biotechnology and welcome its benefits, especially the reduced use of 
pesticides. This support was still evident in a survey I conducted right 
after the StarLink news broke. In it, 67 percent of consumers said they 
would continue to consume biotech products that had been engineered to 
resist insects, and only 3 percent said biotechnology was their most 
serious concern about food safety.

It's fair to say that Aventis should not have proceeded to market its 
corn without being sure it could be kept separate from approved 
varieties. This is, in fact, extremely difficult to guarantee. Our 
modern farm and food system is designed to be efficient and to keep food 
costs low, not to keep individual varieties of crops strictly 
segregated. A couple of years ago, in fact, Aventis was reportedly 
warned not to make a biotech soybean commercially available because 
farmers knew it would be impossible to keep it out of the export market, 
for which it had not been approved.

But the company clearly wanted to establish a presence in the fiercely 
competitive market for agricultural biotechnology. Other companies have 
already received full approvals for biotech seeds, including corn not 
very different from StarLink, that are being widely used by North 
American farmers.

Perhaps the most troublesome and confusing aspect of the controversy is 
the government role. Like many others involved in biotechnology, I was 
concerned to learn that it was the EPA, not the FDA, that granted 
StarLink partial approval while expressing doubts about its allergenic 
potential. The agency best equipped to deal with food allergens is 
clearly the FDA, which has a long track record in the area. Yet the EPA 
asserted regulatory control under the Food Quality Protection Act of 
1996, which expanded EPA's authority over pesticides. Because StarLink 
resists insects, the agency claimed jurisdiction with an interesting 
interpretation--treating a plant not as a plant, but as a pesticide.

The EPA may hope to be a big player in the biotech arena, but most 
experts agree it should not be regulating food safety. The EPA has 
plenty to do regulating the ecological impact of bioengineered plants, 
which is the greatest biotechnology-related concern of most scientists. 
It should concentrate its efforts on that and resist power grabs of the 
StarLink variety. Appropriately, the agency has recently come under 
increasing criticism from the food, agriculture and scientific 
communities for its handling of the StarLink episode and for introducing 
interagency politics into the issue.

Biotechnology represents a powerful set of tools that will have a 
significant impact on society over the next century. New biotechnology 
products provide important benefits, including reduced use of chemical
pesticides and enhanced vitamin and iron content that will help prevent 
childhood blindness and other problems in developing countries.

Because it is so powerful, however, society should be able to control 
this new technology. Biotech crops do undergo extensive safety and 
nutrition testing, and biotechnology has been shown to be as safe or 
safer than traditional breeding practices, which have been used for 
decades without any formal testing or regulation. In an interview last 
January, FDA Commissioner Jane Henney said her agency has seen "no 
evidence that the bioengineered foods now on the market pose any human 
health concerns or are in any way less safe than crops produced through 
traditional breeding."

The main lesson of StarLink is that no new agricultural product should 
be made commercially available until it has received approval for human 
consumption. All parties now agree to this, so there's hope we won't see 
this kind of problem again. But while companies are expected to be 
responsible, the activist groups that oppose them and the government 
agencies that regulate them also need to act responsibly. It's not 
reasonable to demand "zero risk" from any technology, nor to hold 
biotechnology to unreasonably high standards.

We must also be careful not to impose higher costs on all consumers. 
Opponents who call for mandatory labeling of all foods with biotech 
ingredients do so mainly as a means of launching a further attack on the 
industry. The FDA already requires nutritional and health labeling, and 
research has shown that a simple statement that a food "contains 
genetically modified ingredients" would serve chiefly to confuse and 
alarm consumers.

The casualties in the war between the biotechnology industry and its 
opponents are farmers, food companies and consumers. Most of us have 
enough daily concerns without being frightened into thinking the food 
we're eating is dangerous. Food companies and farmers face serious 
threats from low profit margins, industry consolidation and global 
competition. With all this to worry about, a scare like StarLink is the 
last thing that any of us needs.

Thomas Hoban, a professor of food science and sociology at North 
Carolina State University, chairs a nationwide university task force on 
educating consumers about biotechnology.
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