Seeds of Doubt: GE's Globe Trotting Genes

Seeds of Doubt: Globe-trotting genes

Welcome or not, modified strains pop up in crops near and far
By Tom Knudson and Edie Lau -- Bee Staff Writers
Published 2:15 am PDT Monday, June 7, 2004
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/9568700p-10492368c.html

Second of five parts

CAPULÁLPAM, Mexico -- Working the rutted rows of their hillside garden in
1997, Alberto Cortes and his wife, Olga Toro Maldonado, noticed something
unusual.

The maize was like steel. It shot up strong and thick. Bugs didn't hurt it.
Drought didn't wilt it. Growing alongside scrawny stalks of traditional
Mexican maize, the new variety was a bulked-up, botanical stranger - maize
on steroids.

But the biggest surprise came three years later, when a scientist from the
University of California showed up in the small Oaxacan village and analyzed
their maize in a makeshift laboratory.

The new variety, it turned out, was an outsider - a kind common on big
mechanized farms in "El Norte." And inside its big yellow kernels and
muscular stalks was the latest signature of industrial agriculture: genes
shaped not by nature but by technology.

Their maize was genetically engineered - altered to kill insects by
producing its own pesticide. And through the miracle of pollination, its
genes had leaped into their own centuries-old varieties.

"We don't want it," Maldonado said. "We don't know the consequences."

A decade after genetically modified crops first were planted broadly across
the United States - starting with some tomatoes developed in Davis - the
technology is working its magic even where it's not welcome.

Defying state, national and cultural boundaries, biotech crop genes are
showing up, uninvited, all over - from rural gardens in Mexico to organic
farms in Canada, even on barges of corn that's "GM-free" - not genetically
modified - floating down Midwestern rivers.

What this genetic mixing means for the environment and food supply is
uncertain. So far, no one is known to have fallen ill from eating a modified
crop. Nor have biotech genes caused ecological calamity, as conservation
groups predicted.

But biotechnology is young. Today, as companies race to develop new forms of
wizardry - from lawns resistant to weedkiller to rice that produces medicine
- the globetrotting nature of biotech genes is sowing widespread unease.

"This is Pandora's Box," said Marion Nestle, former chair of the Department
of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University. "It's
out of the box. Now everybody has to deal with it."

Biological hobos

Moving wherever chance takes them, engineered crop genes are biological
hobos. Bound up in pollen, they ride the wind, catch rides from insects.
Bundled inside seeds, their horizons expand. Trucks haul them down dusty
gravel roads. Ships filled with U.S. food aid carry them to hungry nations.
But nothing sets them free like human error. No matter the kind of mishap -
a spilled bag of grain, a mislabeled packet of seed - an accident is an
opportunity. From 1996 to 2003, scientists at the University of California,
Davis, sent shipments of biotech tomato seeds, by mistake, through the mail.
Those seeds landed in Europe, Asia and Africa.

"The bottom line is: Most crops mate with wild relatives somewhere in the
world," said Norman Ellstrand, a professor of genetics at the University of
California, Riverside.

"This means crop genes are getting into wild populations. Would we expect
(biotech) genes to be any different? No."

Will the next generation of engineered genes leapfrog into the wild? If the
industry succeeds in its plan to grow drugs in edible crops, could it
accidentally contaminate ingredients headed for grocery store shelves?

Scientists simply don't know, because more money is spent developing new
products than studying their environmental impacts - a process known as risk
assessment.

"It's sad we don't have more data," said Allison Snow, a professor of
ecology at Ohio State University. "There isn't a lot of money, and there
isn't a big community working on it. Companies don't really pay for research
that's not in their own interest.

"You don't make money on risk assessment," Snow said. "And you do make money
on biotechnology."

For its part, the biotechnology industry says genetic engineering poses
little or no threat to nature or nonbiotech crops. "Nobody has yet
identified any risk or substantial harm that is specific to crops or foods
derived from biotechnology," said Val Giddings, vice president of the
Biotechnology Industry Organization, a Washington, D.C., lobbying and trade
group.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is investing more money in biotech
research, but many scientists say it's still not enough.

Last year, it spent nearly $180 million on biotechnology research and
development. But less than 2 percent - $3.4 million - was routed to the
agency's Biotechnology Risk Assessment Grants Program to study environmental
and food-safety impacts.

Much of the data the government does have comes from corporations seeking
approval to market their genetically engineered crops. Michelle Marvier, an
assistant professor of biology at Santa Clara University, has evaluated some
of that data and calls it superficial and scientifically unsound.

For one thing, she found, studies don't last long enough. Studies involving
earthworms typically lasted two weeks, but earthworms can live about a year
in nature, and more than four in the laboratory.

For another, industry tests to prove safety typically included just three or
four samples per test.

"What if a new drug were tested on only four people and compared to another
four people given a placebo?" Marvier asked. "No one would believe the claim
of 'no significant side effects' if it were based on such a flimsy drug
trial."

"I would not let my undergraduate students turn in this kind of work," she
added. "They know better."

Lisa Dry, communications director for the Biotechnology Industry
Organization, disagrees. She said it's in a company's self-interest to
minimize all possible risks.

"Anybody who's marketing a new product of course wants to make sure it's
safe and effective," Dry said. "Nobody wants to market a product that has a
negative impact on the environment."

Ecological promise

So far, California remains less vulnerable to gene pollution because corn
and soybeans, the two major biotech crops, aren't widely grown here. But
biotechnology is not standing still.

Today, about 110 new engineered crop varieties, from a new kind of seedless
watermelon to insect-resistant tomatoes, are being tested in California
fields. Such brave new crops offer ecological promise - farmers could spray
fewer pesticides, for example - but they also pose special challenges.

A report prepared for the California Department of Food and Agriculture in
2002 said the consequences of biotechnology may take years to show up. "The
benefits and risks ... have hardly been examined," the report said.

There's one quick way to see what biotechnology could bring to California:
Visit the places it is booming.

Travel through the prairies of Saskatchewan and you find that runaway
biotech genes are a top environmental problem for farmers. Along gravel
roads, the yellow paintbrush-like flowers of genetically modified canola
sprout where they're not wanted: in fields of organic flax, organic canola
and other crops.

"Listen, it's all over the country here," said Arnold Taylor, a farmer south
of Saskatoon. Taylor has given up growing organic canola because it is so
easily tainted with biotech genes. "It's in the gardens. It's in the towns.
It's on the roadsides. This whole countryside is contaminated."

Swing through western Illinois, where StarLink feed corn engineered to make
its own pesticide - pulled off the market four years ago after it appeared
in taco shells - still shows up at harvest time, taking money out of
people's pockets.

Phil Thornton, an Illinois grain elevator manager, is among those
shortchanged. Last fall, DNA tests detected StarLink on one of his company's
barges, a mix-up that cost him $1,000 when the corn had to be sold as animal
feed because StarLink is not approved for human consumption.

"We're still keeping an eye open for it," he said. "It could very well still
be out in the country."

Or catch a flight to Mexico, where maize first was domesticated some 6,500
years ago, where villagers still line up each day outside neighborhood mills
with maize to be ground into "masa" - dough for tortillas. Mexico is the
motherland of maize, the cradle of corn. Here, the mysterious appearance of
a foreign crop gene is more than just an inconvenience. It is a cultural
insult.

"These genes are killing our heritage," said Olga Maldonado, the rural
farmer.

Diversity as insurance

When the genes were found, Mexico's environmental ministry called it the
"world's worst case" of genetic crop pollution. Today no one is certain how
far the genes have spread; researchers at Mexico's national university,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, are still trying to figure it out.

Paul Gepts, a professor of agronomy and plant genetics at the University of
California, Davis, also is on the trail.

"Because there is wild maize in Mexico, this brings to the fore a series of
new ecological issues," Gepts said.

Is the genetic diversity of Mexican maize - a biological insurance policy
against pests and disease - in danger? Is the grasslike ancestral parent of
maize - teosinte - at risk?

Two years ago, Gepts received a $25,000 grant to look for answers. But when
he asked three biotechnology companies for the seed samples he needed for
his research, the trail went cold.

Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. in Des Moines, Iowa, said no. Syngenta,
of Switzerland, and St. Louis' Monsanto Co. also turned him down. "I was not
surprised," Gepts said. "If you want to study the effects of biotechnology,
you come up against a wall."

Pioneer spokesman Doyle Karr said the seed sample "wasn't ours to give away.
It was licensed from Monsanto."

Monsanto spokesman Bryan Hurley said the company is cooperating with an
environmental commission, under the North American Free Trade Agreement,
which also is examining gene-flow issues south of the border - with some
assistance from Gepts.

"Given that the (commission's) work is still outstanding, we believed it was
premature to support related work," Hurley said.

Gepts sighed. "That's ridiculous," he said. "The commission is not involved
in experimental work. It is a purely bibliographic review. Monsanto is using
the commission as an excuse not to provide seeds. I don't think that's
right."

"This was a major hindrance," he added. "But I worked around it. I bought a
bag of transgenic corn, a 50-pound bag - way more than I needed."

Study stymied

Today, Gepts' research continues. But other scientists have been stifled by
industry resistance. It killed Allison Snow's work on sunflowers.
For five years at a test plot in Nebraska, Ohio State professor Snow had
painstakingly monitored the flow of genes from genetically engineered
sunflowers to wild relatives - and found the wild kin were capitalizing on
the exchange. They were producing more seeds, perhaps evolving into
"super-weeds."

But as she prepared to begin a new phase of research in 2002, Pioneer
Hi-Bred International and Dow Chemical Co., which had funded her work, put a
stop to it, saying they owned the genes.

"We had to destroy all of our seeds," Snow said. "We were so disappointed.
No one had ever studied these questions before. We thought, just for the
sake of science and openness, it would be good to explore this further."

Pioneer had other priorities. "We were not going to bring (the modified
sunflower) to market," said company spokesman Karr. "There was no reason to
take the fitness study further."

Snow sees the issue differently. "This makes it really hard to get research
done when regulatory agencies need it," she said. "Public scientists can't
get access to anything until it's already out in the environment. That's the
Catch-22."

In January, a prestigious National Academy of Sciences panel on
biotechnology sounded similar concerns, saying "the current lack of quality
data and science" is a major threat to agriculture and the environment.

Calling for more "non-market-driven, publicly funded research," the panel
ticked off a scientific wish list. "More data are needed on the nature of
potential ecological effects," it stated, adding that legal, ethical and
social matters should be examined, too, including studies on the behavioral
patterns of farmers and ways to reduce human error.

Harvest mistakes

There's no better laboratory for such inquiry than the American Midwest.
This huge region - reaching from Ohio to Nebraska, North Dakota to Missouri
- is both a pantry for the planet and a biotechnology profit center. The two
biggest genetically engineered crops - Bt corn, which makes its own
pesticide, and herbicide-resistant soybeans - are grown here in abundance.

And there's no better time to see how that pans out than the fall. Harvest
in the heartland is a time of hope and hurry, a haze of 18-hour days, a
struggle with unkind weather and unreliable equipment. Harvest is when genes
break free.

Few people are more familiar with the problem than Thornton, the grain
elevator manager. One crisp morning last fall, he waited near a rumbling
conveyor belt for the crush of trucks to arrive from the fields. A stream of
soybeans whooshed into a red-roofed barge on the Illinois River, ready for a
trip to New Orleans and beyond.

The 400 or so farmers who haul corn and soybeans to Thornton's elevator grow
both conventional and biotech varieties. Thornton's job is to keep them
separate. The process begins with a simple question.

As trucks heaped high with grain rumble onto a scale, Thornton asks: "What
are you growing?"

When the answer is conventional grain, drivers are directed to a shiny new
silo along the river. The genetically modified stuff is held in a
traditional concrete silo a few yards away. "It really comes down to a lot
of trust, to tell you the truth," Thornton said.

But trust has its limits, especially at harvest. Farmers get tired and
cranky. Mistakes happen. "This time of year, it's pretty easy to forget
details," said Illinois farmer Ron Fitchhorn, who finds himself hustling
every fall when his 2,000 acres of soybeans and corn - biotech and
conventional - are ready for harvest.

Fearing a mix-up, Thornton also tests his grain for traces of genetic
modification. But even that is not enough. A state inspector double-checks,
taking samples, by machine, every 75 seconds as the streams of grain cascade
onto the awaiting barges.

"Life was a lot easier before," Thornton said. "Corn was corn."

For Thornton, the mysterious fingerprint of StarLink corn on one of his
grain shipments headed to Japan last fall was a reminder of biotechnology's
bleakest hour.

Mysterious spread

Approved for livestock but not people, StarLink caused an uproar when it was
found in taco shells and dozens of other products in 2000. Its manufacturer,
Aventis, pulled it out of the market, but a wave of product recalls
eventually cost food companies up to $1 billion.

How it spread remains a mystery. "There are all kinds of ways StarLink could
have moved into other corn supplies," said Ellstrand, the UC Riverside
geneticist. "It could have been by cross-pollination, by seed mixing in farm
machinery."

Across the Midwest, elaborate systems now are in place to prevent
contamination incidents. They include a dramatic upswing in testing and
redesigned grain-storage facilities, along with education. The Illinois Corn
Growers Association distributes a booklet on proper grain handling called,
"Know Before You Grow - Know Where To Go."

But could a StarLink-style disaster happen again?

Count on it, said lawyer Ronald Osman, who represented farmers whose grain
was tainted by StarLink corn. "It's just a matter of time. There is no way
anyone can keep it all separate," Osman said. The case brought a judgment of
$110 million total for about 75,000 U.S. farmers.

Even when farmers and grain handlers are meticulous, engineered genes still
escape. They have a key accomplice, one that laughs at even elaborate
containment schemes: nature.

Stray canola

On the wind-whipped plains of Saskatchewan, Arnold Taylor - the canola
farmer - said it's impossible to contain anything. A few springs back, a
storm front swept across the region, tugging and tearing at whatever lay in
its path. "It rained GM canola all over the country," Taylor said. "We think
we've got a science-based world - and it's not. Nature bats last."

Last summer, Saskatchewan organic farmer Pat Neville was eating dinner when
two of his sons, Cale and Andrew, burst through the door. "We've got canola,
dad!" the teens shouted.

Neville winced and headed for the door. Since he bought the farm in 1997, he
had never planted canola. His specialty was organic seeds, including flax
and oats. He prided himself on their purity.

After learning the stray canola was genetically modified and had probably
blown in from a neighbor's field, Neville took action: He asked Monsanto -
which makes the modified canola seed - to remove it.

"They asked if I was growing without a permit," Neville said. "I said 'You
bet I am growing without a permit; and I don't want it.' "

In all, 57 acres were contaminated. Monsanto sent out a crew with garbage
bags, which pulled out the genetically modified canola by hand. It took
three trips.

Canola farmer Taylor took a different course. He rallied farmers into a
class-action lawsuit, claiming biotech contamination is making organic
farming impossible. The case, still pending, says that in Saskatchewan: "As
a result of widespread contamination by GM canola, few, if any, certified
organic grain farmers are now growing canola. The crop has been lost."

Such courthouse action is becoming more common across the heartland, raising
a tantalizing legal question - one that is pitting giant companies against
small farmers and farmer against farmer, too.

"Who's responsible if somebody's nontransgenic crop gets inadvertently
contaminated with transgenes?" said Robert Goodman, a professor of plant
pathology at the University of Wisconsin. "The law will have its day with
that decision."

Goodman, a former director of research at Calgene Inc., the Davis
biotechnology firm now owned by Monsanto, added his opinion. "As a
scientist," he said, "it seems to me the person responsible is the one who's
growing the transgenes, because they should be controlling them."

Seeds from government

Tracking truant genes to their origin can be difficult, though. Scientists
still scratch their heads about the discovery of engineered corn four years
ago in Mexico - a country where the planting of genetically modified corn is
banned.

A trip to the rustic town in Oaxaca, where the genes first turned up, helps
unravel the mystery. Visit with Alberto Cortes, the Capulálpam farmer, and
he will tell you who planted the mysterious seed: He and his neighbors did.

And he will tell you where they bought it: at the government food store.
That store, known as Diconsa, is one of about 22,000 across Mexico that sell
food to the rural poor.

The genetically engineered corn that sprouted like steel in Cortes' 2-acre
plot was most likely American - bought by the Mexican government and shipped
south to feed hungry people through the Diconsa outlets. In 2001, Mexico's
National Institute of Ecology found a third of Diconsa's corn was
genetically engineered.

As Mexican government food aid, the corn was meant to be sold at a discount
and eaten. Because most corn kernels look alike, Cortes and his wife had no
way of knowing they were buying biotech corn.

Olga remembers someone telling them the corn wouldn't grow well in Oaxaca's
cool climate and mountainous terrain. They took it as a challenge. "Let's
buy it," Alberto urged Olga. "Let's farm it."

Today, in the void of definitive scientific information, some organizations
claim the foreign genes have spread to eight Mexican states. In
maize-growing rural communities, fear and frustration about genetic
pollution are commonplace.

"I tell people: 'Watch out for the transgenics,' " said Pedro Aarón Ramírez,
manager of the government food store in Capulálpam. " 'Don't even think
about growing it.' "

Most scientists, though, say the biodiversity of Mexican maize is not in
danger.

"The local varieties are going to be fine," said Snow, the Ohio State
professor, who attended a gene-flow conference last fall in Mexico City.
"What I worry about is the future. There's nothing out there now that is
very dangerous or scary. It just has a lot of potential to go that way.

"Is the technology moving faster than our ability to evaluate it? That's
what I worry about."

Biotech terms

Biotechnology: Any technology involving living cells or organisms. In
general use, and in this series, it refers to gene-splicing technology.
Synonyms: bioengineering, genetic engineering (GE) and genetic modification
(GM).

Bt: Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium that produces toxins lethal to
certain insects but is considered safe for humans and other mammals. When
the bacterial gene responsible for the toxin is put into crops, the plants
make their own pesticide.

Clone: Genetically engineered replica of a DNA sequence. "Cloning a gene"
means isolating and making copies of a gene, typically using engineered
bacteria. (The more common use of "clone" means an organism derived from the
DNA of a single "parent.")

Gene: A DNA segment that is the basic unit of heredity, containing
instructions that cells need to make proteins, the workhorse of cell
activity.

Genetically modified organism (GMO): An inexact term that refers to a life
form changed through genetic engineering.

Genome: All the genetic information in an organism.

Organic foods: As defined by the U.S. government, organic animal products
come from livestock that are not given antibiotics or growth hormones, while
organic crops are grown without genetic engineering, ionizing radiation,
synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge or most conventional pesticides.

Processed foods: Foods altered from their raw state, typically resulting in
changes in appearance, culinary characteristics, nutritional value, shelf
life and structure. Examples: canned goods, cereals or crackers.

Roundup: Trade name for herbicide glyphosate made by Monsanto. Kills plants
by inhibiting an enzyme made in plants but not in mammals, fish, birds or
reptiles. Crops are "Roundup Ready" if they are genetically engineered to
survive exposure to Roundup.

Transgene: Genetic material transferred from one organism to another through
genetic engineering.