Embattled Biotech Industry Seeks to Bring Non-Food GMOs to Market

The Guardian (London) - Final Edition
May 5, 2004

Against the Grain: Consumers don't want to eat GM products, so researchers
are looking for non food ways to use the crops. But cottons, golf courses
and plastics aren't safe either, warns Sue Mayer

BY: Sue Mayer

The biotechnology industry needs to find other uses for its GM crops -uses
which it hopes won't upset the public. Billions of dollars have been
invested in developing crops, and intellectual property rights have been put
in place that should allow the profits to roll in, but the resistance of
people in Europe and many other parts of the world has upset the industrial
dream of a GM future.

Prime targets for GM are the so-called "non-food" uses: grasses, flowers,
trees, cotton, and a range of different crops being modified to provide the
raw materials for the industrial production of biofuels, oils, starches and
plastics.

So, if you don't have to eat them, are there any real reasons to worry? In a
word, plenty. Non-food uses are likely to bring in contamination of non-GM
crops and nature by the back door. This much is clear if you consider what
may be on the market soon.

Perhaps the most alarming development is GM herbicide-tolerant amenity
grasses. Particularly in the US, there is a search for the perfect lawn -
one which is low-maintenance, weed-free, uniform and that can survive
stressful environments, such as prolonged periods of drought. Monsanto, in
partnership with Scotts, a lawn and garden products company, is seeking to
commercialise a GM herbicide tolerant creeping bent grass in the US. The
original application was withdrawn, but a decision on a new application,
filed in 2003, is expected shortly. Experimental GM golf courses have
already been planted.

The problem is that grasses are difficult to contain. They are freely
wind-pollinating, perennial and often reproduce via underground shoots.
Grasses spread internationally on wool, and in lawn and bird seed mixes, so
attempts to isolate GM grasses will probably prove futile over time. Golf
courses and gardens are often close to natural habitats and farmland.

No one, it seems, has considered the international implications of this
development. Britain has worried about GM forage grasses for animals, but
not amenity grasses. GM herbicide-tolerant grasses could pose weed problems
for farmers and lawn-keepers alike, as well as having a very real potential
to establish themselves as an alien invader.

Trees, while less advanced commercially, pose similar kinds of problems in
terms of international contamination, and herbicide tolerance is another
favourite of GM tree producers. It makes economic sense for the owners of
the genes to use them as widely as possible, which is why Monsanto also has
a toe in the GM tree water.

But there are also more familiar GM crops looking for a new role in life.
The interest in biofuels to replace fossil fuels has led to the suggestion
that GM herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape and sugar beet could both be used
improve production efficiency. This would open a new market for crops that
have been rejected for food use. However, the contamination threat to non-GM
food crops will be very real, especially with oilseed rape. And both oilseed
rape and sugar beet have wild relatives in Britain with which they can
hybridise.

Rather unsuccessful attempts have been made to turn oilseed rape and other
oil crops into producers of specialist oils and plastics for industrial
uses. The idea is that a particular oil produced by plants such as jojoba
and coriander could be produced more efficiently in a domesticated crop.
However, problems have arisen because producing the fatty acids that make up
oil is much more complex than was once thought.

Fatty acids have at least three roles in plants - as a constituent of
membranes, in cell signalling, and for energy storage. Unfortunately these
are not controlled by separate pathways, and when novel fatty acid synthesis
has been induced by GM it has not been possible to restrict the presence of
the acid to the seed storage sites. There has, for example, been leakage,
with the new fatty acid being found in cell membranes, where it can be
destabilising and can adversely affect their function.

Another approach could be to make efforts to improve agronomic performance
of plants like jojoba or evening primrose, but this is patentable and so is
not a profitable avenue for the biotech industry to explore.

Producing plastics has been similarly problematic, with adverse effects on
growth being common. All GM approaches are dogged by yields that are not
economically viable. And the prospect of having industrial oils and plastics
in your food as a result of contamination is not appetising.

One notable success in non-food uses has been GM potatoes, with altered
starch production. Amylogene, owned by BASF, has produced potatoes high in
amylopectin starch, which is more useful to the paper industry than amylose
starch.

These GM potatoes are in their final stages of approval in Europe. They are
unlikely to be grown in Britain, but could be in eastern Europe, the Nordic
countries, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, all of which grow
potatoes for starch production. These are unlikely to pose contamination
threats via pollen, but there will need to be systems in place to maintain
their separation from the human food chain, as the residue after starch
extraction is intended for animal feed.

It is the apparent success of GM cotton, however, that encourages the
application of GM to non-food uses. It has attracted little consumer
interest and is grown internationally on many millions of hectares. GM
insect-resistant cotton has reduced the use of some insecticides in a system
which is highly intensive and environmentally damaging. However, the selling
of GM cotton as a cure for the ills of pesticide use is eerily familiar to
the way in which the pesticides themselves have been sold.

Short-term benefits and high-cost inputs are being promoted by industry
salesmen. Loans for seed purchase and second-generation GM crops, if the
first-generation cotton fails, are already part of the plan.

Developing countries are the targets for expansion of the GM cotton market
in Africa, south-east Asia and South America. So while the prospect of GM
food crops being grown in Britain has receded in the short term, the
industry has a whole new rationale and a raft of new uses for the technology
up its sleeve.

With some of these, such as GM grasses, there will be little comfort that it
is happening elsewhere. Inevitable, accidental international movement means
they will surely find their way to Britain.

Sue Mayer is director of GeneWatch UK, which monitors developments in
genetics technologies. More information: www.genewatch.org