A Free Man

When I was born, thirty-ahremeah years ago, there were about 3.7 billion people in the world. The most recent estimates place the population of this planet at 6.725 billion, which means that world’s population has nearly doubled in less than four decades. At our current growth rate we face an imminent Malthusian crisis. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but at some point we’re going to reach the tipping point at which there will not be enough agriculture to sustain the world’s population. Food prices are on the rise and This is one of the reasons that I chose to do a Ph.D. in the field and the place that I did. It turns out that, in the long run, I’m neither breeding nor genetically engineering better crops but it is a field which I still follow with some interest.

There has been a renaissance in plant biotechnology in the last quarter century, which has made it possible to increase crop yield, develop new strains with resistance to many diseases or to too much salt, heat, drought or soil toxins. A big part of this golden age has involved transgenic, or genetically modified (GM), crops. A GM plant is one that has had a foreign gene inserted into its genome. This usually results in an added or modified trait. For example, some of the most common GM plants have had a gene from a soil bacterium which produces a protein that is toxic to some herbivorous pests. When these pests feed on Bt crops they are killed without the addition of pesticide.
The use of transgenic or genetically modified (GM) crops has been a contentious issue around the world for the last couple of decades and made the news here in Australia earlier this month. The governing Labor Party in Western Australia banned the growth of GM crops in that state four years ago. However, in recent elections, Labor was ousted and a Liberal and National coalition have promised to rescind that ban. This follows lifting of bans on GM crops in New South Wales and Victoria earlier in the year. With a changing environment and mired in a seemingly endless drought, Australian wheat farmers are poised to reap the benefits of transgenic technology if drought resistant or salt tolerant varieties could be developed. In other news from earlier this month, China announced a $3.5 billion GM crops initiative  to help the world’s most populous nation catch up with the West in the race to patent new plant genes. The Chinese are beginning to place a priority on food security and see GM crops as the best way forward.

I’m in the minority of plant scientists in the sense that I’ve always been a little hesitant about the use of GM crops. I’m not an alarmist, nor would I support a ban of GM crops for human consumption as the European Union has instated. I believe that most GM crops are perfectly safe and that the technology does have potential to revolutionize agriculture. Hell, I’ve made transgenic plants myself, though none that are going to find their way to your dinner plate. (Unless you have a rather unusual palate.) I do, however, have some pretty serious concerns about regulation, environmental issues and intellectual property.

In terms of regulation, my concerns revolve around scrutiny of GM crops that make their way into the human food pool. GM crops have been approved for consumption in the U.S. since 1994 and there have been exactly zero reports of ill health effects. However, there are an increasing number of instances in which unapproved GM crops are finding their way to the supermarket. The inadvertent release of Starlink corn, a GM line approved only for animal feed,  into the human food supply in 2001 raised some fairly serious concerns regarding regulation and ones that have not been fully resolved. There were no reliable reports of health effects of any kind, despite concerns over potential allergic reaction. More recently, in 2006,  a GM variety of rice that had never been approved or marketed appeared in commercially available supplies in both the U.S. and Europe. It is still unclear how the GM line “got loose”. This is the crux of the problem, regulation of transgenic plants is spotty and inconsistent with different universities, research institutes and companies having wildly different regulations. American consumers in particular should be vigilant here as there is a combination of lots of GM acreage and regulatory agencies stripped of many of their powers after 8 years of the Bush Administration.

One of the benefits cited for the use of GM crops is the reduction of pesticides and fertilizers required for cultivation. For example, growing Bt crops can vastly reduce the amount of pesticide required. Some researchers are concerned, however, that there are also environmental costs of the use of transgenic crops. The most serious of these is potential transgene escape. Recent studies of transgenic sugar beet and canola have shown that cross-pollination of non-transgenic relatives of transgenic crops can occur and that the presence of the transgene can persist for at least six years. This becomes especially problematic when GM and non-GM crops are grown in close proximity and is the most likely explanation for the GM rice escape in 2006. Beyond transgene transfer, there is an issue of harmful effects of transgene products. One of the toxins expressed in Bt crops has been detected in the guts of predators of plant pests. For example, aphids that feed on Bt corn are themselves fed on by ladybugs. Researchers at the University of Kentucky have been able to detect low levels of Bt toxin in the latter. In a controversial study published in PNAS by researchers from the University of Wisconsin, it was claimed that corn byproducts enter streams and are subject to storage, consumption, and transport to downstream water bodies and result in reduced growth and increased mortality of nontarget stream insects. It is worth noting that the large-scale mono-crop agriculture that predominates in the West is environmentally disastrous anyway. Most researchers think that GM crops offer, if anything, a slight improvement on environmental effects.

The final issue that I have with GM crops is that I’m not sure that, as things stand now, they will solve world food supply issues. The vast majority of GM crops are owned by one of a handful of large biotech companies. Monsanto produces more than 90% of crops worldwide with Syngenta, Bayer Cropscience, Dow and Du Pont producing the remainder. It is of some concern that these companies will have too much control over world food productionor will force traditional farmers out of the market.  The biggest fears around world hunger are in developing countries where farmers generally can not afford to buy new seed stocks each season and rely on ‘recycling seed’. Most corporations aren’t in the business of giving their products away for free and thus legally obliagte farmers to buy new GM seed each year. There are instances of biotech companies aggressively protecting their intellectual property. Call me a cynic, I just doubt that the biotech companies that hold the patents for most of the useful GM crops are that interested in solving world poverty.

I know I’ve spent most of this post discussing some of the concerns surrounding transgenic crops, but at the bottom of everything I do think that GM crops could, in the words of Nina Fedoroff, be the source of a new Green Revolution. The Golden Rice story is a wonderful example of academic scientists working with biotech companies for humanitarian purposes. I just think that regulation, on a global scale, is absolutely key. Because we now live in a global economy and agricultural products are shipped around the world, there needs to be a global consensus on how to regulate GM crops. The biggest unresolved issue, and potential for trouble, surrounds inadvertant spreading of GM pollen to neighboring fields or wild relatives. Regulations need to be established to minimize this risk. Importantly, you can not force people to accept a technology with which they are uncomfortable. Just as now we have organic produce alternatives, as GM crops become more prevalent, there should be non-GM alternatives. This requires either labelling of GM products or non-GM products to allow consumers an opportunity to make an informed decision.

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Image credits:

GM Soya

GM Money Tree

 

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