Mindful Eating: Why All the Fuss Over Genetically Engineered Foods?

Jill Davies, director of Sustainable Living Systems, is a pure food activist living in western Montana. She speaks and writes on current trends in the production of foods and medicines with a focus on GMOs, and on organic agriculture and seed saving.

Part 7

GMOs (genetically modified organisms) threaten our health, the integrity of our environment, are likely to cause the loss of foreign markets if our farmers grow them, and lead to further consolidation of global and national food systems into the hands of a few giant corporations. Corporate control of the seed supply threatens farmers’ independence.

Why are foreign countries ready to start trade wars with the U.S. over the import of genetically engineered (GE) foods? It’s because of what goes into the creation of a GE variety.

Plants have elaborate defense mechanism for dealing with foreign compounds, including foreign DNA. To overcome these defense mechanisms, and in order to insert a foreign gene into the germ cell of a host plant, which will then grow into a plant with the desired trait, biologists have to construct complex DNA packages that will carry the chosen gene into the host cell. The packages are constructed using pieces of DNA taken from pathological organisms (virus, bacteria) because these organisms have the ability to overcome a cell’s defense mechanisms.

Generally, there are four parts to a DNA package used to make GMOs:

1. DNA segments that carry the package into the host cell and invade its DNA, called the “vector,” usually taken from a bacteria that causes tumors in plants: (Agrobacterium tumefaciens).

2. DNA segments that assure that the package is “turned on,” called “promoters” — usually from the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV), which is a para-retrovirus, similar to Hepatitus B and HIV.

3. DNA material for antibiotic resistance that is used as a marker to help the chemist find the plant cells in which the insertion has been successful, called “markers” — most often imbues resistance for neomycin/kanamycin (nptII); also taken from bacteria (E. coli).

4. DNA segments for the desired trait, the “payload.” Herbicide-tolerance genes are taken from various bacterias; insecticide genes (Bt) from the soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, which is closely related to B. cereus, a bacteria that causes food poisoning and to B. anthracis, the agent of the disease anthrax.

The concern is: First, that these segments of DNA from pathological organisms will recombine to form active pathogens once again, either new ones, or old ones with renewed virulence, or with new (broader) host specificity, and that antibiotic resistance will continue to spread throughout the microbial world.

This process, called “horizontal gene transfer,” is a natural occurrence in the microbial world and is already known to be the cause of the widespread antibiotic resistance in disease organisms that has emerged in the past decades (facilitated mainly by the overuse of antibiotics in factory farming). There is no reason to further exacerbate this serious medical problem or to risk the release of new pathogens.

Second, it is because the insertion of this complex gene package into the DNA of the host plant cannot be controlled, nor can stable expression of the package be guaranteed. The location and number of copies of the insert is highly variable. This can disrupt the functioning of the host’s DNA, called “genome disruption,” which can create a host of unintended effects in the plant.

This can and does lead to “freak” plants, which supposedly are weeded out by the biotech company, but subtle chemical changes (toxins, allergens) would be very difficult to detect, and the safety testing that is currently required by our federal regulating agencies is inadequate.

Third, it is because people just don’t want to eat a plant that expresses an insecticide in every cell, or a plant that can resist an herbicide so that more of the herbicide is sprayed on the field while the plant is growing, causing higher herbicide residues in the food. The tolerance level allowed for residues of glyphosate (active ingredient in Roundup) in food was increased to allow for approval of the GE varieties called Roundup Ready, meaning they can tolerate sprays of Roundup while all the other plants in the field are killed.

An alternative “vector” method is the use of particle guns, using tiny metal particles coated with the DNA package that are actually “shot” into the host cell. This eliminates the need for a bacteria vector, but adds to the potential for genome disruption in the host cell.

Furthermore, the common promoter used, the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus, is a very powerful and promiscuous promoter, causing the DNA package to be expressed out of proportion with the rest of the genome and outside of the normal regulatory action of the plant. This promoter can also jump out of the DNA package and land somewhere else in the host genome, especially with the particle gun method, causing genome disruption.

All of these issues should generate the most intensive, comprehensive risk assessment process that ever existed for crops. But what do we have as the basis for all of the regulations covering GMOs in the U.S.?

We have the policy of “substantial equivalence,” established by the National Research Council in 1989 and adopted by the FDA in 1992. It means that GMOs will be viewed to be basically the same as traditional food plants, thus requiring no special safety testing and no labeling. Clearly, this policy was crafted by the corporations, and it indicates their level of control in Washington, D.C.

Last, but definitely not least, is the related issue of the patenting of the world’s plants. In 1980 the door was cracked open when, after the case went to the Supreme Court, a patent for a bacterium with other bacteria genes was granted. Thereafter, the ag-chemical companies started buying up the seed and also the pharmaceutical companies, for they saw that they could place patents and make high profits from plant materials.

Now, discovery rather than invention dominates the current patenting process, and land grant university research is rapidly becoming corporate research — product-oriented rather than oriented toward management practices that help the farmer — with technology fees, rather than being free. This hijacking of the public domain is a crime. §