GMF

Genetically Modified Food or Forbidden Fruits?

By Kris Kingsland

"GM's bad, GM's good... Has the world gone mad?"

"No, it's just been modified..."

We are indeed living in a brave new world, although some of us seem rather less than gung-ho about it. Anyone who has read the papers, listened to the radio or seen the news on TV will know of the controversy that surrounds genetically modified (GM) food. Whilst muddling over this article in a bar, a lady approached me with information that the bar snacks I enjoyed were made with modified wheat! I was already eating GM food and had not been aware of it. What else about GM food are we unaware of? To shed some light I interviewed Professor Trevan the author of "A More Perfect Tomato?", who was kind enough to grant me some of his time and experience.

Q: Professor Trevan, what do you understand by the term 'GM food'?

A: Well, it’s a bit of a misnomer, really. It’s often a case of food being made with ingredients produced by GM. Some, like soya bean oil, are purified chemical substances which are effectively identical to the oil produced by non-GM soya.

It depends on the organism and the GM desired. With oil and similar extracts there is not much difference. However, if you ate the whole soya bean - the germ of the soya, then you might well be eating the GM gene (from a natural source itself). By the time it’s digested, it is nothing more than short segments of nucleic acid which mean nothing. These segments are found in all foods, so there is practically no difference in one digested segment to another. Your average cheeseburger contains about 10 million genes; when you’ve digested them all into small segments, an extra gene seems insignificant by comparisson.

Q: Speaking of cheeseburgers, there has been much uproar about salmonella and BSE. Do you think that they along with media hype have contributed to the controversy surrounding GM foods?

A: I think most of it is a result of media hype! The media knows a good story when it spots one. They sell newspapers. Some editors appear to have a missionary zeal opposing new technology. This does not help the rational debate about the merits and risks of such techniques. Ironically, you get newspapers berating people for months about the dangers of the latest concern and then they turn to the food producers and say "look, everybody’s scared!" Well, if the sensationalist elements of the media are any good at their job, then of course the public’s scared! This doesn’t mean that there is a real reason for them to be scared.

Q: Perhaps we should apply as stringent testing to our media as we do to food?

A: Well, yes, but we live in a democracy and that is one of the prices that you pay for it.

Q: Whilst we might say that everything in GM products is encountered in nature, not everything in nature is good for us. Do you think that there should be more testing on the long-term effects before we release such organisms into the environment?

A: If there is any doubt associated with such novel foods then there should be more testing. However, some products might be deemed less risky than others. The irony is, that if we were introducing the potato as a novel food, we would not accept it because it is too toxic. The whole debate is more about the perception of risk than anything else. Standard toxicological tests don’t work on food. You can’t get animals to eat enough to detect any GM differences.

Q: Talking of tubers, Arpad Pusztai’s press release about GM potatoes adversely affecting rats, caused much controversy. Some say that the only possible conclusion is that rats hate potatoes! Do you think there is a risk from the BT gene (bacillus thuringiensis) that was inserted and could it cause problems ‘down the line?’

A: I hope not! The BT gene is used to code for a toxin, an insecticide produced by the bacilli. Organic farmers already use the bacillus as a natural pesticide, spraying it on their crops, so it is already out in the environment.

Q: I have read that Swiss scientists have found that the death rate of the green lacewing, a major maize pest predator, nearly doubled when they ate pests that had been feeding on BT maize. This also happened when lacewings fed on insect larvae that were unaffected by the toxin. They die out whilst the pest multiplies. Is this worrying?

A: Yes, it’s true, but the alternative is to spray it all with insecticide and kill everything over a wider area. We need a comparative study as to which of these techniques is going to be the most beneficial. One species of pest can cause millions of pounds of damage yearly, reducing crop quality and quantity. Plant diseases account for a loss of 25% of global food production! GM foods could reduce this, those with the BT gene just being one current example.

Q: Any thoughts for the future?

A: We are always going to have scientifically based scares of this sort and the attitude is that ‘we need to educate the public to understand science better.’ I think it’s the other way around, that we need to educate scientists to understand the public better. Studies show that we are far more likely to believe those who say things that support our beliefs than those who do not. If mishandled you can create a sense of suspicion, especially if you are perceived as an authority figure. Ironically were I some person that was traditionally perceived as trustworthy, i.e. a vicar, then never mind how ignorant I am about science, I’d still be believed in preference…

Soon after this my tape ran out, but the conversation ran on. For those wanting more info you will find it on the web.

The genes that are being scrutinised are already out in the environment. It could be that, as some scientists question our understanding of genetics, DNA is not nearly as significant on its own when it is isolated from other factors. How do we know that one segment of DNA will act in a particular way when you place it in an alien environment? One plant’s protein is another organism’s toxin. Not only must we think about new proteins, we also do not know where the novel gene will end up in the plant’s DNA. The positioning is random, and this could lead to unpredictable (mutations?) results.

Forensic scientists have discovered that enough DNA can be left on a gun to identify someone, even if only held briefly. We live in a veritable ocean of stray bits of genetic code and bizarre proteins that are as invisible to us as the molecules of the air that we constantly breathe in. Like software trapped on a 5.25" disk (remember those?) they are meaningless without some mechanism of reading and carrying out their instructions. Should they find their way into the right environment, they could fruit like fungal spores settling into damp compost. There are trillions of microscopic organisms and cells that are constantly picking up bits of protein and nucleic acid and examining them rather like a baby crawls around stuffing anything (and I mean anything!) into its mouth… We tend to be careful what we leave around little babies for this very reason. Sooner or later they will get hold of something awful, and the same principle may well hold for the environment. We cannot predict the results.

What are our real motives for GM food production? To feed the starving or make money? A colleague in the U.S. pointed out that by using GM maize we will kill off the maize pest predators. This will mean that maize pests will multiply and unless you have GM maize your crop could be at risk. Thus farmers will have to buy GM maize or be squeezed out of the market. A chilling thought! We already have the ability to feed the world, we just lack the determination, discipline and altruism to do it. And we think we’re the highest form of life?