December 20, 2004

Safeguard Our Food From
Drug-Producing Crops

The next wave of genetic engineering includes plants that have been altered to produce pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals. An ear of corn could actually be a biological factory for substances never intended for the food supply. A new Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) study
finds that current production practices and federal regulations do not protect against contamination from these crops.

Add your name to UCS's petition to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to safeguard our food supply by going to the following link: http://www.ucsaction.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=23460.

Background

In the spring of 2003, the Union of Concerned Scientists convened an expert workshop on protecting the U.S. food and feed supply from contamination by crops genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals. The experts who participated in that workshop wrote
the technical report A Growing Concern: Protecting the Food Supply in an Era of Pharmaceutical and Industrial Crops independently of UCS, which developed policy recommendations based on its own analysis of this report.

The Experts' Technical Report

Food crops, primarily corn, are currently being genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals. These crops are referred to as "pharma" crops when they produce drugs, hormones, and other therapeutic agents, and industrial crops when they produce compounds
such as plastics for use in industry. Throughout our report, the term pharma crop is used to encompass both types.

Many pharma and industrial products could harm humans, livestock, or wildlife if ingested in active forms.

There are two major routes by which pharmaceutical and industrial transgenes can inadvertently contaminate commodity crops and, therefore, the food and feed supply: physical mixing of seed (pharma seed can be inadvertently spilled or mixed during seed production, harvest, storage,
transport, and handling) and pollen (pollen containing genes for the pharma product can pollinate commodity crops, leading to contamination during the growing year).

Given the dilemma of potential benefits versus potential contamination of the food supply, we addressed the question-Is it possible to design a system for producing pharma products in genetically engineered corn or soybean-two plants often used or proposed for pharma production in the United States-without contaminating human food or animal feed? By promoting a virtually zero contamination standard, we advocate for pharma crop production to be conducted in such a way that the likelihood of contamination would be so low as to be nearly zero.

Experts' Recommendations:

• Eliminate as many steps as possible in each of the seed development,
  seed production, crop production, and handling, storage, and delivery
  operations.
• Develop corn and soybean production and management systems that will
  ensure virtually zero contamination of the food and feed supplies
  through collaboration between industry, academia, and regulatory bodies. If
  broad-based consensus cannot be reached, it would be inadvisable to
  initiate further use of corn and soybean as pharma crops.
• Develop the infrastructure and information needed to implement, and
  maintain pharma crop production in areas geographically isolated from
  commodity crops. Specifically, synthesize studies of pollen flow,
  isolation, and crop production areas to determine whether further research is
  needed to establish the scientific basis for geographic isolation
  zones.
• Develop strategies that would allow individual growers or groups of
  growers to develop case-by-case plans for well-defined spatially
  separated production areas embedded within commodity production areas. These
  strategies would need to meet the specific management, separation,
  confinement and oversight objectives outlined above.
• Encourage research on non-food/feed crops as potential pharma crops.
• Develop the information and technology necessary for pharma crop
  production in non-food/feed crops as soon as possible to ensure virtually
  zero contamination of the food/feed supply and enable pharma crop
  production to succeed. This may require some research incentives, as our
  genetic engineering expertise with other crops is not on the same level as
  corn and soybean.

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations of the Union of Concerned Scientists

UCS carefully reviewed the technical report A Growing Concern:
Protecting the Food Supply in an Era of Pharmaceutical and Industrial Crops and
developed its own conclusions and policy recommendations. We strongly
agree with the experts' major conclusion that corn and soybean cannot be
used for pharma crop production without major changes designed to
protect our food system from contamination.

UCS Recommendations:

• Since contamination of the food supply is likely to be ongoing, we
  believe that pharma crops should not continue to be developed.
  Considering the serious potential health and economic consequences of a
  contamination event, UCS recommends that the United States Department of
  Agriculture (USDA) halt the outdoor production of genetically engineered
  pharma and industrial crops immediately, until a system is put in place that
  can produce drugs and industrial substances without putting our food
  system and food industry at risk.
• UCS also recommends that the USDA explore the indoor cultivation of
  engineered food and feed crops to produce drugs and industrial
  chemicals.
• The best way to reap the benefits of pharma crops and simultaneously
  protect the food system is to stop now and begin investing in other
  methods of biopharmaceutical production such as alternative crops and
  fermentation and cell culture systems. Therefore, UCS recommends that the
  USDA spearhead a major campaign to encourage and fund alternatives to
  the use of food and feed crops in pharma and industrial crop production,
  particularly the search for suitable non-food/feed crops. We agree with
  the experts that this effort should begin as soon as possible and
  should include incentives that enable scientists to explore new crops and
  agronomic systems.

Add your name to UCS's petition to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to safeguard our food supply by going to the following link: http://www.ucsaction.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=23460.

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This page was posted on 12/20/04