The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
February 28, 2002
By JEFF NESMITH

If Mexican politicians are concerned about genetically modified corn, Michael Hansen has an even more alarming possibility for them to contemplate.

Hansen, a research associate with the Consumers Union, says a California company wants to splice into corn the gene for an enzyme that kills human sperm. The enzyme was found in certain women who are unable to conceive because their immune systems attack sperm and kill it.

The goal would be to use corn to turn out huge, pharmaceutically pure quantities of the enzyme for use in producing a male birth control drug, Hansen says. He does not suggest that the seeds of male sterility will be released into the wind by pollen from spermicidal corn. Yet, he says, indications that foreign genetic material from the United States has migrated into native Mexican corn through cross-pollination --- despite efforts by the Mexican government to prevent it --- are evidence enough that what can go wrong often does.

"All of these companies that are talking about using plants to produce human drugs say they'll keep them separate from the environment and make certain none of the pollen escapes into other plants," Hansen said, "but look what happened in Mexico."

Hansen is a leader of a campaign to force U.S. grocery manufacturers to apply disclosure labels to food products that contain genetically modified organisms. So far, he has been unsuccessful. The Food and Drug Administration has ruled that since it has certified the inherent safety of bioengineered food products, it has no grounds to require manufacturers to apply disclosure labels that might "stigmatize" the food.

The agency has suggested voluntary labels on which companies that wish to might declare something like "This product is not grown using biotechnology."

Acreage expanding

However, some surveys have shown that up to half of products with that sort of label do contain food with genetic modifications. Overall, the Grocery Manufacturers of America estimates about 70 percent of grocery store food in America may have been made with biotechnology crops. Slightly less than half of the corn, cotton and soybeans grown in the United States contain some type of foreign gene --- primarily a bacterial transplant that makes them resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. This allows farmers to use more of the herbicide to control weeds without harming their crops. There are no restrictions on the sale of the herbicide. Last year, American farmers planted about 35 million acres of bioengineered soybeans and 25 million acres of bioengineered corn. Labeling requirements and other restrictions have hindered the acceptance of genetically modified crops overseas.

Yet, the acreage devoted to transgenic crops has grown dramatically. According to figures provided by Monsanto, genetically modified organisms were grown on approximately 4 million acres of cropland worldwide in 1996.

Four years later, the figure was more than 100 million acres. Monsanto said farmers planting corn, cotton and soybeans "improved through biotechnology" will be able to reduce annual pesticide use by 57 million pounds between 2000 and 2009, due to new insect-resistant seed. And in 1998 alone, U.S. soybean growers saved more than $220 million on herbicides by planting Roundup-resistant varieties, which lessened the use of other weed killers, the company says.

Other defenders of the emerging technology say it will translate into increased yields and reduced costs for farmers in poorer nations. Still others say the appearance of foreign genes in Mexico's native corn varieties or American fast-food taco shells is not a sign that human health or the environment is in any danger.

"There has been extensive testing by several U.S. entities, and there is no evidence anywhere that this is any more dangerous that what's already on the market," said Robert S. Zeigler, a professor of plant pathology at Kansas State University.

"Future products will have to be tested on a case-by-case basis," he said. "The tests will become even stringent probably, and some of them won't pass. But there is nothing inherent in overall technology that would lead us to believe it is more risky than other technologies."

Loren Wassell, a spokesman for Monsanto, said genetically modified food crops are subjected to unprecedented regulatory scrutiny before they are released. Genetically modified seeds have to be approved separately by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration before they can be sold.

Legal issues up in air

Jeremy Rifkin, director of the Washington Foundation on Economic Trends and a longtime critic of genetic engineering, helped launch an antitrust lawsuit that accuses Monsanto of conspiring to use its genetically engineered crops to gain control of the global food market. He thinks pressures on the industry will lead to a "third generation" approach to plant engineering.

Instead of transplanting foreign genes, like the sperm-killer, Rifkin believes plant breeders will use genetic mapping techniques to improve and accelerate the selection of powerful genetic traits already present in food and fiber crops.

But Percy Schmeizer, a Saskatchewan, Canada, canola farmer, is not sure that will do much to improve his legal problems. Several years ago, Schmeizer's neighbor planted a variety of canola that contained Monsanto's Roundup-resistant gene. Schmeizer says some of the seed blew over to his 700-acre canola field and spread, contaminating with foreign genes seed he had been saving since he started producing the crop in 1947.

Moreover, Monsanto sued him, claiming he was violating its intellectual property rights for growing a kind of rapeseed that contained its patented gene for Roundup resistance. Schmeizer said Monday that a provincial court had ruled for the company, declaring that regardless of how the gene found its way onto his land, Canadian patent law provides that he is violating patent rights by growing it.

"My case has become a focal point for the whole world," he declared. "We're appealing it, and I'm also suing them for ruining the canola seed that I've spent a half a century developing."

ON THE WEB: Foundation on Economic Trends: www.biotechcentury.org

Consumers Union: www.consumersunion.org Monsanto Co.: www.monsanto.com