GE lessons from Britain - 1

by CARROLL DU CHATEAU

Last year, award-winning Herald journalist Carroll du Chateau spent a term at Cambridge University, as a Wolfson College research Fellow.

Her research topic was Genetic Engineering - a subject which she pursued from one end of Great Britain to the other.

Her investigation included a trip to the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh where she talked to the scientists who had cloned Dolly the Sheep, an interview with the president of the Royal Society of Medicine, Lord Soulsby, plus in-depth discussion with scientists, geneticists, conservationists and the people who put together the United Kingdom's complex regulatory system for genetically engineered food.

We are pleased to publish the full text of Carroll's paper in the following 10-part series.

INTRODUCTION

The young woman bends over an ear of wheat, carefully teasing out its almost-ripened kernels with a pair of sterile long-nosed tweezers. From this immaculate table on the laboratory floor of Biogemma UK on the outskirts of Cambridge, these tiny kernels, as big as seed pearls, will be transported to a petri dish. Here foreign DNA will be added to their chromosome set, either by shooting it in with a miniature gun, known as a biolistic delivery, or transporting it in between the genes via a bacterial vector. Either way it will slip into the twisted end-on-end strand of genes that make up the DNA of a plant cell and, from that moment on, change its characteristics forever.

Next the tiny, immature and very infection-susceptible kernel will be "helped develop" in a specially prepared medium of sugar and seaweed in the lab before being moved into a climate controlled, artificially lit, room. Finally, if all goes well, it will end up in a greenhouse, either here or in France.

As with most British companies working on crop modification in Britain, Biogemma, one of five laboratories providing research and development for the French-based and farmer-owned parent company Limagrain, is just part of the process. General manager Tina Barsby explains the three-way system. "The university does the research to see which genes are involved, we do the actual putting of genes into plants here, then we work with the plant-breeding companies in Europe within the group to grow them to maturity."

Both the way in which this new wheat is being modified – and the end product aimed for – seems seriously wholesome. Antibiotic marker genes are avoided and, in this case Biogemma is looking to improve the bread-making characteristics of a common wheat so that it will turn out more nutritious, delicious and stretchy bread.

However, depending on the way you look at it, this innocent-looking process is just one tiny step in the quest to solve the world’s food production problems -- or one more step towards messing them up for evermore.

"Biotechnology is ideologically neutral. Properly supported it can bring immense benefits to mankind, for it is infinitely adaptable to counter all sorts of unforeseen threats. If we cast down through hostility or faintheartedness we shall all be losers."

(1)

Over the past six years the controversy over the genetic engineering of food has risen from a rumble to a public outcry. In Europe, public pressure has already derailed the progress of biotechnology and the massive multinational companies that control it. But why? Why is a technology which has been used in the US for six years, producing food which has been eaten by two million people without causing one known death – or even an illness -- the subject of so much controversy? (2)

Probably because the public realises that genetic engineering has the potential to change our lives more than perhaps any other scientific or technological advance in the history of mankind. (3)

Four innate and substantial fears come together in the Genetic Modification of food debate. They are: fears that foods produced using genetic modification may poison us, cause cancer or immunity to antibiotics; fears that pesticide-resistant weeds, created by GM crops crossing with wild relatives, will take over the English countryside; fears that crops, which have been Genetically Modified to produce substances toxic to insects, will kill off both insect and bird varieties, so harming wild life; and last, fears that a few massive international biotechnology companies that are using gene patents and agrichemicals will lock the world’s farmers into their powerful empires. Within a decade, it is claimed, the world’s seed stock will be controlled by a cartel of companies. (4)

Dr Brian Johnson, head of the Biotechnology Unit for English Nature, the British statutory conservation agency and one of the key people behind the moratorium on the commercial release of GM crops in Britain, puts it succinctly. "We are at the dawn of a new revolution in how we grow food and many other products on this planet…A revolution is pushing society into rethinking what we want out of agriculture. Biotechnology and other advances in plant and animal breeding and crop technology is already offering an unprecedented range of choices for how we use agricultural land and how we produce fish and forests. Visions of the future for agriculture vary between weedless and pestless ‘green concrete’ on one hand, and visions of a new organic agriculture, producing high quality, high yield crops yet protecting and nurturing biodiversity."

The problem underpinning the introduction of GM foods in Britain was that it was conducted with very little public discussion or input. Initially at least, government advice was drawn mainly from scientists and businesspeople, the majority of whom were convinced that the advantages of GM foods far outweighed any risks. Political and commercial pressure, especially from the United States, where GM food was already being consumed by the tonne, was great and British politicians were readily won over. Says Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, veterinarian, president of the Royal Society of Medicine and active member of the House of Lords, "Whether we like it or not -- if we don’t join GM farming production, we’re going to be left behind."

However, as Brian Johnson points out, the debate needed to go much deeper than that. "Given the rapid pace of new developments in agricultural biotechnology and the 'anything goes' culture of the research world, policy makers and regulators struggle to come to terms with these choices. This is perhaps the most important debate of the new millennium, because its outcome will have global implications for food and raw material production for the rest of our history."

Read the rest of this report:

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