Once more with feeling: How safe are GM foods?

In the interest of fair play, we’re sharing excerpts from a mouthful of letters we received by snail mail reacting to previous articles on GMOs (genetically modified organisms) or GE (genetically engineered) food:

With regard to ethics, this is what Benigno Peczon, Ph.D., president of the Biotechnology Coalition of the Philippines has to say:

"Greenpeace was quoted as saying, ‘The genetic engineering industry does not respect nature’s boundaries – boundaries designed to protect the uniqueness of individual species and assure the genetic integrity of future generations.’ Ever since our ancestors started to breed plants and animals, species have been continuously altered. By selecting only the crops that have desirable characteristics, farmers were able to develop superior varieties of crops. The corn that we grow now looks drastically different from the corn grown by native Americans over 200 years ago. Dogs, which a number of us have welcomed into our lives, come from wolves. Man has long been modifying the natural evolution of crops and livestock."

On safety, this multisectoral organization advocating safe and responsible use of biotechnology in the Philippines asserts, "Genetic engineering is no different from traditional breeding, except that it involves high-end technology. It is even safer because it integrates only the desired trait to the host organism, unlike in traditional breeding where the entire set of traits is incorporated."

You may have know it (fact is, you may have eaten one already), but biotech products have been on the market for sometime now. Among this bushel of GM foods are insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant corn, virus-resistant papaya, insect- and virus-resistant potato, herbicide-tolerant soybean and soybean with high oleic acid content (a monounsaturated fat that’s considered to be a good fat), herbicide-tolerant and oleic acid canola, virus-resistant squash, herbicide-tolerant sugar beet, herbicide- and insect-resistant tomato, tomato and melon with delayed ripening trait.

Speaking for the Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture, network administrator Sonny Tababa stoutly asserts: "GM crops and GM-derived foods undergo stringent food safety tests before entering the market place. Guidelines used are consistent with those issued by several international scientific agencies such as the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Only products that pass the safety tests go to market. Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO director general, said that based on current scientific knowledge and information from a variety of sources, the consumption of foods containing GMOs is ‘not likely to present human health risk,’ and that therefore ‘these foods may be eaten.’"

As regards a major hair-raising concern that an allergen (a protein that causes an allergic reaction) could find its way into a GM food product, biotech scientists assure the public that an allergenicity screening is a very important part of a safety testing before a GM product is introduced on the market.

Tababa’s letter adds that commercially available GM products have also been subjected to and passed rigorous environmental safety tests that answer concerns on potential gene transfer, development of super pests, effects on non-target organisms, and other possible environmental impacts.

As for labeling GM-derived foods, Tababa presents the stand of the American Society of Microbiology, thus: "Food labeling is justified if it identifies real risk and provides information for the safety of consumers. To label a product only because it is genetically modified would be punitive."

Tababa believes that the ultimate decision on the issue of labeling rests on the government. At present, an inter-agency committee led by the Department of Agriculture with members from the Departments of Health, Science and Technology, Environment and Trade are studying the ramifications of labeling.

He’s happy to inform us that our local scientists are already using modern biotechnology techniques to help solve some of our agricultural production problems. For instance, scientists at the University of the Philippines Los Baños are developing a ringspot virus-resistant papaya and a papaya with delayed ripening trait. The ringspot virus practically wiped out the thriving papaya industry in Southern Luzon and now threatens the country’s main papaya-growing areas in Mindanao. Meanwhile, at the Philippine Rice Research Institute in Nueva Ecija, scientists are tirelessly working on bacterial blight-resistant rice which they hope to bring to every Filipino dining table. Coming up soon are other biotech products like bunchy top virus-resistant bananas, mangoes with longer shelf life, and coconuts with improved oil quality.

Tababa gingerly notes: "There are major challenges in food production. We should use all of the approaches available, including GM technology, to address these challenges. GM is neither the only nor necessarily the best way to address food security issues. Yet it is an effective and powerful tool that can significantly increase our ability to produce the quantity and quality of food that our growing population will need."

From the USA comes this rejoinder from C.S. Prakash, Ph, D., plant molecular genetics professor and director of the Center for Plant Biotechnology Research, College of Agriculture, Tuskegee University:

"It is argued misleadingly that consumers globally are demanding the regulation of products, as if products improved through biotechnology are currently unregulated. It is true that many consumers do not know much about biotechnology, but such crops are heavily regulated in every country where they are grown, and they have been found to be at least as safe as their conventional counterparts. This type of scare mongering is what we’ve come to expect from groups like Greenpeace.

"Greenpeace expresses concern over genetic manipulation, using such emotionally charged but scientifically indefensible terms as ‘genetic pollution’ and scare mongering about ‘irreversibility’ of crop releases. The truth is that humans have been genetically manipulating living things on this planet for as long as humans have existed, and to the enormous benefit of our species. With biotechnology, for the first time, we begin to understand just what it is we are doing, and how to do it with a degree of safety and predictability we have never before enjoyed. Crops and foods improved through biotechnology are subjected to more scrutiny, in advance, in depth and detail, than any others in the history of the planet. Despite what Greenpeace wants us to believe, when farmers anywhere around the world have been given access to crops improved through biotechnology, they have snapped them up at historically unprecedented rates.

"Greenpeace’s claims of scientific support for their objections to biotechnology are as baseless as their claims of moral superiority as the sole arbiter of what is good for the planet. Vast experience shows they are contradicted by the facts. In the USA, for example, the commercial cultivation of biotechnology-enhanced crops has reduced the use of insecticides and herbicides by 21 million kilograms every year, as well as saved topsoil and other valuable resources."

* * * Postscript to Grandparents’ Day

We all have a pair of ’em and, thankfully, most of us grow up basking in the warmth of their tender loving care. But of course, we’re talking about grandparents (which we will all be someday – some sooner than the others). In this day and age, grandmothers and grandfathers are having the time of their lives. For them, pain (at this age, everything seems to hurt and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work) may be inevitable but misery certainly isn’t. They may be retired but they’re certainly not tired. There are a lot of grandmas who have taken up golf, ballroom dancing, and creative pursuits like painting. You see them jogging at Rizal Park. They’re not afraid to fly and travel to places they’ve always wanted to visit but never had the time or money to. They’re into volunteer work helping those who need help and raising money for charitable causes (fact is, they’re among the best fund-raisers and they do it not for the fund of it). Our grandparents sure are having a grand time. After all, to paraphrase Barbara Johnson, any day above ground is a good one!