Transcript: Senator Bond, Roger Beachy Roundtable on Biotechnology

During a January 12 roundtable discussion with Thai journalists at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, a U.S. senator and a prominent scientist argued that U.S. foodstuffs that incorporate genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are safe for consumers.

Dr. Roger Beachy, the president of the Danforth Plant Science Center, noted that thousands of U.S. scientists conducting independent tests have shown GMOs to be safe for human consumption. In addition, he said, GMOs reduce the need for chemical pesticides and herbicides and, thus, help safeguard wildlife and the environment.

Senator Kit Bond, a member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, and Related Agencies, said that the United States performs "a very rigorous evaluation of genetically modified organisms."

"Before anything comes to market it has to be approved. If it's a food product it has to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Otherwise, it has to pass the tests of our Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency," he said.

Bond pointed out that "each product that is developed by biotechnology is simply another extension of the development that has been going on in agriculture ... since the beginning of time."

"Almost every one of our food products has been developed by modifications, mutations, hybridization crossbreeding, and they're all different and they've all changed. GMOs -- or biotech -- enable us to do so with precision, to make sure we don't have any unexpected traits in the newly developed products," he said. "With GMO has come a regulatory regime that is far more thorough and far more effective than any regulation or oversight applied to any other of the changes that have been made in our food supply."

According to Bond, most of the opposition to GMOs is the result of politics not science.

Bond said that opposition to GMOs is based primarily among protectionists who want to use non-tariff barriers to protect their own markets. Multinational chemical companies, too, fear loss of business, he said.

"We do have battles with the European Union and the farmers who are protectionists, who want to use non-tariff barriers. We also have the opposition of major multinational chemical companies, who are losing markets for their chemicals," he said. "They're fighting very hard and they're providing much misinformation, and supporting people who either on one hand don't understand and are legitimately confused, or the people who, for other hidden reasons, want to oppose GMOs."

"Goods that are provided for human consumption should be evaluated under the sanitary and phytosanitary agreements, which in essence say sound scientific judgements, must be applied. We believe that sound scientific assessments have been made of the products that are on the market," Bond said.

Following is a transcript of the roundtable:

(begin transcript)

Press Roundtable on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
With U.S. Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) and
Dr. Roger Beachy, President of the Danforth Plant Science Center

January 12, 2000
U.S. Embassy Bangkok

Roundtable Discussion With Senator Bond

MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the U.S. Embassy Bangkok Public Affairs Office. I want to thank you all for joining us. I know there are a few more journalists out there lost in traffic who are supposed to be joining us, but I thought perhaps we would start now. The Ambassador may be joining us as well. But I wanted to get us moved along because we have a short time frame for our activities this morning.

I would like to welcome Senator Kit Bond, Senator from Missouri, or "Missoura", as he would put it, and Dr. Roger Beachy who is from the Danforth Plant Science Center. I won't go into their bios because you have them in front of you, for the sake of saving time, but I just want to say that I thank them for coming here. We know that biotechnology is a very large issue here in Thailand. It's a large issue in the United States and throughout the world, and we're very grateful to have two experts on this issue with us today.

SENATOR BOND: Thank you, Michelle. Thank you very much for joining us. We are here today at the invitation of our friends in Thailand. I was last in Thailand in March of 1999. Met with government officials and private sector officials who wanted to increase and improve the ties between Thailand and the United States, and particularly the state of Missouri.

At the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle I had the opportunity to meet with friends from Thailand again, and spoke with Secretary Pitiphong. At that time he raised the question which was on everyone's mind about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs as we call them today, produced by biotechnology, and he extended an invitation. He said, "We invite you to bring your scientists to Thailand to discuss GMOs, their properties, their potential, their problems and their regulations with our scientists." So we were very happy to accept, and I have with me two eminent scientists from the United States. Dr. Roger Beachy, who heads the Danforth Plant Science Center with the geneticists who developed the first major breakthrough in genetic engineering, a virus-resistant tomato, which provided much greater production and resistance to virus. He has been the leader in plant pathology and plant physiology, and is recognized around the world, and when we came here we found he has worked with your outstanding plant biologists and physiologists at Kassetsaat University.

We also have with us Dr. Shelly Harrison, who has a different phase of scientific endeavor. He is a physicist specializing in lasers, developed the bar code, which is found supermarkets across the world. He is currently the chief executive officer of an organization called Spacehab. Spacehab provides private sector laboratory space on space shuttles and ultimately on the international space station for doing research. He is here with us on this mission to offer to the scientific community and schools in Thailand the opportunity to have students in schools here participate in biotechnology experiments that will be carried on a space shuttle mission one year from now, in January of 2001. He has developed a network that allows school children to participate by computer network, communicating with astronauts about the space explorations and the scientific explorations underway. We feel that his work, while separate from the questions that we're discussing -- the safety and the regulation and the impact of GMOs -- is an important scientific step that we're excited to see made available to students and to the scientific community in Thailand.

Very simply put, the United States goes through a very rigorous evaluation of genetically modified organisms. (Good morning, Mr. Ambassador. Thank you for joining us.) Before anything comes to market it has to be approved. If it's a food product it has to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Otherwise, it has to pass the tests of our Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency. Each product that is developed by biotechnology is simply another extension of the development that has been going on in agriculture, I guess since the beginning of time. Almost every one of our food products has been developed by modifications, mutations, hybridization crossbreeding, and they're all different and they've all changed. GMOs or biotech enables us to do so with precision, to make sure we don't have any unexpected traits in the newly developed products.

With GMO has come a regulatory regime that is far more thorough and far more effective than any regulation or oversight applied to any other of the changes that have been made in our food supply. Hybrid corn or maize is a staple in our diet. It's changed. Tomatoes have changed. Tomatoes started out as poisonous. People couldn't eat them. Man changed the tomatoes so we could eat it. Now man has the opportunity to build into tomatoes protections against a virus. In Thailand, the yellow leaf wilt, the results of the Gemini virus, is being work on by your scientists. Same tomato, tastes good, has the same properties, except it will be resistant to the virus. But, it should be approved by regulatory authority. Once science says that it is safe, there's no difference between it and another tomato. And the political or governmental mechanism should approve it and make it available.

That's my point of view as a public servant or elected official who serves my people. I intend to ensure that they have the safest possible food supply. But I also want to make sure that we take advantage of technology, to provide more nutritious, more efficient food supplies. To protect the environment from the excessive use of chemicals, which poison our environment, and, I'm told, in too many instances poisons the environment of Thailand. We believe, by GMOs, we can provide the benefits that we need with much less use of chemicals. One fact: we now produce cotton with an insecticidal protein, BT (scientific name) which kills the pests that would otherwise would have to killed by chemical insecticides. As of last year we had reduced by over two million pounds the amount of chemical insecticide used on the cotton crop in the Mississippi River watershed in the central part of the United States as a result of BT cotton. This has saved cotton farmers money; it has saved the environment. But the multinational chemical companies don't like it because cotton farmers have had to purchase two million pounds less of chemical insecticide.

Well, I've talked too long. I'm here as an elected official. I represent consumers, corn growers, soybean growers, and cotton growers in Missouri. We are very fortunate to have with us an expert who understands and can explain and can answer your questions. I'd like Dr. Roger Beachy to give you his thoughts on GMOs. And then we would urge you to ask all the questions that you wish. Thank you very much.

DR. BEACHY: Thank you, Senator. I'm not sure of the most effective way to get information to you and to listen to your questions, because in fact it's your questions that we're here to answer.

Let me give you just a little bit of background about the science. The science for introducing genes into plants was developed in Ghent, Belgium, and in Cologne, Germany, and in St. Louis, Missouri, almost at the same time. And in that period of time of discovery, there was a great deal of excitement about how this technology might be used. Scientists were using it to study a very complex biological question, but those of us who are agriculturists wanted to use it for the benefit of agriculture. Because our colleagues in the biomedical field were using it to develop new drugs and new treatments for human diseases, we began to look at the possibility of using similar tools, similar technology, to improve food and agriculture practices.

By 1983 the first food was genetically engineered in the laboratory. By 1986 the first genetically engineered food crop was available. By 1988 we began asking the agencies in the U.S. government to assist us to consider the safety of these plants. That was nearly 12 years ago in which these questions of safety were raised in the United States. We spoke to the church groups, and to the floral societies, and to farmers, and we spoke to many groups around us to answer their questions. They ask the questions about safety in the environment; they ask about safety of food; they ask about the antibiotic resistance marker; they ask about the transfer of pollen to weedy relatives; they ask about insects which become resistant to the insecticidal protein or the biotechnology product.

All of these questions we addressed more than ten years ago. And we, as scientists, listened to the concerns of the people in the media, the people in the church clubs and the farmers. We did experiments to address each of the questions. In the last ten or twelve years we have learned of the importance of the product, of the safety of the product, and of the value of the product to the farmer. Senator Bond indicated to you the amounts of chemical insecticides that have been saved in cotton growing areas. The corn growers have also saved an enormous amount of chemicals in their production by having corn, which contains insect resistance as well.

In the last five years there have been studies by independent university researchers, with no connection with any companies, doing independent third-party research, supported by the federal government and by the state governments. They have shown the benefit to the environment and to the farmer. Others have looked at the safety issue, the food issues, and have considered the nature of the food, and asked is this food different than the food which has been produced by classical or more standard crossbreeding practices. In each case, when they have looked at the nature of the food, they consider the vitamins, the proteins, the starch, the minor elements, the things like calcium, magnesium, and the iron that are important for human diet and human nutrition. And in each case they have used the best possible chemical analysis that we can have. They have determined that these products are exactly the same in every way as the crops that are developed by other techniques.

It's these kinds of data that convinced the scientists, as well as the regulators, that the technology is inherently safe. And the products, the first three products that we have approved in the United States, are likewise extremely safe, and are as safe if not safer than foods developed by classical approaches. In addition, since these new varieties do not require pesticides, they are considered safer for the environment, and safer for the consumer because they lack the residue. We have no chemical residues from spraying chemicals.

The scientists are excited. I represented on a study in the United States a group of 80,000 agriculture scientists who consider this technology the most important technology for crop improvement that we can find. These 80,000 consider our goal should be to reduce the use of all chemicals in agriculture, at least as many as we can, removing insecticides, removing fungicides -- these are the chemicals that kill fungi. And the chemicals that kill bacteria, these are called bactericides. And the only way we know to do this is to use the new tools in genetic modification. I like to consider this to be a new form of plant breeding. These new tools of plant breeding will benefit all sectors. And these 80,000 scientists consider this technology to be safe and important.

I think I've spoken enough. There are many questions that are raised by people such as yourself in the United States and in Europe and in Latin America. It's important that scientists learn to speak with you and to hear your questions so that we can do the right kinds of experiments to assure the safety of the environment and ensure the safety of the food. And when we do the experiments to address your questions, we want to know that those answers to those experiments will be truthfully told to the readers.

With that I believe I'll stop and ask you for questions that you might have about the Thai situation.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Dr. Beachy. If we can turn to some of the journalists. I know you have questions because your readers have questions. And if you would like to ask your question in Thai, we can certainly translate that for you. Please feel free to ask your question in either Thai or English, if your prefer. And please push your button on your microphone because that will help us.

DR. BEACHY: I should say I can answer questions about the technique per se, about gene transformation, or where do genes come from, as well as the safety issues. I can cover most of your questions, I think, about technology as well as safety.

Q: We in Thailand are concerned about the GMO because we are producing so many kinds of products that we send especially abroad. So many people in Europe now still got some kind of opposition to the GMO. What do you think for our safety for the kind of economic survival? What should we do about it?

DR. BEACHY: There's a science side and a politics side, and I'll let the senator answer the politics side. There is first the importance of Thai scientists to develop the varieties of their crops which are improved to grow in Thailand. In other words, these would be varieties of corn and flowers and papaya and tomatoes, crops that are important in Thailand. They should be developed for consumers and for export market. Then they need to do the same kind of safety evaluation that we have done in the United States. Remember, the Europeans are co-developers of the technology. At the current time there are more than 400 start-up companies in Europe in the area of biotechnology. Many of these are in food and agriculture biotechnology. The scientists in those countries know that eventually these will be acceptable in Europe, and they are developing the scientific capabilities to develop products and crops for Europe.

At the current time they have less advantage than we have in the United States. Nevertheless, the scientists are using the tools of modern breeding of molecular biology and genetic engineering to improve their crops. I'm optimistic that the science will in fact, be the principle upon which imports and exports will be considered. So I'm optimistic that as you develop those products in Thailand, for export, they will be approved. But it will take some time in Europe. At the current time these products are not yet developed in Thailand. I think it's important for the researchers to continue on their development, so that as they go through the scientific side of this process, that they develop products that those Thai farmers can grow for export. I'm quite confident that the European situation will change with time. But it will only change if we persevere on the evaluation of products at the level of safety from the scientific standpoint.

I encourage my colleagues at Kassetsaat University who are using these tools, using the techniques, to develop disease-resistant papaya. I think you will see this coming into the newspapers and television in Thailand in the next several weeks. They have successfully used genetic modification to improve the papaya production, so the papaya disease -- papaya ring spot virus -- can be controlled. I think we see the progress in Thai science, in Thai food, in Thai agriculture, and this will be an important component for Thai farmers. Thai farmers, I think, you will see (them) adopting the technology. It will not need to be pushed on them. The farmers will want it because it will be valuable for their economic survival. My advice is that you move ahead with the local situation in Thailand, make the appropriate changes to benefit Thai farmers. Then keep insisting to the Europeans that we regulate the export based upon the science that you do in your country and that they do in theirs.

Q: You got some percentage of products that United States send to Europe at the moment with the GMO?

DR. BEACHY: Yes, there are several varieties of soybeans and corn that are allowed for import into Europe. They have gone through the regulatory approval process and some percentage is permitted. There are others that are not yet, and the Senator will address the nature of that oversight, but it's based upon the science that is conducted in the United States. The results of the scientific studies in the United States are then evaluated by the European Community regarding safety in their diet, or in their cattle feed, or whatever the use is.

So there are a number of products that are imported. There are several that are still in decision-making. The Senator can say.

SENATOR BOND: One of the goals of free and fair trade in the world is to assure that the appropriate standards for measuring trade are observed. We met yesterday with my good friend Minister Supachai, who is my choice to head the WTO. I am delighted that he will be assuming that position for the second three years when, we trust, we may make the greatest advances.

The purpose of the WTO is to reduce tariff barriers, and to eliminate what we call non-tariff barriers. Many people who don't want to see free and open trade devise ways of blocking imports to their countries that are not based on tariffs. We've had this problem with European farmers for many years, preventing the importation of United States beef. The beef that we've produced has been shown by our scientists to be safe. The beef has been judged safe by European scientists. But the European farmers, who are not as efficient, who are not competitive, have pressured their government to impose a ban on the importation of U.S. beef. This is in violation of the rules of the WTO and, unfortunately, the United States has been put in a position where we must retaliate. We don't want to retaliate because that is the ultimate weapon.

We need to assure the free flow of goods. Goods that are provided for human consumption should be evaluated under the sanitary and phytosanitary agreements, which in essence say sound scientific judgements, must be applied. We believe that sound scientific assessments have been made of the products that are on the market, that are approved, and I have a statement here that I, actually a letter, that I would like to share with all of our journalist friends.

This is a letter that over 300 scientists in the United States sent me as we went to the discussions at the WTO in Seattle. These are scientists from all walks scientific endeavor across the United States. They have observed scientific protocols and they have followed the development of the science. They urged me to continue to assure that policy makers make their decisions on sound scientific evidence. They believe that biotechnology, as you will see in this letter, provides valuable new tools for growth and development. It can do everything from providing better quality medicines to allow farmers to increase yields and to reduce costs of chemical pesticides, and they can be changed to improve nutritional values. For example, one of the very exciting developments is, I believe, being pursued -- vitamin A rice being pursued. Okay, one of the things that we have discussed with the university scientists here is the addition of a gene for beta carotene, which would add vitamin A to the wonderful rice that is produced in Thailand. This vitamin A could be a very valuable tool in assuring a well-rounded diet for children in less-developed countries because vitamin A deficiency is responsible for blindness and other very serious health problems in less-developed countries. But, that can only be used if the scientific evaluation shows that it's substantially the same product and has no problems. That process must, and will be, carried out. We expect the scientists to apply rigorous tests to assure the product is safe. Once they apply that test, and find that substantially equivalent product, and there's no danger, then we expect the political leaders to have the political will to stand behind the science and say, "This is a safe a product and this product should be approved."

Now, we do have battles with the European Union and the farmers who are protectionists, who want to use non-tariff barriers. We also have the opposition of major multinational chemical companies, who are losing markets for their chemicals. They're fighting very hard and they're providing much misinformation, and supporting people who either on one hand don't understand and are legitimately confused, or the people who, for other hidden reasons, want to oppose GMOs. We can't deal with the people who have their own special interests, protectionism, or protecting their profits in chemical companies, or other agenda items. But for those people who are legitimately unsure, we were very pleased to accept the invitation of the Thai Agriculture Ministry to bring scientists here, to discuss with scientists how to evaluate, what the evaluation should be on these products. We hope that the world trading organizations will prevent countries from imposing non-tariff barriers that are designed not for the health and safety of their populace, but for other special interests that may adversely affected by these new technological developments.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Senator. Do we have a follow-up question?

Q: ... added optimistically about what you just mentioned about tomatoes and other crops that you think it's safe for the consumer. How could you prove that to be true? How could the consumer know that it's safe for them in the long run?

DR. BEACHY: The question is really one of relative safety and relative risk, isn't it? Scientists are interested absolutes, and relative safety and relative risk, as well as absolute. So we do experiments over long periods of time, and over short periods of time, and draw conclusions. That's a difficult way of saying you would do experiments and prove that, in the case of food safety, we say, "Is there any chemical difference, any nutritional difference, between the products developed by classic or cross-breeding and the products that are developed by new methods of crop breeding, genetically modified."

The most extensive experiments ever done on food have been with these food products. Then we look at the history of the safety of the gene and the safety of the product. For example, if we look at the product BT, the BT protein, the BT protein has been used in agriculture for more than twenty-five years. We have a long history of using BT as a powder, as an organic product in organic farming. The organic farmers have used the BT protein as a dust, or a spray, that they put on the cabbages and tomatoes and others to control insects. This BT is a soil bacterium and it's been grown in a laboratory to make many kilos and then it's sold to the farmer. He puts it on the fruit. Then the fruit or vegetable is sold in the marketplace. So in the marketplace we have the BT on the leaves, and that BT is in some cases consumed by the consumer.

Now, the BT compound that is put on the leaves is really a complex of many, many kinds of proteins. Some are safer than others. Scientists identified from the BT bacterium a single protein, one protein, which they then used in genetic engineering, and introduced into corn and into cotton. Based upon the twenty years of history of safety of the powder, which is used by organic farmers, it was believed that that protein would be safe. Scientists then looked at the protein and asked the following questions: Does that protein have any affect on earthworms, or on birds, or on animals that eat the protein. In each case the answer was no. Remember we're talking about a protein, and when a protein goes into your gut, just like milk protein or soy protein, it is degraded by the enzymes in your stomach and the protein is used as a nutritional source by the person who eats the leaves, or the food from that plant. Like every other protein, it provides nutrition when it goes into the diet. It has no effect on your stomach, or on the stomach of the animals that eat the soy. By scientists understanding the nature of the protein we can say the protein is safe. Then when the protein is put into the food, the question is, is the food which contains the protein safe? So the same experiments are done. They say, is there any difference between the plant which has the protein and the one which does not. All the answers to those scientific questions say they are not different. No chemical difference, no nutrition difference. They are chemically equivalent.

We then say if it's chemically equivalent, and we do a short-term experiment, we make extrapolations to long-term. The concern that the consumer has is to say what happens after twenty years, or thirty years, or forty years? We had the same question when we began to import star fruit from Thailand. How do we know that the star fruit from Thailand is safe? We know it's safe because Thai people have eaten it for many, many years. So when star fruit comes to America and on our shelf, we say the Thai people have eaten it and we believe it to be safe. But we do not do any chemical analysis. We don't say, how much vitamin is there? How much starch, or sugar? We take the word of the Thai who have eaten it. So we have a level of trust that says if we know the scientific results and have short-term analysis, we can make extrapolations or extensions to the long-term. If they are chemically the same, then the prediction from science and from the nutritionists and from the medical doctors is that there will be a safety in the long-term.

You ask a very important question. What do we know about thirty years or forty years or fifty years. We can only say, based upon the analysis that we do now, there is no difference in any way from the other crops, and if the other crops are safe, by extrapolation or by extension, these crops will be safe.

If they were chemically different, then I would have a different answer for you. But they are chemically identical. The process of regulation is one that has been proved over the ten years or twelve years of history in the United States. That process modifies each time. As you know, we have a similar process for drugs, for medicine, that looks at evaluation of the safety of every drug. The process works in situation. We have this long history of food safety in America, and we trust that long history.

How do we know it's safe in the environment? The question of BT comes again. How do we know BT is safe in the environment? Again, I go back to the history of the use of BT by organic farmers. We have some areas of forests in the northeast part of the US, in the states of Maine and New Hampshire. BT has been sprayed from airplanes for more than twenty years over the top of these forests. Of course the birds are exposed and other insects, but the bird population has not been hurt. The effect on the environment, we know after twenty years of spraying BT, the environmental impacts are negative, or zero. Again, we use that history of twenty years of safe use in the organic food production, and the spraying of forests to consider that the protein itself is safe.

Then we do other experiments. We look at the soil and say, does the root of the cotton plant affect the bacteria in the soil, or affect the earthworms, or affect other life in the soil. The answer is no. Again, we allow history to teach us and we allow science to teach us in our regulatory process.

MODERATOR: Thank you. Next, please.

Q: Some Thai farmers chew the cotton leaves, or eat cotton seeds. Can BT hurt them?

DR. BEACHY: The question is good because we normally consider that the BT protein on the outside of the leaf is washed off by the cook. Someone who cooks the cabbages will wash the leaves first. In most cases most of the BT comes off of the leaves in production. So there has not been very much BT in the diet of most people, but it has been present in most organic foods for years. It's part of organic farming and is in the diet.

In the case of the protein like BT, when it's in the food, of course the food is often cooked. The food is then eaten and the protein is degraded by the cooking and by the eating. The only thing that I can add to that is to say that we don't eat cottonseeds in our country, but we do eat corn seeds. In the first example where we have corn products which contain BT, they have been used in American diets for about four years without any adverse effect. I will say, however, that in the goal of the next development is to have cotton plants and corn plants so the BT is primarily in the leaves or primarily in the roots, and that the amount in the seed is very low. The amount that's in the seed now in cottonseeds is extremely low. The analysis say that it's much, much less than in the leaves. So the plants that are developed so far have a very, very low amount of BT in seeds. It's not as high as in the leaves. The science behind that, I'd be happy to give you the mathematics, but the amount is about one percent of the amount in the seeds as in the leaves.

There was a small amount there, but there is no reason to believe that that protein has any adverse effect on diet. As I say, we have used, in our diets, the BT in corn which is coming from BT plants.

SENATOR BOND: I might add that those of us who have used for many years BT dust on the tomatoes, I have probably eaten a tremendous amount of BT because for years I grew my own tomatoes and I powdered with BT powder. I washed it off, but I guarantee you I didn't wash all of it off. I am here today to tell you that BT has not killed my appetite. I don't want to be flip about it. BT is very effective. It is an insecticidal protein. It is a protein that, as far as I understand the science, does not have any impact on the human digestive system. But it does on the alkaline digestive systems of certain pests. We have a different kind of system. So even if it was there, in something more than one percent, possibly, hypothesizing, it is a negligible danger.

Now there are dangers in our food supply that we overlook every day: microbial infection, the possibility of getting E. coli contamination from the use of waste on organic foods, whether it's human waste or animal waste, is a very high danger. This is a danger that kills people, and makes people very sick all across the world every day. These are the dangers. Microbial contamination. These are the dangers that we must focus on to assure that we don't have food-borne illnesses. These are very different from the potential impact from any carryover in a BT cottonseed that could be eaten by a farmer. We would hope that a farmer using BT cotton will find, as they have in China, that they make so much more profit per hectare, some $200 more. They would not have to eat cottonseeds and they would be able to eat other nutritious food as well.

DR. BEACHY: There's an experiment that was done at the University of Iowa, or Iowa State University, in America, which looked at corn which was produced by BT plants. They looked at the amounts of toxin which causes cancer. That toxin is called aflatoxin; it's one of the micotoxins. It's a toxin which is produced by a fungus, and it is found on corn seeds. The toxin gets there because the insect normally bores into the corn stalk and into the corn ear, and carries with it a fungus which produces micotoxin. This micotoxin has been shown to kill cattle and to make people sick, and to cause cancer. The scientists in Iowa looked at corn seeds which came from corn plants that were protected with the BT protein. They found that the amount of aflatoxin was less than one percent the amount found in standard-grown corn, because standard-grown corn is infected with the insect, and the insect carries the fungus which makes the toxin. If you don't have the insect, you don't have the fungus, and you don't have the toxin. So these corn seeds were shown to be much more safe for the cattle and much safer for people who ate the corn.

Someone gave me a note and asked me to address the issue of the monarch butterfly. Is that issue of whether or not BT protein can affect butterflies and other insects? Is that important for your readers? Is this important in your discussion? Some discussion about BT from the pollen affecting the butterflies?

There was a report in a scientific journal that the BT in corn plants might kill monarch butterflies. That report came from a study done in a laboratory. The scientists took a leaf, and then took some pollen and spread it around a leaf. It wasn't a very good experiment, but it was an experiment that he did. And then he put a larvae, a caterpillar larvae, on the leaf, then looked at the growth of the larvae. The insect had nothing else to eat. It only had that leaf. It had no choice. So he tried to eat, and of course he grew very slowly and then died. In agriculture, the pollen from the corn plant blows by the air and goes on the leaf which is eaten by the monarch butterfly. The leaf is usually a weed, called milkweed. It's kind of a nice weed because it makes feathers, and some people are making pillows from the feathers. So the pollen falls on the leaves, but it falls on the top leaf and the second leaf. The amounts of pollen dust on the leaf depends on how far away that leaf is from the corn plant. So if we put a corn plant where you are and milkweed plant here, there is very little pollen. If we put the milkweed very close to you, there is more pollen on the milkweed. So it's a matter of distance. The farther the distance, the less pollen.

The amounts of BT pollen on the leaf very near to you, less than one meter, would be only one percent, of the amount that this scientist used in the laboratory. So the amounts of pollen that's on the leaf here is less than .00001 per cent used in the experiment. My point is that the experiment done in the laboratory has no relevance to agriculture. So the insect is in no danger in agriculture. In addition, if the insect doesn't like the leaf that he's eating, he crawls down and goes on to the next leaf. He has a choice of the leaves to eat. After this report that was made, a group of seventeen different scientists at different universities in America made a test in the agriculture situation. All seventeen said there was no danger to the monarch butterfly, or to other insects, from the pollen. So every time we ask a question, we need to ask the question in the scientific sense, in the laboratory, and then in the sense of agriculture. And ask which is more relevant to the agriculture situation.

The analog, or the similarity, I say is a scientist did an experiment, and he injected into the rat a solution of salt. And the rat died. So do we say that salt is not safe for human consumption? The amount of salt injected into the rat was too great, much greater than you would have in your diet. Of course the salt is safe, but you can always do an experiment to make it look bad. We can make aspirin look bad, we can make salt look bad, we can make vitamins look bad if we have too much. So it's important to put every question in the context of the real situation, in agriculture or in food. The same as we ask the same question in drugs.

SENATOR BOND: Let me add just one thing. We know that in the area of where they have planted BT cotton that we have saved two million pounds of pesticide. Now, I've used different kinds of pesticides, Sevin, I guess, is one of the ones, and it would kill, I believe, many of the insects on cotton. But it also absolutely slaughters the monarch butterflies, and if you don't used BT cotton and you have to use an alternative chemical pesticide, if that hits the monarch butterfly, that butterfly is gone. In the area, I state this anecdotally, there's a tremendous resurgence of monarch butterflies because cotton farmers are no longer using the very harsh chemical pesticides that do kill monarch butterflies. They're using BT cotton that kills the bole weevil, the worms that eat and destroy the cotton.

Let me impose upon your good nature to hand out, for anyone who's interested, a wonderful speech written for me in Seattle. I wanted to have this great speech, but there were so many riots in the streets that very few people listened to my speech. I was hoping that you might read this speech sometime in your free time. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Yes, one more question. I'm going to have to just take one more question because we have to go onto our next event.

Q: How does the U.S. Government regulatory system work? Does the USG really check the safety before products come to market?

DR. BEACHY: Yes. The question of safety of BT corn or cottonseed oil, or any other process, goes through a process that enters what we call a tree, a decision tree. So the regulatory science looks at all the components. So the crop product goes to the Food and Drug Administration, and they ask the question what is the source of the gene? They look at the source of the gene and say, if it comes from another plant, it has one kind of regulation. If it comes from another organism, such as bacterium, as BT is, they have a different tree. The answer to the question is, it comes from a bacterium. They look at it and say, what is the nature of the protein, and what is the history?

We've talked about the history of BT dust, and the history says it's safe. Then the next question is, is the protein an allergen. Does it cause an allergenic response? So they look at the nature of the protein and say, does it cause an allergen? And they use sets of scientific criteria, scientific measures, and they evaluate the protein. They say, is it causing allergy, and the answer is no.

It goes down to another point in the tree, and says if the protein is mixed with a food, does it cause an allergy? With that experiment, it says no. It goes down this decision tree: no, no, no. Finally the agency says, we believe it to be safe based upon this decision-making tree. This tree is very long. This tree is never used for star fruit, never used for kiwi, and never used for any other crops, but only when the crops are developed by the new techniques of genetic modification. As a scientist, I was very surprised that we would have to go through this regulation, because never before have we had to do this in agriculture. I think it is a good plan, because it asks all the very difficult questions. If at any point in this decision tree it looks to be a dangerous answer, then it goes off to the side and either is aborted or stopped, or more experiments are done to look at safety. It's a very laborious and very long process. Each product goes through at least 18 months, and sometimes 24 months, of testing before it goes to the consumer. So it is a long process. It doesn't just happen in a laboratory and go to the market. It goes through process first.

Q: What about labeling? What is the U.S. government's position on labeling of GMO products?

DR. BEACHY: The U.S. government has said if the food is identical by all means from the other foods made by other standard approaches, if there's no difference, then there's no reason for labeling. Labeling in America is used to indicate that there is a difference. If there is an additive, if the food producer puts more vitamins in by additives, then they must label because that's an addition and they label it that way, if it's chemically different or nutritional. These are not different, and therefore there is no reason to consider that labeling should be done. In the United States, labeling is an information, which denotes difference. And in this case they say it is not different; therefore it need not to be labeled.

Again, what is most important is the product, not the process. Crossbreeding is one kind of process. Genetic transformation is another kind of process. But what is most important for the consumer is not the process, but the product at the end, which is eaten. And if it is safe, it is proven to be safe, there is no reason for labeling, according to the U.S. government rules, which I think are based on sound science. You can say other reasons, after politics reasons you should label. But for science reasons it's the same. It need not to be labeled. And again, it's important to recognize that we consider in the U.S. science is an important component of our society and an important component of how we regulate and the rules that we impose.

MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Dr. Beachy. I'm afraid we have to cut it off now. I know you have one more question, but we have to have one more event and I want to thank Dr. Beachy and Senator Bond for coming to Thailand and for sharing their information and their expertise with us today. For those of you who haven't received some of our documents on biotechnology, we have some extra documents, both in English and Thai. Please see Khun Wichai. He also has some information about regulations and about regulatory processes and how it works in the United States that are very clear. So please talk with Khun Wichai and he can give you those documents.

Thank you very much, everyone, for coming today.

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