Biotechnology Creates a Green Gene Revolution

By Nadine Nigel Leavitt
USIA Staff Writer

What is biotechnology? Agricultural biotechnology is a collection of scientific techniques, including genetic engineering, that are used to create, improve, or modify plants, animals, and microorganisms. The big news for food security concerns crops created through biotechnology, or bioengineered crops.

In many cases, the crops you see on farms today bear little resemblance to the original plants from which they have evolved. That is because farmers have painstakingly selected plants for particular characteristics, carefully bred them and, through constant care and cross-breeding, have created plants with improved yields or some other desirable trait. But traditional breeding must be done among closely related species, and often unwanted genes conferring undesired characteristics can be transferred along with the desired characteristics. Furthermore, this all takes a great deal of time -- it took many generations of patient and persistent farmers to produce the modern major crops that you find in your local market.

Modern techniques now enable scientists to offer farmers new crops by moving specific genes (and their desirable traits) in ways farmers could not do before -- and with greater ease and precision. Also, scientists can use the newer genetic techniques to move genes among unrelated species to yield plants with novel traits that cannot be produced by traditional breeding. One such novel trait could be, say, the ability to resist herbicides, thus allowing more efficient application of herbicides to kill weeds without harming the crops.

In the United States, herbicide-tolerant soybeans became available to farmers for the first time in 1996. Within just two short years, 4.1 million acres (40 percent of the U.S. soybean acreage) have been planted with herbicide-tolerant soybeans -- making soybeans the number one bioengineered crop in the United States.

Why have U.S. farmers taken to the herbicide-resistant soybeans and similar crops? It is because they have found that using these bioengineered seeds reduces the need to plow their fields to control weeds; decreases the amount of chemical herbicide they need to use; produces higher crop yields; and can deliver a cleaner and higher quality harvest.

In the United States, more than 5000 field trials have been safely conducted since 1987 and about 50 new agricultural products have completed all the federal regulatory requirements and may be sold commercially. As a result, acreage using genetically engineered crops in the United States has increased from about 8 million acres in 1996 to more than 50 million acres in 1998. Bioengineered crops grown in the United States range from longer-lasting tomatoes to pest-resistant corn (maize).

Of all the corn grown in the United States in 1998, approximately 25 percent came from seeds that were genetically modified. For example, farmers have perennially faced huge losses caused by a pest known as the European corn borer. Corn provided with genetic protection from this pest by biotechnology (i.e. "Bt corn") was approved in the United States in August 1995. Fields of corn with Bt protection, on average, have 7-11 percent increase in yield per acre in comparison to more conventional corn. No wonder American farmers use of Bt corn has grown from about 1 percent of planted corn acreage in 1996 to 19 percent of the overall crop in 1998.

Biotechnology also offers unique opportunities to help protect the environment and solve problems that have traditionally hindered sustainable rural development in developing countries.

Biotechnology-derived crops can:

• boost the nutritional value of foods (thus combating malnutrition and/or the need for vitamin supplements);

• reduce the need for agrochemicals and pesticides (thus reducing problems of agricultural chemical run-off);

• reduce the need to till the soil to control weeds (thus stemming erosion and soil infertility);

• improve crop yields (thus lessening the pressure to deforest for agricultural land);

• increase resistance to drought (thus averting famines); and

• reduce the amount of water needed for crops (thus reducing the danger of water depletion).

For example, when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman took a pro-biotechnology stance at the World Food Conference in Rome in 1996, he was pelted with genetically modified soybeans -- by naked protesters. But Glickman -- and the U.S. government in general -- supports a safe/slow approach.

As Glickman has summed up the situation: "The important question is not, do we accept the changes the biotechnology revolution can bring, but are we willing to heed the lessons of the past in helping us to harness this burgeoning technology. The promise and potential are enormous, but so too are the questions many of which are completely legitimate . . . we have to grapple with and satisfy those questions so we can in fact fulfill biotechnology's awesome potential."

Some critics of biotechnology question the environmental safety of the new technology. They are concerned that genes from genetically modified plants could escape into the environment through cross fertilization and result in "super weeds" resistant to certain herbicides. Others fear that plants that produce their own pesticide/insecticide -- such as the Bt corn -- will cause insects to develop resistance to its toxic effects and become "super bugs." And some people question the effect food made with bioengineered ingredients may have on the human body. They worry that food made from bioengineered crops might inadvertently contain toxins and/or cause allergic reactions in people.

"We must develop rules rooted in science to encourage the full fruits of biotechnology," President Clinton said at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the World Trade Organization in Geneva in May 1998. In other words, fear must be tempered with facts -- and the safety of bioengineered foods must be scientifically evaluated prior to public release.

In the United States, the regulation of biotechnology food products does not differ fundamentally from regulation of conventional food products. Three federal agencies are primarily responsible for the regulation of genetically engineered foods -- the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Each federal agency is assigned certain regulatory responsibilities. FDA provides voluntary pre-market consultations with food companies, seed companies, and plant developers to ensure that biotechnology derived foods meet regulatory standards for safety. USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) licenses field testing of crops prior to commercial release of newly developed plant strains. EPA registers pesticides in U.S. commerce (including plants engineered to produce pesticides) and establishes levels at which pesticides in foods are permitted. APHIS and EPA together established procedures to review and approve field tests of modified plants and microorganisms. FDA has post-market authority to remove a food from the market.

In the United States, the regulatory path for testing and commercializing biotechnology products as they move from laboratory to field to marketplace has been around for more than a decade and decisions are based on rigorous analysis and sound scientific principles.

The U.S. Government encourages other countries to develop appropriate legislation and to set up regulatory bodies to cover all aspects of safety with regard to bioengineered foods. As Glickman has pointed out, "... science will march forward, and especially in agriculture, that science can help to create a world where no one needs to go hungry, where developing nations can become more food self-sufficient and thereby become freer and more democratic, where the environmental challenges and clean water, clean air, global warming and climate change, must be met with sound and modern science and that will involve biotechnological solutions."

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