Need for Testing of Bioengineered Foods Debated

(Safety of current procedures challenged and defended) (1000)

By Charlene Porter

Washington File Staff Writer



Washington -- A debate is brewing in the scientific community about
whether the regulatory process for agricultural products derived from
the techniques of biotechnology is safe and adequate. An article
published in the British journal Nature last week challenged the basis
for current regulatory review, but defenders of these procedures call
the criticism short-sighted, ill-informed and ill-advised.


"Beyond Substantial Equivalence" appeared in the Oct. 7 edition of
Nature, written by Erik Millstone, a director of studies with the
Science and Technology Policy Research Institute at the University of
Sussex; Eric Brunner with the Department of Epidemiology and Public
Health at University College; and Sue Mayer, director of GeneWatch UK,
an independent organization concerned with the ethics of genetic
engineering.


Even before its actual publication, advance copies circulating in the
scientific community prompted a clamor of denunciations on the
Internet-based FoodBiotechNet, self-described as a "central, credible
forum to facilitate information sharing and exchange of scientific
perspectives" on food biotechnology.


The "substantial equivalence" concept noted in the title of the Nature
article essentially means that if a genetically modified food can be
shown to have virtually the same chemical make-up as its natural
cousin, then it can be considered safe. Substantial equivalence has
served as an international guideline for the evaluation of organisms
modified through bioengineering since a 1986 consensus reached by a
Group of National Experts advising the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD). The panel determined that
genetically modified organisms "may be assessed in generally the same
way as those associated with non-rDNA (non-recombitant DNA)
organisms."


The authors argue that foods produced with bioengineering techniques
and proposed for human consumption should be subjected to thorough
toxicological testing "which would actively investigate the safety and
toxicity of GM (genetically modified) foods rather than merely taking
them for granted...." The article further suggests that the current
system of evaluation is based less on a concern to protect the public
health than on a desire to advance the interests of the agriculture
industry.


Critics of the view propounded in Nature argue that substantial
equivalence is still valid. In a 1992 editorial, Nature said that "the
same physical and biological laws govern the response of organisms
modified by modern molecular and cellular methods and those produced
by classical methods...(Therefore) no conceptual distinction exists
between genetic modification of plants and microorganisms by classical
methods or by molecular techniques that modify DNA and transfer
genes."


The OECD's experts group has also examined food safety specifically,
concluding in a 1993 report that modern biotechnology broadens the
scope of the genetic changes that can be made in food organisms, and
broadens the scope of possible sources of foods.


This does not inherently lead to foods that are less safe than those
developed by conventional techniques," the report said. "Therefore,
evaluation of foods and food components obtained from organisms
developed by the application of the newer techniques does not
necessitate a fundamental change in established principles, nor does
it require a different standard of safety."


Substantial equivalence is still "accepted by most experts as a
primary strategy in the evaluation of the safety of GMO foods,"
according to Dr. Steve Taylor, who chairs an international panel of
scientists appointed by the World Health Organization and the Food and
Agriculture Organization to assess the safety of biotechnology
products.


Despite this history, the authors of the Nature article argue that the
substantial equivalence concept is "misguided, and should be abandoned
in favor of one that includes biological, toxicological and
immunological tests rather than merely chemical ones."


"This is simply NOT TRUE," writes Taylor. The principle of substantial
equivalence is applied to identify what components might be novel to
the newly developed food. "Safety assessment procedures are then
focused, and appropriately so, on these unique, novel components.
But...extensive toxicological testing and safety evaluations are
conducted for each GMO food...."


Several critics of the Nature article point out that the proposal for
extensive chemical testing of new foodstuffs seems to ignore the
successes of plant hybridization conducted through the millennia.


Dr. Henry Miller, senior research fellow at Stanford University's
Hoover Institution and a founding director of the Food and Drug
Administration's Office of Biotechnology, said that the Millstone
article is inconsistent, demanding "extensive, difficult to perform,
hugely expensive biochemical and toxicological tests on gene-spliced
plants, but not on the dozens of new plant varieties improved with
more crude traditional techniques of genetic modification, such as
hybridization, that enter the marketplace each year without special
labeling or premarket review.


"They are apparently unperturbed by the fact that many products on the
market are from...hybridizations in which genes are moved from one
species or one genus to another to create a variety of plant that does
not and cannot exist in nature," Miller continues. "They seem likewise
unimpressed by the fact that thousands of foods containing
gene-spliced ingredients or from hybridization have been consumed
routinely and safely by consumers in Europe and North America."


Alex Avery, director of research and education at the Center for
Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, suggests that the
"meaningless" testing called for in the Nature article could cost in
the tens of millions of dollars, resulting in data about chemical
composition that would likely provide little insight on how safe the
GM food might be for humans or the environment.


Avery says the Nature article ignores the potential benefits. He says
the danger of attempts to unduly restrain the advancement of
biotechnology "is that we severely curtail agricultural innovation at
the exact moment when we need it the most. The world's population is
expected to increase another 50 percent before leveling off about the
middle of the next century....Without rapid innovation, we risk
destroying the last remaining critical wildlife habitats for food
production."


(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State)