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Genetically Modified Plants—Panacea or Peril?
Plants & Gardens News | Volume 14, Number 4 | Winter 1999
by Niall Dunne
What's in a name?" wrote William Shakespeare. "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." But then the Bard never had to get his nose around late-20th century biotechnology, with its ability to alter the genetic blueprint—and hence the characteristics—of many complex organisms. Perhaps Shakespeare wouldn't have been so equivocal if he'd known that scientists might one day create a rose that smells like a pine tree or banana.
To my knowledge, nobody's actually bioengineered a pine-scented rose. Not yet anyway!
My point is, rather, that in biotechnology labs around the world today, no plant is inviolable. Had Shakespeare himself beseeched the hags on the Scottish moor to "look into the seeds of time," they could have informed him that an Australian company called Florigene, founded in the mid-1980s, expects within a year to turn his beloved rose blue using pigment-producing DNA imported from a petunia.
I may be overstating the case. As every gardener knows, humans have been altering—through selective breeding, hybridization, and relocation—the fate (and the DNA) of plants for millennia. However, because biotechnology has wrought so much change in so little time, it is important for anyone who cares about plants to become familiar with its vernacular.
Panacea or Peril?
In the current controversy over genetically modified (GM) crops, it seems a name can make a lot of difference. Last August in Britain—where the government accused newspapers of stirring up "Franken Food" hysteria—protestors destroyed test fields of genetically modified oil-seed rape and maize. And in the United States, the Monsanto Company (the nation's leader in agribusiness) cancelled its plans to develop a seed-sterilizing biotechnology labeled "The Terminator" or "Suicide Seed" by its critics.
The biotechnology industry is dismayed by the negative publicity and the profusion of misnomers. It contends that its "transgenic" techniques are simply an extension and refinement of our time-honored methods of plant breeding. These latter traditionally have involved the deliberate transfer of genetic traits from one related plant species to another. Transgenics, no longer held to the same constraints as its predecessors, is able to target specific genes and transfer them individually across whole phyla. A recent example is that of the frost-proof tomato created with a gene from a flounder—a fish whose naturally occurring anti-freeze allows it to survive in cold water.
After over 30 years of research—including a worldwide project, now nearing completion, to sequence the genome of the flowering weed Arabidopsis thaliana—scientists are closer than ever to knowing how to manipulate the genes responsible for the control of every function and feature in a plant. Proponents of GM plants claim that this new knowledge offers the only hope of feeding the world's three billion malnourished poor—and the billions more that are expected within the next 50 years, due to rapid population growth. They foresee a "Second Green Revolution" that will replace our current over-reliance upon chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
Biotech scientists are engineering, or are hoping to engineer, crops with such desirable traits as greater yield, drought tolerance, pathogen resistance, and higher nutritional content. As well as feeding the impoverished billions, the enhanced crops are being touted as a way to make more productive use of farmland and thereby reduce the pressure to turn dwindling wild habitats into arable property.
Cosmic Concern
So if biotechnology holds such great promise, why have many countries around the world either legislated the mandatory labeling of GM foods and food products, or banned them completely? Why are environmentalists and biotech strategists fighting a pitched battle over the future of plants and the plants of the future?
The question of whether or not GM foods are safe for human consumption is obviously crucial. With transplanted genes creating new proteins in our food, some opponents of GM plants fear a sharp rise in allergic reactions. For now at least, there seems to be little scientific evidence to support their concern.
A broad, sociological objection to GM plants is that we simply don't need to figure out how to grow more food. According to the non-profit Institute for Food Development Policy, we already grow more than enough to feed everyone. The real problems are poverty and inequality—too many people are too poor to buy the food that is available or lack land on which to grow it themselves.
Another controversy swirls around the patenting of GM plants. Nowadays, if farmers save seed from their GM harvest for next year's planting (saving seed is standard practice in developing countries), they risk prosecution on grounds similar to copyright infringement. Many public interest groups see patenting as an attempt by corporations to monopolize the global farming economy.
A more cosmic concern is raised by works such as The Diversity of Life, by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. In the book, Wilson estimates that we've only managed to identify and name roughly 10 percent of the species that inhabit the Earth. If we know so little about the natural world, why are we in such a hurry to alter it?
There is also the matter that 70 percent of the current GM harvest—about 20 million hectares—is made up of herbicide-resistant crops (HRCs). These crops are designed to tolerate high levels of exposure to a broad-spectrum herbicide, thus enabling farmers to reduce their spraying to one heavy dosage per year. However, ecologists argue that HRCs do nothing to break the overall cycle of dependence upon chemical applications. They are also concerned that HRCs will breed spontaneously in the wild with related plants—creating "superweeds" that would threaten ecosystems and precipitate the need for even more potent chemicals.
There are similar fears about the so-called "Bt crops" that comprise most of the rest of the commercial GM plant market. These crops have been fortified with a gene from the soil organism Bacillus thuringienisis, currently used by organic farmers and gardeners to control insect pests; the gene produces a substance in the cells of the plants that makes them toxic to certain insects. The idea is that if the pesticide is already built into the plant, there won't be any need for chemical sprays. But organic farmers, who apply Bt sparingly, and only when needed, fear that insects exposed to transgenic crops over sustained periods will develop a wide-scale immunity to the effects of Bt, and as a result the organic farming industry will be severely crippled.
What's in a Label?
Until recently, few Americans questioned the wisdom of genetic engineering or were even aware that its fruits had already reached the supermarket shelves. But a growing number here are unhappy about the fact that GM food plants are being regulated the same way as other foods. Federal law requires biotech companies to label a GM food only if it differs significantly from the unmodified version. The task of testing for significant difference—and overall safety—is entrusted to the companies themselves.
Biotech companies believe that the mandatory labeling of GM products could spell disaster for the business. Because 75 percent of trangenic crops are U.S. grown, they characterize the worldwide moratoria on their products as thinly veiled anti-Americanism or as naïve attempts to resist globalization. But surely in an age of free trade we are all entitled to a corresponding freedom to be informed—to know the real names of things—and decide whether we want GM plants in our lives or not.
Niall Dunne is the associate editor of Plants & Gardens News.