Interview with BioChica on labeling, organics, and GMOs

A couple of weeks ago, a student from USF reached out to me for an interview for an assignment that she had. She had a series of questions about labeling, organic food, and GMOs. Once I had answered her questions,  the spouse suggested that it would be good to share my responses on my blog (with a few edits), because it summarized my thoughts on quite a few topics.

Q: Why do you think there is a debate about GMOs vs. Organic or natural produce?

I think that it's because GMOs are feared as being “unnatural”. The idea of taking a protein from one species into another seems like something out of a science-fiction novel, particularly since the general population associates bacteria and viruses with harm and danger. So taking a gene from a bacteria and adding it to a plant has an "ick-factor" or a certain amount of "unnaturalness" associated with it. This fear has been harnessed by activists into campaigns against GMOs. Some of these groups are organic food proponents, such as the Organic Consumers Association or Only Organic, creating a false dichotomy of GMO vs organic.

However, many farmers grow both conventional and organic crops. The dichotomy does not need to exist, and in fact, some GMOs could be grown using organic food production practices if the label allowed it.

Q: Do you have a stance on the GMO vs. organic issue? How did it develop?

My stance on GMOs vs organic has evolved quite a bit. I never really had an issue with GMOs and I started blogging to learn more about them. So to be more accurate, my stance was with respect to conventional food vs organic food. The reason why I never had an issue with GMOs is because I don't view a protein or gene as "belonging" to a species. Genes get copied, erased, and shifted around all the time throughout the evolution of a species (actually, here’s a picture about one of my publications in grad school that outlines that the gene I was working on was copied in placental mammals, but not in marsupials). So I actually view the process of transgenesis (which is generally used to make GMOs) as more accurate, because you can select exactly what gene you want to copy or erase rather than letting it happen randomly (which is what happens when we crossbreed). When I started reading the scientific literature on GMOs, my mind was completely put at ease about the GMOs in our food supply, so I eat GMOs and feed them to my family.

Regarding organics, when my son was born, my primary concern was the level of pesticide in our food. I began feeding him organic veggies, because I thought that they were pesticide-free. As I learned about our food and found out that organic food production does use pesticides, I was really taken aback. I read the recommendations from the FDA and USDA, and learned that washing fruits/veggies with cold water gets rid of pesticides, regardless of the method used to grow the crop. When I saw the actions of groups such as the Organic Consumers Association and the misinformation they spread about GMOs, I boycotted organic food entirely.

Now, I've come to realize that all forms of food production have pros and cons. Farmers should be free to grow their crops with whatever method they find suitable, following laws and guidelines set forth by regulatory bodies. This creates a wealth of different foods grown using different styles. I try to buy what's in season from California (since it’s where I live), and I try to buy at the best price point, regardless of whether the food is grown organically or conventionally. At the moment, most of our fresh produce is conventionally grown. All the meat and dairy we buy is conventional. Some of our dry goods, particularly my son’s snacks, are organic (Costco has amazing deals on organic snacks for kids).

Q: In your opinion should GMOs be labeled?

This is another topic where my opinion has changed a lot over time. I started out thinking that if the general public wants labeling, then it should be provided. I didn't understand why companies would fight it. My opinion changed due to several reasons:

• Risk perception: A label stating "May contain GMOs" conveys the idea that GMOs may be harmful, which is why food manufacturers fight the label.
• Cost to suppliers/farmers: if we're going to start separating GM food from non-GM food, we’d have to start separating them from the source, and most of that burden will fall on farmers. They will have to have separate equipment, separate storage, separate transportation, etc for GM and non-GM crops, which will significantly increase the cost to farmers and the cost will probably trickle down to consumers. The cost of changing the label itself is not significant, but the cost of segregating crops will be burdensome.
• Defining what needs to be labeled: There’s no consensus on the definition of a GMO ingredient (here’s a recent post that I wrote on the topic). There are so many different criteria and examples: do we label the meat from a cow fed GM grain? What if the cow received a GM vaccine? Do we label sugar derived from a GM-beet, even though it contains no DNA or protein and is therefore indistinguishable from sugar derived from a non-GM beet? How much of a GMO needs to be present for an item to merit being labeled? There’s absolutely no consensus on what should be labeled.
• Labels already exist: if individuals are genuinely concerned about GMOs, then they should just buy food under the USDA’s organic label, which already excludes GMOs, ingredients derived from GMOs, and animals raised on GM-grains. Why do we need to go through the expensive legislative and burocratic process of creating a label for individuals who want to avoid GMOs, when there’s already a label in place to meet their needs?
• Arbitrary nature of the label: the demand to label GMOs is basically a demand to label how a crop was made. It doesn’t provide information on the amount of pesticide used, on the conditions the crop was grown in, or anything that might genuinely be informative. So why is there a demand to label transgenic crops, but not any other methods to develop crops, such as mutagenic crops (derived by radioactivity or mutating chemicals)? Crops derived through mutagenesis are accepted under the USDA’s organic label, so you couldn’t avoid them even if you wanted to. It doesn’t make much sense and seems completely random.

Q: What is the number one misconception you hear repeated over and over again about GMOs?

“GMOs aren’t tested. We’re the guinea pigs”. There’s a very large number of publications on the GMOs in our food supply and they range from animal feeding studies to environmental impact studies to tests/assays on identifying GMOs in our food supply. I understand the hesitation to trust data generated from the companies that develop GMOs, but many of these studies are carried out by independent researchers. You can find many of these studies in GENERA.

Q: Are GMOs harmful or helpful to our world’s food economy?

“GMO” is a (non-scientific) term used to denote that a crop is made through transgenesis. But the gene/protein/trait introduced into the crop varies. So GMOs should not be lumped all together into a single category: their value, pros, and cons depend on the trait that was introduced.

For example, the Rainbow Papaya is a transgenic crop made to resist the papaya ringspot virus and revitalized Hawaii’s papaya industry. It has made a significant impact to the State’s economy and to its farmers. It’s a great example of how a transgenic crop can benefit a region’s economy.

Q: What inspired you to begin writing about GMOs?

When California had its labeling bill on the ballot, I started seeing a lot of contradictory information in the media on GMOs, particularly in social media. I thought that the responsible thing to do would be to go and read the original research papers myself and find out the truth of the matter rather than rely on someone else to tell me what’s true. Soon after, my husband and I had the opportunity to travel to Cambodia, and I learned a lot about their struggles to rebuild and how they were working with the International Rice Research Institute to try to increase their yields. I wanted to learn about how it was done, and it was what I needed to buckle down and start reading. I started writing just to document my journey and to share it with family and friends, so it’s been a surprising turn of events that has led me down a path where I find myself writing for larger audiences.

Q: Where do you see the GMO labeling debate heading in the future? Do you think there will ever be an end to it?

I think that the solution might be a Federal law on voluntary labeling, and I believe that most agricultural biotech companies as well as food companies would support such a law (one has actually been proposed. Read more about it here). However, that won’t stop the campaign of misinformation about GMOs. I genuinely do not know what the solution is to the latter and doubt that there will ever be an end to it. After all, there are still people who believe that vaccines cause autism and there are still groups that promote such ideas, despite the overwhelming amount of information and data to the contrary, so I don't think there will ever be an end to it in that sense.

Which one of these things should we label?

If you've followed this blog since it's inception, you'll know that my stance about labeling GMOs has changed and evolved with time. At first, I was indifferent towards labeling: if people want GMOs labeled, just label it and get it over with. What's the big deal? Then I read several papers that looked into customer risk perceptions regarding labels and learned why food producers probably wouldn't want to label their products. I read articles written by farmers, highlighting the high cost that they'd have to bear in terms of equipment to sort GMO from non-GMO products (here's a great example of one such article). I realized that a label that simply says "May Contain GMOs" is not informative enough (see last section in my article here). But what has really convinced me that labeling GMOs would be a messy legislative exercise is my perception that I probably wouldn't be able to find two people to give me the same answer on what should be labeled.

For example, should milk from a cow fed GMO grain be labeled? What if the cow received a vaccine produced through genetic engineering? What about yogurt made with a bacteria that's been engineered? Should a transgenic ear of corn be labeled? What about a cisgenic ear of corn (i.e has a gene from a related species that it could be bred with)? What about high fructose corn syrup from GMO corn?

To highlight what this last point is all about, I have to point you to my previous article where I outline that a transgenic organism is a species that has had a gene(s) introduced from another species with which it could not breed. That gene produces a protein which performs a specific function. For our example about high fructose corn syrup made from transgenic corn, let's imagine that it's from Bt-corn. The corn's genome now has a piece of DNA that has been introduced, and this piece of DNA produces a protein that is toxic to specific insects. The corn has two things that identify it as a transgenic organism (GMO): the insecticidal-protein and the gene that codes for it.

In the case of high fructose corn syrup, the process of making the syrup removes all proteins and degrades DNA. So it's virtually indistinguishable from high fructose corn syrup made from non-GMO corn. The same goes for sugar extracted from a GMO beet: refined sugar doesn't have the transgene or the transgenic protein. So if the "thing" that makes it a GMO isn't there, is it still a GMO? Does it need to be labeled?

Sort of sounds like one of those if-a-tree-falls-in-a forest-and-no-one's-there,-does-it-make-a-sound philosophical questions.

Except that there's nothing philosophical about it. The Non-GMO project, an organization that offers a voluntary label for food manufacturers who want to certify their products as non-GMO, states that if there's not enough DNA in a product to determine if it's a GMO, then you have to look at the supply chain and test products that are upstream (see 2.6.1.1.4 of the link). To be clear: the Non-GMO project considers refined sugar from a GM beet to be different than sugar from a regular beet, even though there's no chemical difference between the two. The Non-GMO project also requires cows to be given non-GMO feed in order for dairy products to earn their label. However, Ben & Jerry's, who is leading the way in all things non-GMO doesn't consider their milk to be a GMO despite the fact that they use GMO feed for their dairy cows.
 
Determining which things should be labeled gets even messier when you look at the proposed legislation. In states where there have been ballot measures for GMO labeling, the exemptions are very strange: alcoholic beverages would have been exempt in Vermont, Colorado and California; Colorado's proposed ballot measure specifically states that chewing gum would be exempt; in Vermont, you don't need to label if the amount of GM material makes up less than 0.9% of the total weight of processed food, but in California the cutoff is at 0.5%. Some how GMOs are more GMOish in California so the state can't handle as much of it... Perhaps the GMOs have more Monsantonization...

I genuinely feel that the best solution is that individuals who are concerned about GMOs purchase organic goods (which already exclude GMOs and well as GMO feed) or purchase items voluntarily certified as Non-GMO. It makes WAY more sense than to create a mandatory GMO label and then try to decide what to slap it on.

On a different note, I've been reading "Tomorrow's Table" about organic farming and genetics. Fantastic read thus far. Maybe I'll write a book summary/review next time.

Finally, have you signed up to receive notifications about my blog? On the right hand menu of the page, you can add your email. You'll get an email about 1-2x a month letting you know that there's a new post and it's title, and these emails will completely revolutionize your life. You'll find yourself feeling better and full of vital energy. You'll even lose weight. Sign up now!

GMOs and toxins leach through your skin

Last week, the tweets were flying furiously in a "Right to Know" campaign regarding fem care products (for more information, see here). Apparently, there's concern over the fact that feminine hygiene products are not labelled, we do not know what's in them, and that may include GMO cotton. Two "experiments" were performed:

Every item here is potentially toxic
Wikipedia Commons

1) Two pads were incinerated in someone's backyard: one was Always and one was organic cotton. The Always pad burned differently and released a lot of "toxins".
2) Two tampons were submerged in ultra-purified water on someone's kitchen table: one was O.B and one was organic cotton. The O.B tampon supposedly released a lot more fibers, which are assumed to be rayon, and the O.B tampon also developed spots, which are assumed to be mold.

Based on these experiments, there's a petition to Procter & Gamble to disclose the make up of their fem care products.

The concern is that the contents of the fem care products will leach into our systems, since "our skin is the largest and most absorbent organ in our body" (that's from Dr Mercola's site, highlighting the dangers of inorganic fem care products).

I'll begin with the fact that there's no evidence for the causation or even association between synthetic fem care products and health issues. Let me outline the steps I took:

• I checked Snopes.com for any information on tampons and pads. There are two false urban legends regarding tampons being associated with toxic shock syndrome, as well as the presence of asbestos in tampons. There is also a false urban legend regarding the use of sanitary pads being linked to cases of uterine and bladder cancer. 
• I went to pubmed and typed in "feminine hygiene products". I found 1337 hits. That's not a typo. 1337 various studies have been carried out examining different aspects of feminine hygiene products ranging from their use in HPV detection, HIV prevention, and health education. Study methods range from the examination for irritation with new film surfaces to the analysis of changes in bacterial cultures with feminine care products.
• I checked the American Cancer Society's webpage, which stated that the link between tampons and cancer is "absurd". I searched on the American Medical Association's webpage, and couldn't find anything.
• After that, I stopped.

With 1337 studies performed, the alleged toxicity of fem care products is not an issue to our doctors or to the FDA. Instead of speculating that it's due to payoffs from big corporations like P&G or Unilever, I will propose that it's because it's not a problem.  

There are several issues at hand. One is that the team or individual behind this whole movement has not done their homework. If I was able to find this information during my lunch break at work, then so could they. This is perhaps best highlighted by the fact that O.B tampons are not made by P&G and that their petition on change.org is to the incorrect person. As to the burning of the products, I hate to say it but that experiment is up there with putting salt water fish in fresh water to see if they'll die. Always products contain glue, plastic liners, and other oil-based compounds which anyone would expect to burn differently from an organic cotton pad. As for the mold, if you look at the pictures those brown specs are present even at 2 hours. But even at 24 hours, the likelihood that it's mold is pretty low, and it's probably just cotton fibers. 

Second is that if you are going to argue that toxins from GMOs and from hygenic products leach into your system through your skin, here's a list of items that you should be aware of:

• The cotton clothes you wear are probably made of GM cotton
• The natural baby care products may contain ingredients from GM crops. 
• The fabric in your car and child's car seat might contain GM cotton
• The production of many types of fabrics and plastics require alcohol, which might be ethanol made from GM corn or soybeans
• Your wool clothes might be from animals that are fed GM alfalfa 
• Your leather furniture might be from animals that are given GM feed
• The taxi that you take might be running on ethanol gas from GM corn, as well as the municipal vehicles in your area. All that GM DNA might be in the air...

And then there's all those toxins from all the other things that come into contact with your skin and how they might impact your health:

• Your cell phone cover is in your hand or in your pocket for most of the day, and probably contains "toxins" that make the plastic durable and robust
• The mouse on your computer has a rubber wheel, which may contain natural rubber from a farm that douses its trees with pesticides
• Your desk and table are probably made of composite wood that release tons of formaldehyde that you're breathing and is entering your pores
• and a million different things

There is no evidence that any of this is true. In the past, I've shown how we might create a sharknado or a zombie apocalypse, in similar hypothetical statements. At this point, we're beyond sharknados. We're at sharktopi (is that the plural of a sharktopus?). 

My next point is regarding your "right to know". I am willing to bet Baby-Boy's two chubby cheeks that in the highly unlikely scenario that P&G responds to your request, the list of ingredients in their feminine care products will include compounds with words like "poly-X" or "ethyl-Y" or "nitro-Z" and you will be displeased because they won't sound "natural". Someone out there will do a bit of research and will probably discover that those compounds are also present in other ominous things like trash bags or the sole of your shoes, and you will panic. So instead of making a ruckus and trying to get a giant corporation to disclose trade secrets which they are not legally obliged to provide, why don't you just buy organic fem care products and be done with it?

Finally, the video with the fem care product bonfire was put together by a company that sells "100% natural fem care products". So isn't there a possibility that you're being duped by a company that's trying to sell their product into believing that there's an issue when there really isn't one?

I'd like to close with a personal note. My sister, the mother of two phenomenal kids, is a chemical engineer and has been working for P&G for over 5 years. She started as an intern and has worked with them in two different countries, so I've met a few of her friends and colleagues. And she worked in their fem care product lines. I've always felt that the mark of a good product is brand loyalty, especially from its own employees. And I have never seen a company with employees as loyal to their products as P&G, with the possible exceptions of Google and Apple. So if you think that they put products out there without proper testing, you're wrong. If you think they'd create products that would knowingly endanger you, you're outta whack.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: yes, big corporations (correction: ALL corporations including companies that make "100% natural tampons") are in the business of making money and to create a crummy product or a product that would be recalled would not be conducive to their goals.

Also, P&G makes awesome commercials for the Olympics :)

YAY TEAM CANADA!!!!

A look into Golden Rice

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Golden_Rice.jpg

This week's blog is a look into the numerous claims about the properties of the controversial "Golden Rice".

So, I first learned about Golden Rice a few months ago, when I saw a viral video where a 14-year old girl who stood against GMOs was interviewed on CBC news (I'm going to miss CBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics this year... I don't think I'll be able to get it in CA). When the host asked her about the promise of Golden Rice, she said "Golden rice was scrapped because it didn't work. And in order for the average 11-year-old boy to get enough Vitamin A from rice he would have to eat 27 bowls of rice per day... The reason there is blindness isn't because there is a lack of Vitamin A in the rice, it's because their diets are simply rice."

So, what is "Golden Rice"? It's a grain of rice made by an eccentric food magnate as part of a contest, and if you get one, then you get to visit his biotech company. Hilarious! (I crack myself up sometimes...) Actually, Golden Rice is a genetically modified strain of rice that is not yet commercially available. It has been modified to produce beta-carotene, which is a precursor to vitamin A. Rice plants have beta-carotene in their leaves, but the endosperm (the white stuff that we eat) doesn't have any. Golden Rice has been modified with two genes that help the endosperm make beta-carotene: one gene is from the daffodil and the second is from a soil bacterium (all this information is brought to you courtesy of Wikipedia). The beta-carotene in the rice grain gives it a yellowish hue, which is why it's called "Golden Rice". In 2000, a paper was published in Science describing the grain of rice and mentions that Vitamin A deficiency is a serious health problem in at least 26 countries. WHO's numbers (World Health Organization) are much more staggering: Vitamin A deficiency is a public health issue in half of all nations. It leads to visual impairment and blindness, and significant increased risk for infection. Pregnant mothers are also at high risk during the third trimester when the demand for Vitamin A from the fetus and the mother are highest. As such, Vitamin A deficiency has been labelled by the WHO as the leading cause of preventable blindness in children: 250,000 to 500,000 vitamin A deficient children become blind every year, and half of them die within the first year of becoming blind. The purpose behind Golden Rice is to help improve diets by providing a rich source of beta-carotene for vitamin A biosynthesis, particularly since many regions with high rates of Vitamin A deficiency have rice as their primary staple.

Despite what is mentioned in the quote in the first paragraph, Golden Rice was never scrapped. A new strain of the rice (Golden Rice 2) was introduced in 2005, with 23x more beta-carotene. Golden Rice 2 replaced the daffodil gene with one from corn. So the project is alive and in full progress: the Golden Rice network has partners in numerous countries, and is supported by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). The partners work on performing field trials in their respective countries and work with local farmers to transfer knowledge and technology.

Sounds like a delightful project, right? Might even make scientists reconsider their Oaths. Next section focuses on arguments against Golden Rice and their validity.

A September 2013 opinion piece in Huffington Post raised numerous issues, and I'll go through them. But there are three primary concerns regarding the grain's efficacy in combating Vitamin A deficiency (the following section is quoted directly from the article, including the links):

1. "After storing and cooking, will there be sufficient carotenoid levels left in Golden Rice to have an impact?
2. How much remaining carotenoid will actually be "bioavailable" for already malnourished bodies to convert?
3. And are there likely, unintended health and safety risks associated with consuming Golden Rice?
   
   We don’t know the answers to these questions, in large part because the necessary studies have not been completed (two flawed and controversial studies notwithstanding). Or if they have been conducted, they have not been published or released for public and independent scientific scrutiny."

Point #1:

Storage:
I found a paper from 2006, published in a journal of a rice research institute in Vietnam. They found that the amount of beta-carotene decreased between 5-10% after 5 months, and that the beta-carotene was more stable at 4ºC. The paper is pretty basic and I had a few issues with it: first, they dehusked the rice right before using it. I'm pretty sure that in the "real world" that's not what will happen. I think most people worldwide buy their rice dehusked/milled. Second, the significance was fairly weak (but still there) and they should have really looked beyond 5 months. So I definitely agree that more studies are needed about the proper storage of the rice. (In discussing this with my boss, she pointed out that even if the amount of beta-carotene in the rice decreases by 50% in 6 months, isn't it better than nothing?)

Cooking:
There have been a few human trials that have been published where they had to cook the rice in order to eat it (duh). I was able to find two feeding trials, and most recent one was from 2012, where they fed Golden Rice to 68 children from China. The study found that the beta-carotene in Golden Rice was as effective as pure beta-carotene oil, and better than spinach, at providing vitamin A to children. So why does the article from HuffPo call the study "flawed and controversial"? Apparently, the researchers cut corners and didn't fully inform the parents of the children or Chinese regulatory agencies about the fact that the rice was genetically modified. But as sleazy as the researchers may have been, many believe that the conclusions of the paper remain valid. The scientists have since been sacked. So, I'd say that this one has been semi-demonstrated, although not under the best circumstances. Also, the findings indicate that the response given by 14-year-old Rachel Parent to CBC's Kevin O'Leary was highly inaccurate.

So why do I say "semi-demonstrated"? The two feeding trials that I found have both consisted of providing the subjects with cooked meals that had been steamed, frozen until use, and then heated in a microwave. Prior to cooking the rice was stored at -80oC, so it isn't exactly a "real world" scenario, although it was necessary for these particular studies to maintain uniformity amongst all subjects. As such, there's no data on what happens when the rice is fried, or the countless other ways of preparing rice, including rice pudding (yummmmm... BTW, if you've never tried Iranian rice pudding, you definitely should).

It's also important to note that these feeding trials could not be performed on animals since the metabolism of beta-carotene in animals is different. So an animal feeding experiment would not answer questions about vitamin-A conversion in humans, and a whole slew of different animal trials would need to be performed in order to get a vague understanding of the numerous aspects of beta-carotene metabolism.

Point #2:

The reason why this point is raised is that individuals convert beta-carotene into vitamin A at different efficiencies depending on a variety of different factors, including malnutrition and intestinal health (parasites, infections, etc). I imagine that human feeding trials (such as the one performed in China) will help answer these questions. But differences in the conversion of beta-carotene into vitamin A between different individuals would be an issue with any source of beta-carotene, whether it's from a GMO or not, right?

ADDITION SEPT 4, 2014: Note that this is an instance where a human feeding trial is actually needed, because the goal of the crop is to address a human nutritional deficiency. The argument against human feeding trials for current GMOs is that animal trials provide us with the answers we need, which have to do with safety.

Point #3:

According to the Golden Rice project's webpage, they will comply with the regulatory requirements of each nation where the rice will be used. Since it isn't available yet, it makes sense that the tests haven't been done/completed. According to the same webpage, standard allergenic tests have also been done (bioinformatic prediction). They also state that gene expression profiling has been performed, and I think it would go a long way if that data were made available (for more information on this test, please view this previous post). Additionally, the Golden Rice Project webpage notes that the rice has been backcrossed with local varieties of rice from different countries, so that the rice is adapted to each location. I'd speculate that it makes sense to perform these tests using the local variety that will be submitted for approval in each country.  Maybe the authors are waiting to publish a huge paper at the end of their studies, who knows? However, if Point #3 is about GMOs in general, then there really are no grounds for the concern. As outlined previously, there are numerous long-term feeding studies in animals showing that there are no health impacts in eating GMOs (please read every entry in this blog for more details :) ).


Other concerns/complaints:

-This is just another way for Monsanto to make tons of money: the seed is not developed by Monsanto. The private partner in the endeavor is a company named Syngenta, who is making the seeds available for use freely, on humanitarian grounds. There's no Golden Rice-specific fertilizer or pesticide that needs to be used. Additionally, you can save seeds from one season to the next.

-There are better ways to address vitamin A deficiency: I'm sorry, but this is the lamest excuse ever. If the popular belief is that "the reason there is blindness isn't because there is a lack of Vitamin A in the rice, it's because their diets are simply rice" (quoted from the first paragraph), are you seriously going to change the diet of millions of people around the world? My rant on this is below.

My conclusion:

I think that Golden Rice has the potential to be a fantastic product. Potentially. It has the potential to benefit those who suffer from vitamin A deficiency, those who are at risk of developing it, as well as local farmers and traders. I think that there's still a ways to go, but that's understandable. I've always felt that the time and effort that science takes is grossly underestimated. For example, one of the projects I just completed consisted of a one month test to change an identical plastic consumable from one vendor to another. 1 month. For a piece of plastic. Now that I have the initial dataset, I have to start the project all over and go out till 3 months. In the end, the project will have lasted 5 months. For a piece of plastic from a highly reputable vendor. Keep in mind that this is a piece of plastic being used in a research environment where no humans/animals are at risk. So imagine how long it would take if my work were clinical in nature or subject to regulations. This powerpoint presentation by Syngenta (the private partner in the Golden Rice Project) outlines all the delays they've experienced in their research, including 2 years to transfer seeds from the Philippines to Vietnam. So I think it makes sense that they're still working on things. Yet according to numerous articles I've read, many feel that it's time to put Golden Rice aside because it has yet to deliver anything.

I have a few serious issues with the outrage over Golden Rice. A few months ago, anti-GMO activists vandalized a field of Golden Rice in the Philippines, allegedly setting back the study by a few months. Here's my beef: you can't complain that GMOs aren't tested thoroughly enough, and then destroy the progress being made in their testing. You can't state that Golden Rice has failed to deliver anything since its conception and that after many years of research it's "still stuck in the lab", and then hold-up its research or complain about the lack of thorough tests. Yes, there are many socio-economic factors involved in vitamin A deficiency and you can definitely argue that bio-enriching rice is not the best way to address the problem. If that's your argument, then go ahead and work on an alternative solution, but don't try to sabotage the ideas and potential improvements that others are working on. Alternative ideas that I've read about include providing vitamin supplements and teaching farmers how to grow leafy greens. Those sound like fantastic ideas. Go ahead. Start working on them. There's no reason why these efforts can't work in parallel to one another. Providing leafy greens and vitamin supplements would probably help prevent a whole slew of additional vitamin deficiencies. I'd like to believe that if Baby Boy and I were living in poverty and that we both suffered from malnutrition, that people looking into vitamin A deficiency would be trying any means at their disposal to help us out. So now it's my turn to ask: why hasn't it been done already? The alternative measures suggested are items that you could be working on right now or for the last 5 decades. If it's lack of funds and your argument is that Golden Rice is a "flashier" project with strong endorsements from the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, then perhaps there's a reason for that. Perhaps it's because, sadly enough, many realize that private funds are required for such endeavors and Golden Rice is the right fit to garner those funds. But as an individual raised in a developing nation, I can envision the logistical nightmare of getting vitamins into the hands of those who need it most or trying to convince populations to eat spinach when they aren't familiar with it. In general, products are most successful if they can be easily integrated into one's daily life and Golden Rice fits in this category.

According to the HuffPo article, the message we're being fed by the Golden Rice Project is to "swallow our technical fix, despite its failure to deliver on its promises, or you consign millions to misery and death." I don't think those are the two choices being offered. I think that the options are to keep quiet, embrace the Golden Rice Project's work, or to find an alternative solution and to work on it. I think that the message that the Project is also trying to convey is that roadblocks and baseless complaints won't help anyone. At least that's what I think they're trying to convey.

Biochica out.

Death Match: Transgenesis vs Traditional Breeding

For this week's blog, I wanted to learn and read papers about a common claim made by the pro-GMO scientists: that creating a crop by transgenesis is better than traditional methods for creating plants. I'll explain a bit more, but we'll have to start with the very basics: as this paper outlines, there are three broad categories of plant breeding, and for the sake of simplicity, we'll be focusing on only two of these:

• Transgenics: when you take a gene from an organism and stick it into another organism that it traditionally could not breed with. These new species are popularly known as GMOs, and are subject to regulations.
• Traditional breeding: every other method of creating a plant and are not subject to regulations. This includes mutagenesis through chemicals or through radiation, which brings about random mutations creating new traits. Reminds me of X-Men, the first movie, where they zapped the senator and made him a mutant. But that was in the good 'ol X-Men movie days... 

So, the pro-GMO parties state that creating a new strain of a plant through transgenesis can be better than mutagenesis, where you get random mutations, or even cross-breeding, where two genomes with thousands of genes integrate (although I wonder where Napoleon Dynamite would be if he didn't have a hybrid Liger). A few recent news articles have reported that plant breeders are turning more frequently to radiation and mutating chemicals to create new strains because there are fewer regulations, so this topic is all the more relevant.

Before you read on, I feel the need to clarify a few things. I've been working on this blog article for over one week, because the spouse is stuck on one fact: "How can nuking a plant be OK, but a GMO isn't? Do you mean to tell me that if a pomegranate with grape-size seeds appears in Fukushima, that's OK?" Spouse: you'll be reading this again in a few hours when I ask you to review. Don't get stuck on that. Read on. The whole point of this is to find out whether it is OK or not. (Addendum: it's important to note that plants derived through mutagenesis are not excluded from the "Certified-Organic" label. Transgenic crops, however, are excluded).

So this week, it's the battle of the methods thunderdome-style: traditional breeding vs transgenesis. Two methods enter, one method leaves... Or maybe neither one leaves. Or maybe both leave a little
bloody. We'll see. (BTW, I'm pretty proud of my little image here.)

Round 1: Mutagenesis vs Transgenesis

To get started, I reached out to the folks at Biofortified.org. I had tried finding a review on the topic, but I couldn't find a good comprehensive paper that summarized the different methods. Someone should get on that :) Anyway, they sent me a paper from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which served as a great starting point, because then I could start cross referencing.

This paper, released in 2008, looked at the expression of thousands of genes to find out if there were any unintentional changes in gene expression in transgenic crops (I can hear the spouse now saying "huh?"). Gene expression refers to how much of a gene is turned on or turned off, and is measured by amounts of RNA. If you remember high school biology, DNA is transcribed into RNA which is then translated into protein, and the protein is generally considered to be the final goal. Now, proteins generally do not work independently and often regulate one another. For example, if protein A and protein B work together in the cell and you change the amount of protein A, you might also affect protein B. That consequence is often easier to identify, particularly if you know that protein A and B work together. But sometimes, you see a change in protein C and then you scratch your head and try to think of how protein C could possibly be affected by protein A. So, in this study, they wanted to determine if there were any unintended changes in gene expression when you add a gene in a transgenic plant (i.e. GMO), and compare it to the unintended changes in gene expression when you create a plant by the more "traditional" mutagenesis route, such as by gamma-irradiation. Yes... Gamma-radiation is real and is not confined to creating the Hulk or other super-heroes (BTW, don't scientists in comic books seem incredibly error-prone?)

The study seemed pretty straightforward and included the appropriate controls (although the plants were grown in the lab). The authors compared transgenic rice strains (i.e. GMOs) and strains of rice generated through mutagenesis, to the closest non-modified strain (i.e control). The authors found that in all the strains, there were unintended changes in the expression of genes that are related to plant stress or defense, and the paper spends a lot of time breaking down these genes into various categories. There are also changes in gene expression in certain genes that might be related to the transgene or mutant gene itself (i.e. changes in protein B in my previous explanation). The authors draw several conclusions:

• Although there were unintended consequences in gene expression using both methods, transgenic strains had fewer changes.
• Changing a plant through mutagenesis or transgenesis creates stress in the plant and leads to changes in gene expression, which are carried through several generations.
• The authors recommend that food safety assessments should be carried out on a case-by-case basis and not just limited to foods obtained through genetic engineering.

Round 1 Results: advantage to transgenics


Round 2: Hybrids vs Transgenics

So, at first I was a bit disappointed. I couldn't find a paper that had done a battle between hybrids created by cross-pollination/cross-breeding and GMOs. But then when I thought about it, a head-to-head battle didn't really make sense. What would you use as a control? What would be the GMO equivalent of a broccoflower? As a consolation, there were plenty of papers that had examined genetically modified strains of corn vs their non-GM control strains.

The most comprehensive paper I found was a 2010 paper that had looked at changes in gene expression, as well as proteins and metabolites, in Round-Up Ready corn and Bt corn, compared to the closest unmodified control. They used seeds from the same location over several years, as well as different locations in the same year, to make sure that they had accounted for geographical and year-of-harvest effects. Their conclusions are:

• Year-to-year variation can account for more differences in gene expression, protein levels and metabolites than whether the plant is genetically modified.
• Geographic location can account for more differences in gene expression, protein levels and metabolites than whether the plant is genetically modified.
• The authors also reiterate that food safety assessments should be carried out on a case-case basis, rather than just lumping all genetically modified foods into one category.

There are many other papers that have done assessments on changes in gene expression in plants, and this freely available 2011 review does a really nice job categorizing the studies based on crop. If you quickly scan through it, you will see that it's a topic that has been studied quite a lot. So why is any of this important? Well, "substantial equivalence" is the starting point for food safety assessment. That means that you have to show that the food item is equivalent to conventional food in several different categories including nutrients, toxins, allergens, etc. So examining changes in gene expression is a different way (and I'd argue that it's a more rigorous way) of determining "substantial equivalence". There are a few conclusions from the review that are worth highlighting:

• There doesn't seem to be a single, consistent method for assessing changes in gene expression. Each paper looks at different variables and factors, different number of plants, and with plants grown in different conditions. It would be nice to have some consistency.
• Environmental effects consistently play a bigger role in gene expression than the transgene.
• None of the large scale studies examining thousands of proteins, genes, and metabolites have raised any food safety concerns.
• Since transgenics has less of an impact than other breeding methods, the regulatory standards on transgenics should be lowered (the authors highlight that the more likely scenario is that conventionally bred plants will be regulated).

I agree.  I fail to see how mutagenic technologies are any safer than transgenesis. I agree with the fact that food safety should be regulated and determined based on the trait and not based on the method used to generate that trait.

So, unfortunately, there was no clear victor in today's thunderdome because there haven't been enough head-to-head battles. What is clear is that stringent regulations against all forms of transgenics don't make sense considering their history of safety and substantial equivalence.

Labelling GMOs - Why not?

This week, I wanted to look into the topic of labelling GMOs. As I start writing this blog, my perspective is "who cares"? If people want to purchase GMO-free food, then they should have that right. Similar to buying organic labelled or fair-trade labelled, if it's important to the buyer then why shouldn't they be able to do the same? So, I'm interested in reasons why pro-GMO parties would be against labelling.

I started by reading a study carried out by the Food Standards Agency in the UK. The UK has had GMO labelling for several years and you can read all about their guidelines. The goal of the study, published in 2012, was "To explore UK public views on the labelling of GM (genetic modification) on foods, and the options for labelling food as GM-Free in the UK". The 129-page study looked at numerous areas, including how labelling impacts decision making about buying foods, and public awareness about GMOs. There were 70 participants in the study from across the UK, broad age range, and range of education.

Some findings seemed pretty obvious. For example, there was strong association between people who check the label and concern with food quality or healthy eating. I was shocked to learn that only 2% of participants check for GM ingredients in their labels. Even when the survey prompted them, 4% of participants said that they check for these ingredients.

There was low awareness and knowledge on the topic of GMs: 60% of participants knew little or nothing about genetic modifications in food or food production. Some people didn't know that GM foods were for sale, others thought that they had been banned. Participants generally felt that they couldn't make a decision about GM foods, but tended to feel that GMOs were "unnatural". People who tended to view GMs negatively were more suspicious overall of the food industry (probably because they've heard of Monsanto's kitten-eating cows)

I was interested to read the section on cost of GM and was a bit disappointed that this topic wasn't investigated in-depth. The only conclusion in this section was that most participants didn't want to bear the burden of GM-labelling costs, although anti-GMO individuals and highly health-conscious participants didn't care about paying extra.

The study also looked into nuances and wording of the labels, as well as what the public felt comfortable labelling as "GM-free". Here are a few interesting findings:

• 53% thought that meats should not be labelled "GM free" if the animal had received vaccines or medicine produced using genetic modification (huh??? I wonder why the participants thought that a vaccine produced using GM technology would affect the meat?)
• 69% thought it important for that animals not be fed GM plants, for items like meat, milk, or eggs (I was surprised about the eggs).
• 41% of participants would be more likely to buy a product labelled GM free. 49% would be less likely to buy a product with a label that indicates that it contains GM

I tried searching for a similar study on US public perception on food labelling. I found a lot of interesting information and conclusions align with the UK study. Here are a few nuggets:

• One study took identical pairs of ingredients and labelled one in each pair as "organic". Consumers found that the "organic" ingredients tasted better, thought they had fewer calories, and were willing to pay more
• A recent study examined food label designs. Although I didn't have access to the article, the abstract states that even if the label is stating that the product is free of genetically modified ingredients, it increased the consumer's hazard perception and decreased purchase intentions, relative to a no-label condition.
• A study from 2003 found that most Americans do not know about GMOs, and their opinions are not yet firm on the technology. Although only 1% of participants mentioned that the labelling of GMOs in food was important to them, 94% said that GM ingredients should be labelled when prompted with the question. 52% of individuals surveyed said that a label indicating that food has a GM ingredient would make them less likely to purchase the item.
• A news poll on GM labelling generated very similar results. 93% of participants want to see labels stating if food has been genetically modified, and 57% said that they would be less likely to buy foods with such labels. 52% of those surveyed also though that these foods were unsafe.
• In "huh... that's interesting" category: there's a WTO agreement, where food safety standards are set by each member nation and must be based on science. Hypotetically, if a labelling law were to pass using the argument that GMOs are not safe, then the evil Monsanto could lodge a complaint with the WTO against the government on the basis that there's no scientific evidence for the law.

So... Labelling... I'm not sure where I stand on this one anymore. The best solution would be for people to learn about GMOs and to make an informed decision. But in the course of writing this blog, I'm learning that it's not easy, even for people with strong backgrounds in science. If you've been following this blog, you'll know that I still haven't read anything to merit food labelling, and it bothers me that people would be swayed easily enough to think that GMOs are bad for you even by reading a label that says "GMO-free".

Basically, I don't want to pay the price for labelling and I don't want my kid growing up thinking that his mom is evil. So, I ask the question: if you're concerned about GMOs, why don't you just buy "Certified Organic" labels? The USDA has clarified that "organic" also means GMO-free, so why is an additional label required? Is the label not specific enough? I honestly don't know the answer to these questions, so please feel free to comment below.