Why Biotech Food Labeling Is Met with Resistance

Posted under agriculture, Benefits of biotech crops, biotech industry, Biotechnology, Blog, Companies, Diagnostics, Farmer Gene, Food And Agriculture, Funding, global food crisis, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Plant biotechnology, Startups, Sustainability, Universities, Videos by biotechnow@bio.org (Biotechnology Industry Organization)

In recent weeks, there’s been a lot of new discussion around the biotech labeling debate.  On May 10, the International Food Information Council (IFIC) released its latest “Consumer Perceptions of Food Technology” survey, which showed that very few Americans cite biotechnology as an information need on food labels.

Earlier this month, the California Right to Know initiative announced at various rallies held around the state that it had collected the prerequisite number of signatures to get its proposal on the November ballot. The initiative would require biotech foods (also known as Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs) and foods containing GMO ingredients to be labeled.

A number of mainstream media outlets reported on the California activity. Andrea Billups’ piece in the Washington Times and Jack Kaskey’s article for Bloomberg nicely sum up why the broader agriculture and food manufacturing community is opposed to the measure:

The California campaign is the best chance for biotech labeling in the United States after the failure of similar bills in 19 states and the rejection of a petition to the Food and Drug Administration last month.

But the California voter initiative is likely to meet fierce resistance from agricultural and business interests, who predict it will prove costly both for growers and consumers. Opponents warn the measure constitutes a “right to sue” initiative that will undercut sales of numerous food items that have been consumed safely for years.

Monsanto opposes labeling modified ingredients because the move risks “misleading consumers into thinking products are not safe when in fact they are,” said Sara Miller, a Monsanto spokeswoman.

The initiative is a “back door” way to hurt the $13.3 billion biotech crop industry, according to Richard Lobb, managing director for the Council for Biotechnology Information. The Washington-based council represents Monsanto and five other biotech-seed developers. “They basically are trying to scare consumers through labeling,” Lobb said in a telephone interview. “The obvious objective is to push biotechnology out of the market altogether.”

Biotech labeling has never been endorsed by the FDA. The agency says crops engineered to tolerate herbicides or produce insecticide pose no greater health risks than conventional foods.

The California Farm Bureau opposes the ballot initiative, along with the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Seed Association, the California Grain and Feed Association, and California Women for Agriculture.

Jamie Johansson, vice president of the California Farm Bureau and an olive farmer from Oroville, Calif., said the initiative puts an enormous burden on growers and packagers, and it prevents any processed food from being labeled as “natural.”

An apple, for example, wouldn’t require a label, but it would if it were ground into apple sauce. The same for almonds: They are fine picked raw, but ground into almond butter, even without any other ingredients, they would not pass the test under provisions of the proposed label law.

Food labels should be reserved for “critically important food safety and nutritional information,” said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which opposes the California initiative.

The California proposal would mandate a label for foods in which more than 0.5 percent of the product is a genetically modified ingredient. The proposal exempts meat, dairy foods and beer.

The label “would be the equivalent of a skull and crossbones” that would drive away customers and force food producers to stop using engineered ingredients, Joseph Mercola, the labeling initiative’s leading funder with $800,000 in donations, said. Mercola is an osteopath who promotes natural remedies at his clinic in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

Martina Newell-McGloughlin, director of the University of California Systemwide Biotechnology Research and Education Program, called the labeling proposal “completely blown out of context.”

“To me, the issue with this as a scientist is you are focusing on the labeling of process rather than the labeling of product,” she said. “The issue for safety should be on the product itself if you are going to look at risk-assessment and whether something should be of concern to the consumer.”

“You don’t have a label on sausage telling you how they are made and you probably wouldn’t want one. For biotech products, the issues are an individual’s right to know. If you were going to ask to supply all information made on a processed crop, you’d have a whole encyclopedia attached to everything on your grocery shelf.”

Chris Shaw, a New York-based analyst, said labels identifying genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, won’t change most consumers’ buying decisions. “People who are buying Oreos aren’t going to care if there is GMO soybean oil in there,” Shaw said. “It’s going to be a marginal group of people that will care.”

That’s the consensus of consumers who participated in the IFIC survey.  Seventy-six percent of respondents could not think of any additional information (other than what is already required) that they wish to see on food labels.  Of the 24 percent who wanted more information, only 3 percent (or about five people and less than 1 percent of all surveyed) wanted more information about biotechnology. In addition, 87 percent of Americans say they have not taken any action out of concern about biotechnology.

IFIC President and CEO David Schmidt said the strength of the methodology used in the IFIC survey sets it apart from other surveys looking at food technology issues.

“In the public landscape, we often see polling that tries to provoke or frighten people into giving a certain desired response,” Schmidt said.  “We don’t believe in leading consumers to any conclusion.  We believe our open-ended methodology used at the beginning of our survey provides a more accurate view of concerns on Americans’ minds, and the survey is the most objective and long-term publicly available data set on U.S. consumer attitudes toward food and agricultural biotechnology.”

The survey, formerly the “IFIC Survey of Consumer Attitudinal Trends toward Food Biotechnology,” is part of a series that has been conducted since 1997.

When Did Tree Huggers Become Tree Haters?

Posted under agriculture, Benefits of biotech crops, biofuel, Biofuel Technology, biofuels, Blog, Companies, Diagnostics, Farmer Gene, Food And Agriculture, Funding, global food crisis, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Plant biotechnology, Startups, Sustainability, Universities, Videos by biotechnow@bio.org (Biotechnology Industry Organization)

As we celebrate Arbor Day 2012, I want to personally chew out any of the “activist” ilk whose agendas are so extreme, it results in destruction.  I’m talking about eco-terrorism, agri-terrorism, crop vandalism, etc. – basically, killing trees and plants.

This destruction becomes especially horrific when it kills not only the plants and trees themselves, but holds back research and scientific progress aimed and healing, fueling and feeding the world.

In recent weeks, The New Zealand Herald reported on the senseless destruction of hundreds of genetically-engineered pine trees.  Scion, a New Zealand Crown Research Institute (CRI), planted 375 radiata pines last year to test herbicide resistance and study reproductive development.

Scion Chief Executive Dr. Warren Parker describes this as a blatant act of vandalism designed to end Scion’s genetic modification research program. The company said damage to the trees, which occurred over the Easter Weekend, will cost around $400,000.

“As a Crown Research Institute, Scion has a responsibility to pursue areas of science and technology that offer opportunities for the forestry sector in New Zealand, including gene technologies. While this is a big blow to us and has set back our work some 12 months, we will not be deterred in carrying out our lawful research,” said Dr. Parker.

“The field trial was approved under one of the strictest regulatory regimes in the world, and our team has fully complied with the containment controls. Despite this, our research opponents were determined to stop us and used criminal means to do so,” Dr. Parker said.

Most of the trees were less than 1m high, and were part of two experiments due to run for two to three years.

Last fall, eco-terrorists targeted Hawaiian papaya farmers.  Fortunately, these attacks got some wide- spread attention by Fox News and the Huffington Post.

Anti-biotech activists chopped down hundreds of papaya trees that were genetically engineered to resist the ringspot virus.  The ringspot virus all but wiped out Hawaii’s papaya industry in the 1990s, and the genetically modified fruit is credited with saving the state’s $11 million papaya production industry.

“It’s hard to imagine anybody putting that much effort into doing something like that,” said Delan Perry, vice president of the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association. “It means somebody has to have passionate reason.”

Papaya grower Erlinda Bernardo says her family will plant again in another area after 3,000 trees worth tens of thousands of dollars were destroyed. “We’re afraid to plant in that area, so we’re giving up the lease there.  When you start all over again, you have to wait a year for the papaya to bear fruit.”

Last summer in Australia, three Greenpeace activists broke into a scientific farm near Canberra and destroyed a crop of genetically modified wheat. The farm belongs to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the Australian national science agency, and the crop was part of research into developing genetically modified crop plants with enhanced nutritional value.

Suzanne Cory, president of the Australian Academy of Sciences, issued a statement in which she condemned the attack. “For an organization that claims to be dedicated to the protection of the environment, this is an unconscionable act,” she said.

The same week, The Farmers Guardian reported that masked attackers overpowered guards at two GM trial sites in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, destroyed potato and wheat plants and caused damage worth hundreds of thousands of euros.

Vandalism of biotech crop trials became such a problem in the UK in recent years, that the government mandated that the trials be conducted in secret locations.

In the United States, many state legislatures have passed bills increasing the penalties for destruction of field trials.  “In addition to the cost of the property damage itself, state legislatures say the real damage is in the destruction of the research,” says Ab Basu, BIO’s Managing Director of State Governmental Relations.

There’s been a lot written about these types of ag research attacks, and I have to agree with some who liken these efforts to the book burnings of the 1930s.   These fanatics say they are following some kind of guiding ideological principle, but what is principled about preventing new information and new science from seeing the light of day?

British professor Anthony Trewavas told The Economist that today’s global-food problems demand agricultural pragmatism and flexibility, not ideology. “If the crop trashers are so convinced they are right and have public support, they should identify themselves – and face a new trial. There, in front of the world, they can air their complaints and defend the need to destroy a trial that aims to put food in the mouths of hungry people.”

Biotechnology and Sustainability

Posted under agriculture, biotech crops, Blog, Companies, Diagnostics, earth day, Farmer Gene, farming, Food And Agriculture, Funding, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Startups, Universities, Videos by biotechnow@bio.org (Biotechnology Industry Organization)

Last week, a post ran on BIOtechNOW celebrating Earth day and discussing biotechnology’s contributions to sustainability. It turns out; we’re not the only ones talking about it.

In a Council on Foreign Relations blog, Calestous Juma, professor of the practice of international development at Harvard, writes that biotech crops are a necessary agricultural solution to help address the challenges of climate change and population growth. In regards to biotech crops he says, “It doesn’t make sense to reduce the size of the toolbox when the challenges are expanding.” In an earlier post, Juma gets specific showcasing stats on agricultural biotech’s impact on the environment:

• “Over the 1996-2010 period, biotechnology crops have reduced 443 million kg of (active ingredient) pesticide use.”
• “Another major impact of the adoption of biotechnology crops has been reduction of carbon emissions. In 2010 alone the world reduced 19 billion kg or carbon dioxide due to the use of biotechnology crops. This is the equivalent to taking about nine million cars off the road. The world also reduced its use of land by 91 million hectares by adopting the crops.”

Last month at a meeting of Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB), Professor Josephine Nketsia-Tabiri, director of Biotechnology and Nuclear Agriculture Research Institute (BNARI) encouraged farmers in Ghana to embrace biotech crops. “Some critical challenges facing farmers including weeds, pests and diseases, spoilage due to over-ripening, inadequate irrigation and lack of mechanization can be addressed through effective application of biotechnology”, she said.

Recently, Mid Norfolk MP George Freeman spoke at the Norfolk Farming Conference, urging the EU to accept biotech crops. In addition to the economic sustainability it could bring, he highlighted environmental benefits saying, “But it would be irresponsible for us to turn our back against the enormous environmental and developmental benefits of GM and other agricultural innovation, at a time when the planet desperately needs these breakthroughs for sustainable development.”

A post just this past week shows researchers from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse are using biotechnology to try to bring back the historic American chestnut tree that has been nearly wiped out because of the chestnut blight, a fungus that made its way to the North American range from imported Asian chestnut trees. “This was a key species in the eastern forest. It was super at producing nuts for wildlife; very important for agriculture for human consumption of the nuts; very important for the lumber industry, making a rot-resistant, fast-growing wood product; and it was an important part of our history,” William Powell, a plant biotechnology expert, said in a SUNY release. “We really want to bring it back. The only way it can come back is to make a resistant tree because no one has been able to control the blight any other way.”

Despite all this recent news, biotech’s role in sustainability is not a new discussion. Read this 2010 Economist piece where Pamela Ronald, professor of plant pathology, University of California, Davis, says the future of our planet requires that we improve the environmental, economic and social impacts of our global farming systems—the three essential pillars of sustainable agriculture, and that biotech crops will continue to play an important role in this future.

The Keystone Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture shows that the United States has seen productivity gains in agriculture since the adoption of biotech crops, while also improving efficiency in its use of resources including land, energy and water. As the population continues to grow stretching our planet’s resources to their limits, agricultural biotech practices can help conserve resources ensuring that future generations will have enough food and fuel.

Earth Day 2012: Biotech Contributions to Sustainability

Posted under agricultural biotechnology, agriculture, Blog, carbon, Companies, Diagnostics, earth day, emissions, environment, Farmer Gene, Food And Agriculture, Funding, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Startups, Universities, Videos by biotechnow@bio.org (Biotechnology Industry Organization)

This Sunday, April 22, the world celebrates Earth Day as the biotech industry continues to do its part to make the agriculture industry more sustainable. Biotech allows us to meet the food production demands of a growing population in an economical way while lessening environmental impact.

Reducing Emissions
Low or no-till agriculture, in limited use prior to 1996, has enabled farmers to shift to simpler, more effective agronomic practices that better contain carbon in the soil. This leads to improved soil health and water retention, reduced pesticide runoff and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. In 2009, the combined savings of carbon emissions from biotech crops was equivalent to removing almost 8 million cars from the road.

Conserving Land and Water
New developments help American farmers produce crops that use water more efficiently. Biotech-derived crops also allow for higher productivity on land currently under cultivation, preventing the conversion of tropical forests and land used for other, non-agricultural purposes to farmland. A 2011 study showed that without using biotech-derived crops to produce the 229 million tons of food, feed and fiber that farmers produced globally from 1996-2009, farmers would have had to convert an estimated 185 million additional acres to farmland.

Ensuring Energy Security
The solution to America’s energy security challenge lies in applying innovative biotechnology to convert biomass to advanced biofuels. Biofuels are made from everything from corn to soybeans to sugar beets to wood and grasses and even algae. Biobased feedstocks offer key environmental and economic advantages over crude oil as those that replace fossil fuels can actually reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases by fixing atmospheric carbon.

Preventing Polution with Industrial Biotechnology
Industrial biotechnology, holds immense promise for transforming a wide variety of industrial processes by preventing pollution, reducing costs, conserving natural resources, and delivering innovative products to improve our quality of life. It is also creating new markets for traditional agricultural crops and crop residues as renewable feedstocks, chemical intermediates, and energy sources. Learn more.

To learn more about how biotech is making farming earth-friendly, download BIO’s 2012 Earth Day fact sheet!