By Dr. Henry I. Miller
Knight Ridder/Tribune
PALO ALTO, Calif. _ Safeway has announced the removal of its in-house
brand of taco shells from its 1,650 supermarkets throughout North America,
following a similar recall by Kraft Foods, because samples of the products
contain a strain of gene-spliced corn not approved for human food use.
The recalls follow reports that tests of the taco shells had detected
genetically engineered corn containing a protein called Cry9C.
This bacterial protein, introduced into corn with gene-splicing techniques,
has been approved only for animal feed but not for human consumption
because, although it does not resemble known allergens, it was not
immediately degraded in digestion tests.
Most food allergens are not readily digested, so EPA wanted more data
before concluding that consumers could not be allergic to the protein. The
real problem lies not in the taco shells but in federal regulatory policy
toward gene-spliced plants and foods. The taco shells in question are
actually far less likely than thousands of other products on the market to
cause allergic or other health problems.
For instance, Fava beans, a fixture of upscale restaurants, can be
life-threatening to persons with a hereditary enzyme deficiency, for
example, and occasionally there is contamination with peanuts _ a known,
potent allergen _ of a product like candy bars that is supposed to be
"peanut-free."
Unlike those situations, however, no allergenicity, toxicity or any other
problem has been demonstrated with Cry9C or any substance similar to it.
The EPA and other government agencies hold gene-spliced foods to a higher
standard than other similar foods, requiring the testing as pesticides of
gene-spliced crop and garden plants such as corn, cotton, wheat and
marigolds that have been modified for enhanced pest or disease resistance.
The policy fails to recognize that there are important differences between
spraying synthetic, toxic chemicals and genetic approaches to enhancing
plants' natural pest and disease resistance.
EPA's policy is so potentially damaging and outside scientific norms that
it has galvanized the scientific community.
Eleven major scientific societies representing more than 80,000 biologists
and food professionals published a report warning that the policy
discourages the development of new pest-resistant crops and prolongs and
increases the use of synthetic chemical pesticides.
Their report also said the policy increases the regulatory burden for
developers of pest-resistant crops, limits the use of biotechnology to
larger developers who can pay the inflated regulatory costs _ and handicaps
U.S. companies competing in international markets.
Scientists worldwide agree that adding genes to plants does not make them
less safe either to the environment or for humans to eat. Dozens of new
plant varieties produced through hybridization and other traditional
methods of genetic modification enter the marketplace each year without
scientific review or special labeling.
Many such products are from "wide crosses," 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.
While the changes may sound dramatic, the results are as mundane as corn
that is more resistant to disease, or wheat that is more resistant to cold
weather.
Gene-splicing is more precise, circumscribed and predictable than other
techniques, and can better exploit the subtleties of plant pathology. For
example, the so-called "Bt corn" in the recalled taco shells was made by
splicing in a bacterial gene that produces a protein toxic to corn borer
insects, but not to people or other mammals.
The gene-spliced corn not only repels pests, but is less likely to contain
Fusarium, a toxic fungus often carried into the plants by the insects.
That, in turn, reduces the levels of the fungal toxin fumonisin, which can
cause esophageal cancer in humans that eat the infected corn. Thus,
gene-spliced corn is not only cheaper to produce but is a potential boon to
public health. Moreover, by reducing the need for chemical pesticides in
the field, it is environmentally friendly.
Yet, regulatory agencies have regulated gene-spliced foods in a
discriminatory, unnecessarily burdensome way. They have imposed
requirements that could not possibly be met for conventionally bred crop
plants.
Paradoxically, only the more precisely crafted, gene-spliced crops are
exhaustively, repeatedly and expensively reviewed before they can enter the
field or food supply. Policy makers have ignored a fundamental rule of
regulation: that the degree of scrutiny of a product or activity should be
commensurate with the risk.
What we need is not to punish Kraft and Safeway for marketing taco shells
that contain an insect resistant, chemical pesticide-replacing,
low-fungal-toxin, potentially more healthful corn, but to "craft" federal
regulation so that biotech's shackles are removed.
Regulation would then make more sense, cost less, offer greater benefits to
the consumer and stimulate innovation.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Dr. Henry Miller is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
and a former regulatory official in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Readers may write to him at Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Stanford, Calif. 94305, or e-mail him at: miller(AT)hoover.stanford.edu.
This essay is available to Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service subscribers.
Knight Ridder/Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the
opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views
of Knight Ridder/Tribune or its editors.
(c) 2000, The Hoover Institution
