How the Biotech Fruit Trees Were Stopped.

• Author: Zimmerman, Andy
• Position: Interview

The Okanagan Valley is an important fruit growing region of British Columbia in Canada. At the Canadian Government's Summerland agricultural research station, scientists have genetically altered fruit trees so that the fruit doesn't turn brown when exposed to oxygen, using a patent controlled by a company called Okanagan Biotechnology. But planned field trials of the trees have now been called off.

Linda Edwards (ledwards@keremeos.com) an organic apple grower, has led the effort to prevent the introduction of the biotech trees into the Okanagan ecosystem. We asked her to tell us her success story.

Q. What has been going on at the research station?

A local man who is an agricultural engineering consultant got the patent on a gene that would stop fruit from turning brown. It came from a big government-funded research conglomerate in Australia. He got the rights for North America.

They were growing the trees in greenhouses, and doing the molecular work We realized that they were about ready to do field trials. And we knew that, because bees move pollen around, there could be genetic contamination.

Q. Why would anybody want non-browning fruit?

A lot of it would have gone for processing. You would go to a salad bar, and there would be apple slices that would be sitting there all day and they wouldn't turn brown. Or you could make apple sauce that didn't turn brown. Institutional uses of apples.

They said, "As a farmer, you should be happy. If they get bruised when you pick them, they won't turn brown." We said, "Yes, but the bruise is still there. The texture has been destroyed. It's a soft apple."

For cherries, it was to keep the stems from turning brown. When you look at a cherry, if the stem has turned brown, it doesn't look fresh. If the stem is green, it looks fresh.

Any good cherry grower can grow a cherry whose stem will not turn brown before the fruit rots. So this would help the bad cherry growers. You'd have a cherry that nobody would want to eat, but the stem would be nice and fresh. It would look a lot better than it would taste.

Q. What were your concerns about the field trials?

Many of us have strong feelings about the effects of genetically modified organisms on the environment and health. We knew that that wasn't something everybody agreed with. But we did know one thing for sure. As farmers, the first thing we have to do is make a living, or we're not farmers.

We would lose our markets, period. If you're organic, and you have...