Risky rice.

• Author: Epp, Walter
• Position: Biodevastation

A little-known Sacramento-based company, Ventria Biosciences, tried to get a California permit for commercial cultivation of rice genetically engineered to produce pharmaceutical substances, despite the fact that FDA, EPA, and USDA reviews had not been completed and federal permits had not been obtained. It won narrow approval from the California Rice Commission for an emergency process giving the California Secretary of Agriculture only 10 days to decide, blocking the normal public comment process.

The Rice Commission's lawyer falsely advised them that they could not deny the application; his law firm works for other biotech companies developing GE rice varieties. [1] This would be the first commercialization of a GE pharmaceutical food crop.

Such a precedent-setting decision requires extra diligence.

If it's so beneficial, why can't this technology stand the light of deliberate public scrutiny, and why ram it through with such an irregular process?

Public relations describe the substances produced as extracts from human breast milk and tears, giving a motherhood and apple-pie image, but if the food supply is contaminated, we'll be dosed with uncontrolled amounts of these pharmaceuticals. Less well known is the possibility that genetic engineering could trigger a genetic meltdown in food species.

A researcher with 30 years experience noted: "Our experiment showed up how imprecise the [genetic engineering] technique is, because we had two GM potatoes, both contained GNA lectin, and both came from the same pot. They were both grown in greenhouses or in fields in tunnels under identical conditions and at the same time. Yet they came out different. The only explanation is that the incorporation of the transgene into the host genome happened at two different places. And the effect on the genome was different.... With our two lines of potato, which should have been substantially equivalent to each other, we found that one of the lines contained 20% less protein than the other. So the two lines were not substantially equivalent to each other. But we also found that these two lines were not substantially equivalent to their parent." [2]

One obvious corollary of this is that each gene insertion line and each generation of each insertion must be separately tested and approved.

DNA tends to be unstable and prone to recombine. The artificial GE mechanisms enabling insertion of foreign genes also enable them to jump out and re-insert somewhere else, possibly resulting in a cascade of different mutant combinations over multiple generations, each with different properties, including possibly greater toxicity. [3,4,5]

This cascade of genetic rearrangements can stress the organism's ability to cope. It may take a number of generations for these disruptions to accumulate. If they exceed the organism's coping mechanisms, the result can be extinction of those populations. [6,7,8,9]

If this instability accumulates quickly, in a small number of generations, it will tend to be self-limiting. If it happens slowly, it may be dwarfed by other factors and limited by natural selection. The worst case is an intermediate rate slow enough that the GE genes and their ensuing instabilities spread through both GE and via cross-pollination to conventional populations, but fast enough to cause them to self-destruct generations later, resulting in extinction of both GE and conventional varieties.

Critical information of paramount importance is how many generations it can take for this process to unfold. For an annual crop like rice, this requires many years. Approval made without knowing this number would be criminally negligent.

Different growing conditions must be tested, as genetic "immune systems," including genetic mutation repair mechanisms, may be more likely to...