An alternative to a genetically engineered brave new world - a visit to Monsanto

European Business Review

ISSN: 0955-534X

Article publication date: 1 February 1998

282

Citation

Tansey, G. (1998), "An alternative to a genetically engineered brave new world - a visit to Monsanto", European Business Review, Vol. 98 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.1998.05498aab.008

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 1998, MCB UP Limited


An alternative to a genetically engineered brave new world - a visit to Monsanto

An alternative to a genetically engineered brave new world ­ a visit to Monsanto

G. Tansey

Europeans should be aware of the almost Messianic fervour at Monsanto's laboratories about genetic engineering plus the belief that they are helping to secure the future of world food supplies ­ as well as turning Monsanto into a world leader in agro-biotechnology. It is a fervour shared by other scientists and companies involved in biotechnology.

But many others, including scientists and organic growers, are concerned about the genetic redesigning of our future food supplies for a wide variety of reasons:

  • some are scientific;

  • some concern power, choice and control;

  • some are moral or ethical; and

  • others are concerned with who will have access to this technology and benefit from it.

Dr Margaret Mellon, director of the agriculture and biotechnology programme of the 90,000 strong Union of Concerned Scientists in the USA, expects farmers will have less and less control in future over whether the plants and animals they farm have been genetically engineered. She believes this could cause a major public backlash.

"Genetic engineering is radically different from traditional breeding" she says, because it is not limited by natural species boundaries. In traditional breeding the best examples within the same species, chosen for their observable characteristics, are crossed with each other.

Genetic engineering "allows scientists to artificially manipulate genes outside organisms and move them around at will", says Dr Mellon. It allows a combination of genes from completely different species which is impossible in nature or in traditional breeding. For example, genes could be moved from an elephant to a pig, a daffodil to a cow or any combination of plant to plant, animal to animal or between plants and animals.

While scientists might know the trait they are transferring into a species "what they don't know is where these genes are going to end up", she says. Moving genes between different species could include many unforeseen risks, some of which include:

  • introducing new allergens into the human food supply, making more people allergic to certain foods, such as those that make people allergic to peanuts;

  • turning on previously silent toxin pathways in plants, by activating genes that are naturally in plants to produce toxins;

  • the spread of antibiotic resistance. Genes giving antibiotic resistance are sometimes used as markers to show that the required genes have been transferred, these might then transfer this resistance to bacteria.

  • an increase in weediness, caused by genes' resistance to, for example, insects or salt tolerance being transferred to wild or weedy relatives, and from unwanted volunteer plants of the engineered crops. If genetically-engineered plants cross-breed with wild relatives the "foreign" genes will escape into wild plant populations ­ producing a form of genetic pollution impossible to remove from the environment.

Dr Mellon fears that a kind of bio-treadmill may develop, for example with genetically-engineered Bt crops. These crops include a gene from a bacterium found in the soil, called Bacillus thuringiensis, which produces a insect toxin. This toxin has been used as a natural insecticide by organic producers for decades. In Bt crops, the plants produce the toxin throughout the growing cycle and insects are likely to become resistant to it in the same way they become resistant to other pesticides. Growers would then need to plant a new crop with a different toxin engineered into it.

The issue is not simply about the uncertainty over the risk involved in the science, but is also about choice over whether to buy genetically engineered foods. Just over 3.5 million hectares of genetically engineered soya was grown in the USA this year and about 1.4 million ha will be planted in Argentina this autumn, according to Monsanto estimates. In addition, genetically-engineered cotton, maize, potatoes and rapeseed are also being planted on an increasing scale. The benefits from these come basically to the farmer, not the consumer. This rapid increase of such plantings is causing opposition in many consumer markets, especially in Europe. Customers want to be able to choose whether to buy them or not.

The commodity trading system is not geared to separating out products grown by different methods. Commodity crops like soyabean and wheat are sold by farmers into stores (elevators in the USA) where they are mixed up together. Farmers then instruct the elevator company to sell the crop as and when they want according to market conditions ­ with the buyer not knowing seller and vice versa. Soyabeans are traded around the world and turned into a wide variety of products which end up in an even wider variety of foods ­ up to 60 per cent of foods on the supermarket shelves.

British retailers, who have traded increasingly on a "trust us" line, cannot correctly label these products. They are reduced to rather meaningless labels of the kind that state that this product may or may not contain "genetically modified" ingredients.

Monsanto accepts the need for labelling if there is a difference between products from genetically-engineered plants and normal ones. However, it does not accept that its Roundup Ready soyabeans are different and cannot see why they should be labelled. This is part of a bigger battle over labelling products or the processes by which products are produced.

It is also part of an even larger concern about power and control of agricultural inputs, believes Bruce Marion, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin. He sees Monsanto's creation of crop varieties tolerant of its own Roundup Ready herbicide as providing a powerful new lever for market power on the input side of farming.

He has also studied the economics of another of Monsanto's genetically engineered products ­ bovine growth hormone or bovine somatatrophin, rBST ­ in the USA. He concluded that it produces a technology treadmill where farmers adopt the technology, production rises, prices fall, some farmers are squeezed out of business, with the remaining farmers ending up where they started financially, but unable to give up the biotechnology.

Others worry about who will have access to whatever benefits genetic engineering brings, especially for poor farmers in developing countries. Most genetic engineering research is on the main commercial crops and animals ­ poor people's food crops are barely researched in comparison. The increasing privatisation of research, coupled with patenting, also means the results will be in private hands and aimed at significant markets. Unless there is publicly-funded research on poor people's food crops biotechnology simply will not reach them ­ however good or bad that turns out to be.

Although most genetically engineered food will be plant derived in the immediate future, work is also going on apace on animals too ­ from cloning to genetic engineering aimed at altering various animal characteristics such as growth rates.

Graham Plaistow, from pig breeders PIC Group in the UK, expects genetically engineered animals to appear more slowly than plants. At present, his group uses work on gene mapping to identify genes linked to desirable traits for breeding to increase the effectiveness of selective (traditionally) breeding. "It's like a supercharger to existing breeding inputs", he says.

There are also various moral and ethical arguments about genetic engineering, especially if it introduces animal genes into plants, or crosses animal genes from one species with another where there are religious taboos on consumption of particular species, e.g. pigs. It may also fuel views of farming that some find unacceptable.

"Intensive farming views animals as unidentified units living in a factory system", argues Dr Kate Rawles, from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Lancaster. Intensive systems lead to a narrow, monetary, cost-benefit view of life, which sees ourselves as consumers and not as citizens who have a set of values that cannot be reduced to monetary terms. This is one reason why she rejects the use of genetic engineering to "design" animals that do not have such a wide range of needs or suffer in such intensive environments.

"As we learn more about the complexity of the ecosystem our attempts to control it look foolish" she says. Industrial agriculture sees humans as detached from the natural world and trying to dominate it. Biotechnology takes the arrogance further, with plants and animals to manipulate and the environment to control. Kate Rawles feels agricultural systems should go with the flow of the natural world, rather than against it.

At present, there is a tidal wave of private and public research into genetic engineering, coupled with market pressure from the big input suppliers. This is likely to increase the pace of change, leaving few foods untouched. Unless the organic movement steers clear of these development, people wanting to avoid genetically engineered foodstuffs ­ for whatever reason ­ may find there is no choice.

Monsanto's changing agriculture

Monsanto has perhaps the highest profile of several huge biotech companies, thanks to their genetically engineered Roundup Ready soyabean and earlier products such as the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, bovine somatatrophin, rBST. But what are they doing and how?

Twenty-six greenhouses gleam in the sun on the roof at Monsanto's life sciences laboratory, set in 210 wooded acres at their world headquarters, 25 miles west of St Louis, Missouri, USA. They house a whole range of genetically engineered plants ­ from potatoes to soyabeans ­ destined for farmers' fields. The scale of their research is awesome.

"We are the largest research facility in the world today dedicated to biotechnology research. The site was constructed and opened in 1984, cost US$150 million and currently has 1,860 employees. Of these about 1,600 are in research. There are 250 laboratories, 123 plant growth chambers and two acres of greenhouse space" says my personal tour guide Bill Kozinksy. The company has spent an estimated US$2 billion dollars since 1980 on biotechnology research.

So far they have produced a virus protected potato, cotton and maize plants that produce Bt toxins that kill certain insect pests, and soyabean, cotton, and oil seed rape (or canola in the USA) that can tolerate the herbicide glyphosate or Roundup ­ which is also produced by Monsanto ­ with Roundup Ready maize due in a year or two.

The key point for Monsanto about all of these innovations is that the technology is locked-up in the seed. This means that anyone who can farm can use their genetically-engineered seed, without needing to understand about any new technology or treatment.

The laboratories are like a small town, complete with shops, where everything is geared to ensuring researchers are productive. "If you're a researcher you're top of the food chain", says Bill. Researchers have a glasswashing service, a complete workshop facility to remodel their laboratories as necessary, computer technicians on hand to assist them and a private supply company on site, with mini-depots on all the laboratory floors, to minimise delays and maximise their efficiency. I wonder if this all smacks of a company in a hurry? "It's a very competitive world but I'd not use the word hurry but efficient; efficiency is the key", says Bill.

In the noisy soils laboratory, they can create 40 standard soil types and use about 75 tons of soil for their experiments each year. Basic soil components ­ sand, silt and clays ­ are mixed in large computer-controlled green hoppers, and potted using specially designed machines.

In quieter corridors are dozens of laboratories where they can put the genes into the plants. Over 5,000 visitors last year came to peer, like me, through glass windows at the researchers. But my jaw drops when we reach a really huge corridor, lined with shiny steel doors with lights glowing outside. This is one of two corridors housing the 123 growth chambers. Here, by controlling light, day length, temperature and relative humidity, growing conditions from around the world are mimicked and year round experimental growing is possible ­ from Asian rice to US cotton, and anything in-between.

This is pretty concentrated firepower for agricultural research, with a group of academics from the US land grant universities reportedly telling Bill on their visit that there were more plant growth chambers at Monsanto than in all the US land grant universities put together.

It is only recently that all this research has begun to bear fruit for Monsanto as their genetically engineered crops are released to farmers. "Last year we had one million acres of soya, this year 8-10 million acres" says Karen Marshall, spokesperson for Monsanto's agriculture sector operations. The acreage is only limited by the seed availability, she says.

Two views of biotech

For two very different views of genetic engineering see (the following two booklets, one is from the industry, trying to smooth over any fears, and the other from a non-governmental organisation, keen to encourage debate about the issues and lay out some of the problems): Food for Our Future ­ a guide to modern biotechnology: cheese, tomato, soya and maize. Produced by The Food and Drink Federation, 6 Catherine Street, London WC2B 5JJ. Tel: 0171 628 2460; and Spilling the Genes ­ what we should know about genetically engineered foods. Produced by The Genetics Forum, 5-11 Worship Street, London EC2A 2BH, price £6.00 inc. p&p. Tel: 0171 638 0606.

New gene, sir?

Today, new genes are put into plants using either bacteria or a particle gun, depending on the plant species involved. Genes that produce a desired characteristic are identified in an organism, be it bacteria, fungi, plant or animal, and certain enzymes are used to cut it out of a DNA strand.

For dicots, plants such as potatoes, tomatoes and oil seed rape, a bacterium ­ Agrobacterium tumefaciens ­ is used for genetic engineering. The bacteria contain normal chromosomal DNA and a circular ring of DNA called a plasmid. This plasmid induces a gall in plants. Using enzymes, the bit of the plasmid which causes the disease can be replaced with the gene that has the desired trait. By mixing the modified bacteria with small pieces of plant tissue it can be used to infect plant cells. Around one plant cell in 10,000 will successfully accept the new gene. The transformed cells are then grown on media like agar into cell calluses, then into plants in a series of stages.

For monocots such as wheat, rice, maize and soya the genes to be introduced are put on to the surface of microscopic pellets of gold or tungsten which are then fired into the nucleus of plant cells. Occasionally, genes are transferred into the plants' DNA; these are then cultured into whole plants.

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