I’m very impressed by the fact that these blue potato chips exist. It’s no small feat to create a good-frying potato with excellent agronomic qualities in itself. I can’t imagine crossing in blue coloring (anthocyanin expression) on top of this in a reasonable amount of time – especially since potatoes aren’t true to seed. Non true to seed crops like potatoes have messy, highly heterozygous genomes that when crossed (or selfed) produce offspring that segregate for all the traits you care about. I’ve been told that potato breeders typically make a bunch of crosses in the first year of their program – and then spend the rest of their careers evaluating and propagating the resulting segregants asexually.

Though the chips really are purple, not blue…

As part of an Undergraduate Research Scholars program, I gathered research for Professor Jordan Rosenblum. He is interested in how the slow food and local food movements, as well as the biotechnology revolution relate to Kosher Laws. He is working on writing a book about ancient Jewish dietary practices, and the various arguments for or against it. He is a well-versed scholar on the subject of biblical and rabbinical literature. My role was to help him find modern arguments concerning Jewish dietary laws and culture, and how they are interpreted in the 21st century. I have read and analyzed over a dozen books, journal articles and web links to focus on two modern debates concerning Jewish dietary laws. I wanted to find out how Jewish beliefs influence their views on genetic engineering, and whether there was evidence for the modern argument that certain Kosher laws were based on health considerations.

The first topic that I researched was Jewish views on genetic engineering. I was surprised by what I found because I had assumptions going into it. I thought liberal Jews would be open to genetic engineering because of an “open mind” to modern biotechnology. On the other hand, I assumed conservative Jews would be against genetic engineering because I thought they would view it as a potential threat to their views on social and religious order. I was completely proven wrong.

Liberal Jews tend to be more cautious and reserved about food biotechnology. They employ a different set of ethics compared to their Conservative counterparts, like the use of secular, modern liberal ideology. They feel that not enough is known about its potential drawbacks and benefits to completely integrate its use into modern society. Some also feel, in a very general way, that an organism’s “soul” has been tampered with by manipulating its genome. There is one exception to these feelings of doubt and malaise concerning genetic engineering. This is the Jewish duty of pikuach nefesh – the solemn duty to save a human soul. If genetically engineered food can save lives, then it must be supported.

On the whole, conservative Jews are strongly in favor of biotechnology. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, there is no fear over “playing God.” They regard themselves as “co-creators” with God in improving the natural world. Psalm 115:6 reads ‘the heavens are the heavens of God’ yet ‘the earth he has given to the sons of man.’ Second, the Torah and the Talmud has nothing in it that directly or indirectly forbids genetic engineering. So conservative Jews who strictly follow the holy texts openly embrace genetic engineering and use it to their advantage. Interestingly enough, we also see Amish communities as deeply religious and resistant to modern technologies, yet there are Amish farmers who grow genetically engineered crops because they believe it supports their way of life and it is not directly forbidden in their Scriptures.

Frank and Jordan. Shalom! שָׁלוֹם

The second topic is about modern scientific claims surrounding the kosher laws. Our current understanding of food safety has imbued ancient religious discourses about food and dietary practices. For instance, there are many scholars who argue that ancient injunctions against consuming pork products were a way of avoiding being contaminated with trichinosis. The kosher laws were thought to have been enacted for religious purposes, intent upon purifying one’s soul of “unclean” food sources. The truth is, no scholar is certain as to the origin of the kosher laws. The modern analysis of kosher laws as health prescription is a wholly modern invention, with little Biblical or Talmudic justification. The application of modern scientific ideas to ancient food rules and practices is a way of rationalizing non-rational rituals.

There are various reasons given for the nature of the kosher laws, some are intellectual and others are hukum. Intellectual arguments in favor of kosher laws are laid out by rabbis in the Talmud. Hukum is a non-rational justification for following a rule. Basically, as a Jew, you are expected to follow the kosher laws because God said so. It is like being told to do something that seems irrational by a parent without a good explanation. The Kosher laws are also seen as a form of cohesion within the Jewish community. During ancient times and even today, they were a way of stating one’s unique Jewish heritage. Kosher food rules made it difficult to mingle with Gentiles or non-practicing Jews who did not keep kosher. This definitely solidified social bonds between Jews through food and ceremony. The fact that certain dietary laws may be healthy or sanitary is superfluous to its initial meaning.

My research on the kosher laws will be relevant to me as a trained sociologist and Registered Dietitian. This will be very useful for me as an aspiring dietitian to know the rationale behind religious food rituals. I would know what questions to ask and boundaries to respect concerning these food practices. Given the growing number of practicing Muslims and Jews in the United States alone makes this topic worth researching. Even after having completed my work with the Undergraduate Research Scholars, I plan to keep researching this topic. Food and sociology are two very relevant and important topics for me as an aspiring dietitian!

References:

1. Green, Ronald M. “The Jewish Perspective on GenEthics.” Ed. Pfleiderer, G., Brahier, G., Lindpainter, K. Genethics and Religion. Basel: Karger, 2010. 118-127.
   Hart, Mitchell B. The Healthy Jew. New York, Cambridge, 2007.
   Regenstein, Joe M. and Carrie E. “An Introduction to Kosher and Halal Food Laws.” Ed. Patricia A. Curtis.  Guide to Food Laws and Regulations Iowa: Blackwell, 2005. 163-201.
2. Reichman, Edward. “Why Is This Gene Different from All Other Genes? The Jewish Approach to Biotechnology.” Ed. Michael C. Brannigan. Cross-Cultural Biotechnology. Oxford: Rowman, 2004. 93-102.
3. Schlich, Thomas. “The Word of God and the Word of Science: Nutrition Science and the Jewish Dietary Laws in Germany, 1820-1920.” Ed. Harmke Kaminga and Andrew Cunningham. The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840-1940. Amsterdam: Atlanta, 1995. 97-120.
4. Sherwin, Byron L. Golems Among Us: How a Jewish Legend Can Help Us Navigate The Biotech Century. Chicago: Dee, 2004.
5. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava. “Jewish Philosophy, Human Dignity, and  the New Genetics.” Ed. Sean D. Sutton. Biotechnology: Our Future as Human Beings and Citizens. New York: Albany, 2009. 81-112.
6. Zoloth, Laurie. “When You Plow the Field, Your Torah Is with You: Genetic Modification and GM Foods in the Jewish Tradition(s).” Ed. Conrad G. Brunk and Harold Coward. Acceptable Genes? Religious Traditions and Genetically Modified Foods. New York: Albany, 2009. 81-110.

The topic of the debate was “can organic agriculture solve food scarcity problems?”. The subjects were randomly chosen and don’t necessarily support the views of those engaged in the debate, so I will not speak for anybody but myself. I was on the con team, and we were charged with arguing that organic agriculture is an inferior method of food production. We were up against a very good team and all day folks were coming up to us and telling us how much they enjoyed our debate. Ultimately, we won the best overall debate team and took home an engraved trophy and left the meeting $125 richer after splitting a $500 prize between the four of us.

My role on the team was to look into the pesticides used in organic agriculture and their treatment regimes. To my surprise, I found that organic operations actually increase the amount of inputs put into the environment by requiring higher concentrations and more frequent applications of pesticides. The insecticides used in organic ag are often less effective, less selective, and can have greater non-target effects than synthetic insecticides. Some organic pesticides, like the biopesticide Beauveria bassiana, are assumed to have a very low environmental impact quotient (EIQ), but haven’t been tested for potential ecological side effects. My position (and position on the debate team) is that GMOs like Bt corn are better for the environment because they decrease the amount of pesticides that we must put on crops and that organic pesticides are worse for the environment because they must be constantly reapplied in very high concentrations.

This, however, wasn’t the idea that earned me my stripes during the debate. During the Q&A session, somebody asked us to clarify why we thought organic ag was able to innovate to a lesser extent than sustainable or conventional agriculture. My response was that we can modify pesticides to become less toxic, more easily degradeable and more difficult for insects to detoxify by producing insecticides synthetically and making it more or less difficult for the insecticides to degrade. While organic ag could certainly benefit from new chemistries, they reject them as soon as modifications such as these take place because the new pesticide is synthetic. In short, organic producers are unable to take advantage of novel chemistries. I used the example of adding carbon atoms or benzene rings in a specific place to keep beta-lactam antibiotics medically relevant during the debate, but there was a much better example I could have used but unfortunately neglected to discuss. But, hey… that’s what the blogosphere’s for isn’t it?

Very recently, the lab of Reddy Palli has figured out a way to genetically modify an organism to become a spray-on pesticide. To fully understand and appreciate what’s going on, there are a lot of things I need to explain. Fortunately, I’ve got about 12 hours of travel time ahead of me. Awesome, right?

A Colorado potato beetle. USDA photograph by Scott Bauer via Wikipedia.

First, let’s talk about the animal discussed in the paper. The Colorado Potato Beetle is what’s referred to as a ‘superpest’. It’s highly prolific, and essentially bulletproof. This insect specializes on solanaceous crops like potatoes and tomatoes, the crops most closely related to nightshade plants. These plants are famous for defending themselves by producing deadly secondary metabolites. By specializing on these plants, the Colorado Potato Beetle has evolved with some incredible detoxification mechanisms which shields it from our pesticides. As an unfortunate (for us) side effect, it manages to become resistant to every pesticide we throw at it very quickly. It can defoliate entire potato fields, and we can’t stop it very easily. We’re desperate for new chemistry to counteract this pest.

Next, let’s talk about a very basic part of insect physiology. Insects, like humans, are made from proteins encoded by DNA. When a protein needs to be made, an RNA polymerase translates DNA to RNA, and a ribosome transcribes the RNA molecule to protein. This is pretty constant throughout the kingdom of life plants, humans and insects all use a similar system and there is RNA in everything you consume. It can get a bit more complicated than this (see below), but there’s one thing I need to point out – mRNA is always single stranded in eukaryotic organisms. Some viruses use a double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecule. This is kind of like DNA, but it’s made out of slightly different stuff. Insect immune systems are good at picking up stuff that looks like it shouldn’t be there and dsRNA sticks out like a sore thumb.

The beetle has an immune system just like us. Ever get sick? Did you get better? That’s your immune system working. Beetles are exposed to pathogens just like we are every day. A good example of this is a cypovirus, which is kind of like an insect rotavirus. When the beetle gets a cypovirus, a series of enzymes pick the dsRNA it makes from the crowd of mRNA and selectively degrades it by using that dsRNA as a template to scan all the RNA in the insect and then degrade it. This is called RNA interference, or RNAi.

How can we use this to our advantage?

The experimental setup Palli's team used. Everything's labeled pretty well, and very self explanatory. The larvae eat the leaf, eat the dsRNA which causes their own body to shut down vital systems.

Unlike our antibody production system the RNAi system is kind of stupid and won’t distinguish self from nonself mRNA. The reason for this is that RNAi is also used to make sure the beetle doesn’t produce too much of a particular protein. If it wants to shut down certain specific proteins, it can make small interfering RNA (siRNA) and allow the RNAi system to destroy the RNA. It’s physiologically important for the beetle to be able to do this, but there’s no doublecheck system. The beetle can’t tell if it produced the RNA or if the dsRNA came from another source.

Reddy Palli’s lab did something ingenious with bacteria. They inserted several sequences into a bacterium that made double stranded RNA to a variety of important proteins. These included the muscle protein actin, sec23 which is a protein involved in the transport of newly produced proteins, and a couple ATPases which are responsible for producing the ATP energy currency of the cell. After killing the bacteria but preserving the RNA, they sprayed the bacteria onto potato plants which contained Colorado Potato Beetles. They also did this with just straight dsRNA. The beetles eat the plants, they eat the bacteria and a whole load of dsRNA.

What happened?

Here’s the cool part: it actually worked. To me this is mind blowing because RNA is incredibly unstable, thanks to an oxygen attached in a rather unfortunate place which allows it to break the backbone of the molecule. There are also nucleases which degrade RNA so the bacteria had to be modified so they wouldn’t produce these enzymes. Keeping the molecule double stranded helps by making it more difficult for either of these reactions to occur, so dsRNA is more stable than regular mRNA. But it’s still an incredible thing to me that this even worked.

If you want to show this works, you need to first show that the mRNA levels drop in response to the treatment. Turns out that they do for all the genes involved. Actin is the muscle protein, the ATPases produce energy and sec23 and CopB are involved in protein transport. The control was something which has relatively constant transcription that wasn't target by RNAi.

The beetles ate the killed bacteria, digested the outer wall and released the dsRNA. The cells take up the RNA, and the RNAi process occurs just as described above. The RNA coding for actin gets degraded, so that the beetles don’t make new actin or repair their existing actin polymers. In short, their muscles fall apart, their cells don’t divide. Even their sperm wouldn’t move…all these processes are dependent on actin.  As a direct result, the beetles stop eating, stop moving and die. Similar things happened with the other genes. When sec23 and COPB are silenced, their proteins don’t properly get transported and modified, resulting in a buildup of nonfunctional machinery. When the ATPases are silenced, ATP is no longer produced and the beetle can’t produce enough energy to maintain vital life functions. From this research, it would appear there are a great diversity of genes we could target which opens up a lot more avenues of attack when making pesticides.

Now, there are some neat implications to this research. This was a ‘proof of concept’ paper, which means that this works on a particular organism with a particular set of proteins under ideal lab conditions but doesn’t directly deal with the economics, field conditions or range of pests that could be targeted. It’s exciting and this technique has a lot of potential, but a lot more research needs to be done before we could use this in the field. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good reasons to be excited to see this further developed, though. Even though this may be a somewhat limited technique (see below), I could still see this being used to create very highly specific insecticides that quickly degrade in the environment.

In general, this would be the ideal pesticide for an environmentalist because RNA is all around you, as are nucleases. The Colorado Potato Beetle produces RNA and siRNA. We produce RNA and siRNA. Bacteria produce RNA, but I’m not sure if they produce siRNA. This is essentially all-natural, with the only difference being that we’re telling the beetle to degrade proteins at the wrong time and at a much higher rate than it normally would. RNA degrades by itself pretty easily and RNA degrading nucleases can be found almost anywhere you look. The bacteria can degrade in the environment and have no components which aren’t found in soil bacteria except foreign RNA sequences. There’s no reason to think there would be any issues with the bacteria staying around in the soil for an extended period such as we’d see with DDT.

Despite my enthusiasm for this clever technique, I also don’t want to give anybody the impression this is a ‘magic bullet’ for pest control. Some critters take up RNA better than others. RNAi was discovered in nematodes using this technique, so we could potentially use this on nematodes as well as beetles. Honeybees are able to ingest RNA and acheive silencing, so we might even be able to target sawflies. We could not use this on moth pests because lepidopterans are notoriously difficult to perform RNAi in, which has led to caterpillars being more of a biochemistry rather than genetic model organism. Since a lot of pests like aphids pierce the plant and suck the juices out, this would be useless against them because they’re not actually ingesting anything on the outside of the plant. There also may be better ways to introduce the dsRNA and for all we know using viral machinery may be a better way to introduce and replicate the dsRNA. There’s a lot more basic research which needs to be done on this before I’d be willing to say ‘we could use this’. With this paper, there are good reasons to think this would work.

The results from the experiment. This is a survival curve, with the percentage of the larvae surviving plotted on the Y axis and the time of survival plotted on the X axis. As you can see, the survival curves dropped far below the controls. A is the bacteria encapsulated dsRNA, while B is the dsRNA without bacteria. Both work, despite the limitations I explained earlier.

In addition to needing to pay attention to the pests this could work on, we need to pay attention to the kinds of beneficial insects and other animals this would potentially harm just as we would any other pesticide. Actin tends to be pretty similar in all organisms. The other genes are really important, and are probably very conserved in genetic sequence. I would think this could have some potential nontarget effects on other beetles, flies or wasps that I’d be pretty concerned about the potential for syrphid flies to eat aphids coated in dsRNA filled bacteria, for example. I think it’s unlikely that RNAi would be able to be done for humans in this manner because we’re coated in nucleases and to perform RNAi we must actually envelope dsRNA viral components in artificial cell walls to prevent degredation in the bloodstream if we inject RNA into the body as we would with medication used to treat ebola. I’ll go into more detail about this in the next paragraph but even if we found that we could potentially perform RNAi in humans by doing this I wouldn’t expect any big nontarget effects because we could choose the systems interfered with in the insects and avoid using systems humans and insects have in common. We aren’t able to do this with conventional insecticides as well as we could with dsRNA because they often target systems humans and insects have in common like sodium channels and acetylcholinesterase. We do OK by making pesticides less toxic to humans (synthetic pyrethroids have LD50s 10x less than natural pyrethrum for a quick example), but we could always do better.

I’m not sure how big of a problem resistance would be, but I can kind of sort of speculate on this. RNA is difficult for some organisms to take up, so I don’t think it’s impossible for the organism to change its ability to uptake RNA. As far as easily imaginable forms of resistance go, I think this would be the most problematic form of resistance. Increased nuclease activity in the digestive tract would be an issue from a resistance management standpoint, as well. The beauty of this technique is that we can put any sequence of RNA into the bacteria to perform this technique. If we were to target insect specific insulin-like peptides, we could kill the beetles by causing growth deformities or by putting the insect in a diabetic coma. If we found that we could silence some of the metabolic machinery in a species specific manner we could target this. We could target single genes, or groups of genes and thus custom-tailor our pesticides to the pest itself. If the sequence of the RNA changed in response to the management, we could just determine if a different RNA sequence would work. It’s very exciting stuff, and it uses chemistry that’s already existing all around (and even inside) you.

It’s a good example of how technology can be applied in novel ways. In this particular example, we are doing something very simple-genetically modifying bacteria-to accomplish the relatively simple goal of killing crop pests. If we were to develop this further and get it ready for field use, organic agriculture proponents would be sadly unable to take advantage of this technique because they ban both synthetic insecticides and genetically modified organisms. Organic agriculture rejects many tools which could help them further goals which are certainly admirable. Unfortunately organic agriculture proponents attempt to maintain a false dichotomy between synthetic insecticides, genetically modified organisms and environmental issues. A lot of this stems from simple chemophobia, the idea that synthetic things are inherently bad. This causes the field to reject many good tools like this based on little more than fear and misunderstanding. Unfortunately, as a result of this I reject organic agriculture and refuse to buy anything organically produced despite the fact I agree with their goals wholeheartedly. I sincerely hope the field moves in a direction which places an emphasis on environmentally friendly solutions rather than perceived naturalness of interventions. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

Zhu, F., Xu, J., Palli, R., Ferguson, J., & Palli, S. (2011). Ingested RNA interference for managing the populations of the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata Pest Management Science, 67 (2), 175-182 DOI: 10.1002/ps.2048
Zehnder, G., Gurr, G., Kühne, S., Wade, M., Wratten, S., & Wyss, E. (2007). Arthropod Pest Management in Organic Crops Annual Review of Entomology, 52 (1), 57-80 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ento.52.110405.091337

Bahlai, C., Xue, Y., McCreary, C., Schaafsma, A., & Hallett, R. (2010). Choosing Organic Pesticides over Synthetic Pesticides May Not Effectively Mitigate Environmental Risk in Soybeans PLoS ONE, 5 (6) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011250

Kovach, J., Petzoldt, C., Degni, J., & Tette, J. (1992). A Method to Measure the Environmental Impact of Pesticides New York’s Food and Life Sciences Bulletin

Glusosino-What?

There has been considerable interest in investigating the composition of foods to determine what parts of them can contribute to our health. (And what detracts from it too.)  Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables have garnered considerable attention for their effects on the development of cancer. Research has revealed an important class of compounds called Glucosinolates, particularly one known as Glucoraphanin. When this sulfur-containing compound is metabolized by a plant enzyme called Myrosinase, it becomes one of two different compounds: Sulforaphane and Sulforaphane Nitrile. These two Isothiocyanates have been found to have preventative effects against cancer, and Sulforaphane is by far the more potent of the two. And this year, an important paper found that even the precursor, Glucoraphanin, also has important effects.

I apologize for the dizzying array of chemical names. So let me see if I can make them easier to understand. Glucosinolates include many similar kinds of compounds, and Glucoraphanin at the top of the picture here is one example. It gets the Gluco- from having a glucose sugar molecule bonded to it, which is that ring on the right hand side. Isothiocyanates are another class of compounds, and the main example is Sulforaphane. You can distinguish them by that N=C=S group on the Sulforaphane above. There are many Glucosinolates and Isothiocyanates important for this topic, so rather than bring up so many names I’ll only talk about the groups (end in -ates) and the two specific ones I mentioned (Glucoraphanin and Sulforaphane both have -raph- in them).

How do they work? Well, there is a huge amount of research on this topic, and while I could send you on a journey through a google or PubMed search, there are a few clear things that we know. Broadly speaking, cancer is uncontrolled cell growth that usually happens with DNA is damaged, but there are other causes as well (such as cervical cancer being caused by papillomaviruses). Chemicals that damage DNA are known as mutagens, as they can alter the string of letters in the DNA to read differently, and since the mutations they cause can also cause cancer, they are also called carcinogens. We encounter carcinogens in our everyday lives, from artificial chemicals we’ve produced for one reason or another, to the oxidative stress caused by normal cellular respiration, to the UV light naturally emitted by the Sun. Carcinogens are also found in our food.

Yes, our food produces carcinogens. More specifically, there are chemicals naturally present in our food, that when eaten, can become carcinogens. Since plants cannot run away from their predators, they have evolved to defend themselves using chemical and biological weapons, while animals have evolved enzymes and other ways to protect against those defenses. We produce a host of enzymes in our livers that detoxify chemicals that we eat in our food every day, and they are classified as Phase I and Phase II ‘xenobiotic’ metabolizing enzymes (there are also Phase III but we won’t get into that). Phase I enzymes take a foreign chemical and add or expose a functional group that Phase II enzymes can then add a molecule to, which allows the modified chemical to be excreted from the body. However, sometimes the chemicals produced by Phase I enzymes turn out to be carcinogens, which can cause damage before the Phase II enzyme is able to safely destroy it. Some chemicals that are known to have carcinogenic activity are among the Coumarins, Flavonoids, Glucosinolates, Isothiocyanates, and Phenols found in many plants – including broccoli.

Some of these compounds can also affect the activity of Phase I and Phase II xenobiotic enzymes, and often both. A chemical that induces the first class might cause more carcinogens to be produced, while one that induces the second class would more quickly eliminate them from the body before they can cause damage. Sulforaphane was discovered in 1992 to selectively induce the second, and not the first. And the more Sulforaphane you consume, the more it induces this activity. What this means is that consuming Sulforaphane will increase your body’s ability to protect itself against many forms of cancer. Indeed, and although some early research on Glucoraphanin suggested it might be harmful because it induces Phase-I enzymes, the new 2011 paper indicates that it upregulates cytochrome p450 along with Phase-II enzymes and therefore also contributes to the anti-cancer properties of broccoli itself.

You may have noticed that since Sulforaphane is an Isothiocyanate, and Glucoraphanin is a Glucosinolate, that they are members of two of the classes of compounds I mentioned above that have known carcinogens among them. Breeding for enhanced levels of one could affect the levels of others, so there is a great deal more complexity to this issue than I have described here. In addition, some Phase-I enzymes eliminate carcinogens, and some Phase-II enzymes create carcinogens as well. There are other compounds present in cruciferous and other vegetables that contribute in other ways as well. But on the whole it is true that these compounds have a beneficial effect, despite these complexities. And since Sulforaphane is produced from Glucoraphanin in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli – then eating broccoli that is higher in Glucoraphanin will protect against cancer even more.

To top it off, a paper published this year found that Sulforaphane also inhibits the activity of two enzymes in cancer cells, leading to cell death. So its benefits may not be limited to preventing, but perhaps fighting certain kinds of cancers.

Breeding Better Broccoli

Now the question becomes, how can we get broccoli on our dinner plates that has more of these beneficial compounds? There is considerable variation in the amounts of Glucoraphanin and other Glucosinolates in broccoli, and this review paper by E.H. Jeffrey et al discusses what is known about this variation. They show that Glucoraphanin and other Glucosinolates can vary from as little as one tenth to as much as three times the amount found in your average broccoli. Not all broccoli is bred the same.

Differences in the levels of these compounds can be caused by genetics, environment, interactions between the two, and post-harvest storage and processing. It turns out that in one study for Glucoraphanin and other similar aliphatic Glucosinolates, 60% of this variation is genetic, while only 5% is environmental. 10% is due to an interaction between genetics and the environment, which is like saying that one variety makes more in one environment, while another variety makes more in another environment. Genetics comes out as a clear winner if you want to improve the anti-cancer properties of broccoli, and where there is genetic variation for a trait like this, a plant breeder can select for plants that have that trait and improve it over generations.

Plant breeders at the John Innes Center in Norwich, England, and Monsanto’s vegetable seeds division used the genetic variation for Glucoraphanin levels in wild broccoli to breed for higher levels in a modern, commercial broccoli. This is accomplished by crossing cultivated and wild plants, and in successive generations selecting for plants that have higher levels of Glucoraphanin as well as the traits you want in a modern broccoli. They report that by testing in 23 locations against other leading commercial broccoli varieties, that their new Beneforté broccoli variety contains an average of about 2.7 times as much Glucoraphanin as your average broccoli. Since the effects increase with dosage, this means that you would be expected to gain more cancer-protective benefits by eating it. How much benefit, however, is not clear.

The environment it is grown in and what happens to the broccoli after it is harvested still matters, however. As Glucosinolates contain sulfur, fertilizing the soil with sulfur can quite understandably boost their levels. And while organic growing methods can affect some minor Glucosinolates both positively and negatively, Glucoraphanin is unchanged by this practice. How the broccoli is stored and processed also affects what levels remain in the vegetable, and finally, how you prepare it also matters. The enzyme Myrosinase that converts Glucoraphanin into Sulforaphane does this when the broccoli is chopped and chewed, but only if the broccoli is uncooked. Cooking destroys the enzyme’s activity, and also reduces the levels of Glucosinolates. Either eat them raw, or blanch them briefly! And since Myrosinase activity can be affected by the climate and season, there can still be an important environmental factor to this trait.

And one final note about breeding. While Glucoraphanin is the most abundant Glucosinolate in broccoli, it is part of a complex pathway and a complex trait, so breeding for the levels of one compound may affect levels of the others. The best breeding program will look at a broader array of Glucosinolates and other effects that breeding, environment, storage and packaging will have on the final product. Indeed, since some genotypes will do better in particular environments than others, and some may hold onto their chemicals during storage better than others, these downstream effects can inform the breeding process significantly.

Other genetic tools are helping to develop traits such as these, as this paper demonstrates that you can predict levels of Glucosinolates you will get when you made hybrid broccoli.

The Beneforté website indicates that this particular variety of broccoli is grown in a particular location in California, rather than in many places around the country. While you may not like the idea of produce shipped thousands of miles, this does mean that they have essentially fixed the Genotype by Environment interaction. In non-breeder terms, this means that they picked the best environment for the best variety of broccoli to get the highest levels of Glucoraphanin, amongst other traits. This suggests that they also took the environmental contributions into account when developing the Beneforté. The entire process took them about ten years.

While the exact amount of benefit to be had by eating the Beneforté broccoli is unclear, it does appear that it is likely to help in the area of cancer prevention. Keep in mind I am no dietitian, nutrition researcher, nor doctor, however the prevailing scientific literature indicates that it should. It would be nice to see some data published on this and other broccoli varieties, more information about other Glucosinolates in this variety, and perhaps a feeding model as well, but if I saw the Beneforté and I had the cash to get it, I probably would. The story of its breeding is almost reason enough besides the Sulforaphane!

Andy Bellatti

Back to Bellatti

Now that you know all you ever wanted to know about Broccoli and what we know about how its chemical composition prevents cancer, it is time to return to Andy Bellatti’s ill-informed piece purporting to “Bust” the Beneforté Broccoli.

The first point that Bellatti takes issue with is with regard to growing conditions.

“Similar growing conditions” — there’s an interesting tidbit. For all we know, then, Beneforté’s glucopharanin content could pale in comparison to that of organic broccoli.(sic)

Actually, if Bellatti did his research, he would know that organic growing methods do not significantly affect the levels of Glucoraphanin (which he misspells as glucopharanin), as I indicated above. The growing methods described on the Beneforté website appear to be describing climatic factors rather than the organic-conventional dimension. And it is quite odd that he takes issue with a straightforward and scientific manner of studying and reporting differences under similar growing conditions, which is necessary for comparison. But rather than try to find out the facts and report an analysis of them, he goes off the organic health halo to make what is an empty quip.

Next, he criticizes the focus on Glucoraphanin.

Of course, this obsession with glucoraphanin is a silly and myopic distraction. Broccoli, by virtue of being a vegetable, is healthful and does not need to be improved upon. None of the myriad of chronic health issues affecting millions of Americans are due to “faulty broccoli” with low levels of glucoraphanin.

Again, proper research would have prevented him from making a categorical double-error such as this. Being a vegetable does not automatically make something healthy. What is a vegetable but an edible non-reproductive part of a plant? Being healthy is not part of its definition. But more importantly, his ignorance of plant genetics betrays the second error. There is genetic variation for healthful aspects of vegetables, which means that you can have vegetables that are more or less healthy than each other, all on account of genetics. As I put it above, no two broccoli’s are the same. He is enjoying vegetables that are the result of a long plant breeding process of genetic improvement, and his suggestion that ‘This is as good as it gets’ is way off. In the case of broccoli – given that it is the same species as cauliflower, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts which vary widely in their content of Glucoraphanin, that means that the very broccoli trait in question is likely the result of human improvement already. Plant breeding is a continual process of constant improvement that should not stop.

He has also contradicted himself here – by suggesting that organic may be an improvement over conventional (which it is not in this aspect), he is suggesting that vegetables as most people eat them can and should be improved upon. If the mere virtue of being a vegetable was enough, then conventional non-organic broccoli should be enough for him.

Chia, hemp, flax. "Magic bullets" of Omega-3.

Now I will address the more important point, and that is that focusing on Glucoraphanin “is a silly and myopic distraction.” Granted there are more complexities to the cancer-preventative effects of broccoli compounds as I described above, but Glucoraphanin is still the most important part of it. But, some people have food philosophies that focus more on changing what specific foods people eat rather than changing the composition of those foods. To understand his comment in context of his food philosophy, I took some time to read his blog.

He is a vegan, who in his own words “approaches nutrition from a whole-foods, plant-centric framework.” Still, I do not see how improving the genetics of broccoli does not fit into this philosophy. You are still eating a whole plant food. Perhaps, still, the specific composition of those foods does not matter to him?

However, his blog posts reveal a different story. He is in fact quite concerned with the specific composition of foods, ranging from listing the nutrients in each of his posted recipes, to complaining how he had to learn about how food service establishments work instead of the compositional differences of chia, hemp, and flax seeds. As a matter of fact these seeds show up an inordinate number of times in his recipes – and I daresay that “none of the myriad of chronic health issues affecting millions of Americans are due to not eating enough chia, hemp, and flax seeds.” Of course it would be silly to expect these seeds to be magic bullet cure-alls, but that is the standard that he held the broccoli to, so fair’s fair.

So it becomes very clear that Andy Bellatti is highly concerned with specific nutritional compositions of and differences between foods. In fact, the hypocrisy reaches levels that will bust everyone’s irony meters. While Bellatti tries to give enhanced levels of Glucoraphanin in the Beneforté broccoli a bad ‘raph, he is quite delighted to advertise such chemicals as important reasons to eat cruciferous vegetables in the first place!

In this blog post extolling the virtues of broccoli rabe, Bellatti says the following,

For example, it offers high amounts of isothiocyanates, compounds that fiercely battle carcinogens in the body.  High isothiocyanate consumption has been shown to significantly reduce risk of developing breast, esophageal, lung, and prostate cancers.

Compare that to what he said about the Beneforté:

Of course, this obsession with glucoraphanin is a silly and myopic distraction.

Andy Bellati: Eat it for the Glucoraphanin! Err...

Apparently Bellatti is quite familiar with silly and myopic distractions himself. He gives completely opposite opinions of these compounds depending upon the end goal of his argument. It is apparent from his blog that his food philosophy includes focusing in on these nutrients, and so by rejecting the nutrient-focus of this broccoli, he is also rejecting what seems to be his own nutritional philosophy.

Politics, Politics, Politics

He then proceeds to reveal what I think is the real reason for his distaste with the Beneforté, that it is made by Monsanto.

The biggest irony of this product lies in Monsanto’s claim that Beneforté “help[s] maintain your body’s defenses against the damage of environmental pollutants and free radicals.”

Environmental pollutants? As in, the ones that have have increased exponentially as a result of genetic engineering?

He cites The Organic Center’s 13-year report on pesticide use, which we have already discussed here and noted that it compared pesticides of wildly different impacts on human health and the environment as being equivalent by weight. In other words, one pound of a nasty herbicide such as atrazine equals one pound of roundup, which is far less nasty. Genetically engineered herbicide tolerant crops have caused a shift in herbicide use from sprays such as atrazine to safer ones such as glyphosate – which are physically heavier have a lower environmental impact quotient (EIQ) per pound, so The Organic Center reports it as an increase in herbicide by weight even though it is a safer one. The study’s author, Charles Benbrook, is well aware of this problem. The report also demonstrates that GE has reduced insecticide use, but minimizes the actual impact of this by subtracting the pounds from the total. His approach makes math easy, but misleads about the overall picture.

Andy Bellatti also cites the Environmental Working Group page on herbicides, which only reinforces this point. What examples of nasty herbicides do they use to talk about health effects? Why, atrazine! One of the one’s that genetic engineering has replaced with roundup on many farms. While he was trying to catch Monsanto in an irony, he fell into one himself.

And, above all, let’s not allow Monsanto to get away with gimmicky healthwashing.

The real reason that Andy Bellatti set out to criticize this broccoli variety was not because it was a bad idea, but was because it was an idea held by a company that he dislikes. Actually, considering that Monsanto only just bought Seminis Vegetable Seeds in 2005 to form the company’s vegetable seeds division, it was probably an idea already set in motion before Monsanto had anything to do with it.

That’s a ‘Raph

Rather than base an opinion of the Beneforté broccoli variety on a consistent nutritional philosophy, a consideration of the scientific evidence, or even basic research that both his degrees in Journalism and Dietetics should have prepared him for, Bellatti decides to instead base it on his opinion of the company that is marketing it. How much of his dietary advice follows the same pattern, I am left wondering? Are clients hiring a dietitian or a food policy activist?

He completely missed an opportunity to discuss what we know and don’t know about Glucoraphanin and the precise details about how it interacts with our bodies, and then express an opinion about the relative merits of this improvement. But he rejected even the idea of learning anything about it before uttering a cynical burp of bad sulfurous broccoli breath.

There are more things to think about that I haven’t even gotten into. Would the promise of a greater benefit lead to more broccoli consumption, or perhaps less? Are there other interactions that this trait might have for better or for worse with people’s health? What standards ought there to be for health claims based on achievements in plant breeding? There is certainly room for discussion below, but I saw this as an opportunity for everyone to learn more about a health-oriented crop variety which is one of the first in many that are sure to come. The real facts about the biochemistry, genetics, breeding, and marketing are far more interesting to talk about.

GMO Shortens Life Span by Michael. This shirt design was submitted to Atrium in the No GMO t-shirt design challenge.

Threadless recently hosted* a t-shirt contest for Jeffery Smith‘s Institute for Responsible Technology: the No GMO t-shirt design challenge (see Karl’s post Vote for talking, not fighting for more details). One of the shirts really struck me: GMO Shortens Life Span by Michael. The artist proposes an equation:

plants + DNA  = death

This slogan really makes me wonder – does the artist know that plants have DNA? Does he know that his own cells are teeming with DNA? That without DNA, life wouldn’t exist? Do most people know that DNA is essential for life? What would the average person say if told that they eat about 100 thousand miles of DNA in the average meal?

If this is the level of understanding, or rather, misunderstanding, that persons have, can we ever expect to have useful discourse on the subject of biotechnology or even biology itself? This worries me greatly. Just in case anyone out there reading this is concerned that DNA is dangerous, I’d like to provide a simple recipe that anyone can use to see and touch DNA for themselves.

As shown in the picture below, DNA is tightly packed in each cell. It’s wrapped around proteins called histones, then coiled into the familiar X chromosome shape. The amount of DNA per cell depends on the species, but each cell has about 9 feet of DNA in it. Since each meal contains tens of millions of cells, you eat about 7 to 10 miles of DNA at each meal!

Cells to DNA. Image from Michigan State University.

There are a lot of DNA extraction recipes out there, but there are a few essential steps. The DNA must be freed from the cell membrane and the membrane of the nucleus. Then, the DNA needs to be separated from the membrane bits, proteins, and other cellular parts. Finally, the DNA needs to be precipitated, or brought out of solution by becoming a solid instead of being dissolved in the solution.

Supplies:

• Source of DNA. Fruit, especially banana or strawberries, works great because they have a lot of DNA per cell. Onions have a lot of DNA per cell too, but make for a much less pleasant smelling DNA extraction than berries or bananas.
• Detergent, such as shampoo or dish soap. Clear detergent is better so dye doesn’t cover up the action.
• Coffee filter to remove proteins, cell membrane parts, and other cellular gunk from your DNA solution.
• Table salt to precipitate proteins and carbohydrates.
• Ethanol to precipitate the DNA. Rubbing alcohol is ethanol, preferably 95%.
• A plastic sandwich baggie.
• 3 cups.
• A plastic teaspoon.
• A test tube or narrow glass like a shot glass.
• Toothpick.

Safety note: if you are tempted to taste the DNA, just remember that there is shampoo and rubbing alcohol in there and that these things are generally not good to eat! DNA itself, though, is perfectly safe – we eat it in every meal.  Really want to eat DNA? Check out these instructions for building an edible model.

*Just in case you were wondering, the contests aren’t vetted by Threadless, they are run by a separate site, Atrium. This was important for me, because I rather like Threadless, but I prefer to avoid patronizing companies whose publicized ethical stance I disagree with.

This will be the last video* I will produce for this series with Dick Geier, at Merit Media here at UW-Madison. He was always climbing on top of things like ladders in greenhouses, the back of my truck, a cart in the back of a classroom, and a corn detasseling tractor and potato harvester, or crawling through rows of corn. His eye for interesting camera angles, ear for matching music, and editing style and professionalism and efficiency is amazing. His work added a level of quality and interest to the videos that I can only aspire to. I wish him a happy retirement – and hope he will always find ways to keep busy with his creativity!

Dick points while Clark gets ready to shoot

*There will be more videos in this series.

It was striking how much of what was old is new again. One of the earliest priorities of government leaders was to stock their “new” continent with as diverse of seed as possible. They not only promoted the adoption of proven Amerindian crops, but encouraged immigrants to bring their own favorite seeds with them and even sponsored botanical expeditions to the far corners of the world to discover potential new crops. Thomas Jefferson went so far as to smuggle rice seed out of Italy in his pockets – a crime punishable by death!

The young U.S. government not only encouraged the use of diverse, locally appropriate seed but actually provided it to farmers. For years, farmers spurned much of the offerings of the young seed industry due to the reliably superior quality of government seeds.* In what would become a recurring theme, the beleaguered seed industry formed a trade association and successfully lobbied the government to leave seed production to them.**

As the U.S. matured from a rural frontier to an industrial power, the people slowly developed an appreciation for what regulation could do for them (which is a good reminder for all of us from time to time). The Jungle was written to reveal the exploitative working conditions of industrial food processing factories, but the public’s outrage (to Sinclair’s frustration) was consumed by the disgusting revelation of what was going into their dinners. It gave me a new appreciation for the FDA to hear some of the early practices they were tasked with addressing – including chemical adulteration that made exploding ketchup bottles and child deaths from candy consumption common.*** As was also a recurring theme, food processing businesses protested these new regulations full-throated, but the overwhelming demands of the people eventually held the final say.

Along the way, the government kept working to educate farmers and the public on best practices to profitably produce and safely consume the nation’s food, mediating conflicts between the two, and nudging both towards behaviors that were in everyone’s interest. Government efforts in social engineering include rationing during the World Wars (“Meatless Mondays” was invented by the Hoover administration), promotion of home gardening and canning (which I believe was at one point responsible for 40% of all produce consumed by the public), the establishment of the classic American meal of affordably nutritious potatoes + meat + vegetables, the now-infamous ag subsidies and the school lunch program.
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Much of the exhibit was dedicated to the always-evolving efforts of the government to keep its people healthy – from early efforts to ensure that everyone had affordable access to basic nutrition, to burgeoning biochemical understanding of the nutrient components of food (and a seeming “vitamin” craze) to the recognition of obesity as a serious health threat. It was illuminating to walk these displays with my nutrition/social science gf, who explained where and how some education efforts succeeded and others failed.

D wasn’t the first vitamin to be accused of causing widespread deficiency-induced malaise. A pet theory that Americans were in need of more thiamine (vitamin B1) led to the fad of donuts as health food (as they apparently contained a fair amount of it). In this case, the FDA stepped in – allowing advertisement of “enriched wheat donuts,” but not “enriched donuts” or “vitamin donuts.” If I remember correctly, it was this passing emphasis on the biochemistry of food that inspired the now ubiquitous FDA “Nutrition Facts” label.

I balked at the American public’s repeated gullibility in the face of health claims in food marketing (from “vitamin” donuts to “whole grain” sugary breakfast cereals), but gf pointed out that nutrition science is inherently complex, frequently changes and has generally been poorly distilled into simple to understand and follow messages. It’s no wonder that the public is quick to grab products that associate themselves with whatever is seen as healthy at the moment (apparently even green packages are associated with healthiness). She contrasted our complex nutrition education materials (e.g. the terrible interactive food pyramid website) with simple public health education campaigns (e.g. wash your hands to prevent the flu, use clean needles and condoms to prevent HIV).

I asked her to give an example of what she thought nutrition education materials should look like. She re-emphasized that it had to be targeted to the needs, education and attitudes of each given demographic, but that, for example, the core message for many children might be: “exercise a lot more, drink water instead of sugary drinks.” I was encouraged to hear that many on-the-ground nutrition educators already take this approach. She thought the new USDA Food Plate was a step in the right direction as it’s simple and works at the level of a meal (most people don’t have a good idea of everything they eat in a day or a week, and certainly don’t understand how much a “serving” is).

I definitely recommend checking out the exhibition’s preview on the National Archives website, and stopping in if you’re in the area. I just wish it was a lot bigger! In conclusion, I’ll leave you with a quote from one of the displays that I couldn’t resist (and an unrelated poster advertising an early farmer education campaign).

“Many urbanites held on to the agrarian myth—the belief that the family farm stood for all that is pure and good in America—but demanded the cheap food that large agribusiness could supply.”

* If you know more about this program, I’d love to hear it!
** Later, dairy farmers united to compel the government to impose massive taxes on margarine butter substitutes. People were thrown in federal prison for breaking these draconian “oleomargarine laws.” Eventually, the added expense of these taxes was repealed under increasing protests from the public.
*** Industrial ketchup was invented as both a shortcut for busy home cooks and a way to use the dregs of tomato harvests (e.g. cores and skins) made edible with vinegar, red dye and preservatives that built pressure within the containers. According to this exhibit, Heinz was the first to demonstrate that ketchup could be made without these bottle-busting chemicals. Oh, and by the way – ketchup is originally descended from Asian fish sauces. Crazy!

1.  Brand protectionism

2.  Unfavorable economics

3.  Other ways to achieve the same goals, and

4.  Anti-GMO activism

1.  Brand Protectionism

For most crops, somewhere along the chain of commerce from the farmer to the consumer, there is a step where there is considerable “concentration.” This means that much of the market is in the hands of one or a few players.  A classic case is potatoes.  In the US, McDonalds corporation is such a dominant buyer of frozen fries,  it was able to stop the commercial deployment of biotech potatoes with three phone calls.  Unlike standard potatoes, the GMO potatoes in question are not planted into a supply of insecticide sufficient to be picked up by the roots for 60 days because they make their own, super-safe and specific “pesticide” in their leaves (Bt).  The GMO potatoes also don’t need to be sprayed for aphids close to harvest because they are resistant to the virus those aphids spread.  The potato growers were extremely excited about the technology, but purely for the sake of brand protection, McDonalds was able to deprive the entire industry of this advance.  Potatoes are still a perfectly safe food.  It could just be easier on the growers.

There are other cases of this sort of brand-protection power.  The major frozen food companies and grocery retailers have been able to block most use of “Bt Sweet Corn” which could save farmers 8-10 insecticide sprays/season.  Frito-Lay blocked the use of GMO, Bt white corn for corn chips even though that technology greatly reduces the risk of contamination with the mycotoxin, Fumonisin, which has been linked to neural tube defects in humans.

Brands are very valuable things and are protected fiercely.  Activists like Greenpeace know this well, and they are able to use the threat of protest to turn that business instinct into decisions that are counter-productive for farmers and consumers alike.

2.  Unfavorable Economics

Genetically engineering a crop is not that costly, but doing all the work necessary for the regulators is very expensive.  Unless the crop in question is very large, very valuable or both, it will just never “pencil” to make the R&D investment, particularly if there is any marketing risk.  I was once on a team that helped a major banana company and a biotech company think-through whether they should spend the money to develop a disease resistant banana.  In Central America, it is necessary to spray this crop from the air almost every week to control a disease called Black Sigatoka.  Bananas are a large, global crop so I was certain that the “business case” would be attractive.  To everyone’s surprise, when we did the math, it came out as a poor investment!  The problem is that banana plantations only get re-planted about every 20 years, so even if the new technology was available, only a small area would be planted each year. Saving >50 aerial sprays wasn’t enough to cover registration costs once the time-value-of-money is factored in.

So no minor crop and almost no perennial crop is ever going to become GMO unless the growers band together to make the investment.  A coffee expert explained this to the global Specialty Coffee Association last year and suggested that they contemplate what it means that coffee will never be GMO.  With the issues of climate change and declining labor availability, that entire industry is at risk.

3.  Other Ways to Achieve the Same Goals

There has been a tremendous, public/private, global investment in biotechnology, far beyond that for the few crops that have been modified.  That has led to the development of many new methods to alter the genes of plants etc. that don’t involve the introduction of any “foreign DNA.”  Most of the crops that fit category 2 above will likely be improved using these alternatives (Marker Assisted Selection, Directed Mutagenesis, Induced Polyploidy…).  These improvements will not involve expensive regulatory barriers, and so far, don’t draw the ire of activists. (With the exception of one attack on “Hidden GMO” sunflowers that were generated by mutagenesis.)

4.  Anti-GMO Activism

Plant genetic engineering has been the most carefully thought-through new technology introduction in history.  I remember attending major scientific conferences on the safety and environmental questions at least 10 years before the first commercial seeds were planted.  We talked through everything with ecologists, botanists, sociologists, economists, molecular geneticists, food industry experts. But none of this influences the “environmental” groups who have seized on this issue to raise funds and draw attention.  The activist’s task is made easier because molecular genetics is a fast-moving science that few consumers understand.  The press has also been unwilling to take the time to understand this to the extent that journalistic standards would require and so many have not helped to counteract the fear-mongering.  This is the only way I can explain some activist-driven rejections.

My all-time-most-read blog post was titled, “A Sad Day For Wine. A Sad Day For Science.”  There is a virus called Grapevine Fanleaf Virus that is spread by a nematode (Xiphenema index). If the two ever infest a given vineyard site, good quality wine can never be produced there again because the vines will soon decline and die.  That means that there are many wonderful vineyards around the world that have the an excellent “terrior” (something the French appreciate so much), but that site can no longer produce good wine.  Grapes are grown on “rootstocks” and Cornell University had modified a rootstock to be resistant to the virus.  This was an elegant solution to the Grape Fanleaf Virus problem because the top part of the vine is unchanged and only one kind of rootstock has to be developed.  Last fall an experimental block of this new technology was ripped out of the ground by activists who believed they were saving the French wine industry from “genetic contamination.”  That fear is 100% irrational - it is a rootstock under the ground that never flowers.  Besides, grapes are not grown from seeds anyway.  Different varieties of wine grapes are planted side-by-side all the time with no ill effects!

Is This Good Or Bad-Consider the Case of Wheat

So for a variety of reasons (some economic, some logical, some irrational, some selfish), very few additional crops will ever be GMO. That is not to say GMO is a small contribution to the food supply.  Corn, Soy, Cotton, Canola, Sugarbeets and Alfalfa are GMO and cover hundreds of millions of acres and find their way into many processed foods, meat and milk.  Still,  I will continue to argue that GMO crops can be beneficial.  The world will survive without a bit more excellent wine (very few vineyards in California, Chile, Argentina or Australia are contaminated!), but the other crop where activist-generated-fear has “won” by eliciting Brand Protectionism is - wheat, the second largest food crop on earth.  By 2004, Greenpeace was able to generate enough fear in Europe to get major millers and bakers to threaten not to purchase North American wheat if any became GMO.  The Canadian Wheat Board blinked, and two, nearly commercial wheat traits, were stopped in their tracks.  One kind of GMO wheat would have been easier to farm with no-till methods and easier to keep pure for specialty uses.  The other GMO wheat would have reduced disease-related yield losses as well as mycotoxin contamination.

It is far easier to stir up fear than it is to educate the public.   There was an excellent article by Justin Gillis in the New York Times on 6/4/11 titled, “A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself.”  Much of the article is about how wheat production is failing to increase sufficiently to meet rising global demand.  GM technology is not the full answer to this challenge by any means, but the fact that we are not including GM in the wheat improvement toolbox is a clear-cut “bad thing” in my book.

This post originally appeared on Sustainablog on 6/8/11.
You are welcome to comment here or to email me at applied.mythology@gmail.com.  My website is Applied Mythology.  Image of Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting,  ”The Scream” from oddsock. French Fry image by Sun Dazed. Alsatian vineyard image near Colmar, France from Andreea.

Even as speculation about imaginary risks of GM foods continues, particularly among some organic sector enthusiasts, real food risks in the food chain remain unmanaged.

Exposure of fresh vegetable produce to manure is a case in point. Pathogenic Escherichia coli are one of more frequent health dangers of fresh vegetables. These bacteria can be present in manure, and they spread in faeces and water. Tragically, banning of GM crops in Germany has not eliminated these risks.

Another death in German E. coli O104 outbreak; consumers advised to not eat fresh tomatoes, cucumbers or salad 25 May 20 11 on Barfblog by Doug Powell

Another woman died in Germany on Wednesday after being treated for infection with the virulent enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) bacteria on Wednesday, as government minister warned the situation remained “threatening.”

Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner and Health Minister Daniel Bahr called for everyone to take particular care with food hygiene at a press conference in Berlin.

Except the public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) advised this evening not to eat any tomatoes, cucumbers or lettuce from northern Germany.

Sounds like an on-farm problem, not a consumer problem; needs to be prevented, isn’t going to be washed off.

The latest woman to die was a 41-year-old from Cuxhaven – although she was being treated for the symptoms of EHEC infection since May 21, her cause of death will now be investigated.

The number of people confirmed to have died in Germany from EHEC infection has reached three. But health officials said an elderly woman who died on Sunday in Stormarn, Schleswig Holstein, was not killed by the bacteria.

Outbreak Linked to Spanish Cucumbers 26 May 2011 in Der Speigel

Researchers have found the first link to the source of the recent E. coli outbreak in Germany: Spanish cucumbers. As the number of infections increase and spread outside the country, consumers are being warned to avoid certain vegetables.

Scientists at Hamburg’s Institute for Hygiene and Environment have found the deadly E. coli bacteria causing the outbreak in northern Germany, city Health Minister Cornelia Prüfer-Storcks said Thursday. Three out of four cucumbers carrying the dangerous strain of the bacteria were from an organic shipment from Spain being sold in Hamburg supermarkets.

“Information on their origins and further details are now being assembled,” she said, adding that the test results may not be relevant to infections arising in other areas. “It can’t be ruled out that other products will come into question as the source of infection,” she said… (continues at link)

For more news coverage, see: E.coli deaths continue as ministers warn of threat

Update

German E. coli O104 update: 10 dead, 276 HUS, 1000 sick 29 May 2011 from Doug Powell’s Barfblog

More women have died in Germany from an E. coli O104 outbreak linked to cucumbers grown in Spain, bringing the death toll to 10. Of the 1,000 or so sick, 276 have hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).Hospitals in the city of Hamburg, where more than 400 people are believed to have been infected, were said to be overwhelmed and sending patients to clinics elsewhere in the country.

Austria’s food safety agency ordered a recall of organically grown cucumbers, tomatoes and aubergines supplied by a Spanish producer which is thought to be the source of the outbreak. It said 33 Austrian stores were affected.

According to Denmark’s National Serum Institute, there are nine confirmed cases, with at least another eight people suspected of having the intestinal infection, also known as VTEC, in Denmark.

Sweden has reported 25 E. coli cases, of whom 10 developed HUS, according to the European Commission, while Britain counted three cases (two HUS).

Officials in the Czech Republic said the cucumbers may have been exported there, as well as to Austria, Hungary and Luxembourg.

“As long as the experts in Germany and Spain have not been able to name the source of the agent without any doubt, the general warning for vegetables still holds,” German Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner said on Sunday in a report in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

The European Commission says experts are now probing two agricultural sites in southern Spain, in Almeria and Malaga, suspected of exporting products, most likely cucumbers, tainted with E. coli.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/29/us-germany-ecoli-idUSTRE74S12V20110529
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/153939/20110529/germany-cucumber-e-coli.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/health/2011-05/29/c_13899931.htm

German E. coli O104 update: 10 dead, 276 HUS, 1000 sick 29 May 2011 from Doug Powell’s Barfblog

More women have died in Germany from an E. coli O104 outbreak linked to cucumbers grown in Spain, bringing the death toll to 10. Of the 1,000 or so sick, 276 have hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).Hospitals in the city of Hamburg, where more than 400 people are believed to have been infected, were said to be overwhelmed and sending patients to clinics elsewhere in the country.Austria’s food safety agency ordered a recall of organically grown cucumbers, tomatoes and aubergines supplied by a Spanish producer which is thought to be the source of the outbreak. It said 33 Austrian stores were affected.According to Denmark’s National Serum Institute, there are nine confirmed cases, with at least another eight people suspected of having the intestinal infection, also known as VTEC, in Denmark.Sweden has reported 25 E. coli cases, of whom 10 developed HUS, according to the European Commission, while Britain counted three cases (two HUS).Officials in the Czech Republic said the cucumbers may have been exported there, as well as to Austria, Hungary and Luxembourg.”As long as the experts in Germany and Spain have not been able to name the source of the agent without any doubt, the general warning for vegetables still holds,” German Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner said on Sunday in a report in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.The European Commission says experts are now probing two agricultural sites in southern Spain, in Almeria and Malaga, suspected of exporting products, most likely cucumbers, tainted with E. coli.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/29/us-germany-ecoli-idUSTRE74S12V20110529

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/153939/20110529/germany-cucumber-e-coli.htm

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/health/2011-05/29/c_13899931.htm

German E. coli O104 update: 14 dead, 352 HUS, 1200 sick

POSTED: MAY 30TH, 2011 – 5:54PM BY DOUG POWELL

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in a risk assessment today that the HUS/STEC E. coli O104 outbreak is the largest in the world of its kind, with 14 dead, 352 with hemolytic uremic syndrome and over 1,200 sick.

German Health Minister Daniel Bahr said Monday that authorities still haven’t pinned down definitively the source of the E. coli infection — and “we unfortunately still have to expect a rising number of cases.”

An EU official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to standing regulations, said the transport chain was long, and the cucumbers from Spain could have been contaminated at any point along the route.

Spain, meanwhile, went on the defensive, saying there was no proof that the E. coli outbreak has been caused by Spanish vegetables.

“You can’t attribute the origin of this sickness to Spain,” Spain’s Secretary of State for European Affairs, Diego Lopez Garrido told reporters in Brussels. “There is no proof and that’s why we are going to demand accountability from those who have blamed Spain for this matter.”

EU spokesman Frederic Vincent said Sunday that two greenhouses in Spain that were identified as the source of the contaminated cucumbers had ceased activities. The water and soil there are being analyzed to see whether they were the problem, and the results are expected Tuesday or Wednesday, Vincent said.

Update 1/06/2011 Australian time

The Spanish cucumbers have a different EHEC E.coli strain. They are not safe, but they are not the cause of the big problem. This is not good news as we know don’t yet know the cause(s) of the big EU problem. It just became a bigger problem.

Update

Glossary:

Outbreak of E. coli acronyms in Germany

CABI Blog

Germany seems to be suffering an outbreak of acronyms alongside an unusual outbreak of foodborne E. coli. Reports list the culprit as STEC, EHEC, VTEC, shiga toxin producing E. coli, verotoxin producing E. coli….They are all talking about the same thing.

Heres a quick guide to E coli diarrhoea acronyms and a summary of the outbreak plus some resources [link just above].

Pundit’s Opinion:

Human health risks from mis-managed faecal matter on vegetable produce should be put under an intense media spot-light because lack of precaution about poop really does kill.

See Chassy and Tribe 2010 for more discussion, as well as Organic salad with Salmonella, Salmonella in organic Chinese peanuts, Farm in transition to organic farming linked to spinach disaster, and other GMO Pundit posts about E. coli and Salmonella.

This post was syndicated from GMO Pundit. You may comment here or on the original entry.

The graph above shows the relative production of these major US row crops comparing the years 1993-1995 (just prior to the introduction of biotechnology enhanced crops) and 2008-10 (the most recent available data which covers a a span which comes 12-15 years after biotech.  Soybean production has expanded 47% in this time-frame while corn is up 58% (far more than the quantity now being diverted for biofuel).  Both of those crops are predominantly planted to “GMO” varieties, while the various segments of the wheat crop remain non-GMO.  Until 2004 it looked as if North American growers would also get to plant biotech wheat, but a vigorous campaign led by Greenpeace succeeded in blocking the technology.  Many major European and Japanese grain buyers were concerned about potential consumer push-back (based on Greenpeace efforts), so they made a coordinated threat to boycott all North American wheat exports if any commercial GMO wheat was planted in the US or Canada.  This was based on the “precautionary principle.”

The wheat industry, particularly the Canadian Wheat Board, asked Monsanto and Syngenta not to go ahead with their plans to sell the improved wheats, and so those often vilified companies put their programs on the shelf at the request of their customer base.  GreenPeace then declared Victory.

The Traits That Didn’t Happen

Monsanto had been developing a “Roundup Ready” version of wheat which would have helped the wheat growers who have grass weed issues.  It was also shown to increase yields and it would have aided in conversion to no-till, and  increased genetic purity for specialty uses.  Syngenta was developing wheat with resistance to a disease called Fusarium Head Scab.  That particular fungus is difficult to control with fungicide sprays, but it can severely hurt yields, and it can diminish the value of what grain is harvested by contaminating it with the mycotoxin, DON or “vomitoxin.”  A major reason that farmers include less wheat in their crop rotations than would be optimal is because of the risks associated with this disease.  The fact that these traits would have increased grower income and reduced a dangerous toxin in the food supply were listed in the Greenpeace internal literature of the day, not as “pros,” but as “campaigning challenges.”

What The Farmers Thought

In the late 1990s, I had the opportunity to sit down with dozens of wheat farmers in Kansas, North Dakota, Minnesota, Indiana and Kentucky to talk about these coming traits.  These growers had experience with GMO soy and corn and were very much looking forward to these new products.  I was testing various “business models” for how the traits would be made available because, like soybeans, much of the wheat crop is planted with “Farmer Saved Seed.”

With non-hybrid crops, farmers have the option to simply save some of their previous grain harvest to use as seed.  Typically they buy new, “certified” seed every few years.  With Soybeans, Monsanto took the risky and controversial step of getting growers to sign a “technology agreement” in which they promised not to save the biotech seed but rather to purchase it new every year.  I, and many in the industry doubted that growers would be willing to do this or that the system could be enforced well enough to prevent free-loaders.  After a few, high-profile lawsuits, the new system was widely accepted and no mainstream soybean farmer even questions it today.

Much More Was Lost Beyond The Traits

Before biotech, the soybean seed industry existed mainly as a “price of doing business” for corn seed companies.  Much of the breeding advancement was still happening in Universities (though with precarious funding).  When soybeans became an every-year purchase, the overall investment in the improvement of that crop went up dramatically.  This helped extend the range of the crop into colder Northern regions and dryer Western areas.  We are also now beginning to see the pay-off of the investment in genomics and Marker Assisted Selection – biotechnology enabled updates on “traditional breeding.”  Roundup Ready soybeans were not a “yield trait” as such, but they were far more convenient for busy farmers and easier to “no-till” farm.  So now both soybeans and corn had become much more attractive options for farmers, and in many regions the “loser” has been wheat.

The Wheat That Was Not To Be

The expansion of corn and soy production in the first chart represents a combination of factors.  Growers planted more of their land to those crops, often using their better fields.  They often grew these crops with greater inputs of fertilizer, water because the economic risk was smaller.  In most areas there was a distinct change in the long term trends for these crops that corresponds to the pre-biotech era (before 1996) and the post-biotech era (after 1996).

One way to calculate the real “cost” of the Greenpeace wheat victory is to extrapolate what would have been the production of wheat if the earlier trend lines are extrapolated to 2010.  To do this I took the data from the USDA-NASS at the Crop Reporting District level (usually 9 districts per state) from the years 1984 to 2010.  This allowed me to fit lines for each crop/district covering the Pre-biotech years of 1984-1995 and then a similar 12 year time frame from 1999-2010 as a Post-biotech era.  By comparing what level of production each trend for predicted for 2010, the impact of the non-biotech nature of wheat in a biotech world could be estimated.  Example trend comparisons are shown below for single district examples of corn, soybeans and winter wheat.  Finally those differences are summed for all the districts where data is available over the 27-year time span (238 for corn, 173 for soybeans, 191 for winter wheat, 39 for spring wheat and 6 for durum wheat).

An example of one of many areas where corn productivity increased faster after the introduction of biotechnology through a combination of more acreage being planted and yield progress increasing.

A very typical example of an area where farmers began to plant a great deal more soy when it was improved through biotechnology.

An example of an area where wheat planting and intensity dropped in the biotech era relative to earlier trends.

Many Variables but Major Overall Outcomes

Exactly how trends changed for each crop and region varied widely, but in very few cases did the pre-biotech trend continue unchanged. For every crop some areas were up and some down, but the net effect was an overall shrinkage of US wheat production at a time when global wheat demand is constantly increasing.  The chart below shows that the biotechnology enhanced crop options saw substantial production increases vs earlier trends, + 437 million bushels/year for soy and a whopping + 4.03 billion bushels for corn. Winter wheat overall declined slower than it had prior to biotechnology for a net trend change of +35 million bushels.  Spring wheat, which was much more in the geographic path and time of year of the soy and corn “locomotives,” lost 315 million bushels of “potential” production.

Would Things Have Been Different With Biotech Wheat?

Would that have been different if Greenpeace didn’t “win?”  It is difficult to know because there were other factors in that time frame such as the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996 which changed the nature of government crop subsidies and set-aside programs.  Delays in biotech trait approvals for import to the EU and Japan altered global market dynamics as did the wide-spread pirating of Roundup Ready soybeans by South American farmers.

Would Monsanto and Syngenta have cross-licensed their wheat traits to allow an attractive package for farmers?  Would the transition away from a “saved seed” market for wheat have offset the declining public breeding support which continues even today?  It is impossible to know, but the wheat industry has now decided that they don’t want to be denied a technological advantage again.  National wheat grower associations in the US, Canada and Australia agreed to a simultaneous launch of any future GMO wheat so that the Europeans and Japanese could not blackmail them again.  Even so, it is likely to be at least a decade until that happens because the other thing that was lost in 2004 was the continuous years of breeding effort that it takes to incorporate a biotech trait in the complex world of wheat (winter, spring, red, white, hard, soft…..).

How Much Lost Wheat Is That?

The theoretical 315 million bushels of wheat not being produced as of 2010 represents 8.6 million metric tons (in the units of global trade).  That is roughly equivalent to the crop in each of the wheat producing countries Argentina, Egypt, or Italy.  It is more than the total wheat imports that go to each of these major, net wheat importing countries (Japan 5.8MMt, Algeria 6.9MMt, Egypt 8.3MMt, Italy 5.4 MMt, Indonesia 4.5 MMt, Brazil 6 MMt, Iran 5.2 MMt).

Putting This In The Context Of The Current Global Food Price Spike

We just finished seeing a severe spike in prices on the global food trade scene in 2007/8 and a new spike is underway and appears to be continuing - particularly for cereals like wheat which is now within 3% of the previous record (see chart below).  India is considering a wheat export ban this year.  Global wheat demand is expected to double by 2050.

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Then, just to add insult to injury, the US congress cut funding for the Global Wheat Genomics Center at Kansas State .  That happens as a new strain of the dreaded Wheat Stem Rust pathogen is threatening wheat crops in more countries every year.

We probably won’t ever be able to make up for what has been lost for one of the world’s most important human food crops.  The catch-up on biotechnology will not be in time to help many poor people survive or to prevent the political instability implications of food shortages.  These are the true “Costs of Precaution,” but they will not be borne by the Greenpeace activists in rich nations.  These very real costs will be borne by poor families in places where wheat can’t be successfully grown.  Greenpeace was happy to take credit for stopping this technology.  I wonder if they are willing to take credit for these consequences.

Norm Borlaug said:  ”If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace.”

I’d go with Norm’s “Peace” agenda, not that of Greenpeace.