If you are unfamiliar with this subject, click here first for a brief introduction.

Click here for more articles

Foods with power: Besting mother nature: Engineered foods may feed millions and cure disease even as they threaten the environment.

On vast tracts of farmland across Canada this spring, billions of corn borers will descend on the newly planted corn, soya beans and potatoes, just as they have since farmers first cultivated these fields. The insects will go about their usual business of munching on the leaves, causing millions of dollars of damage.

But in a growing number of fields, the little worms will soon start dropping dead. This year a record number of genetically altered crops, containing their own insecticide, will be planted. When the bugs bite into the plants, they receive a mouthful of toxins that create holes in the gut and swelling, causing gut juices to leak into their blood, resulting in paralysis and death.

Welcome to the brave new world of farming, where insecticides are engineered straight into the crops instead of being sprayed on fields. In the labs, scientists are working on even more extraordinary concoctions such as canola that doesn't freeze and tobacco that produces human proteins.

Proponents believe genetic engineering holds the key to feeding the world's growing population and curing its diseases. Critics fear we are in the process of unleashing new threats to the environment and human health.

``Historians will look back at this decade as the transition from the chemical era to the biological era,'' says Dr. Wilf Keller, research director at the federal Plant Biotechnology Institute in Saskatoon and an enthusiastic supporter of the genetic wizardry that can turn plants into ``biological factories.''

Many scientists, like Dr. Keller, believe the day could come when ``chemical plants in the cities will be replaced by biological factories in the field. ``We can now view our plants as sources of industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, environmental reagents,'' he says.

The genetically engineered crops now going into the soil are crude compared to the much more sophisticated creations now sprouting in research labs. ``These are just the Model Ts,'' says Dr. Keller.

The plants of the future will pump out high-quality industrial oils, biodegradable plastics, paints, coloured cotton that will not run in the wash, and medicines by the bushelful.

``It is,'' says Dr. Keller, ``very profound.''

Almost everyone agrees on that point, which helps explain the acrimony over the technology. Acrimony that has seen genetically engineered crops destroyed by activists in Europe and has generated growing consumer backlash against genetically modified organisms (or GMOs) that nature could never have created.
It is so profound that critics such as Ann Clark, an agronomist at the University of Guelph, say the Canadian government and university scientists should be taking a much more critical look at the pros and cons of inserting new genetic machinery into everything from corn to potatoes.

** As with the early days of the chemical revolution, when pesticides ** and herbicides were welcomed with open arms, the environmental and health impacts of the new genetic creations may not be known for many years, say the critics.

Yet Canadians are already gobbling up transgenic foods. About half of all packaged foods here now contain some transgenic materials. It is everywhere, from corn chips -- yes, even some organic varieties -- to baby cookies.

Canadian farmers are busy sowing what is expected to be a record crop of transgenics. This year, more than half the 12 million acres of canola grown in this country will be genetically modified. So will about 40% of Canada's corn, and 15% of soybeans and a large portion of the country's potatoes.

Most of it will head for the dinner table. The leftovers will be ground up and fed to cattle, pigs, and chickens.

Producers and government food regulators estimate about half the packaged food sold in Canada already contains at least one of the thousands of different products made from genetically modified soybeans, corn, and canola.

But no one can say with certainty which specific foods or products contain transgenic products. This is because almost all the genetically enhanced crops grown in Canada are mixed with traditional, non-transgenic material at processing plants, where they are pressed into oils and ground into flour and meal.

They disappear, so to speak, never to be identified or labelled as transgenic again.

``It's impossible to tell them apart,'' says Ken Hough, director of research and market development for the Ontario Corn Producers Association. All the corn products found on store shelves -- everything from the obvious products, such as corn flakes, to the more obscure but ubiquitous additives, such as fructose -- are now made from mixtures of transgenic and non-transgenic corn, he says.

Such ``co-mingling,'' endorsed and encouraged by the biotechnology industry and federal regulators, has made it easy for Canadians to swallow the genetically modified foods flooding onto the market.

There are no ``genetically modified'' labels on crackers or soup mixes to make people aware of the novel contents of what they are about to eat, or to make them wonder if plants genetically revved up in the lab are as safe as the federal government insists they are.

While co-mingling worked like a charm in Canada, it has begun to backfire internationally. Canadian canola farmers have been shut out of the market inEurope, where people and politicians have no appetite for transgenics. Research crops have been torched by anti-GMO activists, consumers have balked at eating the stuff, and policy makers are writing rules to slow the flow of GMO bound for Europe.

Canadian scientists, policy makers and farmers blame mad-cow disease for the Europeans distrust. The Europeans seem to have lost faith in both science and the food safety system, laments Dr. Keller, expressing a common sentiment.

It's irrational and its unscientific, say he and his colleagues. But it is also reality.

Several Europeans countries are moving to label genetically modified foods. In England, rules are in the works that would force restaurant waiters to tell customers when there is a GMO in the soup, or anything else on their menus.

Several Europeans countries have also slapped moratoriums on the introduction of new genetically modified crops, including many of the 43 varieties that are already approved for use in Canada and grown by Canadian farmers.

There is one big difference between traditional plant breeding and genetic engineering: The latter allows scientists to make crosses that nature would never permit.

Scientists can, and do, take human, fish, and leech genes and insert them into canola, tobacco, and mustard. But more commonly they insert genes from bacteria, viruses, and fungi into the plant. They also frequently re-engineer existing plant genes, modifying them so a crop will make a slightly different type of oil or starch, and stick them back in.

The resulting potato or canola is variously known as genetically modified, transgenic, or genetically engineered.

Genes get most of the attention, but it is the proteins they produce that set GM plants apart. This is because the inserted genes instruct the cells to make protein molecules, and it is protein molecules that confer the desired trait.

Herbicide-resistant canola, for example, has been given a gene from soil bacteria. It instructs the plant cells to produce a protein -- one commonly found in yeast and many vegetables -- that binds to and neutralizes a specific herbicide. This means farmers can spray the herbicides on the canola and it will survive.

To genetically engineer a new plant, scientists use a range of tools including genes guns that literally shoot pellets covered with genes into cells. The more common -- and reliable --method is to use bacteria to insert the new genes.

Genes, which come in various shapes and sizes depending on the proteins they code for, are often ordered from gene banks though scientists can sometimes build them from scratch in the lab using special gene-making machines.

While genes from a bacteria or frog are ``foreign,'' scientists say they are often not very different from genes already found in the plant. There are about three billion bases, the building blocks of genes, in canola. ``And all you have to do is change a couple of those three billion bases to make herbicide tolerant canola,'' says Dr. Maurice Moloney, of the University of Calgary, who helped develop the crop.

Compared to traditional breeding where entire chromosomes, carrying thousands of different genes, are exchanged between the plants being crossed, Prof. Moloney says, ``genetic engineering is remarkably precise.''

It might also be described as modern-day alchemy. Basic things like getting genes into cells and producing the desired proteins is still a hit and miss affair. ``It's witchcraft,'' quips one scientist at the Plant Biotechnology Institute, explaining how sometimes the genes get turned on inside the cells and other times
they do not.

But scientists are getting more control over their craft and increasingly they are trying to rework genes already in plant cells to amplify desirable traits.

Radishes, for example, make an anti-fungal agent to protect seeds and young plants when they germinate in the cold, wet ground. But that protective agent is not found in adult radishes. ``If you could activate that gene in the leaves you might get enhanced protection over a longer period of time,'' explains Dr. Keller.
Although the technology is still in its infancy, thousands of Canadian farmers have already embraced the newfangled crops. Farmers like grain grower Corey Loessin can rattle off a long list of practical reasons for sowing genetically modified canola.

The high-tech crops, he says, make it much easier to control weeds on his 6,000-acre farm, just south of the tiny prairie town of Radisson, Sask.

The crops require a lot less herbicides, says Mr. Loessin, who has grown the controversial crops for three years. More importantly, they have dramatically reduced his need to plough. GMO seeds are planted directly into untilled fields, amid the stubble of the crops from the year before. This prevents the soil from drying out and blowing away.

``The number one reason for using them is soil conservation,'' says Mr. Loessin. ``Once [the topsoil] is gone, it never comes back.''

Before GMOs came along, farmers would till canola fields in the fall or in the spring before seeding and apply treflan, a chemical that controls early spring weeds. Then they would plant their canola and wait for it to sprout, along with what would inevitably be another batch of weeds. In early summer, they would spray a combination of herbicides, each chemical in the mixture deadly for different weeds but safe for canola. Now he sprays only once, after the canola is up, and uses less toxic herbicide.

``The downside is that I'm not sure we're making any more money than we did with the old system,'' says Mr. Loessin, pointing to a bin full of the GMO seed that costs up to three times more than regular canola seed.

It is the genetic machinery in the tiny black seeds that make them so valuable to farmers and the multi-national companies that now control so much of modern agriculture. Round-up Ready GMOs, produced by Monsanto, are designed to produce proteins that confer tolerance only to the herbicide Round-up, also produced by Monsanto. Liberty Link GMOs produced by AgrEvo can only tolerate AgrEvo's pesticides. Smart Canola, developed by Cyanamid, can only be used with that company's herbicides.

All of which means farmers have to keep close track of what they plant and where. One of Mr. Loessin's neighbours got mixed up last year and sprayed the wrong chemical on the wrong field accidentally killiong 50 acres of canola. ``He lost it all,'' says Mr. Loessin.

Mr. Loessin, who supplements his farm income by teaching in the agriculture faculty at the University of Saskatchewan in the winter, is so confident in the safety of GMOs that he plants them in the field right in front of his house, where he lives with his wife and two young children.

But like many critics of the GMO technology, he bristles at the growing corporate control of farming. Monsanto is particularly domineering, insisting that farmers sign ``technology use agreements'' when they buy their GMO seed. The agreements say farmers cannot save seed they produce for replanting the next year -- Monsanto wants them to buy new seed each year. It also gives the company the right to send in inspectors -- ``police'' as some farmers have taken to calling them -- to inspect farms and press charges against farmers who violate the agreements.

All of which Mr. Loessin finds offensive. ``I won't put it on my land,'' he says, of Monsanto's GMO canola. ``They want more control than I want to give.''

The growing control of the multinational life science companies, such as Monsanto, worries many people including government scientists and officials. They say the companies now control so many key genetic engineering tools that it is seriously crimping other researchers' ability to engineer new crops and take them to market.

Critics such as Prof. Clark in Guelph, worry about the wisdom of allowing companies to take unprecedented control of the world's food supply. They also have a long list of concerns about the safety of GMOs. Things like the ``genetic pollution'' wafting out of fields of GM crops -- each pollen grain the plants produce contains the inserted genes -- and the safety of eating foods with foreign genes and proteins.

Even among staunch genetic engineering supporters, there is a recognitoin that the hig-tech crops already in use in Canada should be better managed to minimize the ``gene stacking'' that occurs when genetically engineered crops are grown too close together and cross pollinate, creating ``supercrops'' resistant to several pesticides.

There are also calls for more research to explore the impacts of the technology and address public fears.

``We need a pot of money that could be used for science-based, independent studies,'' says Prof. Moloney, one of Canada's leading genetic engineers. While stressing that he has every confidence in Canada's regulatory system that assesses the new GM foods before they are allowed on the market, he says there could be more work to explore such things as the ecological impacts of GM crops and the differences between GE and organic crops.

Meanwhile, Canada's ``co-mingled'' canola can no longer be sold in Europe. Dale Adolphe, president of the Canola Council of Canada, worries that Europe's ``emotional and political'' fear of transgenics might be contagious.

``It could spill over to Japanese consumers or to North American consumers,'' he says. ``I don't necessarily think we've seen the worst of it.''

Given all the uncertainty, the brakes are being applied to what has for years been a head-long rush to get more and more GMO crops in the ground.

``It's put a chill on rushing ahead with transgenic flax and peas, and lentils,'' says Dr. Keller. Several varieties of transgenic peas, designed to tolerate herbicides, are ready to go, but will not be commercialized until the situation in Europe cools off.

``The plants are working just fine; it's the market that isn't working,'' says Dr. John Mahon, who field-tested the peas last year near Saskatoon.

But most farmers using GMOs are not about to give them up. ``Personally I think they should be outlawing cigarettes and alcohol before they outlaw genetically engineered crops,'' says Manitoba farmer Alex McPhail. He will be growing transgenics for the third year.

He will be in good company. Mr Adolph is predicting about eight million acres of GMO canola will be grown on the Canadian prairies this year, up from about six millin acres last year. The story is much the same for corn and potato growers. ``We're probably 60% transgenic by now,'' says Richard Gorrill, who is busy sowing GMO spuds on his P.E.I. farm for the fifth year.

But some farmers are going out of their way to keep the newfangled varieties away from traditional soybeans.

This is because European buyers are hungry for non-GMO soybeans, and have been signing contracts with Canadian farmers willing to grow them, says Kim Cooper, market coordinator for the Ontario Soybean Growers. ``The non-GMO market is increasing as we speak,'' says Mr. Cooper, noting how the crops will be shipped to Europe and processed into f ood clearly labelled ``GMO-free.''

Mr. Cooper stresses that the executive and directors of the Ontario Soybean Growers believe in genetically modified foods and have confidence Canadian regulators are right when they say the crops are safe for humans, animals, and the environment.

``We back the technology,'' says Mr. Cooper, ``but we also provide the market with what it wants.''

The market may be starting to weaken, but biotechnology continues to march onward, with the help of hundreds of millions of dollars from government, and even more from the multi-nationals. One team of federal scientists in Saskatoon is busy reprogramming canola to produce high-quality lubricated oils. Another is working on wheat that makes starch that tastes like rice, to appeal to Asian taste
buds. And another group is engineering anti-fungal agents -- including one produced by a frog gene -- into peas and canola.

Some scientists, including Prof. Moloney's group in Calgary and a federal team in Southern Ontario, are engineering human and animals genes into plants such as tobacco and canola in a bid to get plants to produce large quantities of scarce medicines.

Others are trying to minimize extraneous genes -- ``with real or imaginary problems'' -- and stick with plant genes as much as possible, rearranging and amplifying traits that look most promising. It is an approach that should make the resulting crops palatable to consumers and generate as few headlines a possible.

``We want them to be as boring and effective as possible,'' says Dr. Derek Lydiate, head of a molecular genetics team that is, among other things, trying to engineer canola that will make insects starve to death. (The idea is to make the leaves indigestible, sort of like olestra for bugs.)

Dr. Lydiate is only half-joking. He moved to Canada from Britain 17 months ago and blames the media for much of the hysteria about GMOs in Europe. He has no desire to feed a frenzy here.

While the scientists clearly feel engineering new crops is worthwhile, they acknowledge there may be risks associated with the new technology. But they say the risks are manageable and worth taking, given the potential benefits of the new technology to feed a hungry world and produce new medicines and industrial products.

``In time, I think people will eventually realize their fears are misplaced,'' says Dr. Larry Pelcher, who counts canola-with-a-frog-gene among his many creations. But he expects there will bumps along the way. ``I don't see plants escaping and taking over the earth,'' says Dr. Pelcher. ``But there will be surprises. We are probably going to learn things we didn't want to learn.''

LEECH GENES IN CANOLA MAY MAKE NEW DRUGS

For the last few years, a ``molecular'' farmer near Kamloops, B.C, has been field-testing canola engineered to make an anti-coagulate normally only generated by leeches. Leeches use the compound to keep their prey's blood flowing. Calgary researchers moved a leech gene into canola and dream of harvesting the anti-coagulant for use in treating stroke victims. This year, the farmer will be trying out four other ``value-added'' types of canola and flax engineered by Dr. Moloney and his team to produce pharmaceutical proteins. Dr. Moloney teaches at the University of Calgary and founded SemBioSys Genetics Inc. of Calgary. As is typical in the secretive world of biotechnology, no one, including the government which approved the trials, is willing to spell out just what will be sprouting on the B.C. farm this year. ``I'd love to tell you but I can't because of confidentiality agreements with our partners,'' says SemBioSys president Dr. Andrew Baum, who also refused to identify the Kamloops farmer ``out of courtesy.'' (Dr. Moloney, who says about four and a half acres of the experimental canola and flax will be grown this year, elaborates saying, ``We don't want any silly people setting fire to our fields.'') Because the oilseeds are food crops, federal regulators say canola and flax engineered to produce ``bioactive'' proteins must be grown at least 30 kilometres from the nearest field of edible flax or canola. Dr. Moloney says edible canola is not grown within 200
kilometres of the B.C. farm.

A HUMAN GENE

A tobacco plant fitted with a human gene will be tested in Ontario this summer, the first of many transgenics designed to breathe new life -- and healthier purpose -- into tobacco farming.

The plant, one of the first with a human gene to roll out of the lab, has been engineered to produce a compound to treat Crohn's disease, an often debilitating intestinal disorder. The human gene instructs tobacco cells to produce an immune modulator that can be harvested and purified for therapeutic use. Tobacco is in many ways an ideal platform for ``molecular farming'' in which plants could be customized to mass-produce scarce hormones and medicines, says Dr. Jim Brandle, who heads the Agriculture Canada team that will field-test the tobacco at a research farm near Delhi, Ont. Unlike most plants, tobacco is not eaten by people or animals and has no close relatives in Canada to which it could pass on its genes.

WHAT'S IN THE GROUND WHERE

The federal Plant Biotechnology Office, which regulates transgenic crops for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, has approved field-testing of 434 new transgenic plants across Canada this summer, including a humanized tobacco.

The bulk of the trials will be conducted in four provinces: Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Canola is by far the favourite plant, with 150 of the trials, followed by wheat with 85 and potatoes with 58.

The Canadian arms of the multi-national giants Monsanto and AgrEvo, will be running dozens of the trials across the country.

Among the more interesting trials is one on potatoes that have been given four new genes to confer herbicide tolerance, virus resistance, and insect tolerance.

The H.J. Heinz Company of Canada Ltd. has approval to test three type of tomatoes engineered not to rot -- or to at least resist fungal infections.

RAPESEED

When Dr. David Taylor inserted a yeast gene into rapeseed, he had no idea he would boost the plants' oil production to unheard-of levels. The federal scientist, who works at the Plant Biotechnology Institute in Saskatoon, had been angling to get the plants to produce longer oil molecules for industrial use.

Several promising lines of the rapeseed-yeast will undergo field trials this summer in collaboration with the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and CanAmera. In the greenhouse, the plants have been producing seed that weighs 9% more than regular rapeseed, generates 5% to to 6% more oil and have a 36% increase in erucic acid levels. All of which could prove a windfall for farmers. The new engineered rapeseed could be used as an industrial lubricate and in the manufacture of everything from plastic bags to cosmetics.

TERMINATOR

The ``terminator'' is the most contentious idea genetic engineers have come up with yet.

The system, which could be marketed within six years, uses three foreign genes and an elaborate genetic switching system to make plants produce sterile seeds. By putting a lock on valuable traits engineered into plants, companies developing the new crops will be able to get a better return on their investments because farmers will be obliged to buy new seed each spring.

``What irks people is that it kills the seed,'' says Dr. Wilf Keller who grew up on a farm. ``It cuts against the traditional and fundamental right of farmers to grow their own seed.''

Though the system might have a valid use terminating seeds of plants made to produce potent drugs or industrial products that need careful control, there is concern it will be used mainly to swell the coffers of the large life science companies.

Home / Overview / News Cuttings / Other Related Articles  / Contact