Thread: Rice with human genes

The rice with human genes
By SEAN POULTER - More by this author »

Last updated at 08:57am on 6th March 2007



The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production.


The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva.


Its U.S. developers say they could be used to treat children with diarrhoea, a major killer in the Third World.


The rice is a major step in so-called Frankenstein Foods, the first mingling of human-origin genes and those from plants. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already signalled it plans to allow commercial cultivation.


The rice's producers, California-based Ventria Bioscience, have been given preliminary approval to grow it on more than 3,000 acres in Kansas. The company plans to harvest the proteins and use them in drinks, desserts, yoghurts and muesli bars.

The news provoked horror among GM critics and consumer groups on both sides of the Atlantic.


GeneWatch UK, which monitors new GM foods, described it as "very disturbing". Researcher Becky Price warned: "There are huge, huge health risks and people should rightly be concerned about this."

Friends of the Earth campaigner Clare Oxborrow said: "Using food crops and fields as glorified drug factories is a very worrying development.


"If these pharmaceutical crops end up on consumers' plates, the consequences for our health could be devastating.


"The biotech industry has already failed to prevent experimental GM rice contaminating the food chain.


"The Government must urge the U.S. to ban the production of drugs in food crops. It must also introduce tough measures to prevent illegal GM crops contaminating our food and ensure that biotech companies are liable for any damage their products cause."


In the U.S., the Union of Concerned Scientists, a policy advocacy group, warned: "It is unwise to produce drugs in plants outdoors.


"There would be little control over the doses people might get exposed to, and some might be allergic to the proteins."


The American Consumers Union and the Washingtonbased Centre for Food Safety also oppose Ventria's plans.


As well as the contamination fears there are serious ethical concerns about such a fundamental interference with the building blocks of life.


Yet there is no legal means for Britain and Europe to ban such products on ethical grounds.


Imports would have to be accepted once they had gone through a scientific safety assessment.


The development is what may people feared when, ten years ago, food scientists showed what was possible by inserting copies of fish genes from the flounder into tomatoes, to help them withstand frost.


Ventria has produced three varieties of the rice, each with a different human-origin gene that makes the plants produce one of three human proteins.


Two - lactoferrin and lysozyme - are bacteria-fighting compounds found in breast milk and saliva. The genes, cultivated and copied in a laboratory to produce a synthetic version, are carried into embryonic rice plants inside bacteria.


Until now, plants with human-origin genes have been restricted to small test plots.


Ventria originally planned to grow the rice in southern Missouri but the brewer Anheuser-Busch, a huge buyer of rice, threatened to boycott the state amid concern over contamination and consumer reaction.


Now the USDA, saying the rice poses "virtually no risk". has given preliminary approval for it to be grown in Kansas, which has no commercial rice farms.


Ventria will also use dedicated equipment, storage and processing facilities supposed to prevent seeds from mixing with other crops.


The company says food products using the rice proteins could help save many of the two million children a year who die from diarrhoea and the resulting dehydration and complications. A recent study in Peru, sponsored by Ventria, showed that children with severe diarrhoea recovered a day and a half faster if the salty fluids they were prescribed included the proteins.


The rice could also be a huge money-spinner in the Western world, with parents being told it will help their children get over unpleasant stomach bugs more quickly.


Ventria chief executive Scott Deeter said last night: "We have a product here that can help children get better faster."


He said any concerns about safety and contamination were "based on perception, not reality" given all the precautions the company was taking.


Mr Deeter said production in plants was far cheaper than other methods, which should help make the therapy affordable in the developing world.


He said: "Plants are phenomenal factories. Our raw materials are the sun, soil and water."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... =NEWS&ct=5

There are so many things to fight. NAU - illegal aliens - screwed up food - big Pharm - fed reserve - etc.

As for the food. I would suggest to all to find local organic farmers and ranchers that raise animals properly without hormones and antibiotics and buy your produce and meats from them and stop eating processed foods.

I want my food grown and animals raised as God intended, not as man sees fit to screw with it.

You think they would have learned something from Mad Cow disease.

http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/issues ... genes.html

Are there human genes in your food?

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/2 ... arm24.html
Friday, February 24, 2006
by Trudy Bialic, Guest Columnist

Ask the people around you if they want experimental drugs and industrial chemicals in their food or beer — without their knowledge or consent. Chances are they'll say no. Then tell them experiments that could make that happen are occurring right here in Washington state.

As you read this, a professor at Washington State University and a private Canadian company, SemBioSys, have applied for permits to turn two common food crops — barley and safflower — into virtual factories for synthetic drugs or chemicals.

On its Web site, SemBioSys declares its plan to inject safflower with human genes to produce experimental insulin and a drug for heart attacks and strokes. WSU confirms that it plans to grow barley, injected with human genes, to produce artificial proteins with pharmaceutical properties. Where these fields will be is secret; nearby farmers and residents won't be notified.

Proponents say that injecting human genes into plants (or animals) will provide cheaper drugs — someday. But this so-called "biopharming" has met with considerable opposition.

In California and Missouri, farmers protested and effectively stopped outdoor cultivation of "pharma rice," concerned that the drug-plants would contaminate their food-grade crops and make them unmarketable. Food companies such as Anheuser-Busch and Kraft Foods, as well as the Grocery Manufacturers of America and the Food Products Association, concur. The risks are more than hypothetical.

Several cases of cross-contamination from GE crops have cost farmers and the food industry more than a billion dollars in recalls and lost export markets.

The National Academy of Sciences, a nongovernmental body of scientists and professionals, has warned in two reports that it's virtually impossible to keep biopharms out of the food supply if food crops are used to grow them. Insects, birds, animals, wind, storms, trucks, trains and human error see to that.

Pharma crops are supposed to be rigorously regulated. But the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not review biopharmaceutical crops before planting, even though many of them have toxic or anti-nutritional effects on human health or the environment.

A recent audit by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Inspector General found the USDA failed to inspect field trial sites as promised and didn't even know where some experiments were planted. The Inspector General also found that USDA didn't follow up to find out what happened to the biopharm harvests. Two tons of a drug-laden crop was stored for more than a year at two sites without USDA's knowledge or inspection.

What's the risk of cross-contamination from these experiments? State legislators at least should order a thorough risk assessment and allow public comment.

Washington's Barley Commission is aware that WSU is biopharming barley and is strongly opposed. Administrator Mary Sullivan says, "Once those genetically altered genes are out there, there'll be GMOs in the beer."

No one's opposed to less expensive and effective drugs, but biopharming in food crops in open fields is a bad financial risk. Several leading biopharm companies have gone bankrupt. When Large Scale Biology went bankrupt — it was the first to conduct a field trial in 1991 — even biotech movers and shakers contemplated the demise of the biopharming concept.

Agriculture and the food industry are the largest employers and the greatest source of revenue in Washington state — more than Microsoft and Boeing combined. WSU and SemBioSys should not be mixing drugs and food. They should cancel these risky experiments immediately.

If they want to produce plant-based drugs, they should follow the lead of Dow AgroScience, which just announced approval of a vaccine for chickens produced by tobacco cell cultures in a contained steel tank. Cell cultures are a proven way to generate pharmaceuticals under controlled laboratory conditions — without the risk of untested drugs in our food.

Trudy Bialic is editor of Sound Consumer, a publication of PCC Natural Markets, the largest consumer-owned natural food retailer in the United States.
© 2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer