Senate Schedules Markup of S. 510

by Helena Bottemiller | Nov 11, 2009

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) has scheduled a markup of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, S. 510, almost nine months after Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the measure.

The bill would be a big boost for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by providing the agency with greater authority and mandate. The bill would require more inspections of food facilities, grant the agency access to food safety records, and require facilities to have food safety plans in place.

Though the markup, scheduled for November 18th, is a critical step in the progress of the legislation, sources on the Hill downplayed the possibility that the bill had any chance to make it to a vote before Christmas.

Food safety advocates now hope the bill will be reported out of committee before Thanksgiving.

Leading up to the meeting, the Make Our Food Safe Coalition, is pushing for three changes to strengthen the legislation.

The coalition, which consists of consumer advocacy and public health groups, wants to strengthen frequency requirements for high-risk food facilities (by including the 6 to 12 month minimum standard in the House version), improve the import and traceability requirements, and include language that would require the FDA to issue rules for testing food for contamination.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) is also pressing the committee to make changes to the bill, which would extend limited FDA authority to on-farm production.

Though NSAC has not issued specific amendment recommendations, the group recently released a policy brief. According to the brief, "NSAC urges policymakers to ensure that standards and regulations encourage farmers to seek out innovations and a more sustainable agriculture, and at least not create additional barriers to the widespread adoption of sustainable agriculture practices."

NSAC will be issuing an alert to its network in the next few days to rally support for modifications that would lessen the impact on small and mid-sized sustainable and organic farms.

Farm Food Safety Bill Introduced

 

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) introduced S. 2758, the Growing Safe Food Act, yesterday to help educate and train farmers and food processors in food safety.

The proposed legislation, which is co-sponsored by Senators Bingaman, Boxer, Gillibrand, Leahy Merkley and Sanders, comes as the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, S. 510, a bill that would greatly increase resources and authority for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, continues to be stalled in the Senate behind health care reform.

Stabenow believes her proposal will help small and mid-sized farmers, food processors, and wholesalers comply with the pending food safety overhaul, which is likely to pass once there is room in the Senate schedule.

"With all the recent scares over contaminated food, this legislation will help restore consumer trust in the safety of our food supply," said Stabenow. "Providing training to farmers and processors on things like handling practices and safe packaging will go a long way toward restoring this confidence."

The training program proposed would be administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) National Integrated Food Safety Initiative. State agriculture departments, extension services, agricultural trade associations, and universities would be eligible to apply for grant support to promote training programs.

According to a statement released by Stabenow's office, "Training can be in the areas of handling practices, manufacturing, produce safety standards, risk analysis, sanitation standards, safe packaging, storage, traceability, record-keeping, and food safety audits."

The proposed bill also stipulates that existing conservation, biodiversity, and organic farming standards would have to be taken into account in the development of any training program receiving funds.

GE Corn Growers Out of Compliance

• Farmers growing genetically engineereed corn break rules
  By Elizabeth Weise
  USA Today, November 6, 2009
  Straight to the Source
  
  

Corn genetically engineered to resist pests and tolerate herbicides made up 85% of the U.S. corn crop in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But a report by a watchdog group, out today, finds that since 2006, farmers have become increasingly non-compliant with federally-mandated planting requirements designed to keep the popular technology useful in the future.

Approximately 25% of U.S. farmers no longer follow Environmental Protection Agency requirements to plant conventional corn "refuge fields." Those fields are crucial to ensuring that the pests - corn borers and corn rootworms - don't become resistant to the pesticide the plants have been engineered to make.

About 65% of genetically engineered (GE) corn contains a gene from a common soil bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, which produces a chemical that kills either corn rootworms or corn borers. EPA required refuge fields to ensure that that some insects had non-GE corn to eat, so that not all would develop resistance to the genetically engineered corn. The insecticide produced by the corn is very mild. Organic growing rules allow the use of Bt bacterium sprays.

>>> Read the Full Article

Draft Genetic Sequence of Cucumber Completed By Chinese Scientists

Cucumber is an economically important crop as well as a model system for sex determination studies and plant vascular biology. The draft genome sequence of Cucumis sativus var. sativus L. was completed by Chinese scientists at the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences with a novel combination of traditional Sanger and next-generation Illumina GA sequencing technologies. Results were published online in Nature Genetics on November 1, 2009.
In this study, scientists obtained 72.2-fold genome coverage and the results established that five of the cucumber's seven chromosomes arose from fusions of ten ancestral chromosomes after divergence from Cucumis melo. The sequenced cucumber genome affords insight into traits such as its sex expression, disease resistance, biosynthesis of cucurbitacin and 'fresh green' odor, and also provides a valuable resource for developing elite cultivars and studying the evolution and function of the plant vascular system.
The full text is available at http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ng.475.html

Monsanto Opens Biotech Research Facility in China

Monsanto Company has recently launched its first biotechnology research center in China. Monsanto Biotechnology Research Center in Zhongguancun, Beijing will participate in early-stage bioinformatics and genomics research and serve as a base for collaborations with Chinese scientists, the company said in a press release. Monsanto also has research centers in India, Brazil and the US.
Monsanto said that the center demonstrates "its commitment to forming technology collaborations in the country." Recently, the company entered into collaboration with the Huazhong Agricultural University to further gene discovery and the development of novel biotechnology traits. The company also established a RMB 1 million (USD 150,000) scholarship at the university to encourage students to pursue careers in biotechnology research.
"We are pleased that Monsanto, the leading agricultural biotech company, is setting up a research center in China. Biotech is an important solution to increase crop productivity. Technology innovation and improvement will be determining factors for agriculture sustainability," said Zhai Huqu, president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS).
The press release is available at http://monsanto.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=765

Scientist Jeopardizes Career by Publishing Paper Criticizing GMOs

• By Ken Roseboro, ed.
  The Organic and Non-GMO Report, November 2009
  Straight to the Source
  
  

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Agro-ecologist Don Lotter published a paper titled "The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science" in the 2009 edition of the peer-reviewed International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food.

The paper makes a damning case against genetically modified foods, saying the technology is based on obsolete science, that biotechnology companies such as Monsanto have too much influence on government regulators and "public" universities, and that university scientists are ignoring the health and environmental risks of GM crops. Lotter calls the introduction of GM foods the "largest diet experiment in history."

Lotter has a Ph.D. in agro-ecology from the University of California, Davis, and a master of professional studies in international agricultural and rural development from Cornell University. He has taught environmental science, soil science, plant science, entomology, and vegetable crop production for Santa Monica College, Imperial Valley College, and UC-Davis.

Lotter does not have a tenured position and is currently working on an agricultural project in Tanzania. He half-jokingly describes his paper as "career destroying" because he says it will be difficult to find a position at a US university due to the general recognition at most US universities that GM foods are safe and will help "feed the world."

If you thought publishing the paper would jeopardize your prospects for finding a position, why did you write the paper?

DL: I'm proud of the paper. This topic should be taught at universities. There is an enormous gap in public knowledge about this issue.

The science of genetic engineering is based on the one gene-one protein doctrine. Please describe this and why you think it is flawed.

DL: When they discovered the technology there was a simplified view that genes were in charge of the production of proteins. It is the entire basis for going forward with genetic engineering technology.

Then the Human Genome Project showed that humans have fewer genes than simple organisms, but we also have one to two million proteins. This discovery put an end to the one gene-one protein doctrine.

But by then there had been a massive investment in transgenics. The industry moved ahead with all their PR of "feeding the world" without any scientific basis for their technology. The doctrine has crumbled away, yet the industry has gone on.

In your paper you say that the process of genetically engineering foods is also deeply flawed. Can you give some examples of why that is the case?

DL: The promoter gene used in genetically engineered crops, the cauliflower mosaic virus, is a powerful promoter of inter-species gene exchange. Scientists thought it would be denatured in our digestive system, but it's not. It has been shown to promote the transfer of transgenes from GM foods to the bacteria within our digestive system, which are responsible for 80% of our immune system function; they are enormously important. This is a huge flaw, but not even the biggest in crop transgenics.

The process of splicing genes into plant genomes, transgenics, causes serious genetic damage-mutations, multiple copies of the transgenic DNA, gene silencing. The ramifications of this damage, incredibly, have never been elucidated or even explored for that matter.

Do you think the increase in food allergies we are seeing may be due to GM foods?

DL: Yes, there is evidence pointing to it. The industry is powerful enough to stop any labeling legislation. Without labeling they can't track these problems. We know that after the introduction of GM soy in Britain, there was an increase of soy allergies there.

In your paper, you write that the lack of oversight of GM foods has been a major failure of US science leadership. What makes you believe this?

DL: In the early 1980s, the biotech companies were successful in getting to oversee the regulation of GM foods. The scientific community should have stepped in, and said this is a radical technology, but it didn't.

There has also been a restructuring of the relationship between industry and universities. The Bayh-Dole Act (which gives universities intellectual property control of their inventions) made universities more dependent on industry.

Universities saw transgenics as a big money source, and scientists who objected were harassed or pushed out.

Do you think any US university would fund studies on GM food safety?

DL: No, they are not doing that. Anyone who tries to conduct research looking at GM food safety is given trouble.

Universities should have a mandate to find problems with GM foods.

We need federal money to look at non-proprietary solutions, such as organic farming systems, to the world's problems, and we should see whether proprietary approaches (i.e. GM foods) cause problems.

Unfortunately, non-proprietary solutions don't get funding.

We can show that organic farming systems promote drought resistance; the Rodale Institute did this research. But if a GM crop had been found to resist drought, there would have been major news headlines saying that it will save the world.

Is the safety of GM food considered a given at US universities?

DL: Absolutely. The debate is not there. US scientists have abdicated their responsibility on this issue. They know problems exist but they don't want to talk about them. Most scientists say we need GM foods to feed the world.

Some social scientists are saying there are problems (with GM foods).

I think undergraduate groups will bring the debate over GM foods to universities.

What type of agricultural approaches do you think will solve the world's food production challenges?

DL: The IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development) report said that we can produce food using agro-ecological methods and successful green revolution methods. The report didn't include transgenics.

The report was signed by 60 countries, but the US didn't sign it.

Internet and Newspapers as Sources for Biotech Communication

Where do public officials obtain information about science issues including agricultural biotechnology? Based on a study of two groups that included elected state officers of the National Future Farmers of America (FFA) Organization and Texas House and Senate legislators, respondents relied on the Internet and newspapers as source for agricultural biotechnology. However, Texas legislators used the Cooperative Extension Service significantly more often than did state FFA officers, whereas the FFA officers relied more on the Internet. These were the findings of Gary Wingenbach, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communications at Texas A&M University.
The study published in the Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education, also tackled current and possible future legislators' perceptions of biotechnology. It provided a better understanding of the impact of media types when communicating the science of biotechnology to others.
View the abstract at http://www.jnrlse.org/view/2009/e08-0022.pdf.

Pakistan Biotechnology Report

Despite the lack of any approved GM crop in Pakistan, it is estimated that over 90 percent of the 2009 cotton crop, covering an area of about 8.5 million acres, was planted in illegal biotech varieties, according to a new USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) GAIN report. The report also enumerated several genetically modified crops currently being developed by private companies and public research institutions in the country, including blight and insect-resistant rice, insect resistant cotton, virus-resistant tomato, potato, chickpea and pepper. According to the report, the National Biosafety Committee (NBC) of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted approval for green house and field testing of 39 GM crop varieties.
Download the USDA-FAS GAIN report at http://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/AGRICULTURAL%20BIOTECHNOLOGY%20ANNUAL_Islamabad_Pakistan_9-15-2009.pdf