by Gregory Conko
February 11, 2004

Gregory Conko, Symposium: Remarks on Regulating Genetically Modified Foods: Is Mandatory Labeling the Right Answer?, 10 RICH. J.L. & TECH. 13 (2003), at http://law.richmond.edu/jolt/v10i2/article13.pdf.

{1} Thank you.  It’s a very common mistake to believe that consumers could only have a choice if the government requires mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food. My question back to you, Jean, is, exactly what kind of information do consumers get if all you do is label the product as “Genetically Engineered?”  We can take this up later in the debate part of our panel discussion.  I think the one thing that we can all agree on, however, is that the food label is a very important source of information to consumers.

{2} Now, labeling advocates would say that genetically engineered foods could be changed in unexpected ways or that they’re inherently different from more conventional forms of plant breeding– even inherently different from some of the more scientifically advanced forms of plant breeding that Dr. Hoover talked about earlier – things that are totally unnatural and things that can only happen in a laboratory environment.

{3} What are some of the things that labeling advocates talk about? A potential for new allergens or toxins, or for an accidental change in the nutrient level of foods, or, on the other hand, environmental effects such as those from pest protected plants: the Monarch Butterfly issue.  Pest protected plants could harm non-target insects and others can pass on genes and erode biodiversity. Herbicide tolerant or pest protected plants could become invasive and spread genes to wild plants making them invasive.  Now, at least in theory, I don’t think that there’s a single person in the room here that knows anything about the technology who would say that any of these things are false, that any of these risks are not possible with genetic engineering and with genetically engineered foods.

{4} I think the bigger issue that we need to deal with is that every one of these things, every one of these potential risks, is also equally true about those other, more conventional methods of plant breeding or even animal breeding. For example, food grade plants like wheat, rye, barley, squash, and countless others are routinely mated with distant wild relatives, often from different species and sometimes from different genera, in a way that could never take place in a natural environment. Any one of the genes introduced into the food supply from one of these wild plants that had never previously been part of the food supply could code for the creation of the protein that is allergenic.

{5} Potatoes and tomatoes, two of our favorites, which are themselves descendants of the deadly nightshade family, are routinely mated with wild relatives that retain their natural toxicity to humans. Now, these kinds of things are totally unregulated when they’re put on the market, and we trust that plant breeders will do the appropriate tests to ensure the food is safe by the time it gets to the consumers.  Take a single one of those genes from one of these wild plants and transfer it into a crop plant with recombinant DNA techniques, and all of a sudden you open an entire Pandora’s Box of new

regulatory requirements.  You have to go to the USDA. You often go to the EPA.  And, Greg Jaffe notwithstanding, companies do go to the FDA to ensure that their products are safe for consumers to eat.

{6} With environmental impacts, herbicide tolerant varieties of canola, wheat and soybean have been produced for three decades with selection techniques, basic hybridization, or, one of my favorites, mutation breeding, which is something again that Dr. Hoover was talking about earlier.  Now, mutation breeding, for those of you that don’t know what it is, is essentially what it sounds like.  You take tens of thousands of plant seeds and you expose them to radiation – gamma rays or X-rays – or sometime a caustic chemical to induce random genetic mutations, perhaps one in ten thousand of

which will produce a useful agronomic trait. Now, these things are routinely done.  There are at last count 2,250 varieties registered with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and these things are eaten in every country of the world.

{7} Again, in every country but Canada, they go on the market totally without regulation and totally without any sort of labeling.  Now, if you want to talk about the potential for unanticipated effects, alterations in existing genes, then let’s talk about mutation breeding, not recombinant DNA.  One of the earlier speakers mentioned that she was a little concerned that there was a possibility of genetically engineered canola growing in North America. Well let me tell you, canola wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for mutation breeding. Canola is a variety derived from a plant of the same species that in North America we call rapeseed. It was zapped with some gamma radiation in the 1960’s to silence two genes that occur naturally in rapeseed – one produces a toxin, and one produces an anti-nutrient – so you have edible cooking oil. Nobody in the world can tell you what other possible mutations happened when these Canadian plant breeders zapped canola with gamma rays. No food regulator, no environmental activists, and no labeling advocate knows. And what’s more, no labeling advocate cares – rather curiously.