Sanet Post, Michele Gale-Sinex, November 16, 1996

> I am not so frightened of genetically-engineered food products as
> Greenpeace and many of the Sanet correspondents. I do not
> consider the products of genetic engineering to be fundamentally
> different from triticale or donkeys or any of a number of
> transpecific hybrids which have been produced by more conventional
> techniques.

Bob, you mean mules?

Where sexual reproduction is the method, nature does genetic engineering experiments on a whole-genome basis, as is the case in the examples you cite here. That seems pretty different to me than snipping out a sequence and jamming it into another kind of DNA. However, whether the "products" of genetic engineering are ontologically different than those of sexual or other kinds of reproduction isn't what concerns me; my concern is what stream of potential effects a particular type of genetic engineering can butterfly-effect in the longer run.

I'm thinking, for example, about non-human-intervention recombinant evolutionary experiments, like gene-sequence-exchange in nature. I'm thinking of Barbara McClintock's discovery of transposons in maize, Joshua Lederberg's discovery that bacteria can move DNA sequences to engineer antibiotic resistance for themselves, and the complex activities of retroviruses. Put these events into a global epidemiological context, and...well...here's what Laurie Garrett wrote in 1994; she's the Pulitzer-winning journalist who wrote /The Coming Plague/:

"Many insect-borne viruses were thought to have originally been plant microbes that, thousands of millions of years ago, infected insects as they fed on plant nectar. in the 1990s, amid evidence of rising rates of genetic change in many plant microbes, concern was expressed about the possible emergence of new species that might be absorbed by insects. In such a scenario, a microbe that was genuinely new, to which humans had no natural immunity, might quite suddenly emerge. Genetic change in plant microbes was accelerating due to agricultural practices that exerted strong selection pressures on the microbes; to changing geography of plant growth due to international trading of plant seeds and breeding practices; and to the deliberate release of laboratory genetically altered plant viruses that were intended to offer agricultural crops protection against pests.

"To minimize use of toxic pesticides, and to prevent incurable viral diseases in plants, scientists in the 1990s were developing ingenious genetic means to protect plants. Using crippled viruses to carry genes that would help vital food crops fend off dangerous pathogens, researchers were breeding plants that could withstand a range of types of infections. There was a catch, however. Studies showed that, in nature, plants such as corn, wheat, and tomatoes were commonly co-infected with up to five different viruses, and those viruses could exchange genetic material. A review of 125 plant strains produced through such laboratory manipulation showed that 3 percent of the time the crippled virus that was used to carry such genes into plant cells could swap genes with other viruses in the plants, producing active, pathogenic--/new/--viral species.

"'Microbes are masters at genetic engineering,' wrote Canadian microbiologist Julian Davies. He was referring to mechanisms bacteria use to become resistant to antibiotics, but Davies's comment could just as well apply to viruses in an insect's midgut, malarial parasites responding to chloroquine, or influenza cyclically reinventing itself. That recognition prompted many virologists in the late 1980s to ask, 'What is the likelihood that a truly new virus capable of causing human disease will emerge?'" (/The Coming Plague/, pp. 577-78)

This sounds sensationalist taken out of context, but the Garrett book is precisely not that; this passage is embedded in a 750-page, acclaimed, and well balanced chunk of science writing. But it illustrates my point better than anything I can come up with with my late-Friday brain.

It seems to me that the genetic engineering folks have been successful in getting people to think in a reductionist manner about their gene gunnery...without taking into account that experiments in agriculture are experiments in evolution. Are there any gene jockeys thinking about global epidemiology, for example? About the larger context(s) of their activities? Gives a whole new spin to "think globally, act locally," but then I have kinda a bioregional/biolocal tendency, myself.... Not much on buying or selling in the mass market. Nor economies of scale. Et cetera.

> I consider genetic engineering techniques to be a valuable tool if
> we are to try to keep up with demand for foodstuffs and reduce
> chemical inputs dramatically.

What if the essential and challenging human problems need to be rethought...like reducing both chemical inputs *and* demand for foodstuffs in accord with the land's carrying capacity? What if there's a new set of evaluations--like how well nourished the existing population is--and efforts to keep that in line with what land can provide *without* pfutzing with genes in order to support a burgeoning and unregulated human population? What about looking for the evolutionarily *simplest* solutions? What about addressing the conditions that make the problems rather than coming up with technical "fixes"?

Why *are* people so reluctant to talk about reducing human reproduction, by the way? (Thirty nations have reached population stability...not including the U.S. I sure would like to see more talk about balancing the current generation's reproductive rights with the survival rights of the next...and of other species as well.)

> Pests evolve too fast to foresake this technique for developing
> resistance (I call it breeding for the impatient). Still, I'm not
> completely starry-eyed about the technology -- I'm just not
> terrified by it.

Then one might also say that pests evolve too fast to *rely on* this technique for developing resistance. Spending a lot of money on technical fixes and the research that supports that is one approach. Another is to do the basic field science that is being short changed for the more glitzy approaches.

I think it's fine to keep an open mind about genetic engineering...so long as the mind is kept WIDE open...and to the possibility that the quick fix to the immediate problem might bring about more problems.

> I'm not even terribly upset by the notion that the corporations
> involved in this type of work are in it for profit. I do believe
> in consumer choice, however.

As soon as you have a profit motive, you have a marketplace where producers of goods or services are trying to influence and indeed restrict consumer choice. Making a sale means influencing consumer choice...but perhaps this sort of thing looks a bit more structurally sinister (i.e., an outcome of the rules/features of the system rather than a conspiracy) to somebody like me, who comes out of communications research (market research, "persuasion," "cultivation analysis," etc.) and knows that it is indeed possible for manufacturers to get people to buy things they might not otherwise.

> I find it amusing that these big corporations -- purportedly
> bastions of the free enterprise system -- are fearful of allowing
> their products to be exposed to the forces of the marketplace by
> allowing labelling.

As I wrote above, I'd suggest they less *want* consumer choice than they want consumers to buy *their* products. If corporations wanted consumer choice, they'd be setting up more and more competing products with truly different qualities, and measuring their success in terms of something other than the bottom line and stockholder profits...but again...I digress. "Free" enterprise among the corporate types I know tends to mean *their* freedom to act unfettered in the marketplace.

> I admit that there could be some expense associated with
> establishing parallel marketing channels (as would be needed to
> keep genetically-engineered products separate), but, given consumer
> concerns, this likely should be done despite the cost.

A bigger problem in my eyes is the amount of leverage corporations can create to keep this sort of parallel system from emerging OR the sheer economic oomph it takes to create the economies of scale necessary to make a parallel system work.

One example is this very rBST issue that we've been discussing. Swiss Valley Farms, an Iowa dairy cooperative, got nailed hard by Monsanto for simply trying to disseminate *information* about their alternative or parallel product/market--rBST-free dairy foods. McDonald's has spent an incredible amount of money trying to silence a couple of raggedy activists in England who have had the temerity to suggest that Mickey D don't do good nutrition. The increasing power of intellectual property law and lawyers...the commodification of information systems...the privatization of Extension...all of these trends appear to me to point in the same direction: constructing a consumer class whose only creative function is to consume, in mass numbers, and whereas we all used to rely on information and knowledge as a way to maintain the balance, even the communication function is being bought out...but now I've *really* digressed, even though this stuff all goes together....

Nevertheless, creating an alternative/parallel food system is one of the things we're investigating here in Wisconsin. Diversity good. Monoculture bad. Me Jane. Late Friday afternoon. Hope these thoughts come across rather clearer than I'm feeling, folks, and thanks for the listen.

peace
michele

Michele Gale-Sinex, communications manager

Center for Integrated Ag Systems 

UW-Madison College of Ag and Life Sciences

Voice: (608) 262-8018   FAX: (608) 265-3020

http://www.wisc.edu/cias/