Enhancing staple crop could improve food security, boost farmer incomes.

China and other Asian countries are moving closer to approving genetically enhanced varieties of rice — the primary staple crop in Asia — for commercial production to feed a growing, more affluent population.

"All signals indicate that China may begin commercial cultivation of biotech rice within the year," said Randy Hautea, the Manila-based global coordinator of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), in an interview posted on a Web site sanctioned by the official news service of the Chinese government 1.

This would mark the first time that a genetically enhanced crop was widely used as a food staple in Asia, although the Philippines was the first Asian country to approve a biotech food crop for planting: Bt corn.

China has been field testing several different varieties of genetically enhanced rice for several years, primarily to develop strains with built-in protection from stem borers, sheath blight and bacterial blight —- the three principal pests and diseases that afflict the rice crop in Asia 2.

But research is also being conducted on "green rice" that requires less fertilizer, rice that can withstand droughts and golden rice, which is enhanced with betacarotene that stimulates the production of vitamin A in the human body 3.

With 20 percent of the world's population —- which is becoming more affluent and consuming more food — China has long been looking at ways to improve food production to feed its 1.3 billion people and to boost farmer incomes.

It spends more on biotech rice research than any other country 4 and is second only to the United States in the amount invested in overall crop biotechnology research, according to a recent study by a researcher for the University of Minnesota's Center for Food and Agricultural Policy 5.

China has already approved the planting of Bt cotton — enhanced with a naturally occurring soil protein to ward off insect pests —- in order to raise farmer incomes in rural areas, which lag far behind China's many booming cities. In 2004, genetically enhanced cotton was planted on two-thirds of the farmland planted with cotton.

According to one study, Bt cotton yield gains in China were 5.8 percent greater than conventional varieties in 1999, 54.7 percent higher in 2000 and 10.9 percent greater in 2001. And the revenue per hectare for Bt cotton was $351 higher in 1999, $367 greater in 2000 and $277 more in 20016 .

Government officials are hoping for similar yield and income gains from biotech rice. Estimates vary, but one test plot of Bt rice showed a yield increase of 15 percent over conventional varieties 7. Hautea said field tests of two biotech varieties produced yield gains of between 4 and 8 percent and increased net income between US$80 and US$100 per hectare 8.

"The economic gains from GMO adoption are substantial," said an August 2003 report on the economic impacts of genetically enhanced crops in China. "In the most optimistic scenario, where China commercializes both Bt cotton and GM rice, the welfare gains amount to an additional annual income of about US$5 billion in 2010. This amounts to about $3.50 per person. This is not a small amount in a country, where according to the World Bank, 18 percent of the population had to survive with less than $1 per day in 1998. 9 "

While China is perhaps the closest to approving biotech rice for planting, several other Asian countries are conducting research on the staple crop in the hope the new technology can improve food security.

The Philippines is field testing biotech rice and Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia are testing biotech varieties in the laboratory 10. In India, where farmers grow and sell Bt cotton, there are at least 20 academic and research institutions involved in plant biotech research covering 16 crops, including rice 11.

Many Indian researchers hope to usher in a second "Green Revolution" — which triggered a more than threefold increase in rice and wheat production in the developing countries of Asia between 1961 and 2000 — while adding another facet to its already-booming, knowledge-based economy.

Like in China, Indian farmers who planted biotech cotton have seen significant yield gains — India's agricultural minister said yields for Bt cotton were 30 to 35 percent higher in 2004 than for conventional varieties.

The study on the economic impacts on biotech crops in China suggested the gains from biotech rice could be even more widespread.

A crucial legally binding global treaty on sustainable agriculture has become law today, FAO announced.
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture has entered into force, 55 countries having now ratified it.

"This is the start of a new era," said FAO Director-General, Dr. Jacques Diouf. "The Treaty brings countries, farmers and plant breeders together and offers a multilateral approach for accessing genetic resources and sharing their benefits. Humankind needs to safeguard and further develop the precious crop gene pool that is essential for agriculture."

"The agreement recognizes that farmers around the world, particularly those in the South, have developed and conserved plant genetic resources over the millennia. It is now up to countries to make the Treaty fully operative," he said.

The gene pool

The world's crop gene pool is essential for feeding a growing world population. These genes provide the raw materials plant breeders need to develop new varieties to face unpredictable future challenges such as climate change, unknown pests and plant diseases, and to ensure a richer diet, FAO said.

But agricultural biodiversity, which is the basis for food production, is in sharp decline due to modernization, changes in diets and increasing population density.

Since the beginning of agriculture, the world's farmers have developed roughly 10,000 plant species for use in food and fodder production.

Today, only 150 crops feed most of the world's population, and just 12 crops provide 80 percent of dietary energy from plants, with rice, wheat, maize, and potato alone providing 60 percent.

It estimated that about three-quarters of the genetic diversity found in agricultural crops has been lost over the last century, and this genetic erosion continues.

A current example for the genetic vulnerability of modern varieties is commercial banana production, which is under severe threat from a fungal disease known as 'black sigatoka,' as all five major commercial varieties derive from one original banana variety. The Treaty is a direct response to this continuing threat.

The Multilateral System

"A unique and innovative aspect of the Treaty is its Multilateral System for Access and Benefit Sharing. This ensures the use of plant genetic resources based on the principle of easy access and exchange and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits. The Multilateral System covers a list of 35 food crops and 29 forage crops. They represent most of the important food crops on which countries rely," said Esquinas-Alcazar, Secretary of FAO's Intergovernmental Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

Plant breeders, farmers and public and private research institutions will be able to access these plant genetic resources under standard conditions. Farmers and plant breeders will therefore be able to use a wide range of plant genetic resources.

This will ultimately benefit consumers, by providing them with greater choice and quality of food products. It will also prevent monopolization by the most economically powerful actors.

The Multilateral System will greatly reduce transaction costs for the exchange of plant genetic material between countries. In order to use breeding material from different countries to produce a new variety, plant breeders and researchers will no longer need costly separate bilateral agreements with each donor country.

The Treaty will also enable developing countries to build the capacity to conserve and use genetic resources. Benefit sharing will include exchange of information, access and transfer of technology and capacity building.

Another key aspect of benefit sharing is that, in certain cases, those who commercialize plants bred with material from the Multilateral System will be required to pay an equitable share of the monetary benefits to a trust fund, which will be used to help developing countries improve the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources. The level, form and manner of the payment will be determined by the Governing Body of the Treaty.

Farmers' Rights

For the first time a binding treaty acknowledges the collective innovation on which world agriculture is based. It recognizes the "enormous contribution that the local and indigenous communities and farmers of all regions of the world, particularly those in the centres of origin of crop diversity, have made and will continue to make for the conservation and development of plant genetic resources."

Governments should protect and promote Farmers' Rights by protecting relevant traditional knowledge, giving farmers their right to participate in national decision-making about plant genetic resources, and ensuring that they share equitably in the benefits.

The world's most important gene bank collections, around 600,000 samples, held by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), will be put under the Treaty.

The Treaty's funding strategy foresees the mobilization of financial resources for plant genetic projects and programs to help farmers, especially in developing countries and countries in transition.

An important element of the Treaty's funding strategy will be the Global Crop Diversity Trust. The Trust will establish an endowment that will provide support for gene bank conservation and capacity-building for developing countries. The CGIAR gene banks will also receive support for long term conservation.

The endowment fund has a target of $260 million, of which around $45 million has already been pledged. The Trust has been set up by FAO and the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute on behalf of the CGIAR Centres.

Related links

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture http://www.fao.org/ag/cgrfa/itpgr.htm

It will still take years, if it ever happens, before genetically modified (GM) Golden Rice reaches the millions of children threatened with blindness or premature death due to vitamin A deficiency.

Yet scientists have not lost hope that transgenic Golden Rice, enriched with vitamin A, may prove one day that the controversial biotechnology can help feed the poor and needy if applied with caution and care.

More and more farmers, seeking lower production costs, are planting insect-resistant or herbicide-tolerant GM soy, corn or cotton. But not all consumers are convinced that such products are safe for the environment or people.

Opposing activists have dubbed such crops "Frankenstein food".

Some have also voiced doubts that the technology is really being used for meeting human challenges, such as hunger or water shortages, rather than just to maximise industry profits.

"GM food cannot eradicate hunger," said Devinder Sharma, a food and trade policy specialist in India who is fighting to bar the introduction of transgenic crops into the country.

"It is not the question of production, but the distribution and access...Food is rotting in front of the people as they cannot afford it," he told from Mumbai.

Next week, signatories of the UN Cartagena Protocol, which aims for transparency in trade in GM organisms, will meet in Malaysia to discuss how to implement the protocol.

No GM rice is yet on the market, possibly because it has not been a leading subject in expensive bio-research.

Although it helps feed almost half the world's population, rice, grown largely by small farmers in Asia, has slipped off the priority lists of many private researchers.

Asked why Monsanto Co (MIN.N) was not developing GM rice, the US-based biotech giant said: "Several years ago, Monsanto decided to focus its efforts on several core crops — corn, soybeans/oilseeds, cotton and wheat."

"We made a conscious decision to focus our efforts, as it made good business sense to do so," the company said in an e-mailed reply to questions.

CHINA LEADS IN GM RICE

Scientists say China leads in development of GM rice after pumping in huge sums of government funds into plant biotechnology to improve national food security. Some say it is developing the largest research capacity outside of North America.

The country is already conducting large-scale field trials on insect- and disease-resistant rice in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, they say.

Still, Beijing has put off commercialisation of the GM rice due to rising safety concerns.

"China may approve the GM rice," said Dayuan Xue, a professor at the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, who also works for the State Environmental Protection Administration of China.

"(But) I think it will take at least another three years," he told adding that Beijing had demanded more safety tests for both the food and the environment.

For example, farmers in China and elsewhere grow BT cotton, a GM crop that is toxic to insects that attack it. But Xue said

the crop might encourage successive generations of the insects to become more resistant to poisons, making the problem worse.

He added that, while farmers benefited from BT cotton, which requires less pesticide against bollworms, the benefits were not necessarily large in some areas suffering from other pests.

NEW GENERATION

Scientists say that, while most GM crops commercialised so far were engineered to cut production costs, the next generation of transgenic crops, such as Golden Rice, would benefit consumers directly.

"The second generation is beginning now," said Samuel Sun, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who runs a joint project with China on rice that contains more lysine, one of the essential amino acids that the human body cannot make.

"This is harder to do. More genes are involved," said the biologist. "For the first-generation products, such as insect resistance, one gene would do."

Golden Rice — which is a yellowish grain with beta-carotene, a substance that human bodies convert to vitamin A — includes three new genes, including two from daffodil and a bacterium.

While GM critics have said the vitamin A content in Golden Rice is too small, others say any addition could make a difference to about 125 million children suffering from serious deficiency.

Scientists have successfully raised the vitamin A content since the invention of Golden Rice in 2001.

Swapan Datta, a scientist working on Golden Rice at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, told Reuters IRRI would start field trials this year. It also planned tests on whether the vitamin A can be absorbed by the body.

Yet even if everything goes well, Datta and other scientists say, it will take at least another four to six years before Golden Rice makes it to the market.

COOPERATION

Scientists say Golden Rice, if successful, would also become a model for cooperation between public and private sectors in pursuit of human welfare.

Inventors Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer are claiming no property rights in Golden Rice. Neither are the companies whose technology they used to devise it, such as Monsanto, Syngenta AG (SYNN.VX) and Bayer AG (BAYG.AG).

"This is one of the best examples that the private sector and the public institutions can work together," said IRRI's Datta.

"If this project becomes successful, I believe in future many private sector (scientists) could be more interested in developing those technologies that can go to the people in developing countries."

In fact, some scientists and industry officials say that is already happening. The outcry from GM critics has also encouraged the private sector to do more to win consumer support.

"I think things are changing," said Andrew Powell, an independent bio-consultant based in Singapore. "We see more and more partnerships between public research institutes and private sector companies."

A Sacramento biotechnology company is pushing the $500 million California rice industry to a new frontier with a proposal to grow commercial rice engineered to make drug compounds.

The controversial plan is ambitious and somewhat mysterious. The company, Ventria Bioscience, will not reveal where it hopes to cultivate what would be America's first genetically engineered plant-produced pharmaceuticals to reach the market.

Citing fear of vandalism by militant environmentalists, Ventria's chief executive officer, Scott Deeter, will say only that somewhere in California the company hopes to grow 130 acres of rice that produce two anti-microbial proteins.

A California Rice Commission committee struggling to write rules for the pharmaceutical rice will review Ven-tria's plans at a public meeting Thursday.

It seems likely that Ventria will continue to farm where it has grown engineered rice in experimental plots since 1997: in the northern Central Valley, the heart of California rice country.

And that has local rice farmers' anxiety levels soaring.

"I feel very vulnerable that genetically modified rice could come into the state ... and cause significant disruption to our ability to market our rice to our customers," said Bryce Lundberg, director of organic certification for Lundberg Family Farms, a 67-year-old Richvale business that is the nation's largest organic rice processor.

Lundberg -- who is leading a campaign to bar biotech rice from California -- and others in the rice industry worry about scaring off Japanese buyers, who are wary of genetic engineering.

Ken Chinen, a Japan-born professor of international business at California State University, Sacramento, said that with the recent discovery of mad cow disease in this country and the Asian chicken flu epidemic, the timing is terrible for introducing anything that raises doubts about food safety.

"Japanese consumers are becoming very sensitive about the safety of food, especially from foreign countries," Chinen said.

Deeter said his company's rice, while not intended as food, is safe for human consumption. And Ventria will work hard to keep its rice isolated, Deeter said, though he thinks it's unnecessary to plant the rice far from food rice fields.

"Rice grows where it grows," he said. "There's no risk here."

This spring -- perhaps in March, if weather cooperates -- the company would like to plant 65 acres each of two biotech rice varieties.

In a few years, Deeter said, Ventria hopes to expand to as many as 1,000 acres.

Under state law, Ventria's plan must be reviewed by a 12-member committee of scientists, growers and business representatives operating under the state Rice Commission. The law, the California Rice Certification Act of 2000, reflects the state's interest in protecting its rice markets. It gives California's agricultural secretary final say on growing restrictions and sets fines of up to $5,000 per violation.

Ventria submitted a sample protocol to the Rice Commission last March and has met with the review committee three times to hash out details of a more specific containment plan.

"We still have some significant work to do," said Tim Johnson, president of the California Rice Commission. "Our future depends on doing it right."

Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced its plans to consider tightening its regulation of pharmaceutical compounds grown in food, in part because of rapid advances in development of the technology.

But the Ventria proposal will not be affected because it already has been approved by the USDA as a field test, said Jim Rogers, a spokesman for the agency's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service.

Rogers said Ventria must comply with its existing USDA permit, which requires special precautions to prevent the escape of gene-carrying pollen to nearby crops, including an unplanted buffer zone around the field.

"We want to make sure these plants don't affect other plants," he said.

Rice farmers have long known that scientists were moving genes around in ways not possible through traditional breeding, with a goal of inventing new crop types. Still, they thought pharmaceutical rice was a ways off.

"We have jumped all the way to the most sensitive topic," said Kent S. McKenzie, director of the grower-funded California Cooperative Rice Research Foundation, who serves on the committee reviewing the Ventria plan.

The advent of pharmaceutical rice is not entirely unexpected, though. Ventria has been in Sacramento since 1993, a startup founded by a University of California, Davis, biologist.

Originally named Applied Phytologics, it hatched from the idea that plants could serve as biological factories that cheaply produce proteins with medicinal and nutritional benefits.

The company planted its first engineered rice outdoors in 1997. After exploring several possibilities, including baby formula made with plant-engineered ingredients, it settled on two products for its market debut: human lysozyme (LY so zime) and human lactoferrin (lak toe FAIR in).

Both are proteins found in mother's milk, thought to reduce infections in nursing infants.

Deeter said the company intends to sell the rice-derived lysozyme and lactoferrin for use in oral rehydration products to treat severe diarrhea.

He said 65 acres of Ventria rice could generate 1,400 pounds of lactoferrin, enough to treat at least 650,000 sick children. The same acreage of lysozyme rice would yield enough protein to treat 6.5 million patients.

Dr. William Greenough III, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said oral rehydration solutions, a mixture of sugar and electrolytes, save the lives of more than 3 million people a year worldwide.

Greenough said adding anti-microbial proteins is appealing because existing products don't tackle causes of diarrhea; they merely prevent dehydration.

Despite the potential health benefits, the notion that a genetically engineered crop would have absolutely no hazard may be a hard sell for the public.

"There's no such thing as 100 percent certainty when you're talking about living organisms," said Doreen Stabinsky, a former CSUS environmental studies professor with a doctorate in genetics from UC Davis.

Now a scientific adviser for Greenpeace International, Stabinsky helped coordinate a Greenpeace "action" in 2001 that publicly pinpointed Ventria's rice in a Sutter County field.

Food industry trade groups also have expressed reservations about plant pharmaceuticals.

"This is a technology that deserves to blossom," said Stephanie Childs, spokeswoman for Grocery Manufacturers of America, which represents the nation's name-brand foods. "However, we are concerned that ... regulations are not in place to ensure the safety of the food supply. ... It would only take one accident to destroy an entire industry sector."

Mainstream scientists are similarly wary. Last week, a National Research Council committee examining biological methods for containing genetically engineered organisms recommended using non-food "host organisms" for products that should be kept out of the food supply.

Such concerns are based on the difficulty of corralling biotech genes. In November 2002, for instance, USDA inspectors discovered experimental pharmaceutical corn growing in Nebraska amid soybeans.

The biotech industry, once bullish on the prospect of growing drugs in plants, is pulling back. Nationwide, the number of field experiments on plant-made pharmaceuticals is down from a peak of 19 in 2001, to four in 2003.

Deeter said Ventria is sensitive to concerns about the escape of biotech genes, which is why the company engineers crops such as rice and barley that are self-pollinating, thus less likely to breed with crops in nearby fields.

The company's processing facility is within 50 miles of where the rice is grown, Deeter said. Ventria leases the fields but owns all the equipment, used solely on its own rice.

Ventria's proposal under review by the Rice Commission committee involves about 50 procedures the company will use to keep its rice out of the food chain.

Among them: sealing truck containers that carry Ventria rice, keeping 100-foot buffers between the company's fields and conventional varieties, and providing a test kit so inspectors can monitor for escaped genes.

The draft proposal is light on some details, including how Ventria will prevent birds from spreading its rice; what constitutes "proper" disposal of rice plants; and whether the company will notify nearby growers.

Deeter said he worries that if the location becomes public, anti-biotech activists will destroy Ventria's crops, as they did in 1999 at UC Davis and elsewhere.

Besides state and USDA hurdles, pharmaceuticals also are overseen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But Ventria is categorizing its rice as "medical food" -- which does not require FDA review.

Ventria does plan to voluntarily submit documents to FDA, Deeter said, demonstrating that its proteins are safe enough to be consumed in ordinary food.

Source: Sacramento Bee

More than 150 scientists across the world, including Nobel laureate of DNA structure fame James Watson, signed a letter delivered to British Prime Minister Tony Blair drawing attention to "the positive impact that biotechnology is contributing to conventional agricultural practices in many parts of the world."

The scientists urge in their letter that upcoming government decisions be "based on science-based policies that foster the development of demonstrated safe technologies with significant environmental and economic benefits in the UK."

The scientists cite firsthand global experience that "GM crops are providing farmers with cost-effective means of controlling pests while using less pesticides and reducing the impact of agriculture in the face of increasing environmental pressures." Amongst the signers of the letter include Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Gardens; Ingo Potrykus, developer of 'Golden Rice'; Gurdev Khush - the legendary rice breeder and winner of the World Food Prize; Florence Wambugu, author of 'Modifying Africa: How Biotechnology can Benefit the Poor and Hungry'; Charles Arntzen, the developer of edible vaccines in crops; and Roger Beachy of the Danforth Center for Plant Science in St. Louis.

Currently, the UK is at a critical stage in its considerations of GM technology now that its Advisory Committee on the Release to the Environment (ACRE) has provided recommendations to the government on the recently completed Farm Scale Evaluations (FSEs).

The letter to the Prime Minister outlines the scientists' concerns that the government's science-based reviews of new technologies, including crops enhanced through agricultural biotechnology, are being adversely impacted by politics.

According to the letter's authors, "It is distressing to us to see the impacts that anti-science efforts in the UK have had on the development of excellent basic research into new technologies, as well as those engaged in it."

Professor James Ochanda of the University of Nairobi co- sponsored the letter campaign because he believes that "in Europe, biotechnology is based on ideology as opposed to rational choice. For Africans, biotech crops are an important means of fighting hunger and malnutrition. While Europe is debating about biotechnology, this is a technology that the developing world needs in order to address some of our most pressing societal problems."

"The UK and the EU need to move forward with biotech crops, just as has happened elsewhere in the world," says Prof. Kameshwar Rao of the Foundation for Biotechnology

Awareness and Education in India, who also sponsored the drive. "Biotech crops are helping to address critical needs for increased agricultural productivity and food security. They are not the problem, they are an essential component of the solution."

"Leading international scientists overwhelmingly support integrating biotech crops into existing agricultural systems," said Dr. C.S. Prakash of the United States-based Tuskegee University and signer of the letter to Blair. "In reality, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that this technology is a safe and useful approach to improving agricultural production and environmental sustainability, and contributes significantly to better health."

UK Assesses GM Rice Variety As Safe For Processing And Animal Feed

The UK Government has confirmed today to the European Commission that it has assessed an application by Bayer for the importation of genetically modified rice for processing and animal feed as complying with EU requirements.

This assessment reflects legal obligations under EC law and the advice from the Government's independent advisers, ACRE (the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment). The application and the UK's assessment will now be studied by other EU Member States before a collective decision is made. Consent, if granted, would not permit cultivation of the rice in the EU nor, without separate approval, could it be used in human food.

Under the EC Directive 2001/181, all applications to import or cultivate GM crops are initially assessed by the government to which they are originally submitted. Accordingly, the UK has assessed this application against the safety and other requirements of the Directive. It is now forwarding it for further scrutiny by all other Member States before a collective decision is made. In forwarding the application for further scrutiny the Government is insisting, if consent is subsequently given by the EU for import, on annual reports on post market monitoring of this GM rice. Any consent would be subject to strict requirements on traceability and labeling set out in new EU Regulations.

The Government has been advised by ACRE that the rice: "Does not pose a risk to human health and the environment. The marketing of this product for importation and processing in the UK will be no different from that of other rice imported for processing and animal feed purposes. In coming to this conclusion ACRE have taken account of the advice of the Advisory Committee on Animal Feedingstuffs (ACAF). ACRE also recommends that reports of post market monitoring for general surveillance of this product be provided to the regulatory authorities on an annual basis".

Environment and Agri-Environment Minister Elliot Morley commented: "Current EU legislation requires a case-by-case assessment of all applications on the basis of the scientific evidence - and that is what we have done. Our independent Advisory Committee has concluded that there are no safety-based objections to this application. We will, however, be insisting as ACRE advises that, if marketing consent is given, it should be on the basis that there are more stringent post-market monitoring reporting requirements.

"Everyone should be able to make reliable and properly informed choices about GM food and crops. Genetically modified food and products are available widely throughout the world. Only products which have met stringent health and environment tests will ever be on sale in this country - consumers can then choose whether or not to use them on the basis of the best information available".

More Information

1. The standards applying to the consideration of all applications to release Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) for research or for commercial (i.e., importation or cultivation) purposes are set out in EC Directive 2001/18 , and this is the procedure being applied now to the application for importation of event LLRICE62. The Directive sets out a generic common framework to ensure that any GMO - such as food, feed, seeds, animals or bacteria - is adequately tested and evaluated at each stage in its development and, most importantly, before being placed on the European market. The requirements of all other EU legislation governing specific product sectors - including the new Regulation on GM Food and Feed - must be at least as stringent as Directive 2001/18. It is based on a transparent, case-by-case assessment across the EU of safety according to sound scientific evidence. Once a GMO has the suitable consent, it can be imported and, if the consent conditions permit, it can be cultivated anywhere in the EU, subject to other applicable legislation on seeds, pesticides and, where relevant novel food. For LLRICE62, the application is for import only, not for cultivation. The application and the UK's assessment will now be considered by all the other Member States before a collective decision is taken. Any consent granted would be subject to the provisions of the Directive, as recently amended to cover stricter and more comprehensive requirements for the traceability and labelling of GMOs.

2. Additionally two new and interlinked EU Regulations on GMOs formally entered into force on 7 November. One Regulation elaborates and extends existing rules on traceability and labelling of any GM product and the other Regulation sets up a more centralised and specific regime for the authorisation and labelling of GM food and animal feed, focused on the new European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Importers, producers and suppliers will be required to keep and pass down the supply chain information about the GM content or derivation of a product to facilitate traceability and to underpin labelling information given to the final consumer.

3. Although both Regulations are now legally in force, their practical requirements will only apply to Member States and to individual stakeholders from 18th April 2004. At the end of last year Defra and the Food Standards Agency held face-to-face consultations with representative stakeholders on all practical aspects of their full implementation and are currently running a formal written consultation.

Defra's aim is sustainable development 1 Directive 2001/18/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 12 March 2001 on the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms and repealing Council Directive 90/220/EEC 2 Regulation (EC) No 1830/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 September 2003 concerning the traceability and labelling of genetically modified organisms and the traceability of food and feed products produced from genetically modified organisms and amending Directive 2001/18/EC Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 September 2003 on genetically modified food and feed.

Raising a hand for the pro-GM camp, UK scientists assert that there is an ethical obligation to explore the benefits that genetically modified crops could offer people in developing countries.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics argues that GM crops could significantly improve agriculture in developing countries but it warns against considering GM technology in isolation.

“The possible costs, benefits and risks associated with particular GM crops must be assessed on a case by case basis,” said Dr Sandy Thomas, director of the Nuffield Council and who recently launched a discussion paper on the subject.

“We recommend asking how the use of a GM crop compares to alternatives,” continued Dr Thomas. It is essential to focus on the specific situation in a particular country, and to compare all possible options. This comparison should include not only other approaches in agricultural research and practice, but also the potential cost of doing nothing, the council added.

The position from the council will go some way to redressing the balance that sees the anti-GM food stance largely outweighing the pro side in the debate on GM technology. In Britain, and Europe as a whole, the general consensus from the consumer is one of extreme reticence towards GM foods.

But akin with many other passionate debates, the issue is far from black and white. As confirmed by the council that reported when it held a consultation this summer on the issue the responses received at the time highlighted the complexity of the debate.

’While many respondents described the benefits they had experienced from GM crops, others argued that economic, political or social change was more important than new technologies,’ said the bioethic group in a statement last week.

Emphasising further that the issue is far from clear cut, Dr Thomas added: “We recognise that we are discussing only part of a much larger picture. We do not claim that GM crops will feed the world but we do believe that, in specific cases, they could make a useful contribution to improving the livelihood of poor farmers in developing countries.”

The council maintains that GM crops could be used to address agricultural problems, such as drought and salty soils, where other methods of plant breeding or conventional agriculture have been less successful.

GM crops could also address some health problems. For example, Golden Rice, modified to produce beta-carotene, could help to prevent vitamin A deficiency. However, in other situations, the use of a GM crop may be less appropriate. GM herbicide resistant crops may lead to reduced demand for labour, which could hinder the reduction of poverty in developing countries, added the group.

Safety and Security

Two of the well-known researchers from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) -- Drs Mahabub Hossain and Swapon Kumar Dutta -- set the tone round the table at the very outset. They made preliminary remarks on scientific evolution in molecular biology over the last two decades, genetic basis of living organism, and the ability to develop processes and products useful to food security, nutrition and human health. These two speakers succinctly summarised the potentials and the problems of biotechnology. While the issue is being debated both in the developed and the developing world, according to them, the premises are quite different and hence a grandiose generalisation should be shelved. The developed ones stand against it in the face of an almost stagnant population growth for decades with a consequent crave for food safety, while developing countries' imperative is food security.

For example, a la Mahabub and others, about 1.2 billion people mostly in South Asia and Sub-Sharan Africa live in a state of absolute poverty with an income of less than one US dollar a day. About 800 million people are food insecure and 160 million preschool children suffer from energy-protein malnutrition, which results in the deaths of over five million children under the age of five years. Thus the whole issue boils down to a debate between food safety and food security.

Problems and Potentials

Biotechnology can bring forth a revolution not only in food production -- in a regime of declining land and rising population -- but also in the realm of nutrition for the poor. One example should suffice to sound the semantics. Vitamin A deficiency affects 400 million people worldwide, leaving them vulnerable to infections and blindness. Iron deficiency affects 3.7 billion people, particularly women, leading to higher maternal deaths and infant mortality. Developing micronutrient dense rices, with higher amounts of iron, zinc and vitamin A, can have a tremendous impact on the health of low-income people. Conventional breeding when combined with biotechnology can provide powerful tools to achieve this goal. Besides, rice hybrids have 15-20 per cent yield advantage over inbred rices. Their adoption by farmers is, however, constrained by the need to buy seed every season and sometimes at high seed cost. But government's commitments and gearing up national research institutions, should help stem the rot in the long run.

There is another point to ponder over. The big multinational companies -- the candidates for criticisms on this count -- have reportedly backtracked in recent years fromn rice biotechnology as they observed the dominance of small holders in Asia and the high transaction costs of enforcing intellectual property rights under weak judicial system. By and large, both in developed and developing Asia, the public sector needs to be the vanguard of rice biotechnology.

Bangladesh Perspective: Complacency and Concerns

The Bangladesh perspectives on potentials and problems -- quite obviously -- were on board for threadbare discussions. Bangladesh is one of the most land scarce country in the world with cultivation frontier closed almost half a century ago. The green revolution that swept over the last decades helped a balance between growth rate of population and food. Most of the gains of green revolution came from improved rice and wheat varieties developed by the Bangladesh agricultural research institutions in collaboration with international research centres. Two-thirds of the cropped areas are now being covered by modern varieties and 55 per cent of the cultivated areas are now under irrigation facilities. In tandem, population growth rate also declined appreciably, say from 2.2 to 1.2 per cent per year in the 1990s.

While complacency could be in one corner, concerns loom large elsewhere. Every year, two million people are added to the existing stock putting a pressure on food supplies of 0.56 million tons a year, just to maintain the same level of per capita consumption. Despite the claim of self-sufficiency in food and the calm it confers upon, occasional imports invoke inquiry into the claims made so far. The easy options of realising increased rice production have already been exhausted and Bangladesh is poised to reel under a regime of losing cultivated areas at more than one per cent per annum due to growing urbanisation, population pressure and leaving land for non-rice crops. In this scenario of an almost closed cultivation frontier, declining yield and increasing population Bangladesh -- a country that stands with higher population density than America when all people of the world are pushed into that country -- must strive for the alternatives, especially the opportunities created by the rice biotechnology.

It is also because 60 per cent of the children under age five are underweight and more than half are stunted. More than 70 per cent of pregnant women suffer from Anemia due to iron deficiency. In rural areas, where three-fourths of the people live, malnutrition is acute due to lack of knowledge or financial capacity to buy a balanced diet. Since poor people consume nearly 150 to 170 kg of rice per year, incorporation of a small amount of iron and Vitamin A in rice could go a long way in meeting the deficiencies in these micronutrients

For And Against

There are a lot of risks too. Concerns on food safety, ethical points and environmental implications and socio economic risks were also deliberated upon by the authors. Taking all the risks into consideration, the authors noted that samples drawn from a large section of the civil society and agricultural institutions seem to support biotechnology on certain conditions. For example, it could be supported provided done by public sector and free for farmers, with health and environmental assessment before the release etc. And those who declined to support put forth various arguments like, the development of pests to destroy food sources, dependence of farmers on private companies, additional production of rice not needed and gene transformation is unethical etc.

Riding The Risks

Given the growing constraints on future rice availability in Bangladesh and the devastatingly developed micronutrient deficiency among the poor households in rural areas, the rice biotechnology issue should be left neither to rhetoric nor to emotions. We think that the society needs to rise above all rhetoric and emotions and seriously start a systematic inquiry into the nexus soon. Dr Mhabub Hossain and others provided sufficient food for thought for a safe and secured world of food, particularly in the context of Bangladesh. We strongly feel, biotechnology could be the key to the upcoming crisis, but keeping in mind the questions. We have to seek answers to the questions raised rather than throwing away the question itself. We not hailed adoption of modern rice technology in the 1960s and 1970s, we would have, probably, experienced a worse food situation to turn into a beggar's bowl. Many of the forecasts at that time turned out to be futile. We can only hope that we shall be able to find a judicious path for our survival.

By Bruce Chassy, Professor and Executive Associate Director of the Biotechnology Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Biotechnology has the potential to play a key role in reducing chronic hunger, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, which missed out on the "green revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s, says Bruce Chassy, professor and executive associate director of the Biotechnology Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He urges more public investment in agricultural research, education and training at the local, national and regional levels.

Food aid is one of several global mechanisms created to deal with hunger and food insecurity. The need for food aid around the globe varies from specific responses to acute and episodic shortages to long-term donations of food to abate continuing chronic inability of some regions to become agriculturally self-sufficient. While agricultural biotechnology is not a panacea to food insecurity, it is likely to play a vital role in the delivery of food assistance and reduction of hunger for generations to come.

THE GLOBAL NEED FOR FOOD AID

The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares the right of access to food and freedom from hunger as a fundamental right.

Although we live in a world of unprecedented prosperity and technological development, 800-850 million people are malnourished. More than 200 million of these are children, many of whom will never reach their full intellectual and physical potential. Another 1-1.5 billion humans have only marginally better access to food and often do not consume balanced diets containing sufficient quantities of all required nutrients.

The majority of this nutritionally at-risk population lives in developing countries. Most, perhaps 75 percent, live in rural agricultural regions. Most are very poor. There is a well-recognized link between poverty and hunger. In fact, family income is probably the single most important determinant of adequacy of access to food. The World Food Summit in 2002 reaffirmed a commitment made by the international community five years earlier to halve the number of hungry people by the year 2015. That goal will not be met unless agricultural productivity and personal income can be improved in the world's poorest regions.

It is argued by some that eliminating poverty is more important than producing more food since there is more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone. Economists tell us that there is a surplus of food in the world - or at least a surplus of grain that when tabulated as potential caloric intake could theoretically adequately feed the current global population. But the sad lesson of both recent and ancient history is that adequate food supplies do not reach everyone. The large number of hungry people proves that. It is pointless to argue whether poor agricultural productivity or extreme poverty is more to blame when people are starving. What is clear is that if the rural poor can produce a surplus of food in a more efficient and sustainable manner, there will be adequate food supplies, increasing income and the opportunity for supporting rural development.

While most experts would agree that the only long-term solution to hunger is economic development and the elimination of poverty, people who are food self-sufficient through local or regional agriculture will not go hungry. Unfortunately, neither the required increases in agricultural productivity nor the necessary rural development will happen overnight. The question then becomes "What do we do in the meanwhile?" The short-term solution for the hungry is food aid. But even food aid has become politicized as skeptics have charged that it is simply a way for rich over-producing nations to eliminate the surpluses produced by their heavily subsidized farmers. The skeptics also assert that food aid robs local farmers of markets and makes them hungrier. These arguments ignore the daily reality faced by hundreds of millions of hungry people for whom the immediate alternatives are simple: continued hunger and ultimate starvation or the acceptance of food aid.

ELIMINATING CHRONIC HUNGER

A ROLE FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY

The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s helped India and China and other Asian countries become agriculturally self-sufficient net exporters of food in the last three decades. The increased productivity has been accompanied by increases in personal income and stimulus to national economies. Similarly, through application of new technology, agricultural productivity per hectare has doubled in most developed countries in the same timeframe. The development of new high-productivity agricultural technologies resulted from investment in agricultural research performed in government laboratories, research universities, and non-governmental institutes such as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers scattered around the globe. A crucial element of success has been the deployment of effective systems of outreach education and technology transfer. Research and technology transfer has also taken place in the private sector.

For a variety of complex reasons, improvements in agricultural productivity did not take place in all developing countries. Quite the contrary, some of the least developed countries are now even less able to produce sufficient food. There, the Green Revolution never happened. While civil unrest and political corruption may have contributed greatly to this phenomenon, from an agricultural point of view, the failure lies in the lack of investment in and adoption of new technologies and management practices. Often this occurred because there was not sufficient attention paid or investment made in research to develop effective local or region-specific strategies and technologies.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a region where growth in agricultural production has not kept pace with expanding need. As a whole, the region has some of the poorest and most depleted agricultural soils. Only 4 percent of the farmed land is irrigated. Significant areas of agricultural land are at risk of becoming desert while in some parts of the region excessive humidity and high temperatures contribute to a high incidence of disease and pests. Weeds such as Striga stifle yields. Droughts are commonplace in some parts of the region. Outright crop failure is common and poor yields are endemic. There is clearly a need to develop crop varieties and management strategies that are more productive under these conditions. High on the list of desired traits are crops with enhanced resistance to environmental stresses such as drought, temperature and salinity; enhanced resistance to diseases and pests; and improved agronomic properties and yield potential. The heavy reliance on a few staple crops makes biofortification - the boosting of the vitamin and mineral components of foods to enhance the nutritional value - an attractive strategy as well.

Recent advances in molecular biology and genomics greatly enhance the plant breeder's capacity to introduce new traits into plants. Commercial applications of agricultural biotechnology have already produced crops such as Bt-maize, rice, potatoes, cotton and sweet corn (sweet maize) that can protect themselves against insects; virus-resistant papaya, squash and potatoes; and herbicide-tolerant crops such as wheat, maize, sugar cane, rice, onions and beets that allow more effective weed management.

There is accumulating evidence that these biotech crops can be more productive and profitable for farmers. Major reductions in costs for labor, energy and chemicals have been documented. The crops have also proven to be environmentally-friendly, particularly with regard to biodiversity, reduction of agricultural chemicals in soil and water, and decreased exposure of workers and communities to chemicals.

There is also an emerging international consensus of scientific and regulatory opinion that crops derived through biotechnology are safe to eat as food and feed and beneficial for the environment. These and other promising technologies are now being directed at improving the production and yield of African staple crops: banana, cassava, maize, millets, oil crops, peanut, potato, rice, sorghum, soybean, sweet potato and wheat. Protein-enhanced sweet potatoes and potatoes and carotene-enhanced rice and oilseeds promise to improve the nutritional value of the diet. Thus, over the long term, agricultural biotechnology promises to play a crucial role in the improving agricultural productivity and reducing the environmental impact of agriculture leading to agricultural sustainability and food security in many regions of the world. While it would be foolish to say that agricultural biotechnology alone will solve the world's food problems, it would be equally foolish to assert that food insecurity can be eliminated without agricultural biotechnology.

In recent years, there has been a significant change in the organization of agricultural research directed at improving food security. It is now recognized that research needs to be done at local, national and regional levels in order to address specific agricultural challenges and produce new varieties appropriate to local agriculture and customs. This change is particularly focused on utilizing and expanding local scientific and agricultural human and capital infrastructure that can work in partnership with international scientists and funding. Although the path is clear and there are numerous successful examples of these kinds of international partnership, global funding for such activities falls far short of that the level required to achieve global food security in the next decades.

RECENT CHALLENGES POSED BY ACUTE FOOD SHORTAGES

Widespread local or regional crop failure often leads to acute food shortages and hunger. The reason for episodic events can be as varied as flood, droughts or civil war. The United Nations, national governments and an assortment of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) often respond by mobilizing an immediate food aid program. Food aid distribution can be hindered by lack of infrastructure for storage and transportation of food, and there are often concerns for the security of aid workers.

Recently, a new obstacle to food aid distribution has been identified. Repeated crops failures in Southern Africa have placed millions of people in six nations at risk. In response, the United States offered food aid that included substantial shipments of maize. The maize supply in the United States is approximately 30-35 percent insect-protected Bt-maize developed through biotechnology. This variety of maize had been approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as safe for consumption as food and feed. It was commingled with conventional maize in the U.S. commodity system. However, since the intended recipient nations did not use biotech seed varieties and imported few commodities such as maize, they for the most part lacked specific laws and regulatory systems with respect to foods produced through biotechnology. Genetically modified (GM) maize was an unapproved food in their regulatory systems. In light of the global scare campaign against GM foods, several countries hesitated to accept the aid. Ultimately, intensive international consultation and fact-finding satisfied all of these countries save Zambia, which continued to refuse GM food aid. One obvious conclusion to be drawn from this experience is that regulatory systems and training need to be in place before the need for food aid again arises.

PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND TRAINING

What the experience of recent decades has taught is that agricultural biotechnology can be a powerful tool in the development of improved crop varieties for developing countries. The promised benefits can only be realized in a permanent and sustainable manner when the countries that benefit play a role in defining the need, developing the solution and implementing the education and technology-transfer systems. Each nation must decide what agricultural goals are in its national interest and what technologies are consistent with consumer acceptance and customs. Shared ownership leads to good stewardship.

Partnerships that lead to shared ownership can solve another challenge to applying technology. One major concern about agricultural biotechnology is that the seeds are owned and sold by large multi-national corporations who might eventually exert external domination and control local seed markets and farmers. An additional problem is that developing countries may have limited access to intellectual property rights that would provide them access to modern agricultural technologies such as new seed types. To help counter these challenges and promote public sector uses in developing countries, a consortium of public universities and public sector institutions has recently announced the formation of the Public Sector Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture (PIPRA). PIPRA will work to make public-sector research available to more of the people who want it and insure freedom to operate. Multi-national corporations have also demonstrated their willingness to donate their technology and expertise to such efforts.

There is a holistic answer to all these food security needs and concerns. The global community needs to invest more capital in creating agricultural institutions and infrastructure in countries that face food security challenges. Investment must be made in legal and regulatory systems, agricultural research, transportation and processing systems, and education. The success of the Land Grant University system in improving agriculture and contributing broadly to society in the United States over the last 140 years demonstrates that the development of human capital and educational systems is as important as scientific discovery. The creation of institutions and public/foundation funding mechanisms would create a platform for international collaboration that is open to government, university and private-sector collaborators. If the world community is to arrive at its stated goal of food security for every person, it must put aside ideological and political divisions and pragmatically embrace each and every technology that leads to sustainable food security.

Note: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of State.

"If we are paralyzed by uncertainty, innovation and progress will be stifled." So says the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor in his statement launching the UK science review of biotechnology. The study’s 25-member panel found that there is no scientific basis for ruling out biotech crops and their products as a whole, but any move toward commercialization in the UK must be accompanied by safety assessments, effective surveillance, monitoring and labeling systems.

Summary

In November 2002 the UK government announced a three-pronged national dialogue on the risks and benefits of biotechnology including: (1) public debate, (2) scientific review and (3) economic study The public debate ran throughout June 2003, and the economic study on the costs and benefits of biotechnology was published on July 11, 2003 . On July 21, the interim results of the third strand of the program were released: a comprehensive scientific review of
agricultural biotechnology. This study is important because it is one of the most thorough public
scientific reviews of the technology ever undertaken and because it is viewed by some in the UK as a litmus test of the perceived safety of agricultural biotechnology. The 25-member panel found that there is no scientific basis for ruling out biotech crops and their products as a whole,but any move toward commercialization in the UK must be accompanied by safety assessments,effective surveillance, monitoring and labeling systems.

Putting It All Together

The UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor,Professor Sir David King, led the panel together with Professor Howard Dalton, Chief Scientist at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and with independent advice from the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA).
They, along with 25 scientific panel members representing academia, the biotech industry, and two environmental groups, surveyed the literature on agricultural biotechnology to examine thestate of scientific knowledge on the subject, where there is agreement, and where uncertainties remain. The survey was applied to five topic areas: food and feed safety, the reliability of "GM" breeding, gene flow detection and impact, environmental impact, and the role of science in the regulatory process. Over 600 published scientific documents and contributions received via the
website and open meetings were referred to in the process of crafting the report.
The overall assessment is that there is "no scientific case for ruling out all GM crops and their products". However, the key message Professor King wants to get across is that we cannot talk about the technology in general terms. Each specific case must be evaluated on its own merits and behavior.

On the issue of food and feed safety, the panel notes that there have been no verifiable ill effects
from consumption of biotech foods over the past seven years. The panel concludes that risks to human health are "very low for GM crops currently on the market". For crops that are developed in the future, there is a need to develop safety assessment technology, surveillance and monitoring techniques and labeling protocols. Therefore, the government is not suggesting
blanket approval but rather case-by-case assessment of new crops followed by monitoring. The scientific review does not aim to provide a definitive answer on the safety of biotechnologyderived foods and feeds. In fact, officials of the government have made a point of saying that it is not possible to give that kind of guarantee for any food.

Imprecision and unpredictability are features of both conventional and biotech plant and animal breeding, the panel points out. Testing is key for both, but for biotech crops and foods testing must also take into account potential unanticipated effects. Current methods for evaluation of current biotech crops are "robust" when applied consistently, and must keep pace with future developments.

On the subject of gene flow, field studies indicate that there is very little gene flow to wild relatives. Very little horizontal gene flow to bacteria in the soil or viruses has been found, either. The panel found that in a range of field experiments biotech crops were unlikely to invade the countryside or become "problematic". Further, the threat to wildlife and soil structure was found to be minor. However, the panel acknowledged there are gaps in knowledge on this topic and more research is needed.

The one area in which the panel has the most concern is the environmental impact of biotechnology. In particular, what might be the impact on weeds and wildlife of the use of herbicide tolerant crops? The UK is currently engaged in Farm Scale Evaluations which are intended to shed some light on the impact of herbicide tolerant crops on the environment. The
Evaluations are expected to conclude in September followed by a report. Thus, the panel will reconvene in October to take account of the report and any other significant scientific developments.

It can be said that the report was precautionary in its view of the future, particularly where gaps
in the knowledge were seen to exist, such as "gene stacking", although the report recognizes there
have been no reports of GM crops causing significant environmental damage in regions where they are grown. The report concludes saying "the UK should continue to operate so that it is sensitive to the degree of risk and uncertainty, recognizes the distinctive features of GM, divergent scientific perspectives and associated gaps in knowledge, as well as taking into account the conventional breeding context and baselines".

Reaction: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Reaction has been lukewarm in the media. Overall, the press continues to be nonplused by the UK Government’s attempts to tackle the biotech issue. While many are balanced on the content of the report, the news services effectively shrug off the findings since the panel report cannot provide easy answers. Then, anti-biotech campaigners are given serious column space to voice their views, focusing on the panel’s acknowledgment that uncertainty still exists about the
technology. For example, former Environment Minister Michael Meacher argues that biotechnology has not been adequately tested and emphasizes that this report corroborates his view. In the Daily Telegraph he calls it a "public scandal" to draw conclusions about the safety of biotechnology and states that it would be "political suicide" for government to push
biotechnology through.

The ghost of BSE is used as a reminder of the food safety scares which form the foundation of the UK populace’s distrust. GeneWatch UK’s director is quoted in the Guardian as saying, "People are effectively being used in unmonitored testing of GM food safety
across the world. And there are no plans to start collecting hard evidence from the human guinea
pigs. Even so, the review tried to reassure us that current GM foods are safe. They don’t seem to
have learned the hard lessons of BSE." Greenpeace complains to the BBC that the panel was "stacked with GM flag-wavers" and calls on the government to "admit defeat and halt its headlong rush toward a US-style embrace of GM".