Starlink, Tacos, and GMO Safety

Robert Vavala Author

05/11/2018 Added

66 Plays

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GMO safety discussion with examples

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[00:00:01.760]Hello, welcome back to
[00:00:04.310]Farmers, Consumers and GMOs.
[00:00:06.290]We're looking at social dimensions in consumer acceptance
[00:00:09.760]and examining some of the problems
[00:00:13.580]that were encountered early on as these new corn products
[00:00:19.880]or soybean products, GMOs, became a part
[00:00:23.390]of our food system in the 1990s.
[00:00:25.940]So let's take a look at,
[00:00:28.230]we've examined the monarch butterfly issue,
[00:00:30.810]let's take a look at the corn, the taco shell issue.
[00:00:37.390]And how understand, see if we can understand,
[00:00:40.370]again, how this was related to the development of these GMOs
[00:00:44.310]that were Bts that were designed
[00:00:48.230]to protect the plant from an invading insect called
[00:00:52.540]the European corn borer.
[00:00:54.160]All right, so in this case,
[00:00:56.570]it involved a different kind of Bt
[00:01:01.420]that was still in the process
[00:01:05.280]of being examined by the regulatory agencies,
[00:01:07.950]and the trade name that the company was using
[00:01:11.860]for this product was StarLink, okay?
[00:01:14.700]It was a Bt, in that a gene
[00:01:17.860]from Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria was isolated
[00:01:22.470]that encoded a protein,
[00:01:24.610]a Cry protein that had toxicity to the European corn borer.
[00:01:28.950]But it was a different version of a Bt protein,
[00:01:32.470]a different kind of Bt protein
[00:01:35.140]that had different kinds of properties than those that were,
[00:01:39.860]had been already investigated and approved,
[00:01:44.761]and of course, that's a good if you have a different
[00:01:49.220]kind of biological pesticide
[00:01:53.370]that can target the control of an insect pest.
[00:01:57.470]You have more ways that farmers can use to control
[00:02:01.120]that pest, so there's some advantage to that.
[00:02:03.180]That was the motivation for developing this by this company.
[00:02:06.960]So they had developed products
[00:02:09.401]and we are starting to breed
[00:02:12.500]this trade into potential hybrids for farmers to grow,
[00:02:16.060]but they could not sell the product until it had been
[00:02:19.120]through the regulatory process.
[00:02:22.530]And one of the challenges
[00:02:24.380]that the regulatory scientists were encountering
[00:02:29.310]was the nature of the Bt protein, this Cry9c Bt protein.
[00:02:35.130]Unlike the other Bt proteins that had been tested,
[00:02:39.660]which rapidly digested in a stomach environment,
[00:02:44.610]and were very vulnerable
[00:02:46.590]to changing their structure when heated,
[00:02:49.730]this protein was heat stable.
[00:02:52.430]And heat stability is one of the properties
[00:02:56.440]that some food allergens have,
[00:02:58.500]so the regulatory agency involved said,
[00:03:01.240]we need more data before we are completely convinced
[00:03:05.550]that the risk that this might pose for safety
[00:03:10.840]to people is low enough
[00:03:15.530]that the benefit of having this
[00:03:18.440]new kind of insect protection is worth us approving
[00:03:24.010]for farmers to grow.
[00:03:25.410]There were some questions, okay.
[00:03:27.060]So FDA has the responsibility as we said,
[00:03:32.890]for safety for consumers.
[00:03:34.440]As it turns out, FDA was not
[00:03:36.810]the primary regulatory agency, it was the EPA.
[00:03:39.930]So there are some overlap in responsibility here.
[00:03:43.680]But the EPA has looked at all
[00:03:45.550]of the aspects of this StarLink Bt corn,
[00:03:49.860]had decided that they had enough evidence
[00:03:52.200]that it was safe for the environment,
[00:03:55.750]and it would be just fine
[00:03:57.720]to be used as a food for animals, okay?
[00:04:03.170]And you know, a large majority of the corn
[00:04:06.060]that farmers grow is fed directly to animals.
[00:04:08.760]That'd be corn for feed, okay?
[00:04:10.750]So they had decided that they would approve this,
[00:04:14.800]they would give a deregulated status as long as the farmer
[00:04:18.590]was not growing their corn for food,
[00:04:21.810]directly for human consumption,
[00:04:24.400]but only growing their corn for feed
[00:04:27.920]to be fed to livestock.
[00:04:30.290]The problem with that decision was not recognizing the fact
[00:04:37.690]that the fields where farmers were growing corn
[00:04:40.850]for feed are right next to the fields
[00:04:44.610]where farmers were growing food for corn,
[00:04:47.940]corn products such as taco shells,
[00:04:50.270]and again, the same issue
[00:04:52.230]that we saw with the monarch butterfly larva,
[00:04:54.880]the pollen from one corn plant can move,
[00:05:00.580]and if that pollen lands on a silk in a plant
[00:05:06.100]that's been grown for food,
[00:05:09.190]it will carry with it the gene
[00:05:11.870]for this StarLink Bte protein
[00:05:15.360]and so you are transferring that trait to the seed
[00:05:20.460]and it's the seed, of course,
[00:05:22.170]that's the product that's used to make food from corn.
[00:05:26.792]So while you want to keep it in one part of the food
[00:05:32.830]and feed system, it could inadvertently
[00:05:35.330]end up in another part.
[00:05:37.460]As it turns out, groups
[00:05:40.070]that had an opposition to the use
[00:05:42.110]of GMOs recognized this problem
[00:05:44.890]and started testing different kinds
[00:05:47.900]of food for the presence of the DNA sequence
[00:05:51.400]that was unique to this StarLink type of Bt, okay?
[00:05:58.260]And when they started to examine food products,
[00:06:02.540]they could discover evidence
[00:06:05.050]that the Bt corn that was approved
[00:06:07.430]for feed was actually, the DNA sequence
[00:06:11.320]was actually showing up in food products,
[00:06:15.820]because DNA is a very stable molecule
[00:06:19.003]and even after you cook something,
[00:06:21.560]the DNA sequences are there in your taco shells.
[00:06:25.290]We eat DNA all the time, okay?
[00:06:28.360]So what that illustrated was
[00:06:31.210]that the regulatory agencies had not done the proper amount
[00:06:36.710]of thinking at the ecosystem level,
[00:06:39.550]at the production system level,
[00:06:42.440]and as a result of this lack of approval yet on the,
[00:06:47.870]this kind of Bt, the StarLink Bt for food,
[00:06:54.219]a recall of corn products had to occur.
[00:06:58.780]And this is very expensive.
[00:07:01.180]When a company puts all,
[00:07:03.120]a lot of money into preparing a food products,
[00:07:08.910]distributing those food products,
[00:07:11.060]and then they have to
[00:07:12.810]recall those products, that's very costly.
[00:07:15.630]In addition, it has an impact
[00:07:20.560]on the corn market if global consumers
[00:07:26.380]are concerned about the fact
[00:07:28.880]that some of the corn grown
[00:07:31.024]in the US by United States corn farmers contains a Bt
[00:07:36.760]that has not been fully approved by the regulatory agencies,
[00:07:42.640]the value of that product in the global market
[00:07:45.430]is compromised, okay?
[00:07:47.080]So there are a lot of economic ramifications of this mistake
[00:07:51.710]and so it occurred in 2000
[00:07:54.420]and the testing of StarLink as an inadvertent addition
[00:08:00.730]to the corn supply that
[00:08:07.320]is produced in the United States continued to about 2008.
[00:08:11.450]It was very expensive
[00:08:14.020]mistake, and it was a consequence
[00:08:16.260]of not fully examining the regulatory,
[00:08:24.530]on the part of the regulatory agencies
[00:08:26.780]how our food is grown.
[00:08:28.360]It certainly was a mistake, okay?
[00:08:31.160]Now, as it turns out,
[00:08:32.790]there is no evidence that
[00:08:34.420]that Cry9c protein made by StarLink actually
[00:08:39.910]has an allergen effect.
[00:08:43.090]There is no evidence that somebody
[00:08:45.590]that consume these products got sick
[00:08:47.750]as a result of the products.
[00:08:49.490]But there is evidence
[00:08:50.780]that the ability to separate feed
[00:08:55.600]from food in the US corn system is not,
[00:09:03.060]is not a current part of the way our system is run,
[00:09:07.150]and that regulatory approval,
[00:09:09.420]deregulating it for one reason
[00:09:12.680]but not in other was the cause of the problems.
[00:09:16.220]So it was actually not the FDA
[00:09:20.210]but the EPA was responsible here.
[00:09:23.090]This is certainly considered a problem or a mistake,
[00:09:27.320]but it was also one that could be investigated
[00:09:31.350]and monitored then after the mistake occurred
[00:09:34.530]by our regulatory agencies.
[00:09:36.630]Okay, so this gives you an example of the kinds of issues
[00:09:41.760]that were encountered with these GMO products.
[00:09:46.050]Two examples, there were a couple of other issues
[00:09:49.963]that were similar, but what they all have in common
[00:09:54.500]is that while there was some mistakes
[00:09:59.030]in the regulatory agencies,
[00:10:01.180]in the end there's no evidence
[00:10:03.460]that these products had a harm on the environment
[00:10:08.240]or these products had a harm on consumers, okay?
[00:10:17.110]These problems occur with other kinds of products.
[00:10:20.770]We hear about product recalls.
[00:10:24.370]It's just a part of life where you are a part of a society
[00:10:29.370]that's using new products
[00:10:32.060]that have come about from scientific advance.
[00:10:36.810]All right, so we've taken a look at some of these
[00:10:40.590]issues and what we will do next
[00:10:45.310]is take a look at, well,
[00:10:47.380]what's the current status of opposition to GMO?

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Starlink, Tacos, and GMO Safety

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