GMO delays waste money, health: Symposium

Golden rice has been developed through years of research to address malnutrition for children in developing countries.

Opposition to biotechnology has prevented the rice from becoming available, explained Pamela Ronald, a geneticist whose team is credited with genetically engineering a rice strain that is disease resistant and another that is tolerant to flooding.

These two advancements have benefited thousands of farmers and consumers in several countries, she said.

Ronald, the director of the Laboratory of Crop Genetics Innovation at the University of California-Davis, said protesters sabotaged golden rice research crops.

“They destroyed more than research, they destroyed medicine,” she told those attending the Aug. 31 international symposium in Central Illinois.

Science “is not a belief system,” she added, and 20 years of study show that genetically engineered crops are safe to eat.

Eggplants and papaya are among successful genetically engineered crops, she said. Farmers in Bangladesh, for example, are now able to grow eggplant profitably using fewer insecticides and dangerous chemicals that are banned here.

In Hawaii, genetic developments saved the papaya industry.

Despite that, many people have come to believe there is something “sinister” in genetic engineering.

“It is poor people who most often need technology, but they are denied it because of the vague fears of those who have enough to eat,” Ronald said.

Her husband, Raoul Adamchak, is an organic farmer in California.

Richard Wilkins, a Greenwood, Del., soybean farmer, told Ronald he thought a top geneticist and a dedicated organic farmer would have different ideology.

Ronald, who co-authored a book with her husband, “Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food,” said that in writing it, they found they have many similar ideas and the same goal of sustainable agriculture.

“Everyone is basically interested in food security,” said Floyd Gaibler, director of trade policy and biotechnology with the U.S. Grains Council.

Gunderson notes there won’t be enough food available for the projected world population by 2050 if agricultural technology and new traits don’t advance. The demand for food would exceed the projections for yields.

The acceptance and proliferation of biotech has moved slower than a European 2008-09 study predicted, said Craig Rickard, director of emerging markets technology for Croplife International, an international trade association of agribusiness companies founded in 2001.

The European Commission study had predicted significantly more new traits would be developed by 2015.

Fifteen years ago, the first biotech products went through the Chinese approval system in 15 months. Now, it takes 60 months, Rickard noted.

“Regulatory affairs are the longest part of the increase (in time to approve products) in the past decade,” Rickard said. “A place on the other side of the world slows up innovation here.”

The cost of delays in releasing a new trait can add up to billions of dollars lost to both farmers and consumers, said Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes, director of economics and management at the Agrobiotechnology Center and University of Missouri professor.

A product can’t be submitted for approval in China until it has been grown in the United States for at least six years. By synchronizing the research, the time could be shortened by at least two years, said Jeff Nawn, senior manager of biotech affairs and regulation for DuPont Pioneer.

Slow approval by the EU also causes delays in new traits, speakers noted. It’s an eight- to 13-year process from an idea to a farmer’s field. While the USDA has started to reduce its time to approval, other countries are taking longer.

On the other hand, farmers quickly adopt new biotech products in order to increase their yields, lower costs and be more profitable, said Kalaitzandonakes.

People don’t have a sense of what the delays cost and the affect it has on consumers, he said. A delay of two or three years in introducing a soybean trait effective against resistant weeds, for example, would mean billions of dollars of loss to farmers and consumers.

Agriculture has done wonders, he said, but “We have not explained that message to the rest of the world.”

Rosalind Leeck, marketing director for the United States Soybean Export Council, said sometimes she feels like Bill Murray in the “Groundhog Day” movie.

Science-based research shows no negative health effects caused by GMO products, she recited.

One group making a difference is Mothers Aggregated for GMO in China, or MAGIC. It’s a group of U.S. moms who visit China to explain how genetic research benefits the food they feed their families.

“It’s a mom-to-mom, consumer-to-consumer connection,” Leeck said.

The symposium was a call to action to keep biotech moving forward.