Would you like diabetes with that?
Today in the House Jeanette and Sue K asked Food Safety Minister Annette King what she is planning to do about a draft Food Standards Australia New Zealand recommendation that a new variety of corn which may cause diabetes and Alzheimer’s be approved for release in New Zealand. More details here.
The Minister was non-committal in her answers (I’ll post a transcript tomorrow), but the only chance to stop the release is for her and her Australian counterpart to reject the recommendation when they next meet. At least she has not yet discounted the possibility.
I know for a fact that I am not the only one feeling slightly hysterical at the prospect of genetically modified animal feed linked to serious health problems being approved for human consumption in New Zealand!
[EDIT: (14/6/06) Below is a partial transcript of Jeanette and Sue’s questions about this issue in Parliament yesterday]
7. JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader-Green) to the Minister for Food Safety: Does she have confidence in the recommendation in the draft assessment report by Food Standards Australia New Zealand to approve the sale and use of food derived from LY038 high lysine corn?
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister for Food Safety): I have no opinion on the draft assessment for the setting of the standard of LY038 corn at this stage, as the application is part way through the process of consideration.
Jeanette Fitzsimons: Is she aware that high lysine corn is substantially different from normal corn in that its high level of lysine, when cooked with the sugars in corn, produces highly hazardous compounds, and is she concerned that the New Zealand Food Safety Authority has made no attempt to assess this demonstrated food hazard that results from cooking or processing?
Hon ANNETTE KING: I am aware of those comments and they have been made in a submission by Dr Heinemann to Food Standards Australia New Zealand. His submissions will be taken into consideration.
…
Sue Kedgley: Why on earth is Food Standards Australia New Zealand considering approving for human consumption something that has only ever been approved for animal feed, and does this mean that in future anything that has been approved for animal feed will now be allowed in our food supply; and if not, why not?
Hon ANNETTE KING: The answer to the last part of the question is no, but the reason this corn is being considered is that Food Standards Australia New Zealand wants it assessed to see whether it would be safe for human consumption if it should accidentally get into the food chain.
Jeanette Fitzsimons: When she meets with the Australian Ministers to make the final decision, will she be asking why the New Zealand Food Safety Authority used controls to assess the corn that do not comply with its own rules or with World Health Organisation standards, and is she concerned that this decision would set a precedent that Food Standards Australia New Zealand does not have to follow its own rules or those of the World Health Organisation, and set a precedent that testing for animal feed can substitute for testing for human food, and set a precedent that hybrids from this new corn would also be legal human food without further testing?
Hon ANNETTE KING: There is a lot of water to go under the bridge before it reaches the ministerial council, including an assessment of the final submissions on this application. This application will take account of those matters raised by Dr Heinemann-the very matters the member has mentioned. I am assured the council will consider them. However, Food Standards Australia New Zealand disputes the fact that it has not followed its own rules.
June 13th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
well, there goes the omnivore option.
Looks like the vegans are going to live longer ‘n’ prosper, and what are they going to do with the poor cattle that get alzheimer’s disease from the GE corn…. shades of mad-cow epidemic in Britain in the ’90’s.
Just to fly my usual number of kites per posting….
June 14th, 2006 at 11:31 am
this is likely to make me unpopular, but:
the issue here is not that the corn is genetically modified per se, it’s that corn that contains large amounts of lysine, which has been demonstrated to be a Bad Thing, might be approved for human consumption. yes, large amounts of lysine wouldn’t occur ‘naturally’ in corn, but they might do if the corn was selectively bred for high amounts of lysine. ie, a plant breeder selects plants with naturally occurring or induced random mutations which cause higher levels of lysine. it’s worth pointing out that the vast majority of roundup-resistant crops were bred using conventional (non-GE) methods, and that given enough time and resources roundup-resistant soy could’ve been bred ‘conventionally’ too - it would be a case of being patient enough for just the right random mutation to affect just the right genes.
i’m not pro-GE, i just worry that fear about GE is allowed to eclipse the economic mechanisms that make GE ‘bad’ - ie, large-scale agribusiness and large-scale capitalism. in my view the issues around GE often collapse to a) the medicalisation of food and b) issues with large-scale agribusiness. both of which are problems regardless of whether or not GE is involved.
2c.
June 14th, 2006 at 11:36 am
Thanks for your comment damian. I think you’ll find that while the Greens are concerned about the GE aspect of this corn, in this particular case it’s the secondary concern. The risks associated with lycine are the main health concerns in this case, and if you read the press release they are what Jeanette and Sue focus on. The Greens would be equally worried about this particular corn whether the high lysine was present due to GE or selective breeding. I’ll post the transcript from Parliament yesterday in a minute.
Cheers,
frog
June 14th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
minor pedantic point, it is not Annette King and her counterpart, it is Annette King and her counterparts. The FSANZ ministers board is composed of the Food Safety Ministers of each state of Australia - when the ministers vote, each gets one vote, so NZ is on a par with an Aussie state.
June 15th, 2006 at 11:18 am
If this was a non-GE variety of corn, would it have required approval?
June 15th, 2006 at 11:27 am
Good point Cytochem .. here you go Damian …
from http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/_srcfiles/DAR_A549_GM_Corn_Ly038.pdf
“Corn line LY038 has been genetically modified to have higher than usual levels of the aminoacid lysine. It contains the cordapA gene from Corynebacterium glutamicum, which allows the accumulation of lysine in the corn grain. Corn line LY038 is intended specifically for animal feed, however it is possible that a small percentage may enter the human food supply”
“The types of food products that might be likely to contain corn line LY038 in the case of inadvertent co-mingling are: margarine, cooking oil and baking and frying fats; various sweeteners including high fructose, dextrose, and maltodextrins; corn grain used as an additive; flaking grits used almost exclusively in the manufacture of corn flakes; fine grits utilised by the snack, breakfast cereal and brewing industries; coarse grits eaten as a breakfast food; corn flour; dried-milled corn products used as a substrate for brewing beer; and corn grits and whole kernels used to produce many distilled hard liquors.”
..seems to rule out more than just the omnivores ….
June 15th, 2006 at 11:31 am
one would bloody well certainly hope so!
June 15th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
hang on, why is that a good point? it shouldn’t make any difference. if a crop is potentially dangerous (in this case, because it contains high amounts of lysine), surely the important thing is that the crop is dangerous, not that it is genetically engineered?
if we are vigilant about protecting ourselves from the risks of genetically modified crops then we need to vigilant about protecting ourselves from the risks of conventionally bred crops as well. If a high level of lysine is bad, which it clearly is, then the regulations should be imposed regardless of whether it took genetic modification techniques to actually get these higher-than-normal levels of lysine.
June 15th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
damian: not sure what daniel meant, but what you said was exactly my point. we would certainly hope a conventional variety like that would need approval, but I wonder if that is the case? With all hype around GE crops, everyone assumes that a GE crop is ‘bad’ and a conventially modified crop is ‘good/okay’ without looking what actual has been modified in the crop. I wouldn’t be surprised in this was reflected in the regulations, and special approval is required only for GE crops but not conventional varieties as the latter are assumed to be ’safe’ (because they are ‘natural’). But I don’t actually know what the regulations are, so I stand to be corrected by anyone who does know.
June 17th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
I’m very interested in the discussion and would like to contribute three points.
1. The high lysine corn in this case is GE corn and while a primary safety issue in this case is lysine and its breakdown products (which are at unprecedented concentrations compared to conventional corn), they are not the only problems found with the risk assessment. Other important problems had to do with the corn being GE. For example, a. the molecular and compositional comparisons required for recombinant crop plants were found by our Centre to be deeply flawed and well below the standard recommended by international food safety agencies. b. We also found flaws in the analysis used to evaluate the recombinant protein in this corn as an allergen (i.e. pepsin digest). The studies accepted by the Authority are not studies that have been approved through international consensus agreement (WHO/FAO standards). c. The bioinformatics analysis used to search for allergens appears to have used the incorrect amino acid sequence of the protein. d. There were significant internal inconsistencies with the Southern blots used to demonstrate that LY038 has a single intact insertion. e. There is an unexplained negative effect on broiler chicks during the first 21 days they are fed this corn (even in raw form). f. Others too numberous to mention here.
2. My second point concerns what was done to achieve these lysine and lysine breakdown product levels. As others have indicated, conventional high lysine corn already exists. However, there are zero reports in the literature (that we could find) that these lines accumulate FREE LYSINE (50 times higher in LY038) or the undesirable lysine breakdown products seen in LY038 (up to 110 times higher in LY038). Moreover, spontaneous mutant varieties rarely accumulate lysine in the grain (the part we eat) because of an up-regulation in pathways that eliminate lysine (via the breakdown products I’ve been mentioning). Probably under normal conditions, lysine and its breakdown products are completely converted into benign compounds, but in high lysine corn there is too much lysine for these biochemical pathways to remove all lysine and the intermediate breakdown products. Those pathways just get overwhelmed.
3. Monsanto already has a second generation of high lysine GE corn at the research level. When combined with modifications of the type used in LY038, they found that lysine levels were higher than expected from the two modifications measured separately. This tells us that unanticipated effects may arise when LY038 co-mingles with either conventional or GM varieties of corn over time. Once a line is approved, then hybrids with other varieties (that form through breeding) need no further approval and benefit from no manditory safety studies.
All three of my points are about this corn being GE. I agree that we should be vigilant about all foods in our food supply, regardless of where they come from. However, in this case, there are specific issues arising from the modification itself.
You can see our full submission at http://www.inbi.canterbury.ac.nz
June 17th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Everyone read the post before this!
jack heinemann : Thanks for the info.
June 18th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Thanks Jack. That’s important information.
June 20th, 2006 at 10:30 am
thanks for the post jack. it’s really great to know that centres like yours exist
in conventionally-bred crops, is the potential for problems the scale demonstarted here equivalent? i’d guess that GE techniques increase the likelihood of these ‘new’ issues, but in your line of work do you see ‘conventionally-bred’ crops with a similar scope of problems?
the point i’m trying to make is, in your opinion is GE a more ‘risky’ breeding method from a food safety point of view than conventional crop-breeding? i have an idea to do with biodiversity that would involve individual farmers being able to create recombinant crops specifically for their highly localised area of the country.. i’m not sure whether this idea is a good one or not though
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:04 pm
so in what way does corn cause diabetes, it doesn’t of course,
June 23rd, 2006 at 8:48 pm
why, do trolls eat corn?
June 25th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Hi Damian
It is difficult for me to give an absolute answer to your question. Plants are amazing things after all and we haven’t exhausted their “genetic space” either through mutation or GE. And I’m not a plant scientist or breeder, but a geneticist/molecular biologist that has done a small amount of work with plants and a much larger amount of work with infectious disease causing bacteria.
What I can say is that there is no precedent among corn mutants for the levels of free lysine and lysine catabolites seen in this GE corn. The enzyme used is from bacteria, which have specific uses of lysine that are not shared by anything in the plant or animal kingdom (so far described anyway).
Is GE inherently riskier than all other ways we push the genetics of organisms by high does of radiation etc? I couldn’t give an absolute answer to that. All I can say is that, in my opinion, much more research should and can be done to explore the safety issues of GE crops. I am not against ideas such as yours. In fact, what you are proposing sounds far more about benefits to human consumers than can be said for high lysine corn, which is “unsuitable” as human food (according FSANZ).
All I can say is that if your proposal is serious, be equally serious about safety testing.
Good luck and best wishes.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I hope it all worked out. I should look it up.
I did:
http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/foodmatters/gmfoods/fsanzresponsetoiss ue3407.cfm
Cheers!