EPA Will Probe Test of Bacteria Created in Lab
The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that it will investigate whether a Northern California firm violated federal guidelines by testing genetically engineered microbes outdoors on trees before approval was granted.
Advanced Genetic Sciences Inc. of Oakland received federal approval last November to test the microbes in the open air but had already done so earlier in the year, EPA spokesman Albert J. Heier said. He said the firm did not believe the release broke any rules, but “we have to determine whether (the release) broke containment.”
Meanwhile, environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin, who has filed suit against the experiment, said the premature testing confirms that “this whole thing has been a sham.”
Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, urged the EPA to immediately cancel its November approval of the experiment, which calls for spraying genetically engineered bacteria on a small plot of strawberry plants near Salinas to test whether the material will prevent frost at temperatures as low as 23 degrees Fahrenheit.
Rifkin and other environmentalists have contended that the new bacteria could escape into the atmosphere and alter frost formation in clouds, thus changing weather patterns and the ecological balance.
Concerns Over Safety
The experiment had been scheduled for this month but has been held up because residents of Monterey County--where it was to have taken place--have voiced similar concerns over safety.
Despite those concerns and its own impending investigation into the premature test, Heier said, the EPA remains convinced the experiment is safe. “We feel this chemical would not have any adverse impact on the environment,” he said.
Nevertheless, Heier said the EPA is investigating the premature test, made on trees early last year, because it wants to determine whether a policy established in October, 1984, had been violated. Under that policy, “you’re not supposed to have any field testing in the open environment” without the special approval, Heier said.
He said the firm used a syringe to “inoculate some trees” with the ice-blocking microbe to test whether any of them would suffer injury and reported that they did not.
At the time of the tests, the EPA was under the impression that the testing was indoors, Heier said, adding that officials now know that it took place on a roof, where “the possibility exists that insects and birds could have carried the bacteria away” by taking it from the sap around the injection wounds.
