Cornucopia of Biotech Food Awaits Labeling

The international trade agreement reached this weekend to require labeling of genetically modified agricultural commodities is a boost to activists who are calling for an even more extensive scheme to slap labels on all food products that contain any trace of a biotech engineered ingredient.

Yet, carried to that extreme, few foods on U.S. supermarket shelves would escape labeling.

That’s because genetic engineering, far more than most consumers realize, has transformed the nation’s food supply over the last decade, changing the way a host of products are made, from bread to cheese, soft drinks to vitamins, and even some kinds of beer.

The international debate over genetically modified foods has generally focused on the crops themselves--grains, fruits and vegetables that have been transformed by splicing genes from one species into another, such as corn with built-in insecticides or soybeans that resist weedkillers.

But even if the plants were banished from the fields, it would be almost impossible to avoid foods produced with the help of genetic engineering, some of which have been on the market for 10 years.

Under the “biosafety protocol” agreement reached at a U.N.-sponsored meeting in Montreal, importers would have to be warned of grains and seeds that “may contain living modified organisms.”

The treaty, however, does not resolve growing demands by critics of biotechnology, who are calling for labeling of any food if genetic engineering is used at any stage of its processing--whether it be an egg laid by a chicken fed biotech corn or a block of cheddar made with a milk-clotting protein from a genetically altered bacterium.

And the kind of labeling now being considered by Congress and the California Legislature and in a state ballot initiative now in circulation could cover any ingredient, whether the traces of the genetically modified organism that produced it can be detected in the final product.

“Labeling will empower consumers to make some choice,” said Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who has introduced legislation that would require labeling “without regard to whether the altered material or cellular characteristics of the organism are detectable in the material.”

Kucinich and other critics of biotech foods raise two sorts of health and safety questions. Environmentalists worry that crops equipped with genes from other species to produce their own insecticides or to resist weedkiller will prove harmful to beneficial insects while creating super bugs and super weeds that will be very difficult to control.

The Montreal agreement is intended to address this issue by notifying countries when genetically modified grains and seeds are part of a shipment and giving the importing countries the choice to accept them.

But opponents of biotech food crops also raise concerns about potential health problems--unknown toxins and allergens that might inadvertently be introduced into foods--and they want labeling at the consumer level.

Public support for a labeling requirement has been building, first in Europe and Japan, and now in the United States.

With the help of health food stores across the country, the Natural Law Party last June delivered to Congress 500,000 signatures on a petition for labeling.

The political party’s proposal would cover “all products prepared or processed using genetically engineered enzymes or other processing agents, whether those agents are present in the final product or not.”

The measure would require labels on dairy and meat products from livestock that have been fed genetically engineered feed or treated with genetically engineered hormones, although the end product has no detectable level of the ingredient.

“These experimental techniques are rather crude and can create unforeseen mutations in the food itself, and those mutations can create allergens or toxins in food,” said the party’s press secretary, Robert Roth, voicing concerns shared by a number of environmental activists.

Without labeling, however, it is almost impossible to know which foods are processed with ingredients from bacteria or yeasts that have been transformed with a gene, a piece of DNA, transferred from another species.

U.S. officials and industry executives insist there is no danger. And a decade-long history of safety, they argue, backs up their contention that there is no difference in the safety of biotech foods from the traditional products they have replaced.

“We have no evidence of food safety issues here,” said Laura Tarantino, deputy director of the FDA’s office of premarket approval.

Firms Consult With FDA About Safety

Many companies consult with the FDA about health and safety issues raised by the use of food ingredients produced by genetically engineered organisms, but there is no requirement to do so for compounds that have a history of use in food processing or are similar to food additives that are regarded as safe.

The chemicals made through biotechnology, including widely used enzymes that convert starch into sugars, “are not in the food,” said Michael J. Phillips, executive director for food and agriculture at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which opposes labeling. “They’re used in the process to derive the food. Try to put that information on a label.”

Requiring such labels would result in “an encyclopedia” of fine print about intermediate steps in food production that have no impact on health and safety, he said.

Such labeling would be so extensive that it would be like wallpapering the supermarket, agreed Martina McLouglin, director of the biotechnology program at UC Davis. “It is everywhere,” she said, arguing that there is no need to label products that have proven both safe and beneficial.

Labeling proponents, however, worry about unexpected contamination showing up in foods under a regulatory system that is largely voluntary and relies on manufacturers to ensure the safety of their products.

And many activists cite what they see as an example of biotech gone wrong: A 1989 epidemic of a potentially fatal illness--called eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome--that was linked to high doses of a popular nutritional supplement, L-tryptophan, a seemingly harmless amino acid that was touted for a variety of minor human ills.

The Food and Drug Administration ordered its manufacturer, Showa Denko of Japan, to pull the product from the market.

Just before the epidemic, which affected at least 1,500 consumers, the company altered the way it purified the product, said James H. Maryanski, the FDA’s biotechnology coordinator. Some batches were produced by genetically engineered organisms.

“We cannot say definitely that genetic engineering was not somehow involved,” Maryanski said. “But there is evidence to suggest other causes.”

Both sides in the labeling debate agree on one point: Biotechnology has brought about a quiet revolution in food processing--using chemicals that are mass-produced in yeast or bacteria.

Chemicals from biotech organisms are used to keep bread from going stale and to shorten the brewing time for beers. And biotechnology is used to manufacture nutritional supplements, such as vitamin B12.

In England, Monsanto has assured consumers of NutraSweet that its artificial sweetener is made without genetically modified materials. But in the United States, the company uses a different process that may include biotech, said a spokesperson, who said there are no traces of biotech ingredients in the final product.

The first of the biotech ingredients was the enzyme “chymosin,” an animal protein produced in a variety of genetically engineered microbes and used to coagulate milk proteins, an early step in the production of cheese.

Traditionally, cheese makers used a mix of enzymes called “rennet,” typically extracted from the fourth stomach of a suckling calf.

But, as might be expected given the source, the enzymes were expensive to produce; supplies were unreliable and quality varied from one batch to the next.

There are other enzymes that can coagulate milk but none did the job quite as well, until scientists spliced an enzyme-producing gene from the calf stomach and got it to produce in a common strain of bacteria, which could be grown in a fermentation vat.

In 1990, after an extensive review, biotech chymosin became the first FDA-approved genetically modified food ingredient.

Today, more than 80% of cheese consumed in the United States is produced from a process using one of two major brands of the biotech enzyme, estimated officials at Chr. Hansen Inc., a Danish company that supplies enzymes, coloring agents and other supplies to the food industry.

“In many countries around the world, it is not considered a genetically modified product,” said the company’s North American vice president for dairy systems, David Carpenter. “It’s favored over the animal product. It’s purer.”

One result of the switch: Religious Jews now are able to enjoy traditional cheeses that once mixed meat--the calf enzyme--and milk and, therefore, could not qualify as kosher. Rabbis from the Orthodox Union, one of the most influential of the groups that certify foods as kosher, concluded that the genetically engineered enzyme could be used in processing of kosher cheddars and other fine cheeses.

Other biotech enzymes are used in processing flour and in reducing corn to high fructose corn syrup, said Soren Carlsen, vice president of enzyme research at Novo Nordisk, an international company also based in Denmark that is the world’s largest producer of industrial enzymes.

The resulting flour “gives a better dough quality,” Carlsen said. “It keeps its humidity and freshness.”

Another Novo enzyme breaks down an unwanted byproduct in the fermentation of beer called diacetyl, which has a butter-like flavor. Other enzymes allow brewers to produce more alcohol from a fixed amount of starch, one of the techniques used in producing low-calorie or light beers.

Labels for Foods Sought in State

Why is it necessary to produce such enzymes from genetically engineered organisms? Two reasons: The natural microbes that produce them “are unsuited for fermentation,” Carlsen said. “What you want is a very clean and pure compound.” And genetic engineering improves efficiency of production.

Genetic engineering has also changed production of nutritional supplements. Roche Vitamins, for example, markets vitamin B12 produced by a genetically modified organism. “It’s been manufactured that way for at least five years, maybe longer,” said Ian Newton, director of regulatory affairs for the company.

In California, state Sens. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) and Byron Sher (D-Stanford) say they will introduce labeling requirements for food sold in California.

And an organic farmer from Sonoma, Robert Cannard, is trying to gather the more than 400,000 signatures needed to put a labeling initiative on the California ballot in November.

The measure calls for labels on food grown “with genetically engineered influences,” a broad term intended to include eggs from chickens fed biotech corn or dairy products from cattle treated with a genetically engineered growth hormone used to increase milk production.

Without a requirement, Cannard said, he and other organic food producers will no longer be able to find reliable sources of non-GMO ingredients and “there will be no more organic industry.”.

The FDA has taken the position that it’s the end product that counts, and not the way it is produced, whether the ingredients are genetically engineered or not.

Tom Zinnen of the University of Wisconsin points out, however, that there are a variety of reasons for labeling food products. The FDA approach, he said, is based on the “wholesomeness” of the food--a scientific question about the safety to the consumer.

But there are other reasons for labeling foods, he said. Some consumers take a “holistic” approach, thinking about the consequences to the environment--worried, for example, that genetically modified corn could pose a threat to monarch butterflies. Others have what Zinnen calls “holy” or religious reasons for wanting to know how their food is produced. Vegetarians might object to animal proteins added to fruits and vegetables.

People feel they have a right to know about the food they eat, Zinnen said, and may be willing to pay more for that information.