New Testing Policy Proposed for Altered Crops

The White House on Friday proposed new tests of genetically altered plants while the crops are still being field tested, so that the government will know whether the plants present a risk if they end up in the food supply by mistake.

The new policy would permit small amounts of genetically modified crops to mingle with the food supply--even before they pass the elaborate food safety regulatory hurdles.

The biotechnology industry applauded the White House announcement, but environmentalists and food safety advocates expressed concerns that the new policy failed to go far enough to protect the public because the early tests would be voluntary and not exhaustive.

The proposal represents an effort by the Bush administration to address possible health risks posed by genetically engineered plant varieties without hampering the industry’s progress. Genetic engineering has dramatically changed the way new plant varieties are developed.

Five years after the first biotechnology-derived crops were commercialized in 1996, about 88 million acres were planted with such crops in the United States. Corn, soybeans and cotton represent the majority of the genetically altered plants now on the market.

But biotech companies are experimenting with many other foods, including a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. The primary goal of the developers is to create crops that either repel insects or can withstand herbicides, so the crops are not damaged when the herbicides are applied to kill weeds.

The tests, which would be done only at the request of developers, would assess any potential for allergic or toxic reactions from any new proteins in bioengineered crops.

“We’re proposing a set of science-based regulatory oversight tools which will provide the public with assurance that public health and environmental concerns are being addressed,” said Cliff Gabriel, deputy associate director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Environmentalists and food-safety advocates have been concerned for years that genetically altered crops would contaminate the food supply. The food industry, meanwhile, has been worried that detection of unapproved, biotechnology-derived crops in foods could trigger huge recalls and heavy costs, whether or not the public faced any risks.

These fears are more than theoretical. In 2000, StarLink, a type of genetically modified corn approved only for livestock consumption, was detected in hundreds of popular human food products, including taco shells. Massive recalls were ordered.

Last year, genetically modified plants showed up in Canadian canola seed. Monsanto Co., fearing a negative effect on exports to Japan, where the trait had not yet been approved, launched a large recall.

These examples show that inadvertent blending of biotech crops with the food supply can happen, government officials said. The blending can happen when pollen blows from the test plant to other crops and when the same machinery is used with both crops.

“If there are plants growing in the field, there is always the possibility of pollen flows and seeds being mixed, and products that have not gotten through all the regulatory steps could inadvertently become components of food,” said James Maryanski, the FDA’s biotechnology coordinator. “Our goal at FDA is to make sure the food supply is safe.”

Maryanski said the FDA believes that the preliminary test for allergens or toxicity would catch any possible public health risks, even if the biotech plants have not passed the full regulatory regime.

“These materials will be present at very low levels of food,” he said. “We believe they will not rise to the level that they will present a public health problem.”

But environmental and food safety advocates were not convinced. “I fear that if the FDA approach remains voluntary it will end up protecting industry more than people and the environment,” said Jane Rissler, a plant pathologist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Industry will be able to go to FDA to get an OK if it fears it has not contained a new protein, so it won’t be liable for introducing a protein into the food supply.”

Joseph Mendelson, legal advisor for the Center for Food Safety, said the proposal would help the biotech industry with its difficult battle to improve the public’s view of its products--without ensuring the public a thorough review.

But representatives of the biotech industry said they believed the rules would help assure the public, making it easier for companies to promote their products.

“We think the policy is a positive step toward ensuring there is a framework for allowing the continued development and testing of biotech traits in the field,” added Bryan Hurley, spokesman for St. Louis-based Monsanto, a leading company in the field.