Musings: Talk About It

This is an article I wrote for the Cornell Alliance for Science newsletter after attending the 10th Transgenic Animal Research Conference at Lake Tahoe and hearing scientists express deep frustration at the United States regulatory process that is hindering their work.

It has been more than two decades since American researchers developed the first transgenic food animal — a female pig genetically engineered to produce more milk, thus reducing piglet mortality caused by starvation. Though the technology has continued to improve, and GE crops have been widely consumed, regulators have yet to allow a GE animal into the food supply.

Indeed, just one GE animal has been approved for commercial sale in the entire world: an aquarium fish that glows in the dark.

Meanwhile, international transgenic animal research remains in limbo, as other nations wait for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to take the lead in regulating an issue with global trade implications.

AquaBounty Technologies spent nearly $75 million developing and testing a GE salmon that grows faster and has better disease resistance than its farm-raised counterparts. But it's been waiting 15 years for the FDA to act on its application to deregulate the fish, with no end in sight. The slow, expensive, and unpredictable regulatory process discourages investors, whose capital is needed to support research and to move transgenic animals into the marketplace, conference participants said.

“We have real issues in agriculture and human health, but we don't have the resources to address it,” said Dr. Bruce Whitelaw, deputy director of the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Dr. Matt Wheeler, the University of Illinois researcher who used a bovine alpha-lactalbumin gene to turn a pig into “a mini Holstein” that produces significantly more milk, estimates the technology could save some 2.68 million piglets that die annually from failure to thrive. But it has failed to advance due to regulatory uncertainty, as he struggles to find the funding to keep his transgenic animals alive.

“It's hard to go into the barn because I'm depressed for two or three days afterward,” Wheeler told the international audience of scientists, students and food industry representatives. “There's an economic and also a personal cost to this.”

Other scientists described projects that had potentials for similar animal welfare benefits, as well as positive applications for human and environmental health. These include transgenic mosquitoes that control dengue fever more effectively than pesticides; cattle resistant to the sleeping sickness that sickens and kills livestock in Africa and elsewhere; cattle resistant to the pneumonia that often develops during shipping; poultry resistant to avian flu, and pigs resistant to the African swine flu now spreading across Europe.

But even as scientists continue their research, it's unclear whether their work will ever proceed through the regulatory process.

“In the absence of a definable hazard, it seems irrational to require these regulatory hurdles,” said Dr. Kevin Wells, assistant professor of genetics at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam, a Cooperative Extension Specialist in Animal Genomics and Biotechnology at the University of California-Davis, challenged the researchers “to develop a sensible regulatory white paper” that could set new standards for approving transgenic food animals.

“We need to talk about what it means if we don't adopt this technology” as the demand for food grows along with the world's population, Van Eenennaam said.

Meanwhile, Joni Kamiya-Rose, author of the HawaiiFarmersDaughter blog, is attending a 12-week Fellowship at Cornell aimed at improving science-based communications about biotechnology. Joni has written eloquently and prolifically about the anti-GMO movement in Hawaii and its impact on family farms, aloha and a sense of community. In her most recent post, she writes:

Several years ago when the anti-GMO issue started to surface, I realized that this is a new day and age for our local folks.  The papaya farmers and others in the agricultural communities were under full attack.  The folks that kept the lands green and productive were having their livelihoods threatened.  The once respected occupation of farming was being barraged by misinformation.  I decided to speak up on the fledgling social media outlets.  No one was speaking for our farmers and I could not stand to see these attacks continuing.

Joni and Eric Cho, another local boy, are representing Hawaii in the Fellowship program, which has participants from around the world. I suspect she'll be writing frequently about her experiences at Cornell over the next few months as the leaves turn, the temps drop and her mind expands with all the new knowledge and experiences. 

World famous scientists will be working directly with the Fellows, and I'll be at Cornell next week to broaden my own knowledge about biotech and interview some of these scientists. They include Steve Strauss, Kevin Folta and Alison Van Eenennaam, who agreed to participate with three Cornell scientists in an "Ask Me Anything About GMOs" open discussion initially planned for the GreenStar Co-op.

But anti-GMO activists geared up to kill the public debate. As the Alliance newsletter reports:

Soon, accusations and indictments came from literally all across the country, shutting down what is at the heart of democratic cooperation: the right of diverse voices to be heard.

Really? Now we can't even talk publicly about GMOs without whipping the antis into a frenzy?

Rather than cause any more pilikia for the GreenStar Co-Op, the Alliance voluntarily moved the event to the Unitarian Church, and the directors of the Co-Op and the Alliance released a joint statement:

GreenStar has always taken a strong, anti-GMO position. It is a member of the Non-GMO project, GMO products are characterized as “discouraged” in our stores, and we do not carry them if at all possible. GreenStar is concerned that the GM industry restricts access to its products by researchers and has compromised the science by doing so. The co-op supports GM labeling.

The Cornell Alliance for Science encourages evidence-based decision-making around discussions ranging from biotechnology to climate change. It promotes access to innovation to ensure that scientists have access to the tools needed to find innovative solutions to the challenges of the 21st century. The Alliance emphasizes the importance of choice—so that farmers and consumers globally can make their own decisions about what they want to grow and eat.

As organizations and as moderators, we do not agree about GMO’s and probably many other things as well, but we do both believe there is a lot that could have been gained from such a discussion promised by this event — especially in our cherished community that prides itself on tolerance, life-long learning, and on embracing diversity.

To which I will add, if we can't even talk these key issues civilly and openly, where are we as a society? If a group of misinformed, strident activists feels the need to silence and stifle a simple discussion, how, really, are they any different than the other political extremists who have caused, and continue to inflict, so much harm to society?

And that's what keeps me involved in this issue. It's too important to turn it over to the hardened ideologues who clamor for transparency from government and corporations, yet refuse to allow an open and honest debate to proceed in a college town.