ONE of the biggest hurdles in selling genetically modified crops to sceptical consumers, especially in Europe, has been that there was nothing in it for them. All the traits commercialised so far, such as herbicide resistance, benefit farmers. So it is a major 鈥� and pleasant 鈥� surprise to find that the agribiotech company Monsanto has created a crop specifically to appeal to health-conscious westerners. This is not food for poor people, like rice rich in vitamin A or potatoes packed with protein, but the first commercial GM crop designed for well-heeled consumers.
Monsanto鈥檚 new variety of soya produces unusually low levels of linolenic acid. When used in processed food, it should reduce the amount of saturated fat in the product, the company says (see 鈥淲ill low-fat foods sway biotech sceptics?鈥�). And this is just the start. Monsanto has plans for a range of healthier crops, including soya that produces omega-3 oils, the fatty acids found in fish that are credited with staving off heart disease.
The new variety was created specially for the US market, where new food labelling rules will give products low in saturated fat a commercial edge. This is, however, unlikely to persuade sceptical consumers, who will ask if this is the best Monsanto can do. After all, processed foods do not figure prominently in what most people consider a healthy diet.
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The new soya also manages to muddy the waters over what GM really means. The low-linolenic-acid trait was created using conventional breeding, and the resulting plants were cross-bred with herbicide-resistant GM soya to produce the new variety. So the crop鈥檚 only GM attribute remains its herbicide resistance.
From the European perspective this looks like an odd decision. Why develop a consumer-friendly crop using conventional techniques only to add an unrelated GM trait? Some critics see this as a stealth tactic designed to make GM more acceptable to European consumers. But the truth is more prosaic: the soya is designed to be grown in the US, where farmers have embraced GM technology and consumers don鈥檛 share Europe鈥檚 concerns.
Even so, foods made with the new soya could soon be heading to Europe. Monsanto鈥檚 herbicide-resistant soya is already licensed for sale in Europe, and because no extra genetic engineering was performed to create the new variety, it will be covered by the same licence.
So will the new variety reverse Monsanto鈥檚 fortunes in Europe? Probably not, as critics will continue to point to concerns such as the spreading of GM pollen to organic farms, the indirect damage to wildlife from the herbicide-spraying schedules used on GM crops, and the undesirability of placing food production in the hands of a few corporations. Nevertheless, designing crops for consumers and for specific markets is a step in the right direction.