Industry groups and environmental organisations have placed heavy pressure on biotech companies to move away from producing medicinal proteins through the genetic engineering of staple food plants. But while some companies have switched to non-staple crops like tobacco and safflower, Ventria Bioscience, based in Sacramento, California, US, is ploughing ahead with rice.
Ventria鈥檚 GM rice stirred much controversy in the US this week. 鈥淣obody wants this stuff near food crops,鈥� says Bob Papanos of the US Rice Producers Association in Houston, Texas.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has already granted a permit to Ventria to expand its operation to involve 335 acres this year. Typically such companies do not use all of the acreage they are granted permission to farm. Ventria only used a fraction of its allocation in 2004, but this proportion is on the increase, experts say.
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Mother鈥檚 milk
Watchdog groups and environmentalists fear there is a small chance the proteins genetically engineered into the company鈥檚 rice 鈥� which aim to treat diarrhoea in infants 鈥� could accidentally get incorporated into rice grown for human consumption.
Ventria鈥檚 rice contains genes modelled on the human proteins lactoferrin and lysozyme, which are found in mother鈥檚 milk.
Scott Deeter, chief executive of Ventria, says that the possibility the engineered rice could contaminate other harvests is extremely remote because the crop is grown in North Carolina, far away from other rice plantations.
鈥淥bviously one of our goals here is to take biotechnology to the global community, so it has to be affordable,鈥� says Deeter, adding that rice is an ideal plant suited to this purpose. And while Papnos argues that medicinal proteins should not be churned out by rice, he acknowledges that the plant is 鈥渁 perfect factory鈥� for making them.
Accidents happen
But others disagree. 鈥淥ur position is that they don鈥檛 need to put these into food crops,鈥� says Doreen Stabinsky, a science adviser for conservationists Greenpeace USA. The organisation advocates that companies try genetically manipulating organisms such as yeast, which can be easily confined to the laboratory.
鈥淲e know that accidents happen. They鈥檝e happened already,鈥� she adds, referring to a 2002 announcement by the USDA and US Food and Drug Administration that genetically modified corn from the ProdiGene company 鈥� designed to grow enzymes for medicinal and industrial use 鈥� was discovered growing in two soybean plots in the states of Iowa and Nebraska.
鈥淚f you look at the number of field tests [for genetically modified crops] before and after that incident, it radically decreased,鈥� Stabinsky comments.
Corn falls
A report from the environmental group Friends of the Earth reported that 19 permits were issued by the US government in 2001 for outdoor field trials of crops genetically engineered to produce industrial or pharmaceutical compounds.
The next year only half as many permits were granted, and the number dropped to as few as six in 2003. The number of permits is still below its peak 鈥� regulators issued 11 in 2005.
The report also says that plants genetically modified for industrial or medicinal purposes represent roughly 1.5% of overall US field trials for transgenic crops. And the numbers also reveal a decline in efforts to plant engineered staple food crops. Permits to grow corn altered for pharmaceutical purposes, for example, fell from 13 in 2001 to one in 2005.
