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promoting biopharming response to critics



February 18, 2003
Prof. Joe Cummins
e-mail: jcummins@uwo.ca
“ Promoting unsafe biopharming in Canada both at home and in the third world” Biopharming is the use of transgenic crops containing human or other animal genes to produce expensive pharmaceutical proteins and vaccines at reduced cost. Biopharming has been promoted by universities, the biotechnology industry and by the United States and Canadian governments with little thought given to the consequences of contaminating the crop plant gene pool with genes that have profoundly toxic side effects on healthy humans, farm animals and wildlife. The production of pharm crops has been promoted and farmers recruited to participate in field production of the valuable crops with marginal concern given to the consequence of food crop gene pollution. Inevitably, field production led to at least one detected instance of food crop pollution by a biopharmaceutical gene and its product, the catastrophe was recounted by Ho (1). The problems associated with biopharming of crops producing vaccines and cytokines was reported by Cummins (2,3,4). Any biopharmaceutical crop grown in the open environment must be carefully monitored regarding spread of pollen to nearby cropland or to weedy relatives , surface and groundwater should be monitored for the biopharmacuetical protein and airborn dust and debris from the damaged plant parts should be monitored but it is clear that monitoring has been very perfunctory. Growing plots should be well isolated from human habitation to avoid random contact leading to human exposure. Even though the pollution of a food crop following the field release of a pharm crop (the pharm crop was transgenic corn modified with a gene for a vaccine for pig diarrhea) in the United States was widely reported worldwide most Canadians are unaware of the extensive creation and field testing of biopharmaceutical crops in Canada. The government bureaucracy maintains secrecy over the actual pharm crops and the locations of their field testing by designating the operations confidential business information (CBI). At the same time an industry group (Canadagriculture) linked to Agriculture Canada actively promotes biopharmaceutical crop production both in Canada and in the third world. The Emonds Institute recently uncovered efforts to solicit farm plots and growers for pharm crop growing and promised that there would be extraordinarily rich returns for participants (5).Canadagriculture’s website (6) was used to circulate the following promotion:” Wanted: Contract growers Asking Price: $0 Ad Placed On: 12/2/02 Contact: brian marshall (agcan@molecularfarming.com)
We need more contract growers to join the 30,000 acres we already have
from Canada on our Global Database. Our aim is the Environmentally SAFE
growing of new NONFOOD Molecular Crops. More information by visiting
http://www.molecularfarming.com/database.html”;
The molecular farming data base includes the following applicants for pharm crop production: The data base lists a number of interesting areas of proposed biopharmaceutical production based on isolation and security. The offerings included the following countries: Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Panama, Romania, Tunisia, Indonesia and Guinea among many others. Canada had a number of offerings the most interesting being 100 Acres - { Toronto }. There is nowhere in metro Toronto where there is a reasonable expectation of isolation from random human contact and the millions of inhabitants pose a huge target for released biopharmaceutical pollution. Canada seems to have lost a sense of responsibility to the human population and recklessly promotes the interests of pharmaceutical corporations. The actual testing or production of pharm crops seems to be lost in a bureaucratic “black hole” and extracting truthful information from the bureaucracy is a nightmare. The testing and production of hirudin transgenic canola illustrates the fundamental problem. Hirudin is an anticoagulant drug obtained from a blood leech, it is capable of producing internal bleeding if it is consumed inappropriately. The leech hirudin gene was used to create transgenic canola in which the drug protein was accumulated in the oil bodies of canola seeds(7). An article by Giddings et al (8) stated “Oilseed rape transgenic for hirudin is now grown commercially in Canada by SemBioSys (Calgary, Canada). That comment was quoted by reviewers in other authoritative journals and farm newspapers reported that production was commencing near Kamloops, British Columbia. I began trying to obtain concrete information on hirudin production in Canada January 2003, Dr. Yarrow of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (cfia) commented: “Thank you for your earlier e-mail and please accept my apologies for not getting back to you sooner. The concern you have raised is a very important one - we will be actively investigating. Notwithstanding our investigation, to our knowledge, there is no commercial production of hirudin in the outside environment in Canada. The CFIA (or rather AAFC at the time, prior to the formation of the Agency) authorized confined research field trials of this nature in the mid-nineties, but has not done so since. To our knowledge, the proponents of these field trials did not pursue the hirudin production initiatives, which were characterized at the time as proof of concept activities. Once I have more information about the source of the journal's information, etc, I will e-mail you again.”
Dr. Yarrow passed the investigation to Dr. Finstad of CFIA who replied :
“Thank you for your email inquiring about commercial production of
hirudin in canola.  Dr. Yarrow has asked me to investigate this claim.
I have confirmed with SemBioSys Genetics Inc. that they have not engaged
in any commercial production of hirudin in canola.  The statement in
Nature Biotechnology 18:1151-1155 is incorrect.  Although SemBioSys did
undertake authorized confined research field trials of this plant
material in Canada between 1994 and 1997, they have not continued this
project.  The company is aware of the inaccurate statement in Nature
Biotechnology and has publicly confirmed that the statement is untrue.
I hope this addresses your concerns.”
The CFIA did not really address all of my concerns because I had earlier and repeatedly asked “where were the confined field trials conducted” In Canada confined field trials are never confined, they are just surrounded by crops CFIA thinks will not be pollinated by canola. The location of the field trials might be useful to any farm family whose members experience untoward internal bleeding. Finally, Agriculture Canada and its small sub-department CFIA seems to have grown fully schizophrenic They faithfully and fanatically support creation and dissemination of transgenic food crops, they also faithfully and fanatically support creation and dissemination of transgenic biopharmaceutical crops. However, gene pollution from the biopharmaceutical crops will eliminate the market for the transgenic food crops. The Agriculture Canada remedy for this fundamental problem seems to be to be sneaky and underhanded about the testing and production of biopharmaceutical crops and to encourage the dangerous biopharmaceutical production in third world countries. The Canadian bureaucrats seem to believe that a genetically modified Ponzi game is the remedy to fundamental problem of the coexistence of transgenic food crops and transgenic biopharmaceutical crops . [A Ponzi Game is one in which managers pay out early dividends from the intake of investors in the game, the managers normally “fly the coop” before the subterfuge is uncovered, in the transgenic Ponzi game the participants may have to finally pay heavy costs to those they injure].
References
1.Ho,M. “Pharmegeddon, Science in Society 2003, 17, 23-24
http://www.i-sis.org.uk
2. Cummins,J. “ Poison pharm crops near you”, Science in Society 2002, 15, 16 http://www.i-sis.org.uk 3. Cummins,J. “.Risk of edible transgenic vaccines “Science in Society 2003, 17, 24 http://www.i-sis.org.uk
4. Cummins, J   “ Pharming Cytokines in Transgenic Crops”  31st January 2003
http://www.i-sis.org.uk
5. Burrows, B. “Taking dirty industry south” Feb, 12,2003 Edmonds Institute Alert
6. Canada Agriculture Online “Wanted: Contract growers”
http://www.agcanada.com/ClassifiedAds/Wanted/Contractgrow
7. Parmenter DL, Boothe JG, van Rooijen GJ, Yeung EC, Moloney MM. “Production of biologically active hirudin in plant seeds using oleosin partitioning.” Plant Mol Biol 1995 Dec;29(6):1167-80 8. Giddings,G.,Allison,G.,Brooks,D. and Carter, A. “Transgenic plants as factories for biopharmaceuticals” Nature Biotech. 2000 ,18,1151-55

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