Dennis T. Avery—
Biotech Foods and the Future of Transgenic Crops

Note: For further information regarding the production and regulation of transgenic crops we recommend researching the Iowa Grain Quality Initiative located on the Iowa State University Web site.

FoodTechSource: Make the case for biotech foods; why is biotechnology so important to our future?

Dennis T. Avery: We start with the fact that the world’s population surge is nearly over. The births per woman in the Third World is down from 6.5 in 1960 to 2.8 today. Stability is 2.1. So, the Third World has come voluntarily and swiftly about 80% of the way to population stability. The current birth trends in the world project to a peak population of about 8.5 billion persons in the year 2035, compared to today’s 6 billion. That’s a substantial increase: 40-some percent. Yet, the bigger challenge for agriculture in the 21st century is affluence. We are currently feeding high quality diets to fewer than 1 billion people. Given the economic growth trends in the world and the surge in economic growth through trade and communications, it’s reasonable to expect that we’ll need to feed high-quality diets to 7 billion people by the year 2040 or 2050—which means we will need a three-fold increase in farm output. And unless we want to destroy tropical forests and millions of wild species, we need to do that from the land we are already farming. However, since most of this farmland is already being farmed with improved seeds, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides, we need another technological kick. The only real candidate on the shelf is biotechnology.

“Since most of the world’s farmland is already being farmed with improved seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, we need another technological kick. The only real candidate on the shelf is biotechnology.”

FTS: You’re making an environmental argument.

Avery: Absolutely. Save the ecosystem. Since the ’60s we have tripled the yield on most of the world’s best farmland. And if we had not done that we would have cleared another 15 million square miles of forest to get today’s food supply. The world at this moment has 16 million square miles of forest. So virtually every living tree in the forest owes its existence to the Green Revolution.

FTS: I want to ask you about the recent incident concerning StarLink corn, which caused the rather extensive recall of taco shells and raised citizen ire because, apparently, biotech corn which had not been approved for human consumption made it’s way into the food chain.

Avery: A very big problem.

FTS: Can you provide some background?

Avery: StarLink corn was produced by a company called Aventis CropScience. It contains a toxin—the Bacillus thuringiensisCry9C protein—which is produced by soil bacteria and which is used by the plant to poison corn borers. The toxin kills caterpillars. It’s a bred-in pesticide. It significantly reduces the cost and somewhat increases the yield of the cornfield. The problem is that before farmers were allowed to start planting it in 1998, the EPA suggested that this particular corn had a slower digestion time than other Bt corn and therefore might be more likely to cause allergies. So they offered authorization for use of the corn as livestock feed-only while further testing was being performed, and Aventis accepted. Next thing you know it shows up in some taco shells and the organic environmental groups are saying this proves that biotech shouldn’t be let out of the lab.
     What it really means in my view, is that the EPA committed a serious environmental bungle, betraying their responsibility to conservation. Biotech is the only thing we have on the shelf that offers any promise for tripling yields, and here is the EPA, trashing the public image of the only way out.

FTS: Why do you believe it’s the EPA’s fault?

Avery: Because they offered the feed-only approval. Cross-contamination of the food supply was an accident waiting to happen. More importantly, when you look at the grounds on which full approval was denied, they are flimsy at best. Susan Hefle, Ph.D., co-director of the very reputable Food Allergy Research & Resource Program at the University of Nebraska has basically questioned the science EPA used to hold it up in the first place.
(Note: In an October 11, 2000 letter to Aventis later submitted to the EPA, Hefle suggested that while not scientifically conclusive, data supplied by Aventis does provide evidence of the “low probability of allergenicity of Cry9C.”)

FTS: Why do you think that is?

Avery: Because there is absolutely no reason to think there is an allergy involved. The proteins—Cry9C—are not from an allergenic source; they don’t have the usual structure of an allergenic protein. People who are allergic to other foods are not cross allergied by StarLink. And in the most recent tests the digestion times and stomach acidity ratios have been “normal.” Plus, with an allergen you have a fairly hefty dosage: 1 to 40% of the protein in the allergenic food. In StarLink it is 0.013%. That means if you ate a serving of peanut butter, you would get 150,000 times the exposure to the peanut allergen as you would the Cry9C protein if you ate tacos every day for a year.

FTS: Is that part of the recently released independent lab reports?

Avery: The digestion times, yes. The study is from independent lab called Novigen—a lab report for Aventis, which Aventis then submitted to EPA.

FTS: As part of the further testing?

Avery: Yes. Plus, Aventis is asking for a temporary food approval to use up the grain that is currently in the pipeline. And I don’t imagine they will get that. However, I do understand that they have identified and either recovered or accounted for 23.7 out of 25 million bushels. Which is a nifty performance.

FTS: But for now it’s been pulled off the market completely, correct? And the EPA claims 14 people have complained to federal officials of having adverse reactions to food products made from StarLink.

Avery: And there will be lawsuits galore. On all sides.

FTS: There are dangers inherent in biotechnologically altered food, are there not?

“In biotech the two greatest dangers are escapes into nature and allergenics; thusfar we haven’t found even a skin rash attributable to a biotech release.”

Avery: Yes, of course there are dangers. But there are dangers in the use of pesticides. There are dangers in cross-breeding if you don’t back cross to get the undesirable elements out of your genetic creation. And in biotech the two greatest dangers are escapes into nature and allergenics.
     Now, I can dispose of the allergenics very quickly: we haven’t found even a skin rash attributable to a biotech release. And we are not only screening all releases for allergenicity, as the StarLink case demonstrates, we are also turning the biotech researchers loose to eliminate the natural allergins in foods like peanuts, milk and brazil nuts. So there’s almost no doubt that biotech will reduce our allergy problems rather than increase them. As for releases into nature, why take a chance: let’s make all the biotech organisms sterile.

FTS: Is that general practice?

Avery: Unfortunately, no. It was suggested as a biotech strategy by the USDA’s Agriculture Research Service—to breed in a terminator gene that would make the crops sterile. But critics claimed this would force third-world farmers to buy seed every year from the “big monopolistic seed manufacturers” and they created such an uproar terminator gene development was dropped.

FTS: What was the source of the StarLink cross contamination?

Avery: I suspect it happened on many levels—accidental mixing during storage, storage in contaminated elevators, cross pollination in the fields... As I said, this was an accident waiting to happen.

FTS: Ultimately, who should have foreseen the inevitability of the cross-contamination? Or is there shared fault in this instance?

Avery: In my opinion, the responsibility lies with the EPA. They offered the partial approval, right? Well, is it not their job to look at the regulatory implications of the regulation they write?!

FTS: What about the manufacturing sector? What about Aventis? Shouldn’t they have also recognized the potential for disaster? Or were they just too eager to gain any sort of authorization for the use of their production?

Avery: Sure, it was partially that. But I think they felt convinced of the safety of their product and felt they would get a relatively quick approval for food use. Bad mistake on their part.

FTS: Does this increase the likelihood of a two-tiered marketing system: one for genetically modified produce and one for non-genetically modified produce?

Avery: I believe that would be the wrong solution. I am hoping the EPA will recognize there is no place for feed-only authorizations. Just look at the damage it has caused. The public is being completely misinformed, while another biotech company is going to be severely punished financially. And it will effect all of the biotech stocks in the short term. I think it’s a severe problem for the industry and for the world.

FTS: How do you see this playing out in the long term?

“The optimistic element in all this is that the First World won’t control the future of biotech. China will.”

Avery: The optimistic element in all this is that the First World won’t control the future of biotech. China will. Two years ago I wrote that China had the scientific manpower, the big internal market, the desperate need for additional food even though it didn’t have more land or water to commit, and no need to worry about Greenpeace saying things in the Beijing Daily. And they now have twice as many biotech releases as we do, they have 1 million farmers eagerly growing the crops—because their costs are lower and their profits are higher. In the case of their cotton and rice farmers, who used to trudge back and forth 15 or 20 times a year with their backpack, spraying and walking through their own spray path, and who got serious acne and clouded retinas and nervous ticks and all this stuff, now have genetically modified plants that produce natural pesticides. And the Chinese have just commercialized slow ripening tomatoes and virus-free peppers. Higher yields: it’s one of their top three science priorities.

FTS: From a public relations stance, how damaging has this episode been to the public perception of biotech?

Avery: Well, the farmers are caught in the middle. They don’t like this at all. And the public needs to be made to understand that high yields are the key to wildlife conservation in the 21st century. Responsible people need to be making these points in the public media. I just returned from giving a presentation at Skidmore College in upstate New York...very liberal, very affluent, but with-it kids, who were dead set against the idea of biotechnology until I started talking. And by the end of the day, the last undergraduate who was still holding out stormed out of the room disgusted with her peers and saying “We’re all doomed” because I’d won them over. And one of the local organic farmers came to the meeting demanding the students support local organic farmers. Given the global implications for the ecosystem, it sounded like the most selfish argument you’d ever heard. You know, to hell with the tropical forests.
     Recently, Washington State put a corn gene into a rice plant so it conducts photosynthesis at a higher rate, and you get 35% more yield. This is the most whopping yield in rice since the Chinese learned to hybridize it back in the ’70s. If you implement this one biotech breakthrough on a global basis it would save as much land for nature as there is in the country of France. Why is the government not excited about this? Why are they not telling the American public?

FTS: But you cannot argue, can you, against the issue that there should be some concern here in regulating biotech releases.

Avery: Absolutely. I have never said anything but that we needed honest, science-based risk assessing regulation.

FTS: I am just trying to understand what you consider the perceived dangers to be. For example in China, which can do pretty much what it wants in this field, what is the possibility that they might come up with something that is a danger to the ecosystem? Are regulatory agencies necessary or do you believe the industry should be self-regulating?

Avery: By all means the agencies are necessary. But I think you have to assume that in China they have put it in the hands of their scientists and told them: Do good without doing collateral damage. It’s still early in the game but so far they have not produced collateral damage. Ideally, however, I am more comfortable with independent regulatory agencies such as we have in the United States. But there is still is massive responsibility on the part of those regulatory agencies to balance global need and ...Let’s put it this way: in the next 40 years if we do not triple the yields on every acre of land we are now farming, we will see hungry people clearing massive amounts of wildlife habitat to grow chicken seed. What’s our alternative?