Transcript GMO-Vierlingx - Will Brownsberger

The Science of Meaningful
GMO Labeling
October 20, 2015
Elizabeth Vierling
Distinguished Professor
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
UMass Amherst
What I want to communicate
What is my bias?
What are the major “transgenic crops”
(“GMOs”) today?
Not all GMOs are the same!
Many foods made from GMO plants have little
or NO GMO ingredients!
GMO technology can be ONE way to improve
agriculture
What is my bias?
 Use knowledge-based processes to understand
potential risks and rewards of new (and old)
technologies
 Protect the right for farmers to farm in
different sustainable ways (and make a living),
and for consumers to choose foods of their
preference
 Concern: Over-heated rhetoric is obscuring the
risks and rewards of GMOs.
– GMOs will double yields and solve all agricultural
problems!!!
– GMOs will kill you, or at least make you sick, and
besides…it’s MONSANTO (buy organic) !!!
I use GMO “technology” to put genes into
plants for basic research and discovery.
“Mouse-eared cress”
(Arabidopsis thaliana)
Mustard family
(Brassicaceae)
Related to Canola, Broccoli,
Cauliflower, Cabbage
Flower with an added
Green Fluorescent protein.
Research support: the National
Science Foundation, USDA, DOE,
National Institutes of Health
My other bias: All GMOs must be
tested, and they are not all the same!
GM crops are evaluated by the EPA,
USDA and FDA for:
• Risks to human health (toxicity &
allergenicity)
• Risks of developing resistance in
target pathogens or pests
• Risks to non-target organisms
• Risks from movement of the GMO
genes
What I want to communicate
What is my bias?
What are the major “transgenic crops”
(“GMOs”) today?
Not all GMOs are the same!
Many foods made from GMO plants have NO
GMO ingredients!
GMO technology can be ONE way to improve
agriculture
cera-gmc.org
The Center for
Environmental Risk
Assessment (CERA):
Dedicated to applying sound
science to assess the risk of
agricultural biotechnologies.
Types of “GMO” crops currently grown
Countries listed in order of number of acres
Note: There is NO “GMO”
rice, wheat, peanut
Major genes in GM crops today
 Herbicide tolerance (HT): Corn, soybean,
canola, cotton, sugar beet, alfalfa
“Roundup Ready”
Gene: EPSP synthase
 Insect Resistance (Bt): Corn, Cotton
“Bacillus thuringensis toxin”
Gene: Bt toxin
 Papaya ring spot virus resistance: Papaya
Gene: RSV protein
Because there are different kinds
of GMOs ONE “GMO” label is not
informative.
What I want to communicate
What is my bias?
What are the major “transgenic crops”
(“GMOs”) today?
Not all GMOs are the same!
Many foods made from GMO plants have little
or NO GMO ingredients!
GMO technology can be ONE way to improve
agriculture
The four major Macromolecules of life:
(i.e. big stuff, e.g. relative to an atom)
Nucleic acids: DNA-Deoxyribonucleic
RNA–Ribonucleic acid
acid
Store and transmit information
Proteins:
Made of Amino acids (20 kinds) –
Workhorses of our cells/bodies
Lipids:
Store energy (fat),lots of other functions
Carbohydrates:
Store energy, other stuff too
The four major Macromolecules of life:
(i.e. big stuff, e.g. relative to an atom)
Nucleic acids: DNA-Deoxyribonucleic
RNA–Ribonucleic acid
acid
Store and transmit information
Proteins:
Made of Amino acids (20 kinds) –
Workhorses of our cells/bodies
Lipids:
Store energy (fat),lots of other functions
Carbohydrates:
Store energy, other stuff too
A GMO changes <0.001% of DNA,
and adds 2 more proteins to the
25,000 proteins in the plant
Nucleic acids: DNA-Deoxyribonucleic
RNA–Ribonucleic acid
acid
Store and transmit information
Proteins:
Made of Amino acids (20 kinds) –
Workhorses of our cells/bodies
Corn Oil or Soybean
Oil made from GMO
plants contains no
GMO ingredients –
There is no Protein or
DNA in oils or
carbohydrates.
So a product that
uses corn or soybean
oil as the only
ingredient from a
GMO has NO GMO
material in it.
Contents of
Corn Oil
Products like Tostitos, even if made from
GMO corn, will have so little GMO protein
that, special biochemical techniques would
be required to detect it.
What I want to communicate
What is my bias?
What are the major “transgenic crops”
(“GMOs”) today?
Not all GMOs are the same!
Many foods made from GMO plants have NO
GMO ingredients!
GMO technology can be ONE way to improve
agriculture
Worldwide, preharvest crop loss estimates:
 13.8% due to insects and other arthropods
 11.6% due to disease (fungi, bacteria, and
viruses)
 9.5% due to weeds
Total: 35%
Other losses due to stress:
drought, cold, heat, salinization
The spread of Citrus Greening disease
We have no way to breed citrus for
resistance to this disease, but it
could be done with GMO technology
Disease resistant banana by introducing
a gene from pepper
Resistant
Susceptible
Banana bacterial wilt is destroying plants in
eastern Africa. GM plants carrying a
resistance gene from pepper are resistant to
the disease
Tripathi, L., Mwaka, H., Tripathi, J.N., and Tushemereirwe, W.K. (2010). Expression of sweet pepper Hrap gene in banana
enhances resistance to Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum. Molecular Plant Pathology 11: 721-731.
Where to go from here?
 Each crop, each “trait” (modification) needs
to be evaluated separately.
 We need more agricultural research!
– To understand how to combat pests and disease
– To move away from monoculture towards
sustainable practices
 A single “GMO” Label is NON-INFORMATIVE and
MISLEADING.
Let’s make meaningful labels so that we
can actually make an informed choice:
What GMO “ingredient” has been added?
How much of it is actually present in food?
Thank you
https://sites.biochem.umass.edu/vierlinglab/