Trade war looms over GE loaves

The attempt to sell United States-grown genetically engineered wheat in Britain is likely to light the blue touchpaper in a simmering trade row with Europe over the technology.

Monsanto, the world's leading agricultural biotechnology company, has begun field trials of a genetically modified breed of wheat, which it hopes to start marketing - initially in America - in 2003.

It would herald the arrival of the GE loaf.

If the wheat becomes widely grown by North American farmers, as Monsanto expects, GE ingredients may inevitably end up in British bread, whether consumers like it or not.

Field trials of GE spring wheat have begun on experimental farms in the American prairies, where the crop is being tested for yield, herbicide resistance and other important characteristics that could affect its mass production.

The company says it is also looking at the potential environmental impact of the new strain, a genetically complex plant that is the result of cross-breeding experiments by Neolithic farmers many thousands of years ago.

One problem is that the gene-carrying chromosomes of wheat are a collection of genomes from three different species of wild grass, from which the cereal was bred by the first farmers.

Monsanto has to ensure that the herbicide-resistance genes it inserts into the wheat are incorporated only into the genome that the crop does not share with a common wild relative, the jointed goat grass.

"Wheat is pretty much self-fertilised, but on the rare occasions when it does outcross, it will not transfer the trait," said Mark Buckingham, of Monsanto.

"You've got to make sure that the insertion occurs in the genome of wheat that does not occur in jointed goat grass so then they won't be cross-fertilised in respect of this inserted trait."

Initially, the wheat is being modified to include the herbicide-resistance gene for glyphosate, the active ingredient of Monsanto's all-purpose weedkiller Roundup. Like other herbicide-resistant crops, the wheat will survive being sprayed with glyphosate, which destroys all weeds in a field.

Environmentalists have questioned whether it is possible to ensure that herbicide-resistance genes can be made to stay in the intended crop and not be transferred to nearby weeds, making them resistant "super pests."

Another concern is whether such GE crops are safe to eat.

The US Food and Drug Administration has already conducted extensive assessments on food-safety tests performed on other herbicide-resistant crops and has so far given them a clean bill of health.

One of the tests includes a measurement of a product's allergenicity - whether the genetic modification makes a food more likely to cause an allergic reaction in sensitive consumers.

This is especially important with wheat because a substantial minority of people have coeliac disease, an intolerance to the gluten protein present in wheat.

Another research idea was to incorporate a substance called thyrodoxin into wheat, to make bread proteins more digestible.

American researchers' early experiments suggested wheat could be made 100 times less allergenic by such genetic modification.

But these visions of the GE loaf of the future will rest on whether American trade negotiators can convince the European Union to amend its insistence on the mandatory labelling of GE products.

American officials and the biotechnology industry are nervous that consumers will shy away from products clearly labelled as containing GE ingredients.

One senior American trade negotiator likened the labelling to saying that a cereals product was "rat faeces-free," which at the moment was impossible to guarantee because all cereals contain minute traces of rodent droppings.

The FDA's view is that labelling is necessary only if a product is materially different from a non-GE equivalent.

It is the argument of "substantial equivalence" that European greens have rejected in favour of the "precautionary principle," which Americans see as restricting trade under the guise of scientific safety.

The EU - and Britain's Food Standards Agency - takes the view that consumers should have the choice and be allowed to make up their own minds.

It is an attitude that evolved out of the mad cow disease crisis, which has had hardly any impact in America, where one in three consumers is totally unaware he or she has been eating GE food for years.

Monsanto's Mark Buckingham said the impasse with Europe over mandatory labelling was having a serious impact on the other side of the Atlantic.

"It is a huge issue for Monsanto that the regulatory system is completely stalled. It impacts farmers' perception of the market for their products. US farmers value the European market for all their products," he said.

"But we are not going to not launch a new product because of lack of European approval ... because that would mean European politicians have a veto on what technology we should make available to North American farmers."

The crunch could come over GE wheat.

- INDEPENDENT

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