Amidst African Famine, Allergy Controversy Flares
September 26, 2002
CHURCHVILLE, VA—In the midst of the drought-driven crop failure in southern Africa, the President of Zambia is risking starvation for hundreds of thousands of his people by refusing to distribute U.S. corn donated as food aid. President Levy Mwanawasa says he’s been told by such anti-biotech groups as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth that the U.S. corn contains “poison”—genetically modified corn kernels that could introduce new allergens into the Zambian consumer population.
Greenpeace and other anti-biotech activists have long claimed allergies as a major risk of biotech foods, but no allergy attack has ever been linked to a genetically modified food product.
In a cruel irony, moreover, U.S. researchers just announced that they’ve disarmed one of nature’s most widespread food allergens—the P34 gene in soybeans. This is powerful evidence that biotechnology will save humans from life-threatening natural allergens, not curse it with new ones.
Nearly eight percent of the planet’s kids (and more than 50 million adults) suffer from food allergies, mostly from such highly nutritious food as soybeans, peanuts, milk, eggs, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, and wheat. The allergies usually express themselves in mild forms—itching, hives, or diarrhea—but occasionally an allergy victim goes into life-threatening anaphylactic shock. (Breathing passages constrict, shutting down the victim’s airflow.)
Until now, the only way for allergic people to avoid severe allergies has been to avoid the offending foods. However, such crops as soybeans, peanuts and wheat are used so widely in so many processed foods that it takes enormous vigilance to avoid them.
A public-private team of researchers has now scored mankind’s first big victory over food allergies. They have genetically “turned off” the allergenic gene in soybeans (Gly m Bd 3sOK/P34). Research still hasn’t discovered what the P34 gene is supposed to do for the soybean, but it causes at least 65 percent of the allergic reactions in soy-sensitive individuals, by binding with antibodies circulating in their bloodstreams.
“This is probably the first time a dominant human allergen has been knocked out of a major food crop using biotechnology,” says Eliot Herman of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. “The simplest approach would be to find a soybean without the protein, but we found that all domestic varieties and [even the] wild soybeans had it.” Thus traditional crossbreeding could not eliminate it.
The successful team included public-sector researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Arkansas medical school, and private-sector researchers from both a chemical company (DuPont) and a seed company (Pioneer Hi-Bred).
The activist claim of biotech allergy risks was originally inspired by the successful prevention of a natural allergen spreading through biotech. In the early 1990s researchers, trying to improve the nutritional content of the soybean borrowed a gene from the Brazil nut—but discovered that the Brazil nut gene carried with it the natural Brazil nut allergen. The project was dropped and no permission for release was even requested.
Allergy risks hit the headlines again in 2000, when traces of StarLink biotech corn were found in a variety of processed American foods. StarLink had been approved for feed use, but not for food, because a potential allergy risk had not been ruled out.
Seventeen consumers claimed they suffered allergy attacks due to StarLink “leaking” into food products. However, tests showed that the Cry9C protein in StarLink was at least 500 times less allergenic than peanut butter. Then, Centers for Disease Control testing found that none of alleged victims had antibodies to the StarLink protein. Whatever attacked the consumers wasn’t StarLink. (Our widely present foodborne bacteria are a far more likely cause.)
More testing is needed to prove the “knockout soybeans” are completely safe for allergenic consumers, but the research team is encouraged that the human blood serum tests have found that the antibodies can’t detect any allergen to bind with in the knockout beans. The hypoallergenic beans will also have to pass agronomic checks for seed production, yield, pest resistance, and oil and protein composition before farmers and processors can release them for use.
The new progress against the soybean allergy underscores again the vast potential of biotechnology.
Greenpeace, meanwhile, not only is putting African lives at risk, but also the lives of every wild creature within reach of the starving people. If Africans are desperate enough to boil roots that they know are poisonous for food, they’ll certainly eat any wild creature they can catch that runs, flies, or swims. In fact, reports from Africa indicate this is already occurring.
No one would suggest that Greenpeace and its largely white membership base in North American and Europe are racially motivated, but its policies nevertheless are hastening the deaths of huge numbers of poor Africans.
It’s time for its leaders to do some serious soul-searching.
This article was published by Knight Ridder Tribune
Dennis T. Avery is based in Churchville, Va., and is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis.
Posted in Commentary |