Dr. Charles Benbrook | Food Safety News

GE Crop Risk Assessment Challenges: An Overview

Dr. Charles Benbrook — Mon, 06 May 2013 05:03:34 +0000

There have been dramatic changes in the transgenic composition of GE corn and soybeans over the last five years, coupled with a substantial increase in reliance on pesticides and Bt toxins. Compared to the first five years of commercial use (1996-2000), today’s GE corn and soybeans in the U.S. require:

About twice as much herbicide per acre, with glyphosate/Roundup accounting for essentially all the growth;
In corn, two to six Bt toxins to deal with European corn borer and the corn rootworm complex;
Delayed release, systemic seed treatments including at least two insecticides and two fungicides, one of which is a nicotinyl implicated in honey bee Colony Collapse Disorder;
A return to corn soil insecticide use as a component of Bt-gene, resistance-management programs (eroding a portion of the reduction in insecticide use brought about by Bt corn);
Significant and historically unprecedented increases in fungicide use on corn (11 percent of crop acres were treated in latest USDA pesticide use survey [2010], no more than 1 percent was treated previously); and
Approval and commercial planting in the U.S. of the first GE crop that will be consumed in significant quantities by humans in a largely unprocessed form – Bt and RR sweetcorn.

The move to stacked varieties expressing multiple traits, coupled with the above changes in the intensity of chemical use required to bring GE crops to harvest, raises new questions about new routes of exposure and about cumulative levels of exposure to GE proteins, potential allergens and pesticides, especially via drinking water, certain foods made from corn or soybeans, and, for infants, breast milk, cow’s milk, soymilk, and formula. It also raises new testing challenges arising from the likely presence of multiple transgenes, DNA fragments, promoters, regulatory sequences and chemicals from pesticides (active ingredients, metabolites, surfactants, adjuvants, etc). These changes pose serious risk assessment challenges that are, for the most part, being ignored by the industry and regulatory authorities. New information is essential to convince regulators that they must invest substantially more public resources in the independent testing of GE crop safety. The two core goals for a new testing initiative should be to (a) resolve lingering uncertainty over the safety of the GE traits currently on the market, and (b) develop advanced testing methods and protocols for application in the testing of future GE food traits. At a minimum, the following steps should be taken to explore key questions about today’s GE crops:

1. Quantification of the levels of pesticides and their metabolites/breakdown products associated with GE crops in key foods and human fluids (blood and urine), encompassing initially glyphosate, AMPA, nicotinyl seed treatments and Bt proteins. Top priority foods to test include whole wheat grain and flour, whole wheat bread, and soy-derived ingredients and foods. Essential liquids to test include cow’s milk, breast milk, soymilk and infant formula.

2. Development of methods to accurately quantify GE protein exposure levels in tissues and organs of concern in evaluating human health risks. The research would also be designed to track the breakdown products formed as GE proteins move through the digestive system. Methods would be developed to identify the form of novel proteins or other phytochemicals from GE foods, as well as the quantities passing from the GI tract into the bloodstream, from the blood to the kidneys and liver, and in the case of pregnant women, across the blood-brain barrier.

3. Methods must be developed to assess the impacts on fetal development following pre-natal exposure to GE proteins via maternal blood flows. Focus should be on epigenetic patterns of gene expression and the frequency of auto-immune diseases including food allergies, asthma and behavioral problems.

4. In light of novel combinations of exposures, including combinations of glyphosate, AMPA, a nicotinyl insecticide and Bt proteins, short-term cell assays should be used to test for toxic potential of each of these singly and in various combinations. The results can be used to target subsequent, long-term testing.

5. An appropriate, government agency or international organization should fund long-term toxicology and cancer feeding studies in at least two species of laboratory animals on a cross-section of the major traits now in GE varieties. Trials should cover the most widely planted Bt endotoxins alone, the EPSPS gene conferring resistance to glyphosate alone and these two traits in combination. At the conclusion of a first round of testing, the research team should issue recommendations for the design and conduct of future cancer feeding trials applied to GE food traits and render judgments regarding the need for additional testing.

Organic Food and Human Health – Is There a Connection?

Dr. Charles Benbrook — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 07:50:49 +0000

A meta-analysis of the health benefits of organic foods was published in The Annals of Internal Medicine on September 4, 2012. A large team of physicians and graduate students affiliated with the prestigious Stanford Medical School carried out the work. The paper’s basic finding was that consuming organic food does not deliver “clinically significant” improvements in human health. The Stanford press office and several team members communicated the study’s findings in a way that was designed to attract the media and stimulate debate. They obviously accomplished both goals. The global media picked up and covered the paper’s “surprising” findings, which were often accompanied by headlines or commentary asserting, without qualification, that “…organic food delivers no meaningful health benefits…,” or variations on this theme. Media coverage of the study set off the latest round of discussion and spirited debate about whether organic food delivers on its multiple human health-related promises. A small handful of scientists have carefully read, critiqued and summarized the results of the approximately 250 valid studies comparing the nutrient content and safety of organic versus conventional foods. Sophisticated methods have been established to conduct meta-analyses in ways that control for the two dozen or more factors that can influence a given study’s outcomes, in addition to the selection of the farming system (e.g., “conventional” versus “organic”). Many published meta-analyses by experts in this field have reached strikingly different conclusions from this same body of literature. Why? Some people might wonder whether scientists really know how to measure food’s nutritional quality and safety. Others are losing faith in science because so much of it appears to be agenda-driven fodder for PR and political campaigns, and responsive to the highest bidder. As public support for science has dwindled, public interest in science has too often been eroded, or just buried, in the sheer volume of other science “messaging.” The Fundamental Problem with the Stanford Study The many methodological and technical flaws in the Stanford study are laid out clearly in the “Letters to the Editor” that are now posted on the website of The Annals of Internal Medicine. The methodological flaws are serious and because of them, the Stanford study will likely be remembered more for the dust it stirred up than the new light it sheds. But perhaps the most important problem with the Stanford study has remained, for the most part, below the radar. The Stanford team looked for evidence in published studies of a “clinically significant” improvement in human health associated with consumption of organic food. This decision virtually guaranteed the outcome and also set up a straw man that critics of organic food will take pleasure in torching over and over. To a physician, a “clinically significant difference” occurs when a patient comes into the doctor’s office with X problem, which is diagnosed, and the physician then recommends a course of action. It might include medication, a procedure and/or lifestyle changes. The physician draws on evidence from highly refined, often long-term clinical trials that establish a reliable linkage between a defined treatment or course of action and a clinically significant improvement in the patient’s health status. The key characteristic embedded in a “clinically significant difference” is that the doctor must believe that for this specific patient, the person will get better if they do x, y and z, as prescribed by the doctor. If the person does not, the physician knows that he or she will face various consequences, ranging from a sicker and disappointed (or angry) patient to a call from the patient’s lawyer. In nearly all cases, the decision to buy organic food, and the health impacts stemming from that decision, will not rise to the level of delivering – with a high level of reliability – a clinically significant improvement in health outcomes for a person dealing with an acute or chronic illness. We don’t need a meta-analysis to prove this. But does this mean there are no health benefits from consumption of organic food? No, it does not, because so many factors contribute to the etiology of disease. In fact, relatively little is known about what makes one person healthy and another ill. The cause of most cancers remains a mystery, 70 percent of birth defects remain of unknown cause, and even for many common diseases like diabetes, physicians cannot answer the patient’s first and most fundamental question – why did this happen to me? By reducing a number of known risk factors for any one of dozens of health problems, consumption of organic food tips the trajectory of population-wide health outcomes in a more health-promoting direction. By how much, no one knows. Long-term clinical trials involving consumption of organic food have never been done and would be very, very expensive. Consuming organic food does not guarantee any one individual dealing with a health problem a clinically significant improvement in health, because too many other variables and risk factors are in play with each individual. No one knows which risk factor might come into play, worsening an existing problem or creating a new one. The Stanford team ignored this critical distinction between health promotion/disease prevention and bringing about clinically significant improvement in the health of a sick person. Whether this was an act of omission or a poorly executed effort to erode consumer confidence in organic food, everyone who cares about promoting food’s nutritional quality and safety through sound science should expect more from a great medical school and a highly respected medical journal. Dr. Benbrook’s full analysis of the Stanford study can be found here.