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.

Mustard family(Brassicaceae)

Related to Canola, Broccoli, Cauliflower,

Cabbage

“Mouse-eared cress” (Arabidopsis thaliana)

Research support: the National Science Foundation, USDA, DOE, National Institutes of Health

Flower with an added Green Fluorescent protein.

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 grownCountries 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 toxinPapaya ring spot virus resistance:

PapayaGene: 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 acid

RNA–Ribonucleic 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 acid

RNA–Ribonucleic 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 acid

RNA–Ribonucleic 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

Other losses due to stress: drought, cold, heat, salinization

Total: 35%

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 SusceptibleBanana bacterial wilt is destroying plants in eastern Africa. GM plants carrying a resistance gene from pepper are resistant to the diseaseTripathi, 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?

https://sites.biochem.umass.edu/vierlinglab/

Thank you