The Associated Press.
August 3, 2002
Pharmaceutical crops raise questions about liability
By EMILY GERSEMA, Associated Press Writer
KNIERIM, Iowa

In a field near their northern Iowa farmstead,  brothers Bill and
Joe  Horan  have  planted  what  some  say is the future for both
farming and pharmaceuticals.  

Their field has corn genetically altered  to  contain  an  enzyme
that helps cystic fibrosis patients digest food.  

"We're  helping people with pharmaceutical therapeutics.  It is a
different role and it makes you look at agriculture differently,"
Bill Horan says.  This is the second year the  Horans  and  other
farmers  with  the  Iowa  Cooperative have sown the altered seeds
developed  by  Meristem  Therapeutics,   a  French  biotechnology
company.  Meristem purifies the corn after harvest,  extracts the
enzyme and puts it into pills -  a process French scientists  say
is 14 times cheaper than producing the enzyme in a laboratory.  

Other   companies   are   experimenting   with  growing  potatoes
engineered to help obese people  lose  weight  and  nicotine-free
tobacco to help smokers break their habit.  

Leaders  of farm states believe such biological developments will
help steady the bumpy farm economy, keeping farmers on their land
and out of bankruptcy court.  

"Ultimately,  biotechnology is  rural  development,"  Bill  Horan
says.  

There  are  concerns,  though.   Researchers  and consumer groups
wonder if the industry, government and "pharmers" can ensure that
drug-containing crops do not find their way into the food supply.  

The "pharma-crops"  are closely monitored.  To ensure that  seeds
do  not commingle,  the U.S.  Agriculture Department requires the
cooperative to plant the crop at  least  a  mile  from  any  seed
production sites 

Pharmers must plant their crop at least 21 days before or 21 days
after  all  neighbors  within  a  half-mile to a mile radius have
planted theirs, to assure there is no cross-pollination.  

Meristem and the  Horans  have  taken  extra  measures,  planting
male-sterile  corn  so  there is no pollen that could be blown to
nearby fields and detassling the plants.  

"Even if  a  tornado  comes,  there's  nothing  there  to  spread
around," Horan says.  

Animals  could  pass  through the field and eat the product,  but
Dominique Mison,  Meristem's bio-industrial director,  says there
is little danger in that.  

"We  are  sure  that  there  is no toxicity of the product,  even
digested at a high dose," Mison says.  

Critics of genetically engineered crops  are  skeptical  of  such
claims.  

"We  take  a  very  strong position that absolutely none of these
crops should ever be grown in anything  that  isn't  a  contained
field,"  says Joseph Mendelson,  legal director at the Center for
Food Safety in Washington.  

The Bush administration moved a step in  that  direction  Friday.
The  White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said the
Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection  Agency
should  do  preliminary  safety  assessments  early  in the field
trials of experimental crops.  

"There's no question that growing these crops right now,  without
having  any  type  of good requirements in place ...  is a recipe
for very serious contamination," Mendelson said.  

Biotech companies are aware of the hazards.  

In October 2000,  a genetic testing company found an altered corn
approved  for animals but not for humans had ended up in the food
supply,  contaminating products such as taco shells.   Scientists
feared  human  allergies  to StarLink corn but no link was firmly
established.  The cleanup cost the seed's manufacturer,  Aventis,
and farm and food industries millions of dollars.  

"What  was  a  good  lesson from StarLink was that a problem like
that can be managed,"  says  Stephen  Howell,  director  of  Iowa
State's Plant Sciences Institute.  

The Biotechnology Industry Organization says consumers should not
expect to see acres and acres of pharma-crops anytime soon.  

The  Washington-based group's spokeswoman,  Lisa Dry,  says it is
less like farming than a living laboratory, where crops are grown
by a few farmers in small plots and need constant monitoring.  

Rick Carlson of Council Bluffs, Iowa,  is looking at pharma-crops
not  as a farmer but the parent of Justin,  14,  and Candace,  9,
whose cystic fibrosis could be treated  and  maybe  someday  even
cured by genetically altered plants.  

The  chronic,  genetic  disease  is  attacking their body's mucus
glands,  making it difficult to digest fats in food.   They  must
take  pills  containing an enzyme,  lipase,  to help their bodies
digest.  

"When  it  comes  to  this  development-   with  regard  to   the
plant-based  enzymes  to assist with their digestions-  that will
allow them to better cope with their disease," says Carlson.