April 26, 2006

Healthy Omega-3-Enhanced Oil in Biotech Pipeline

Within a few years, biotechnology will allow consumers to get their Omega-3 fatty acids from soybean oil instead of fish. Researchers are currently working to gather the data that will prove the health benefit claims of nutritionally enhanced food to the Food and Drug Administration and begin to develop consumer interest and support.

Biotech companies, food manufacturers and health associations will need to join together to make these products and ideas successful before they reach store shelves according to Richard Forshee, deputy director of the Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy at the University of Maryland.

Forshee and Maureen Storey, director of the center, recently presented a model for quantifying the public health benefit of genetically modified foods at the 2006 Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) conference in Chicago. Their study looked at the effects of adding Omega-3 fatty acids to soybeans and canola, following the same methods used to evaluate the health benefits of non-biotech enriched foods, such as milk with added vitamin D and calcium-fortified orange juice. The soy and canola plants would be used to produce cooking oils to manufacture foods such as potato chips and salad dressing.

Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to improve heart health. Currently, fish is the best food source of these acids, but over 80 percent of consumers say they eat fish less than twice a week, the frequency recommended by the American Heart Association, according to Storey. About 10 percent of consumers say they never eat fish. “We have a lot of room for improvement” in the American diet, Storey said. “And that's where (agricultural) biotechnology can help.”

Biotech companies and food manufacturers see a business opportunity and are working to create products with added health claims that consumers want. According to Robb Fraley, chief technology officer at Monsanto, if everything works out, we may begin seeing salad dressings, soy milks, margarines, yogurts and other foods including Omega-3-enriched oils after 2010. This would open the door to new ways of increasing Omega-3s in consumer’s diets.

While the early results of the study Forshee and Storey presented are promising, they say there is more research that needs to be undertaken. Forshee says they must make sure there are no unwanted health impacts from eating excessive amounts of the Omega-3-enhanced oils. Storey said that complications are “not terribly likely because (the oil) will be in foods that are self-limiting...You'd get full” before eating enough to be harmful. Also, scientists must confirm that the particular type of Omega-3 fatty acid added to crops – stearidonic acid, or SDA – delivers the same health benefits as the type occurring in fish, docosahexaenoic acid.

“Scientists work to fatten up soybeans with the good stuff Monsanto, others try to add benefits of Omega-3s to new foods,” Rachel Melcer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

High Cost of Entry, Regulation Limit Biotech Solutions

According to Roger Beachy, president of the Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, improved regulatory processes for biotechnology could help universities and public entities conduct research on smaller market crops and toward reduction of plant diseases. “The impact of regulatory costs on getting a transgenic crop to the field and commercialized is very high,” Beachy said. Because commercialization of a biotech product can run between $1 million to $50 million, the majority of work so far has been done on high-return crops, such as cotton, corn and soybeans, he said.

During his keynote address to the Molecular and Environmental Plant Sciences Symposium at Texas A&M University, Beachy said he felt like “we are being hamstrung…by current policies on regulation and the cost that regulation imposes.”

He noted that the high cost of commercialization has caused difficulty in developing biotech crops such as vegetables. According to Beachy, less research means these crops will continue to be treated with chemical pesticides.

Beachy continued by saying, “Don’t get me wrong, regulation is important, but let's do it with a sense of what agriculture is and can be, and how biotechnology can play an important role…We don’t want to expose the public to danger…My point is there are some things out there that we know are safe.”

“Fewer restrictions will lead to advancements in transgenic crops,” Blair Fannin, Southwest Farm Press

Australia’s Ag Competitiveness Depends on GM Acceptance

February’s World Trade Organization (WTO) interim ruling condemned the unscientific moratoria on genetically modified (GM) crops, maintained by member states, created headlines and media attention in Europe and North America, but hardly received mention in Australia. Whether or not the EU opens to GM crops, the WTO’s decision will affect others around the world, including Australia.

Despite scientific-based evaluation and approvals by Australia’s Office of the Gene Technology Regulator, Australian states (except Queensland) continue to maintain moratoria on GM crops other than cotton and carnations. Dr. Glenn Tong, chief executive of the Molecular Plant Breeding Cooperative Research Centre thinks that these moratoria cost Australian farmers access to GM technology, and are also damaging Australia's international competitiveness.

According to Tong, the debate about GM technology continues to include misinformation, which continues to reinforce the widespread suspicion that GM crops are overly “risky.” Discussions may be much different when some state moratoria come up for review in the near future since major health agencies such as the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations have both endorsed GM crops, stating that they pose no risk to humans or the environment.

However Australia decides to approach the GM issue, it will affect the country’s competitiveness for years to come, Tong says.

“Australia's fear of GM crops is hampering our competitiveness,” Canberra Times (Australia)

Philippines Looks to Biotech to Save Abaca Industry

Agriculturists from the Philippine Fiber Industry Development Authority (FIDA) are working to develop a genetically modified abaca plant in hopes of saving an industry threatened by three currently uncontrollable diseases. According to Cecille Gloria Soriano, FIDA administrator, the rapid infection of abaca mosaic, abaca bunchy-top virus and abaca bract mosaic threatens the Philippine’s export revenues.

Abaca exports provide the Philippines with an annual income of $76 million and account for about 85 percent of the world’s supply. About 1.5 million Filipinos depend on abaca for a living. In 2004 there were more than 77,500 farmers growing more than 127,250 hectares of abaca, according to FIDA estimates. Soriano notes that in 2002, over 7,750 hectares of abaca were infected, rising in 2003 to 23,000 hectares lost to infection.

“We in FIDA believe that the only permanent method to control the disease is by developing GMA [genetically-modified abaca],” says Josephine Regalado, chief of the FIDA crop research division.

Regalado said a new biotech breed of abaca is crucial in saving the industry since conventional methods have limitations. FIDA is currently working with bunchy-top virus-resistant plants at the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in the University of the Philippines in Diliman and in Los Baños.

Abaca is used in the production of cordage, pulp, fibercraft, cosmetics, and in fiber composites in car manufacturing.

“Genetically Modified Abaca Being Cultured,” Mercedes E. Rullan, Manila Times