Pharming and farmaceuticals

The same technology that can genetically engineer corn, tomatoes or cows to grow faster or produce their own pesticides can be used to make plants and animals produce 'farmaceuticals', plastics, detergents, antibodies, biodegradable plastics, hydraulic oil, biodiesels, fibers, papers or construction materials.

Biotech companies say that 'pharming' (or 'biopharming') would be cheaper than building and running factories, and fruits or biscuits engineered to produce vaccines or medicines could help developing countries where syringes, refrigeration and trained medical staff are scarce.

Pharmaceutical giants argue that the idea is not new, as scientists already make many drugs by harvesting them from genetically modified (GM) bacteria, yeast or hamster ovary cells. But this is done in sterile, isolated conditions. A field of corn growing a contraceptive surrounded by fields of non-GM corn is hardly isolated and is likely to contaminate the surrounding crops.

A spokesperson for the US Food and Drug Administration said in 2002, "They're not going to process them [pharmaceutical crops] anywhere near your food." But although the technology is relatively new and most consumers are unaware that it even exists, several contamination incidents have already occurred. And each time a pharmaceutical crop has contaminated a food crop, or even worked its way into the human food supply, the FDA reassured the public that it was an isolated incident, highly unlikely to ever happen again, and no threat to consumers whatsoever.

Companies like ProdiGene have also proposed 'dual-use' of farmaceutical plants, i.e. they would like to extract the drug or industrial compound and then sell the leftover food for consumption. Incomplete extraction would mean drug or chemical residues in food products and feed.

And as Larry Bohlen, Director of Health and Environment Programs at Friends of the Earth said, "just one mistake by a biotech company and we'll be eating other people 's prescription drugs in our cornflakes."

A history of contamination
June 2001
Tainted pigs show up in sausage at funeral

Pork from GM research pigs stolen from the University of Florida showed up in sausages served at a funeral in High Springs. The Associated Press reported that three GM pigs, killed by injection with barbiturates and chloroform, had been stolen by a university animal technician in January and sold to a butcher. For months, university officials said they had recovered and incinerated all of the meat from the stolen pigs.

The butcher who made the sausages said he and his brother tasted the meat but threw it away because "it didn't taste right."

The stolen pigs were genetically engineered to develop a disorder similar to diabetic blindness in humans. University officials did not know what effect, if any, the treated meat could have on people who ate it.

February 2002
Canadian transgenic pigs end up as chicken feed

Reuters reported that eleven GM research pigs from the University of Guelph in Ontario were made into chicken feed. Eleven piglets engineered to produce more environmentally friendly manure, most of whom were stillborn, were removed from a university freezer and sent to a rendering plant.

The animals, called "enviropigs", contained DNA from the E. coli bacterium and a mouse. The extra gene helps pigs produce an enzyme in their saliva that reduces environmentally harmful phosphorous in their manure.

The 675-ton batch of contaminated feed was sold to at least 30 premises and fed mostly to laying hens whose eggs were sold. Some of the feed was also given to broilers and turkeys.

ProdiGene contaminates corn
September 2002

The USDA ordered 155 acres of corn in Iowa pulled up and incinerated, fearing that pollen from GM corn not approved for human consumption may have contaminated nearby fields of conventional corn.

The GM corn, manufactured by ProdiGene, may have spread pollen at the same time corn in nearby fields were receptive, raising the possibility that transgenes could have spread into ordinary field corn, the USDA said. It was not revealed what the crop had been engineered to produce, and the scandal was not made public until November, following another ProdiGene contamination incident reported by the Washington Post.

November 2002
Soybeans contaminated with farmaceutical corn

The US government quarantined approximately 500,000 bushels of soybeans estimated to be worth US$ 2.7 million after USDA inspectors found evidence that the crops were mixed with a small amount of farmaceutical corn. Neither the manufacturer, ProdiGene, nor the USDA would identify the protein in question. Different news agencies reported that it was insulin, trypsin, a vaccine for pigs or a treatment for intestinal disorders. The corn had not been approved for human consumption.

A plot of the GM corn was grown in a Nebraska field in 2001. When the crop failed, ProdiGene plowed over the field and later planted regular soybeans intended for food. However, corn seeds left over from the year before sprouted and grew a small number of corn plants containing the protein. The company was supposed to check and ensure that those plants were removed before setting seed, but did not, even after a warning by USDA inspectors.

The contaminated soybeans were then mixed at a commercial grain elevator with many bushels from other local farms, making the entire harvest unsuitable for human consumption. Inexplicably, a senior administrator at the USDA said "I think the message for us is that the system [to prevent contamination] is working."

April 2001 to January 2003
FDA says food supply may contain altered pigs

The New York Times reported that 386 of the offspring of GM pigs were illegally sold to a livestock dealer who might have sold them for use as food. While the University of Illinois, which created the GM pigs, insisted that the piglets had not inherited the transgenes and were therefore not GM, the FDA said they could not verify these claims because the university failed to keep adequate records.

In any case, the offspring were not supposed to have been sold for food without permission, the agency said. Under FDA requirements, the pigs should have been incinerated or sent to a rendering plant for disposal.

The pigs were engineered to increase milk production, improve digestion and grow faster without antibiotics. Some pigs were given a cow lactation gene, others were given a synthesized gene for insulin-like growth factor 1, and some pigs contained both genes. Insulin-like growth factor is known to cause colorectal and breast cancer.

The FDA again stated its belief that the incident was an isolated one, and that the transgenic products posed no health risks to consumers.

Chris Webster, of the biotech company Pfizer, has been reported as saying of pharmaceutical crops: "We've seen it on the vaccine side where modified live seeds have wandered off and have appeared in other products." It is not known what crop he is talking about or where it was grown.



Farmaceutical crops are already widespread

More than 300 field trials of pharmaceutical crops have already been conducted in secret locations around the US. The USDA keeps all farmaceutical crop sites secret from the public and neighboring farmers and usually hides the identity of the drug or chemical being produced.

The farmaceuticals grown include a drug which causes abortions, growth hormones, the blood clotter aprotinin (which can cause pancreatic disease), a blood thinner, the research chemical/insecticide avidin (which causes a vitamin deficiency) and trypsin and antitrypsin (both of which are allergenic and were grown on hundreds of acres throughout the Corn Belt in 2002). Researchers are also experimenting with plants and animals engineered to produce drugs to treat hemophilia and blood-clotting diseases, cystic fibrosis, cancer, heart disease, infant diabetes and Crohn's disease. Vaccines are being grown to treat smallpox, hepatitis B, measles and animal diseases such as mink enteritis virus.

Suitable crops for pharming include tobacco, alfalfa, canola, flax, potatoes, soybean, peas, beans, bananas, tomatoes, hemp, carrots and rice, but corn is by far the most popular.

Corn is especially risky for pharming because it readily cross-pollinates and its pollen can travel for over a mile. Contamination of conventional and organic corn by GM corn is already widespread, most famously by StarLink - the GM corn unapproved for human consumption which contaminated human food supplies and led to the recall of over 300 processed foods.

Farmaceutical genes could spread through pollen carried by wind or insects, spilled seed, unharvested seed sprouting the next year (volunteers), and farmaceutical seed residues carried by farm equipment to conventional fields.

Experts have warned that current isolation standards will not prevent contamination of normal corn. Geneticist and biochemist Dennis R. McCalla and colleagues have said that there is a "very high probability" that "plants engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, enzymes [and] industrial chemicals" will contaminate the human food supply. The editors of Nature Biotechnology have also warned: "Current gene-containment strategies cannot work reliably in the field."

ProdiGene, the company with the greatest acreage of farmaceutical plants, projects that 10% of the corn crop will be devoted to pharming by 2010. StarLink corn was planted on less than 1% of total US corn acreage and still managed to contaminate hundreds of food products and corn seed stock. However, rather than supporting containment strategies such as buffer areas between GM and non-GM crops, Anthony Laos, ProdiGene's CEO, told farmers in 2001 that: "We will be dealing with these [separation] distances until we can gain regulatory approval to lessen or abandon these requirements altogether."

Pharming threatens all farmers

Even US food companies which normally support the production of GM foods are concerned about pharming, and have called for farmaceuticals and industrial chemicals to be grown only in non-food crops, such as tobacco. However, this would not remove the risk of contamination of the food supply
Some researchers use GM viruses to infect plants with drug genes, but genes are known to be able to move between species. For example, Trichosanthin, a potent abortion-causing drug, has been introduced into tobacco by a GM virus which is also known to infect tomatoes, peppers, and other tobacco relatives.