Category: GMO Food

How Well Do You Know Your Turkey?

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by Efthimios Parasidis

In the United States, over 250 million turkeys are slaughtered each year, with over 45 million just for Thanksgiving. The overwhelming majority of these birds (over 99%) are a genetically engineered and industrially-farmed breed known as Broad Breasted White. As the name suggests, this breed of turkey has an unnatural abundance of white breast meat.  In many ways, industrial turkey farms are similar to industrial chicken farms–typically there are thousands of birds packed into a closed space with no natural light, no access to the outdoors, and mechanized feed and water (often laced with antibiotics and growth hormones). Adult turkeys in an industrial farm typically cannot walk properly or reproduce on their own, and artificial insemination is the norm. The eggs are hatched in an incubator and newborns have no contact with their mother. Shortly after birth, the young turkeys are placed into a large dark warehouse that will be the only space they will ever know. Their toes and beaks are cut without pain killers. Due to the grotesque environment, millions of birds die from “stress-induced conditions“. Those that survive grow at an astonishing rate, attaining market weight in just 12-18 weeks. The adults often are blind, due to lack of natural light and other factors (such as pecking fights in the tight quarters). According to one study, if a 7 pound human newborn grew at the same rate as an industrial turkey, it would be 1,500 pounds at 18 weeks of age.

A small but growing number of turkeys are non-genetically engineered Heritage Breeds. Heritage Breeds were in existence prior to the industrial-farming practices introduced in the 1960s, with some breeds tracing their roots to the 1800s. Standard farming practices for Heritage breeds include liberal roaming of pastures, humane growing conditions, and no antibiotics or growth hormones. Heritage turkeys are difficult to find, with some farmers requiring advanced notice (often months in advance) to purchase. The higher cost of Heritage turkeys (about $7 a pound, compared to approximately $1.50 a pound for industrial birds) reflects the higher cost of raising them, as well as insufficient subsidies for farmers employing organic and/or sustainable practices (along with over-subsidization of industrial and corporate farms).

It’s important to note that an organic turkey is not necessarily a Heritage breed. An organic turkey is any breed that has been fed an organic diet. Similarly, a free-range turkey is not necessary a Heritage breed. In fact, free-range does not mean that the turkey has actually stepped foot on a pasture. Rather, under USDA regulations, a bird can be labeled free-range if it lives in a space where there is access to the outdoors. Reaching the outdoors is immaterial. If knowing your turkey matters to you, be sure to ask the right questions, including the breed of the turkey, what feed the turkey has been provided (including whether the feed was comprised of genetically-modified ingredients), whether the turkey has been given antibiotics or other drugs or hormones, and whether the bird actually foraged in a pasture.

“How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Test Tube Meat (and Started Thinking It May Be Immoral NOT to Eat It)” Or “Hooray For Chickie Nobs!!??!!”

I. Glenn Cohen 7 Comments

If you were watching television this week you may have seen this clip of a taste test for hamburger meat grown in a “test tube” in London discussed here. The meat was grown from stem cells from existing cows used to grow 20,000 strands of tissue. Costing more than $330,000 to make, with funding by google Co-Founder Sergey Brin, the day where this will be available at your grocery store or served at your fast food franchise is far away. But it may come sooner if we conclude that there may be a moral duty to develop and eat this kind of meat rather than animal-grown meat and press our governments to start funding this work. What is the morality of test tube meat consumption?

Sometimes narrative can be a way into ethics so consider this bit from one of my favorite novelists (and Canadian public intellectuals) Margaret Atwood from her novel Oryx and Crake. She imagines a dystopian future that includes the the consumption of “Chickie Knobs” in one scene:

“This is the latest,” said Crake.

What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.

“What the hell is it?” said Jimmy.

“Those are chickens,” said Crake. “Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They’ve got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit.

“But there aren’t any heads…”

“That’s the head in the middle,” said the woman. “There’s a mouth opening at the top, they dump nutrients in there. No eyes or beak or anything, they don’t need those.”

To be clear the test tube meat unveiled earlier this week is not a Chickie Nob, it is grown from stem cells rather than being a cow with extra parts and brains missing (Atwood is silent on some characteristics of the Chickie Nob that may matter ethically such as whether it feels pain or is sentient), but I think many will react to the test tube meat the same way: disgust. Some in bioethics, like Leon Kass, think there can be a “Wisdom of Repugnance.” In my own work I have been a persistent skeptic on this theme. For me repugnance and disgust are good and should be cultivated as reactions for that which we deem immoral, but should be broken down and overcome for those things which we conclude are morally worth pursuing. Thus repugnance is a tool whose proper deployment depends on prior moral conclusions. In the case of test tube meat, whatever repugnance we feel is one we should get over and media, government, etc, should help us do so.

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Unapproved GMO wheat found in Oregon; Japan cancels US wheat imports.

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By Nicholson Price

One fear about GMOs is that they will escape whatever controls are placed them and end up in the wild.  A version of that story appears to have come true in the wheat industry this week, when the USDA announced that farmers in Oregon had discovered an unexpected and unapproved patch of Roundup-Ready genetically modified wheat in a conventional wheat field.  Monsanto developed Roundup-Ready wheat (which is not resistant to its Roundup herbicide) and tested it between 1998 and 2005, but it was never approved for sale and was discontinued.  Japan has cancelled or suspended orders of wheat from the Pacific Northwest in response.

h/t to Grubstreet; see also recent posts on GMOs and the environment and on Monsanto’s patent protection of GMOs.

Monsanto v. Bowman: Patents on GMO Seeds

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By Nicholson Price

Monsanto has been receiving quite a bit of press recently.  Marchers in over 400 cities protested the company and the GMOs it makes took place a few days ago, arguing that foods should be labeled if they contain GMOs.

More broadly relevant to the biotech industry and GMOs generally, a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court released its 9-0 opinion in Bowman v. Monsanto, No. 11-796.  This case shores up the patent-law foundation for the GMO seed business (as was widely expected), but also takes an interesting turn involving intent and self-replicating technology in general. Read More

GM Crops and the Environment

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By Joanna Sax

I’ve become increasingly interested in GM crops, in general, after the recent Petrie-Flom Conference on the FDA in the 21st Century.

I know there is a lot of discussion and controversy about genetically-modified (GM) crops.  I want to pick-up on a topic that is related to GM crops – that is, the environment.  The May 2nd issue of Nature includes a special section on GM crops.  Part of this section provides information on the environmental advantages of GM crops.  Most of the GM crops contain DNA that allows them to be resistant to herbicides or insects.  It turns out that a study showed that there was a 6.1% reduction in the use of herbicide between 1996 and 2011 on crops of herbicide-resistant cotton compared to the amount of herbicide that would have been used to treat conventional crops.  See Natasha Gilbert, A Hard Look at GM Crops, 497 Nature 24, 25 (2012) (I believe this article is free if you search for it on the Nature website).  A reduction in the amount of herbicide used to treat our fabric or food sources may have environmental advantages.  Less herbicide run-off into waterways.  Less herbicide for animals to consume.  See id.

Other scientific data provide inconclusive results about environmental impacts.  Some studies look at whether transgenes are spreading to weeds or non-GM crops.  For example, husbandry techniques of cross-breeding may unknowingly cross breed a non-transgenic line with a transgenic line and thereby create a transgenic line.  Now, a GM crop will be grown without the farmer even knowing it.  See id. at 24, 26.  And, if the GM crop has some sort of negative environmental impact, then a farmer may unwittingly be creating potential harm to the environment.

One thing I want to raise with this post is the importance to incorporate multiple areas of study – biology, environmental studies, genetics, health, regulation, etc. – to determine how we advance our understanding of GM crops.  I imagine that many readers of this blog are much more familiar with GM crops than me, so I welcome your comments.

Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference, Panel 8: Food, Supplement, and Tobacco Regulation

I. Glenn Cohen Leave a comment

[Live blogging off-the-cuff, so apologies in advance for any errors in summarizing, typos, etc]

Moderated by Emily Broad Leib, Harvard Law School

Robin Craig, Leslie Francis, and Erika George, University of Utah The FDA’s Authority Over Labeling: Current Ironies and Future Improvements:

Goal is to look at FDA authority over safety and labeling of Genetically Modified (GM) foods argue that FDA should do more, and argue for human right to food approach.

By GM we mean rDNA modification not husbandry and not careful selection.

FDA has moved to use guidance and policy. In particular two are relevant here. First, in food additives there is GRAS – Generally Recognized as Safe. E.g., Cinnamon was treated as GRAS. Manufacturers can self-determine a product is GRAS without notifying FDA, or, if in doubt, request a GRAS notice letter from FDA. This was proposed in 1997 and final review never issued, but this is how they do it. Has increased frequency of GRAS review request from FDA. But the process is voluntary and relies entirely on info from producer not scientific separate work by FDA.

In 1992, FDA issued a policy document related to GM foods. Stated no scientific evidence that GM foods have more safety concerns than existing husbandry techniques, so GM technology is NOT material information. This was NOT a conclusion that GM foods were GRAS.

In 1996, FDA issued a guidance for GM foods. Consultation process to determine whether there are material differences between GM version and non, voluntary process, encouraged to get consumer trust. Like GRAS totally voluntary, totally reliant on FDA data. 95 reported consultations between 1996 and 2012.

Alliance for Biointegrity v. Shalala, challenged in 2000 in D.D.C., court deferred to agency on safety questions and whether the info on GM was “material” and therefore needs to be disclosed.

Where would FDA get authority to regulate GM foods? May pose allergy risks? May be relevant to nutrition or quality. Maybe an additive not GRAS. But each of these arguments apply to specific GM food not GM foods as a whole.

Their argument: Consumers have a right to know so they can make their own consumption risks, and consumer or religious views are not merely preferences but a ground for the information that is material to consumers.

On why this is best understood as Human Right to Food. Adequate right to food is an HR right framed after WWII about enough food that is not adulterated and not against your faith or ethics (kosher, halal, vegan) and respectful of environment. U.S. is not part to Socioeconomic rights convention, which is most explicit protection of this right, but are signatories to other treaties that protect the right more indirectly.

Whole Foods has moved ahead on this as have others. Even if not a worry as GRAS, consumption may be inappropriate. We need a national strategy. More of a precautionary take that understands material to matter to consumers.

Jennifer Pomeranz, Yale, A Comprehensive Strategy to Overhaul FDA Authority for Misleading Food Labels:

Obesity and diabetes is the big problem in public health. And also people showing nutritional deficiencies because too much processed food. Current labeling is misleading makes people think food is healthier than they are. This is a unique public health problem. FDA has very weak authority and power here.

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Rethinking Biotechnology and Software Patents: A Myriad of Jurisdictional Issues Related to Subject-Matter Eligibility

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by Adriana Benedict

Today, Professor Glenn Cohen announced on this blog that he, in conjunction with two others, filed an amicus brief in AMP v. USPTO (Myriad), a case concerning Myriad’s patents on isolated DNA and cDNA. In a paper I have been writing on the natural phenomenon doctrine as applied to biotechnology patents, I arrived at this conclusion about the doctrine’s implications for Myriad:

According to Mayo v. Prometheus, the preemption rationale for the natural phenomenon doctrine suggests that any patent on a diagnostic biotechnology product or process should be limited to the inventive use of that product or process as defined by its associated process or product, respectively.  As applied to Myriad, this qualified interpretation of the natural phenomenon doctrine would suggest that ideally these patents ought to be limited to Myriad’s one remaining valid method claim, namely claim 20 of the ‘282 patent, “a method for screening potential cancer therapeutics.”  The unavoidable and unsettling problem with such a conclusion, of course, is that at this stage in litigation, it is not possible for the Court to limit Myriad’s gene patents in this way.  This procedural limitation sheds some light on the elephant in the natural phenomenon doctrine: If the doctrine was meant to exclude certain categories of discoveries from patentability before Congress had the opportunity to refine more specific patent validity rules, then perhaps it should be limited to carrying out that function at the outset of a patent prosecution.  The natural phenomenon doctrine serves the important purpose of ensuring that patents do not contravene their Constitutional objective by too broadly preempting the use of “basic tools of science.”  It does so by balancing the scope of preemption against the scope of invention, and ensuring that the scope of preemption does not exceed that which is justified by the inventor’s handiwork in applying natural phenomena.  At the patent prosecution stage, the natural phenomenon doctrine is a useful “catch-all” analytical tool that allows flexibility in promoting the spirit of patent law when the letter of patent law has not kept pace with the progress of science. But at the litigation stage, its Achilles heel is that it may prove too much: In the absence of a procedural option to limit a patent at this stage, the natural phenomenon doctrine is forced to err on either the side of all or nothing.  While the doctrine may be useful at the patent prosecution stage, it was not (as other statutory patentability requirements were) appropriately designed to assess the validity of patents once they’ve been issued in a way that is compatible with today’s patent litigation procedures.  As a doctrine of limitation, it must in this context either fall, and prove nothing at the expense of unwarranted preemption, or rise, and prove too much at the expense of patent holders who have been reasonably relying on guidance from the USPTO regarding gene patents for many years.  

I am unable to find any commentary exactly on this point, but some issues concerning the jurisdictional authority of §101 have been raised in response to both Mayo and CLS Bank v. Alice.  While these cases concern biotechnology processes and software, respectively, they are extremely relevant to Myriad if we consider isolated genes / cDNA to be the equivalent of biological software. Indeed, Professor Ronald Mann observed that “Though most of the attention to …[Mayo]  has focused on its immediate implications for medical providers, the broader effect of the case probably will be on the software industry.”

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