Rebecca Nesbit's Blog

The first GM food to reach the market was the Flavr Savr tomato, the brain child of Calgene, a small company in Davis, California. The tomatoes had been genetically-modified for a longer shelf-life, and their launch was announced in 1994.

The gene for an enzyme that breaks down pectin was flipped in Flavr Savr. The enzyme causes the fruit to soften and rot, so the flipped gene meant Flavr Savr tomatoes lasted longer than their counterparts.

Calgene produced its first mature Flavr Savr tomatoes in the late 1980s, and tests showed these had the long shelf life the scientists had been striving for. There were then years of testing to gain regulatory approval in the US, and tomatoes hit the shelves of grocery stores accompanied by booklets explaining the genetic-modification process.

Sales were high over the coming months, with Flavr Savr tomatoes reaching over 1,700 stores and selling for up to twice as much as other tomatoes. Their popularity was fuelled partly by a blind taste test in which employees of high-end restaurants declared their surprise at the sweet and juicy tomatoes.

Good sales figures, however, were not enough, and Calgene faced losses of millions of dollars. Whilst the tomatoes had an improved shelf-life, they were easily damaged during transportation which added to costs.

Part of the appeal of the Flavr Savr was that the tomatoes were picked when ripe, whilst the rest of the tomato industry picked green tomatoes and used ethylene gas to induce ripening. Harvesting green tomatoes stops them getting damaged in transit, but artificial ripening can impair the flavour.

The hope had been that Flavr Savr tomatoes would be strong enough for transportation even when ripe, but this didn’t prove true and shipping proved difficult and expensive.

The cost of shipping was compounded by the challenges of harvesting ripe tomatoes: you can pick green tomatoes together, but ripe tomatoes are ready for harvest at different times. Once you took the extra costs into account, Flavr Savr was actually selling at a loss.

Flavr Savr’s story ended when Calgene was bought by Monsanto, and the GM industry moved in the direction of commodity crops designed to benefit consumers.

The inspiration for my book’s title (Is that Fish in your Tomato?) came from the images which sprang up alongside the Flavr Savr’s release. Contrary to the rumours, the tomato was neither cubic nor made with a fish gene, but if you search for images of Flavr Savr you will find some imaginative fish-tomato hybrids. My favourite is a stylish ‘tomato-soup fish’.

Medicine has moved from old wives’ tales to a discipline founded on evidence, but agriculture and conservation haven’t completely caught up. A new paper by Defra’s chief scientific advisor and a collaborator argues that insights from pharmaceutical science can inform pesticide regulation and monitoring.

During the early stages of discovery and testing, pharmaceuticals and pesticides are regulated in a similar way. However, this changes in the later stages of testing and after approval, when pesticide monitoring lags far behind.

The debate about chemicals in agriculture has recently been brought into focus by new research into neonicotinoid pesticides and the ongoing campaign against glyphosate, which I cover in my book Is that Fish in your Tomato?. This paper occupies the valuable middle ground, acknowledging both the importance of pesticides and their impact on the environment.

The United Kingdom has one of the world’s most advanced regulatory and monitoring systems for pesticides. But still the authors find these systems lacking, particularly the lack of continued monitoring once a pesticide has been approved for market.

In contrast, pharmaceuticals are subjected to ‘pharmacovigilance’ throughout their lifetime. This involves the collection, detection, assessment, monitoring, and prevention of adverse effects.

Whilst there is a maximum residue level set for pesticides in food, with human health in mind, there is no equivalent level for the environment. If this information was widely collected, it could help us understand trade-offs between environmental costs and food production. This is a first step towards ensuring that policy decisions about the use of agrochemicals are based on thorough evidence.

There’s also no consideration of pesticide levels at a landscape scale. For some wildlife, it may be important not just the level of pesticides in a particular field, but how many fields across the countryside are treated with these pesticides. There currently is little information about where, when, and why pesticides have been used.

Certain pesticides have been withdrawn from the market on precautionary grounds, and whilst the authors hope this will drive innovation, they also caution that abrupt withdrawals can lead to the use of alternates which are no better.

Overall, there’s great room for improvement, particularly from an environmental perspective, but don’t forget that the benefits of eating vegetables vastly outweigh any possible health risk from pesticide residues.

New book launched (It’s mine…)

Exciting news! My first popular science book ‘Is that Fish in your Tomato?‘ was released on 6 July 2017, exploring the fact and fiction of GM foods. Thank you in advance to all of my readers.

Australia approves GM field trial

The wheat and barley tested has been genetically modified for yield enhancement and tolerance to abiotic stresses.

Reviewing the US GMO regulations

In January 2017 proposals were made for change, and comments since have applauded the move yet raised concerns such as a failure to consult with international markets.

In defence of meat production

An Edinburgh University professor argues that meat production is likely to continue to play an important role in feeding the world. Given that many places are ideal for growing grass rather than crops, and that animals often eat industry byproducts. He suggests animal protein might make up an optimum of about 12% of our diets, though no doubt this varies by region.

New research released on the effect of neonicotinoids on bees

A new paper has presents complex data on the impact of neonic pesticides on three species of bee. The debate, however, doesn’t seem to have moved forward. Reaction from the people who already believed that neonics were bad: ‘this confirms we were right’. Reaction from industry: ‘this proves nothing’.

With the plans for a post-EU Britain still unclear, farmers and conservationists are in the dark about how their income will be affected by the loss of EU subsidies. There has been some welcome news from the Chancellor: funding is guaranteed for all agri-environment schemes drawn up until the UK leaves the EU.

For three decades EU agri-environment schemes have been compensating farmers for loss of income associated with measures that aim to benefit the environment or biodiversity. It’s not clear whether spending on these will be maintained by the UK government, or what new schemes would look like if there are any. 

Farmers who are currently applying for agri-environment schemes have confirmation that the projects will be funded until completion, even if this is post-Brexit. Whilst this news helps farmers make short-term decisions, we know nothing of what the long-term future of agri-environment schemes in the UK will be.

Agri-environment schemes are costly, accounting for the highest conservation expenditure in Europe. In England, total expenditure on agri-environment schemes (which includes some with non-biodiversity objectives) was €375 million/year from 2007 to 2013.

Many would argue that overall they have delivered very poor value for money. A 2003 review concluded that about half of EU agri-environment schemes lacked positive effects on biodiversity.

Schemes have changed since then, but the same can’t be said for outcomes. Recent studies conclude that agri-environment schemes generally enhance biodiversity locally, usually with only small increases in species richness or abundance of common species.

Their success is context dependent, and they tend to be effective in simplified but not in complex landscapes. Greater success is also seen with schemes targeted towards particular rare species, rather than untargeted schemes with more general goals.

As the UK government is forced to put its own policies in place, these EU schemes provide a lot to learn from. The recently published State of Nature report 2016 sets a backdrop for discussions about agricultural biodiversity and future ways to protect it. But what will the government take from this?

There are lots of unanswered questions. The emphasis of agri-environment schemes has been shifting to prevention of species loss, especially birds, and to protection of ecosystem services, such as pollination and biocontrol. Will this continue?

How much importance will a post-Brexit Government place on environmental protection? And will funding for conservation focus on agricultural landscapes or will it shift towards less disturbed habitats, protected areas for example?

Time will tell, and perhaps the over-arching question is to what extent will environmental protection schemes be informed by science?

[image error]It’s been an exciting month for me, starting with the release of my first popular science book. Is that Fish in your Tomato? explores the fact and fiction of GM foods, and is available in print or as an ebook. If you’re interested, please do head to Amazon or order it in your local bookshop.

It was fascinating to write, and I learnt a huge amount about our food system as a whole. It also gave me a glimpse into personal stories and motivations. The stories in there range from plant scientists modifying BB guns to fire DNA into onions, to live animals being used in early (failed) attempts at skin grafts.

It was made possible through the support of family and friends, and the many people who I interviewed whilst writing it. That support continues, so thank you to everyone who reads the book. You can see reviews on my website, and if you fancy adding a review to Amazon that would be much appreciated.

Alcoholic beverages make up a greater proportion of the UK food supply than fruit does.

We talk a lot about cutting down on food waste, but what about things we consume that we don’t really need? Growing sugar cane for fizzy drinks has all the environmental impacts of farming foods of nutritional importance, yet simply makes people less healthy. Maybe it’s time we all considered a approach to drinks as well as animal products. I’m not planning to completely give up alcohol, though I will definitely keep it below my fruit consumption and remember it is a luxury. Adding the effect of packaging into the equation makes the impact of many drinks even higher, so I personally have a near total ban on drinks in cans.

Scientists in Taiwan are introducing genes from wild relatives into domestic tomato.

They’re doing this through conventional breeding, which is slower than genetic engineering but more acceptable to consumers. Interesting that using wild relatives in breeding programmes is very palatable to most people, yet using genetic engineering to introduce these genes from another species is often not.

The wild relatives used by the Taiwanese scientists are from the Galapagos – a reminder of what we are set to lose if such unique ecosystems are destroyed. Save the Galapagos!

To what extent are multi-national businesses trying to increase their sustainability? And how much power do they have to be successful? Based on a recent study, the answer to the first question seems to be ‘more than I thought’ while the second question has the opposite answer.

Opponents of genetically-modified foods often cite corporate control of the food system as a reason for their rejection. They are generally referring to Monsanto, but when researching for my book I discovered a far more complex picture.

As well as the multi-nationals involved in agriculture, our food system is dominated by ‘Big Food’ companies such as Kellogg, PepsiCo and supermarket chains. The recent analysis questions how powerful these organisations really are, and concludes that while they face growing pressure to increase their sustainability, they don’t have the knowledge or power needed to ensure farmers will change their practices.

A major hurdle is information. Processed food typically has ingredients from around the world, and each ingredient may have a complex supply chain with many players, so huge amounts of information would be needed to assess the impact of a single product.

One barrier to Big Food companies collecting that information is that they normally buy from commodity trading companies such as Cargill rather than directly from farmers. This means they know very little about the farmers who produce the food, let along have the ability to influence how they behave. What’s more, it emerges that the trading companies themselves don’t even have detailed information about the sustainability of the farms they buy from.

One approach Big Food is taking is signing up to multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs). These bring together government, NGOs, civil society and the private sector to address complex challenges.

For example, dozens of companies signed up to the Sustainability Consortium. This was founded in 2009 to help Walmart create a ‘sustainability index’ quantifying the environmental and social impacts of every product it sold. This knowledge, they hoped, could be passed on to consumers. However, it turned out that there was a complete lack of data needed to make a reliable sustainability indicator.

The technology exists to tackle this. Farmers often collect data for their own operations, and new software has been released that would allow the flow of data from farmers to a central database. The first question is will farmers agree to data being shared, the second is even if this data is collected and analysed, will this lead to change. We shall see.

Susanne Freidberg (2017): Big Food and Little Data: The Slow Harvest of Corporate Food Supply Chain Sustainability Initiatives, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1309967

GM crop and food security news from around the web:

Brazil approves GM sugarcane for commercial use

This Bt Sugarcane is the first GM sugarcane approved for cultivation in the world. It is resistant to damages caused by sugarcane borer, Brazil’s main pest of sugarcane in Brazil.

RNA interference used to kill insect pests

New approval in America of a corn resistant to western corn root worm caterpillars. This follows approval of the Arctic Apples I’ve already written about.

Food Evolution film

The new film asks the question ‘Amongst all this conflict and confusion around food, how do we make the best decisions about how we feed ourselves?’ The short trailer is worth a watch, though contributor Professor Marion Nestle has something to say about it. In the GMO debate, it is easier to sell fear than science.

Syngenta ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages 

Kansas farmers claim Syngenta rushed its GMO seed to market before getting approval from China to export grain there, and that Syngenta misled them on when the Chinese would approve the seed.

This week is Cereals – a huge arable farming event. Sadly I’m watching from the sidelines of Twitter, but at least things have quickly got interesting.

Our President tells #Cereals17 that we will continue to make the strongest case for regulation based on robust scientific evidence. pic.twitter.com/1F2HrFY34d

— NationalFarmersUnion (@NFUtweets) June 14, 2017

I couldn’t agree more, but the issue is that scientific evidence is complex and not clear cut. Most groups asking for decisions to be made on science have a clear idea about how the evidence should be interpreted. Everyone wants regulation to be based on ‘robust scientific evidence as interpreted by me’.

Take the neonic pesticide debate. The NFU has expressed concern over the ban, including some very sensible points about the need for more evidence. Yet Friends of the Earth point to many scientific studies in their call to uphold the ban.

The different starting points when interpreting scientific evidence are even clear at scientific institutions. Scientists at Rothamsted Research question the ban by arguing for ‘independent, unbiased research’. Even the language used reveals their position – by saying ‘alleged harmful impact on bees’ they are not defining the evidence of harm as being anything more than an allegation.

Their collaborators at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology take an approach which is far more focussed on bees rather than farmers (they did a really interesting study on this).

When the scientific evidence is sketchy (as it so often is) we bring our biases into how we interpret it. Just because someone is calling for people to use scientific evidence, it doesn’t mean that we should trust their assessment of it.

The Game and Wildlife Conservancy Trust, an organisation which strongly advocates scientific evidence, this week welcomed the appointment of Michael Gove as environment secretary at Defra. Given that history of interpretation of evidence included supporting the badger cull, I was not alone in having the .

The GM crop debate shows huge biases, but these examples demonstrate something much more subtle. To me, it is more concerning. Biases aren’t just present in hippies, politicians and people who disregard scientific evidence; they affect people like me.

My bias is to seek out the middle ground, so I am perhaps blind to some situations where one point of view isn’t valid. I’m also keen to disagree with both right-wing politicians and ‘hippy’ environmental activists.

Heaven forbid that someone who opposed gay marriage made a good environment secretary – no doubt I would look for way to dismiss their views on agriculture. And this morning I was torn by reading very sensible ideas about how to replace the Common Agricultural Policy in the wake of Brexit  accompanied by quotes from a campaigner who has, I believe, spoken unhelpfully against GM crops (yes, you can guess where I discuss her comments).

We need to make a decision about who to trust – we can’t spend our whole lives researching evidence on every issue which interests us. But we also need to be aware of our biases and keep an open mind, even if the alternative view is inconvenient. I’d be interested to know the biases people have identified in themselves, and any ways you deal with them.

Since I wrote about the arguments for being an ethical omnivore, I’ve discovered that someone has made a word for what I was trying to say: flexitarian. Flexitarians commit to reducing their meet consumption without cutting it out completely.

It seems to be popular – 2017 YouGov research found that 44% of people in Britain were willing or already committed to cutting down on or cutting out meat eating.

Various initiatives are supporting this, such as Eating Better’s #MeatFreeLunch campaign. This encourages people to swap their lunchtime meat, fish, cheese or egg sandwich for a vegetable-based option.

The ultimate aim is to encourage retailers to change their offerings. A 2016 survey of retailers and sandwich chains found that only 19 out of 535 sandwiches (4%) didn’t contain meat, fish, cheese or eggs as main ingredients.

It seems to be working, with a range of retailers introducing options which aren’t based on animal products.

There’s also Meat Free Mondays which encourages people to have at least one day a week without eating meat (it is hard for me to understand that some people don’t already!). Schools and other organisations have signed up.

It’s a big challenge, as show by the graph above which I drew using FAOSTAT. And whilst attitudes in the UK seem to be changing, elsewhere in the developed world needs to catch up.

At the weekend I heard from crime writer Steph Broadribb how the idea for one of her novels came from her fear of being pulled over by the police in America when driving round  with no tail lights trying to find somewhere which served vegetarian food. That’s hard to imagine in the UK where there is even a pleasing trend for vegan food.

Avoiding animal products is no simple proxy for environmentally friendly food choices, but it is a good start. This isn’t just for vegans and vegetarians – it is something we can all think about.