Honolulu Weekly

Pamela Ronald / Though genetically-engineered crops, often referred to as GE crops, have been produced since the 1980s, they have made their way into virtually all processed food. But it seems only recently that the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms has been heating up again. “GE-free” labels are appearing on supermarket shelves across the country, and here in Hawai’i, at least five bills concerning so-called GE crops have been brought to the Legislature. A slew of new books, touting positions both for and against GE foods have also appeared over the last couple of months.

Pamela Ronald is a professor of plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, where her husband Raoul Adamchak manages the certified organic Market Garden at the Student Farm. The pair recently came to Hawaii to promote their book, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food.

Their marriage, that of a pro-GE food scientist and organic farmer, reflects the premise of their book: a union between genetic engineering and organic farming principles for a sustainable agriculture. The Weekly recently caught up with Ronald.

Why are you for GE food?
We need to focus on global sustainability of farming systems and that’s been lacking from the debate. So what we propose is to use the most appropriate technology that will reduce negative environmental input and help feed the poor and the malnourished and be sure that food is safe and nutritious to eat.

What we’re proposing (an incorporation of GE plants and the use of organic practices) is really a new approach to agriculture. Organic agriculture is 2 percent of total agriculture. What we’re proposing is to convert that remaining 98 percent of agriculture to a sustainable system. We’re talking about a sustainable agriculture. Organic agriculture has problems, like all agriculture. There’s a lot of pests and diseases that they can’t control. It uses a lot of land. It’s not entirely available to low-income consumers. In a place like Hawaii where you have an island and you need to provide food without importing food and destroying your beautiful rainforests, you need to take advantage of the best and appropriate technology.

What’s the process of testing whether GE food is safe to eat?
We’ve been eating genetically engineered crops for about 16 years. There’s been a billion acres planted. And there’s not been a single case of harm to human health or the environment, whereas 300,000 people die every year from the use of insecticides. You also have conventional breeding which mixes large sets of uncharacterized genes. Breeders do that and they’re not tested at all. You can bring in a brand new gene and you don’t even know the genetic sequence, you don’t know the protein, it’s not even tested. GE crops are evaluated by several agencies and foods produced by GE undergo additional scrutiny. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has stated that the process of GE presents the same types of risks as the process of conventional breeding. The processes are essentially similar. It really matters what you’re putting in the plant, and that’s what has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

Conventional breeding is a whole set of methods. One example of conventional breeding is you take the seed in and dip it in a carcinogenic solution and you look for mutations and you identify new traits. Those varieties are certified organic. But the NAS has stated that the process of genetic alteration introduces much higher possibilities of unintended consequences (than genetic engineering).

There seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there on GE food. How does the average person sift through it to decide what is true and what is not?
I recommend people look at the National Academy of Health, National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation. They all have really great layperson description of GE. That’s much more helpful than other sources of information, like random sources on the Internet.

I’d like people to think about the concept of the science-based decision-making process and peer-reviewed research because there’s a lot of misinformation on the Internet. The culture of science is focused on truth and repetition and challenging and scrutiny.

In Obama’s inauguration, he really made the point that we need to restore science to its rightful place. There’s been a lot of mis-information in the media and it’s really important to get that information out to consumers. It’s not easy because science is something that not everybody understands. So we try to get people to think about what are the goals. How are we going to feed the people, how are we going to do it in an ecologically sustainable manner and what are the best farming methods, the best seed that we can use.

What is your opinion on biotech companies and genetic engineering?
I think in the U.S. there’s been consolidation of seed companies into corporate hands. That has nothing to do with GE. That occurred before GE. People need to decide what’s important to them. If they don’t want seed consolidation, seed companies in corporate hands, then they should fight against that. The process of GE is something that has been developed in the non-profit sector. These are different issues. What I’m concerned about is that people don’t like corporations, and that’s fine, but they need to really advocate for publicly funded research. The whole idea of corporate control of GE is not accurate. We use that tool in the public sector.

How much GE is developed in the public sector?
Everybody is using GE all over the world. It’s a very simple process and widely accepted. It’s the tool for research. It’s a very simple, benign technique that everyone is using.
The biggest success story is GE papaya*. That was developed by a Hawaiian. It was shared free to farmers of modest means. It rescued the entire industry. There was no corporate involvement at all.

* Excerpt on Hawaiian papaya, from Ronald’s book: “In the 1950s, the entire papaya production on the Island of Oahu was decimated by papaya ringspot virus … The story of Hawaiian papayas is an example where GE was the most appropriate technology to address a specific agricultural problem. There was no other technology then to protect the papaya from ringspot virus, nor is there today.”