1. What is new about the report A Growing Concern?
2. What kinds of new substances do pharma crops produce? 
3. To what extent is the food supply currently contaminated with drugs and other chemicals from pharma crops? 
4. If pharma crop contaminants are discovered in the food and feed supply, how would they be tracked and removed from food and feed products? 
5. Could low levels of pharma crop contamination of the food and feed supply present risks to human or animal health? 
6. What are the potential consequences, in addition to risks to human and animal health, if pharma crop contaminants are discovered in the food and feed supply? 
7. Do pharma crops offer potential benefits? 
8. Why are pharma crop contaminants more dangerous than contaminants from other genetically engineered crops already on the market? 
9. What can I do to avoid food that might be contaminated by pharma crops? 
10. Are organic foods safe from contamination by pharma crops? 
11. Could the seed supply for food and feed crops be contaminated by genetic material from pharma crops? 

1. What is new about the report A Growing Concern?

A Growing Concern is the first systematic analysis by agricultural experts documenting the magnitude of the challenge of protecting the food supply from contamination by crops engineered to produce drugs and industrial chemicals (known collectively as "pharma crops"). The experts warn that the food supply is vulnerable to contamination by pharma crops unless substantial changes are made in the ways and places these crops are grown and managed.

2. What kinds of new substances do pharma crops produce?

Pharmaceuticals to treat or prevent diseases in humans and animals, including:

• Proteins for healing wounds and treating conditions such as anemia, liver cirrhosis, and cystic fibrosis; anticoagulants; blood substitutes; and hormones.
• Vaccines for conferring immunity to diseases, including vaccines against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, hepatitis B, rabies, cholera, piglet diarrhea, and foot-and-mouth disease.
• Antibodies that home in on disease-causing molecules with great specificity, including antibodies against bacteria causing tooth decay and antibodies to treat non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Industrial chemicals used in manufacturing and other industrial processes, such as:

• Laccase, an enzyme employed by the paper-pulping industry.
• Trypsin, an enzyme used in detergent manufacturing and leather tanning.
• Research chemicals for diagnostic and research laboratories, such as:
  • Avidin, a protein used for purifying other proteins.
  • Beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme used extensively in plant molecular biology research.

3. To what extent is the food supply currently contaminated with drugs and other chemicals from pharma crops?

No one knows for sure. However, over the past decade, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved between 125 to  more than 200 applications to grow pharma crops on U.S. farms, some at multiple sites. (Uncertainty about the number is a result of USDA policy allowing applicants to withhold information on pharma crop products from the public as confidential business information.)

Corn is, by far, the crop of choice for pharmaceutical and industrial chemical production, followed by soybean. It has been common practice to grow pharma crops, particularly corn, in areas where food and feed versions of the crops have been grown, so pharma crop contaminants may have entered the food supply. However, because of the relatively small acreage of pharma corn and other pharma food crops compared with the much larger production of food and feed crops, the level of contamination, if it has occurred, is probably quite low.

This situation would likely change if the scale of pharma crop production increases as industry predicts and the government fails to establish stronger measures to prevent contamination.

4. If pharma crop contaminants are discovered in the food and feed supply, how would they be tracked and removed from food and feed products?

If a pharma crop contaminant were discovered, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to track and remove. As the StarLink contamination episode illustrates, it is very difficult to find and then purge the food/feed chain of engineered contaminants. More than three years after the unapproved StarLink corn was first detected in tacos and other food products, it was still showing up in the U.S. grain system.

Pharma crop contaminants would be more difficult to track than the StarLink contaminant because they would likely occur at much lower levels and detection methods might not be sensitive enough to pick them up. Even if the pharma crop contaminant could be traced back to particular farmers' fields, it would be impossible to know where all of those farmers' harvests ended up in the food supply because of extensive commingling of grain.

The best approach is to prevent contamination in the first place.

5. Could low levels of pharma crop contamination of the food and feed supply present risks to human or animal health?

If pharma crop contaminants enter the food and feed supply, consumers and livestock could be at risk. Many of the new chemicals produced in pharma and industrial crops are biologically active and may have effects at low concentrations. As a result, small amounts of pharmaceutical or industrial chemicals may harm people and animals that accidentally consume them in contaminated food or feed.

The human drugs produced in pharma crops are especially problematic because they are intended to be biologically active in people. The magnitude of the risks posed by pharma crops depends on many factors, including which chemical is involved, the level and duration of exposure of people and animals to the substance, and the amount of the compound needed to have an effect.

It should be noted, however, that because of the secrecy surrounding pharma crop products and the expected low levels of contamination, it is likely to be quite difficult, if not impossible, for a consumer harmed by a pharma crop contaminant to be able to connect the malady to a particular substance or trace the problem to its source.

6. What are the potential consequences, in addition to risks to human and animal health, if pharma crop contaminants are discovered in the food and feed supply?

The discovery of contaminating pharma crop chemicals could cause enormous disruption throughout the food chain. As demonstrated by the StarLink incident in 2000, the costs of such disruption can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Pharma crop contamination of food poses especially large risks to retail food companies. People who consume pharma substances in foods may sue the companies that sold the food products. Moreover, the publicity associated with such incidents could severely damage valuable food brands.

In addition, the presence of drugs in food could harm the agricultural biotechnology industry. Many consumers in other parts of the world are uneasy about genetically engineered food, and the discovery of pharma products in grain destined for a country with a high level of consumer resistance could do serious damage to an already struggling industry.

7. Do pharma crops offer potential benefits?

Pharma crop companies claim that their products will offer substantial benefits, including lower drug prices for consumers and drugs unavailable by any other method. Anticipating reductions in infrastructure and production costs, pharma crop companies predict significantly lower prices for certain drugs. Cheaper production may also mean that drugs currently unavailable because they are too expensive to make by conventional methods might become economically feasible to produce using genetically engineered crops.

It remains unclear whether pharma crop products will succeed in the market place and deliver on their promises. For example, there are hurdles to overcome in reducing production costs, including the challenge of purifying proteins from pharma plants. Separating foreign proteins from plant-produced compounds and/or agricultural products like pesticides could prove formidable. Even if costs of production are reduced, those savings might not be passed on to consumers as lower prices. Virtually none of the biotechnology food products currently on the market in the United States deliver price benefits to consumers.

8. Why are pharma crop contaminants more dangerous than contaminants from other genetically engineered crops already on the market?

Unlike the novel substances in engineered food crops allowed on the market, the new chemicals produced by pharma and industrial crops—including hormones, vaccines, diagnostic compounds, and plastics—were never intended to be eaten and might be toxic or harmful if accidentally consumed.

9. What can I do to avoid food that might be contaminated by pharma crops?

Avoid processed foods. Corn and soybeans, the food crops most commonly used for pharmaceutical production, are found in some form in most processed foods.

Since avoiding processed foods might not be practical for most people, consumers should urge the USDA to prevent contamination of the food supply in the first place by halting the outdoor production of genetically engineered pharma crops until a system is in place to produce pharmaceutical and industrial chemicals that does not put the food supply at risk.

10. Are organic foods safe from contamination by pharma crops?

Yes, for the most part. The exception might be corn. Pollen flow from pharma corn is a possible route of contamination of organic corn. However, because federal organic standards preclude genetically engineered ingredients, organic growers often take steps to prevent contamination from engineered corn.

11. Could the seed supply for food and feed crops be contaminated by genetic material from pharma crops?

In a report released in February 2004, Gone to Seed: Transgenic Contaminants in the Traditional Seed Supply(www.gonetoseed.org),  UCS showed that the traditional seed supply for three major crops—corn, soybean, and canola—is contaminated by genetic elements from popular engineered varieties of those crops. While we cannot know for sure, it is possible that pollen or seeds from pharma crops might also have found their way—via cross pollination or mixing of seeds—into seed supplies of food and feed crops.