November 1999 Perishables Handling Quarterly Issue No.

100 Page 3

The Second Wave of Biotech Fruits

and Vegetables Enter the Market
Peggy G. Lemaux, Extension Biotechnology Specialist, University of California, Berkeley

The Changing Marketplace for Fruits and
Vegetables
Take a look at the marketplace. Consumers’
awareness of the value of eating fruits and
vegetables and, in fact, their consumption of fruits
and vegetables has increased, particularly over the
past ten years. The Five-A-Day program, initiated
in 1991, aimed to increase public awareness of the
value of eating at least five servings of fruits and
vegetables a day. California, the national leader in
vegetable and melon production (53% of production;
52% of total value, 1997 CA Dept. Food and
Agriculture) obviously benefits from this increased
awareness and consumption.
But is increasing market awareness the only
factor that is going to drive fruit and vegetable sales
upward? Have you looked on the shelves of your
favorite supermarket lately? Your local drug stores?
Manufacturers of cereals and whole grain products
make claims of improved health by eating their
foods. Consumers have turned to calcium-fortified
November 1999 Perishables Handling Quarterly Issue No. 100
orange juice in large numbers to bolster calcium
intake during both the formative years and during
later years to alleviate symptoms of osteoporosis.
Compounds have been identified in grapes that
serve as very strong antioxidants and naturally
occurring products in broccoli have certain anti-
cancer properties. Fruit and vegetable marketing
orders and commissions are working with the
federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to
work out details for approved language related to
health claims for non-nutrient constituents of fresh
and processed produce. Even the USDA is jumping
into this arena creating databases that track
natural products in foods that people might find
beneficial. This particular database catalogs the
amounts of isoflavones in every food imaginable so
this information can be used to guide dietary
choices; other databases look at other compounds
that health professionals now consider important to
human health.
What Does This All Mean?
I believe it means that people will be looking more
and more to their foods to help them create a
healthier lifestyle. Among the cornerstones of this
new, healthier diet are fruits and vegetables, both
as they exist today and as they will evolve through
the application of genetic engineering.
Bioengineered Products Reach the
Marketplace
Why this new interest in natural products? For
years, folk remedies, often based on natural
products, have been used by some to enhance their
health and to treat their ills. But often these were
not widely accepted by the medical community here
in the U.S. Recently, however, through more
sophisticated biochemistry and genetics, it has been
possible to identify the compounds suspected of
causing the beneficial (and sometimes detrimental)
effects. These have been tested under a variety of
different conditions to confirm their biomedical
effects. This leads to a new era of foods, the health
claims of which have been validated by the scientific
community and more widely accepted by consumers.
One of the technologies that can take
advantage of this new knowledge to change the
characteristics of our fruits and vegetables is
biotechnology. This will come about in two ways,
from indirect use of these technologies to facilitate
classical breeding efforts as well as from their direct
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use to change the genetic makeup of each target
crop in very specific ways.
Researchers have been talking about the
“promise of plant biotechnology” for over a decade,
but until recently there were no sustained products
in the marketplace. Today, agricultural
biotechnology is a reality. We have crops in the
fields that have been genetically engineered and we
have products in the marketplace that are being
eaten widely by consumers. Beginning in 1994, the
first wave of fruits and vegetables resulting from
biotechnological applications were introduced into
pilot test markets in the U.S. These included:
z Vine-ripe tomatoes with extended shelf life
(FlavrSavrTM and Endless SummerTM varieties),
z Melons that have slow-ripening properties,
z Processing tomatoes with superior
quality (higher solids content and
deeper red color)
z Yellow crookneck squash with
resistance to several devastating
viruses,
z Genetically engineered virus-
resistant papaya from an area of
Hawaii devastated by this
particular virus and
z Potatoes genetically modified to
produce an insect-killing protein.
Large-acreage crops like
soybeans, corn, and cotton have a significant
proportion of acreage in the U.S. as genetically
engineered varieties and their products are in many
processed foods in the U.S. In the summer of 1999,
the percentage of actual production acreage planted
with genetically engineered seed was 50% of cotton,
55% of soybean, 40% of maize and 3% of potato in
the U.S. (The Economist, June 19-25, 1999, p. 21;
San Francisco Chronicle, July 1999).
What has led to the rapid adoption of these
crops? According to the Farm Bureau this adoption
by farmers was not driven by the promise of
increased yields since many of these crops already
have significant surpluses; it is rather the prospect
of lowering chemical costs and energy inputs -
through fewer application of herbicides and
pesticides.
November 1999 Perishables Handling Quarterly Issue No. 100
Advances in Biotechnology Raise
Important Questions.
Revolutionary discoveries in the 1970’s and 80’s
fueled these dramatic changes in agriculture and
stimulated entrepreneurial excitement and
investment in biotechnology. What are these tools?
How are they used in vegetable breeding? What new
vegetable products are on the market or can be
anticipated for the future? What are the benefits
and limitations of these new technologies? How will
they affect the vegetable industry and the
consumer? Will the consumer accept them? Who
regulates these products? Will it effect international
trade? These important questions cannot be
answered here but it is valuable to introduce
selected issues at this point.
How Does Classical Breeding Differ from
Genetic Engineering?
To answer some of these questions, it is important to
have a cursory understanding of how the methods
by which vegetable and fruit varieties have been
traditionally developed differ from or are similar to
the new genetic engineering techniques. This is
easiest to explain using an analogy. The genetic
information in a cell is the recipe that determines
what cells will do; that recipe is written in chemical
units. If we represent each chemical unit in the
genome (the entire recipe) by an alphabetic letter, it
would take 1700 books, each of 1000 pages, to hold
all the information needed to “cook-up” a wheat
plant. Stacked on top of one another, the books
would be as high as a 20-story building!
Classical Breeding
So when we do classical breeding, it is like mixing
two stacks of books, but genetic rules state that we
can only end up with one 20-story building. To
demonstrate how these two technologies are
different yet similar, I will use an example based on
work done by Alan Bennett at UC Davis. His
laboratory crossed a wild tomato with a commercial
variety in order to transfer a high sugar trait from
the wild species into the garden tomato. The idea
was to transfer only the higher sugar characteristic
to the domesticated tomato, leaving behind the
small fruit size, bitter fruit taste and lower yield of
the wild relative.
By crossing the two tomato species and repeated
crossing of the best lines to the original commercial
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variety over many years, a higher sugar tomato was
achieved. The end result was that the two different
stacks of books were combined and the information
randomly mixed. The final stack of books had
mostly volumes from the domesticated species, with
about 100-200 pages from the wild species. In that
100 pages was the information for higher sugar
content and other information in hidden pages that
they hadn’t “read”. Part of the additional
information from the wild species turned out to
cause reduced fertility in the resulting tomato
plants. This is because with classical breeding, the
breeder has only limited control over the final
outcome.
The Precision of Biotechnology
In the second approach the goal was the same, to
increase the sugar content of the commercial
tomato. This time they did this by looking at the
“recipe” for the tomato fruit and, by doing so, they
identified a single gene, one responsible for the
breakdown of sugar. Through
molecular technologies they turned off
the genetic machinery that makes the
sugar-degrading enzyme, equivalent
to a half page of information in our
analogy. By so doing the researchers
engineered a sweeter tomato.
In the classical breeding approach they knew
the information from the wild species contained the
information for a higher sugar content, but weren’t
expecting the other information that interfered with
fertility to come along with it. In the second case
where “genetic engineering” methods were used,
they knew everything about that half-page of
information they were adding from one tomato to
another; they had “read it”. This points out one of
the main differences between the two technologies.
z The outcome of genetic engineering is often more
predictable because it is more precise.
z Although not obvious from this example, another
difference is that the source of the genetic
material with genetic engineering is any living
organism; the donor and recipient organisms
need not be related.
z Another important difference with the two
technologies is that in the molecular approach the
expression of the introduced gene can be modified
to occur only in specific tissues of the plant, for
November 1999 Perishables Handling Quarterly Issue No. 100
example only in the fruit, the seeds or the roots.
Control may also be modified to restrict the
outcome of the genetic change to a specific time in
development from germination to ripening.
Is the Advent of the Technology Going to
Change the Market in Fruits and Vegetables?
Is the development of new varieties using genetic
engineering a fleeting excitement about the
Biological Revolution reaching the market or are
these varieties likely to become major parts of the
marketplace in the years to come? Clearly there are
many diverse and even polar viewpoints. My
personal opinion is very similar to that of the
president of the largest vegetable seed company in
the world, responsible for approximately 40% of all
vegetables sold in U.S. supermarkets. Alfonso
Roma, the president of Empresas La Moderna SA,
or ELM, predicts that in 10 years 80% of all annual
fruits and vegetables will be genetically engineered
in one way or another.
With the recognition of the power of the new
biological tools, the focus of agrochemical giants
shifted from chemistry to biology. With this shift
came a greater interest of the chemical giants in
buying up crop seed businesses. Biology, specifically
biotechnology, they felt, would provide their next
wave of products in soybean, corn and cotton.
Control over the seed supply would be key to
capitalizing on these advancements as well as
linking much of the seed to company agrichemicals.
(Monsanto alone spent $8 billion in this arena.)
Recognizing this, Mr. Roma, aware of the $80 billion
market for fruits and vegetables, went about quietly
buying up vegetable seed companies.
Why his excitement? What will the next
generation of these varieties look like? Mr. Roma
envisions vegetables such as nonbrowning lettuce,
broccoli with enhanced cancer-fighting properties,
and produce of all kinds that resist decay or have
enhanced consumer traits. Indeed, ELM and
Monsanto have teamed up to release Roundup
Ready iceberg lettuce. Molecular technologies were
used to place in lettuce a gene that provides
tolerance to the herbicide Roundup(glyphosate),
allowing farmers to spray their crop to kill weeds
without harming the lettuce. In this case, ELM,
which supplies 55% of the lettuce seeds used by U.S.
commercial farmers, plans to sell the altered seed,
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which is close to full regulatory approval, for at least
two times the price of conventional lettuce seed;
ELM and Monsanto will split that premium 50-50.
Of course, Monsanto gets to sell more Roundup and
growers can have access to an environmentally safe
herbicide.
So, whether his own scientists or others achieve
these goals, Mr. Romo believes he will benefit.
“Seeds are software,” he says. “And we have the
seeds.”
“Funtional Foods”
Outside the walls of ELM, there is much activity in
both the public and private sectors. One area
rocketing to the forefront falls under the broad term
“functional foods” or neutraceuticals; this is the area
of greatest activity in the private sector. What does
this mean? This is the engineering of an edible
plant part to deliver an extra benefit to the
consumer - either the removal of an anti-nutritional
compound, such as a glycoalkaloid in potato or
cassava or a food allergen. On the flip side, the
addition of specific components may render a food
more nutritious by raising the level of certain
vitamins, amino acids, minerals, or “bioactive”
compounds in the food.
There are many examples of these kinds of
improvements in the pipeline at the moment; it is
one of the large growth areas. Why?
z First, the consumer views these as positive
attributes ones for which they are likely to pay a
premium. An example of such a product (not
genetically engineered) is the new fat Benecol,
which has been shown to lower cholesterol when
consumed in the diet. This has been very well
received in Europe and is likely to be a hit here in
the U.S. Products like these sell because the
consumer sees a direct benefit. This differs
dramatically from the situation with disease- or
herbicide resistant varieties, in which the con-
sumer sees little or no benefit, and may even see
a risk.
z If consumers believe there is a direct benefit the
developer of the variety can realize a profit
because the perceived value-added can be cap-
tured.
z Lastly, I believe that consumer acceptance issues
will be less for human health-related products.
November 1999 Perishables Handling Quarterly Issue No. 100
In fact, the entire industry would have been well
served if these had been the first products out of
the pipeline instead of BollGard Cotton or
Roundup- Ready Soybeans.
How Have the Products Released Been
Accepted by Consumers?
Biotechnology is not the first technology over which
public uncertainty and discussion has arisen.
Furors have arisen in the past, over the shift from
margarine to butter, over pasteurization, microwave
ovens, and food irradiation. In the U.S.,
scientifically conducted polls of public opinion have
consistently shown that consumers here in the U.S.
will accept and even welcome genetically engineered
foods. In a recent survey by the International Food
Information Council, conducted in February 1999,
more consumers were likely to buy food produced
through biotechnology to taste better or fresher
than were not. In fact the number of “accepting
Americans” was higher in the 1999 poll than a
similar poll conducted in 1997. An even higher
percentage was likely to buy foods from plants
modified to resist insect damage and thus require
fewer pesticides. In this case they are buying an
environmental benefit. For the vast majority of U.S.
consumers, biotechnology is viewed as much less
risky than additives and preservatives.
But the values of these changes are by no means
universally accepted. Most recently, expanding
adverse publicity and anti-technology activism, most
especially in Europe, has sparked a new wave of
media attention to the potential risks of genetically-
modified organisms (GMO) reminiscent of the late
1980’s. The Wall Street Journal recently carried an
article stating that major food processors, such as
Gerber and Heinz, have agreed to take genetically
engineered ingredients out of their baby food
products, under pressure from the European activist
group, Greenpeace. MacDonalds Corp. has likewise
developed a “GMO-free” food policy.
Consumers in the U.S., Canada and Japan take
for granted that the foods they purchase are safe for
themselves and their families and involve very low
risk of acute food-borne illness. U.S. consumers, in
general, trust that their regulatory agencies, which
ensure the safety of the food supply, are doing their
jobs. This trust is reflected in the level of
acceptance of a new technology or product.
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Public acceptance polls conducted in Europe in
1998 show that consumers in certain European
countries, such as the U.K. and the Netherlands,
are not that different from U.S. and Japanese
consumers in their attitudes toward genetically
engineered foods. The situation has changed
markedly since that survey was conducted. Survey
results in the U.K. might reflect a very different
attitude today. Conversely, the attitudes of
consumers in other countries in Europe, such as
Germany and Austria, are quite different. The
number of individuals opposed to the technology
outnumbers those who support it.
These differences likely relate to differences in
people’s attitudes toward the benefits of science and
technology, the effectiveness of public education
efforts and their trust in regulatory authority,
which was seriously eroded in Europe, due in part
to the recent BSE (mad cow disease) and dioxin
contamination scares. The governmental decisions
made during these crises appeared to many to be
solely based on political expediency with little
concern for public safety.
How Do Labeling Issues Figure
into Acceptance?
What is the labeling law with regard to genetically
engineered foods here in the U.S.? The FDA says
that foods need be labeled as genetically engineered
only if they change the nutritional quality of the
product, introduce a gene from a known allergenic
source (e.g. egg, nut, wheat), or other, as yet,
nonspecific modifications. All other labeling will be
strictly voluntary. The results of a survey conduct-
ed in February 1999 indicated that the vast majority
of Americans support the FDA’s current labeling
policy.
But labeling laws are not uniform in the global
marketplace and the issue of labeling has raised
serious international trade issues. U.S. companies
staunchly refuse to segregate their shipments of
grain. Certain European countries and Japan state
that it is a matter of human safety and demanding
labeling. The U.S. stance is that it is not a food
safety issue (and this is a tenet that must be
satisfied under international law in order to justify
refusal) and therefore the demand for labels is not
defensible.
November 1999 Perishables Handling Quarterly Issue No. 100
Despite the stance of the government, all
Americans are not of one voice on this issue. Polls
conducted around 1997 in the U.S. indicated that
consumers did want to know, for reasons of choice
not safety, that they were eating a genetically
engineered food; however, the practicality of this
choice was borne out by further polling. If asked in
a poll whether consumers want more information,
they will always answer “yes” and yet few will
ultimately use that information to make a decision
and fewer still are willing to pay for it! But the
issue is not resolved; in early July a petition with
numerous signatures was delivered to Washington
D.C., demanding labeling of all genetically
engineered foods.
In my opinion, for most people it is not a matter
of human food safety; it is a matter of choice. There
is discomfort with the fact that food production is
falling into the hands of a few, large multinational
companies and that perhaps these few will decide
what varieties of crop species will be grown and
eaten. Many consumers want to use their grocery
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store purchases to “vote” on whether this is a
situation that they endorse.
How will this controversy be resolved? It is not
known. It is likely that some products and some
applications of the technology will not survive in the
marketplace. In other instances products will be
delivered to the consumer where the human health
and environmental benefits will be easily seen and
appreciated. In these cases perhaps the path to
consumer acceptance will be eased and the issue of
labeling will become mute.
The global marketplace has its benefits for the
producer, but there are also difficulties. Mass media
plays a very important role in shaping public
opinion and we must use that tool wisely to provide
consumers with a science-based understanding of
the true benefits and risks of the foods of tomorrow.
P. Lemaux. Dept of Plant and Microbial Biology, UC
Berkeley. lemauzpg@nature.berkeley.edu