Science bakes a GM baguette

Baguettes may soon enter biotech age

By Douglas Herbert, CNN.com Europe writer

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Bread, the staff of life, is set to become a lightning rod of controversy as U.S. regulators study requests to market gene-altered wheat.

American bioscience company Monsanto is entering the fourth year of U.S. farm trials of wheat crops engineered to resist weed-killers and boost yields.

Monsanto spokesman Mark Buckingham told CNN the company had already applied to one U.S. regulatory agency for permission to begin commercial cultivation of genetically engineered wheat and would soon file applications with two other regulators.

He said the company expected to launch genetically modified (GM) wheat between 2003 and 2005, first in the U.S. and Canada.

The company hopes to eventually import its U.S.-cultivated wheat to Europe. But Buckingham stressed that timetables for doing so are yet to be determined and that any such foray into European markets would have to get a green light from national regulators.

A UK Food Standards Agency spokeswoman said the approval process was likely to take two to three years in Britain alone.

"I hope that people will appreciate that there are benefits with this technology and that it is safe," Buckingham said, noting that wheat is one of Monsanto's four core crops, along with corn, soybeans and cotton.

He attributed the relative delay getting GM wheat to market to the fact that the variety under development -- known as "spring" wheat -- carries a more complicated genome, as the complete blueprint of chromosomes is known, than the other core crops and is more difficult to manipulate in trials.

CNN.com Europe More news from our Europe edition

Nonetheless, any move to market GM wheat would mark a major leap, bringing the world of genetic engineering to a staple of the Western diet.

In Europe, popular antipathy to GM foods has tended to drive the debate, dictating everything from supermarket displays to government policy.

Jill Evans, a member of the Plaid Cymru party, who represents Wales in the European Parliament, called Monsanto's GM wheat trials "highly disturbing" and predicted a tough fight if the company tried bringing the crop to Europe.

"Consumers throughout Europe have already sent out the clear message that they refuse to be force-fed GM products, and the markets for European Union imports of products such as GM corn are already closed," Evans said.

Concerns over the long-term effects of GM foods have prompted a consumer backlash that has all but led to their banishment from supermarket shelves in Britain and across mainland Europe. The debate has also spawned a cottage industry of organic food cultivation that is free of man-made manipulation.

Farm trials of gene-altered wheat are in their fourth year in the U.S.

GM proponents acknowledge an element of risk in what is still a relatively new science. But they contend much of the criticism has been a knee-jerk reaction from interest groups hostile to big business.

GM crops, they say, resist pesticides and weed-killers better than other crops, lowering costs to farmers and raising yields. They also note that GM seeds that grow in adverse conditions may help subsistence farmers.

"In the last three years, the climate has changed considerably and people are realising that this isn't a flash in the pan, and that the benefits are there for the farmers as they are for the consumers," said Tony Combes, corporate affairs director for Monsanto UK.

Yet in a sign of the alarm over GM foods in some quarters, a group of EU Green parties recently called for regional authorities to ban the crops from their territories and declare themselves "GM-free zones."

Moreover, the legal climate is getting more restrictive.

Since June 1998, the EU has enforced a moratorium against licensing new GM products. The result is a backlog of 18 products, from genetically engineered tomatoes and fodder beets to starch-enriched potatoes and new cotton varieties.

Other GM foods are subject to strict guidelines; products with more than 1 percent GM ingredients must say so clearly on the package.

A new directive likely to take effect this year will strengthen the labelling and traceability regime and, for the first time, force companies to renew their licences to market GM products after 10 years.

Stakes raised in Europe's GM food fight
October 5, 2000
The good, the bad and the genetically engineered
January 13, 2000
'Terminator' victory a small step in long war
October 7, 1999

International Food Policy Research Institute
The European Union
World Health Organization site on GM crops
Monsanto
UK Food Standards Agency

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.