Rice, Corn and China's New Genetic Attraction

By staff reporters Xu Chao and Li Hujun  04.02.2010

(Caixin Online) Panic spread across China after a rumor on the Internet recently claimed half of all men in southern Guangxi Autonomous Region who ate genetically modified (GM) corn could not father children.

Part of the rumor was indeed correct: A study by researchers at Guangxi Medical University's Department of Andrology had found abnormalities in semen samples from more than 56 percent of about 200 young men attending a local university.

But the assistant to the department's head, Liang Jihong, told Caixin that the investigation had nothing to do with GM corn.

Actually, the assistant noted, Liang had told the media last fall that the abnormal semen did not necessarily indicate impotence, and that the health of the men studied may have been affected by sedentary, computer-centric lifestyles, as well as unhealthy eating and environmental factors.

Besides, the researchers say, semen quality is an issue not only in Guangxi but around the world.

Another fact punching holes in the rumor was that Chinese agricultural companies and U.S.-based Monsanto Co. have planted not GM corn but non-controversial hybrid varieties in Guangxi.

Nevertheless, the rumor succeeded in cultivating public misunderstandings, fears and increasingly negative views of GM products in China.

Internet comments in China posted before and after the rumor suggest widespread opposition to GM food, including rice, nationwide. Some prominent scientists support the opposition, and an open letter in March to China's national legislators from more than 100 people voiced objections to GM research.

A researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who surveyed consumer views of GM food in Nanjing and other cities said about two-thirds of those questioned were willing to eat GM food products seven years ago. Today, the number of GM supporters has fallen to around 40 percent.

One reason for the skepticism is a weak regulatory system. The Chinese government has yet to approve commercial production of any GM staple crops. But an increasing number of farmers have been found secretly growing GM crops. And after illegally grown GM rice enters the market, there is little the government can do.

Still, the Chinese government is interested in GM applications. Of the 16 major state science and technology projects currently under way nationwide, the only agricultural project involves testing new varieties of GM products. This 10-year project is slated to cost more than 20 billion yuan.

And in a recent government work report, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the country must conduct research and develop new GM organisms.

So unless most Chinese consumers change their minds and accept GM food, tens of billions of yuan in research and development spending may have been spent needlessly.

Certificate Crisis

Not helping the cause of GM promoters was the recent handling of China's first safety certification for a type of modified rice called transgenic rice.

The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) awarded the first certificate in November to a rice research team led by Professor Zhang Qifa of the Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan.

The public was not told about the government's approval of GM rice until after the certificates were issued, and only through an obscure notice posted on the MOA website.

MOA officials defended the lack of a public notice, saying any approval of a GM organism cannot be announced unless first being vetted by higher authorities.

But news of government support for transgenic rice ignited a powder keg of public opinion. In numerous reports, the media and a number of public figures questioned the crop's safety. One frequent critic of GM crops, Professor Larry Hsien Ping Lang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, appeared on a TV talk show to denounce GM food as "toxic."

More than 100 people, including many scholars and notable figures, signed a letter to Chinese legislators in March warning that introducing GM staple crops "could endanger the nation and national security." It was delivered to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) before the NPC convened with the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

The letter asked the committee to have the State Council immediately withdraw all safety certificates for modified corn and rice.

The letter contributed to mounting pressure against MOA, which later released bits of information about the rice certificates at press conferences before and after the legislative sessions. But most specifics have remained a mystery.

Caixin asked MOA in March for access to assessment materials related to the safety certificates, but the ministry failed to respond by press time. Non-governmental organizations such as Greenpeace have raised a red flag over the government's lack of disclosure as well.

"Without real information, there can be no real debate," said Luo Yuannan, director of food and agricultural projects for Greenpeace in China.

A source of the certificates was MOA's Genetically Modified Organisms Safety Committee, whose members include scientists engaged in transgenic research. Few environmental protection and public health experts are represented in the decision-making process, and neither consumers nor civil society are represented.

Safe or Not?

Controversy over GM technology is not new. Supporters and opponents have been facing off over food safety, environmental safety and economic security issues for years.

Huazhong rice researcher Zhang recently told Zhang Xiaoqiang, deputy director in charge of the biotechnology industry at the National Development and Reform Commission, that insect-resistant GM rice is safer to consume than drinking water. In fact, Zhang said he and his team have been eating GM rice for years.
 
Supporters also stress that GM foods do not modify human genes. Zhu Zhen, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, explained that "a gene is a section of DNA. Upon entering the human body, it is broken down into nucleotides."

But opponents are equally adamant about the risks. They say any GM food, as a completely new product, should be "absolutely safe, with zero risk" before it's made available to the public.

Supporters counter that no "absolutely safe" food products exist. That's why, when evaluating the safety of GM food, governments worldwide follow the principle of substantial equivalence by comparing modified foods with natural counterparts.

Economic Security      

Other areas of dispute surround what Greenpeace calls "food sovereignty" and the livelihoods of farmers. GM opponents say governments that approve growing these special crops effectively submit to the foreign biotechnology companies that hold GM food patents.

Greenpeace has issued several reports over the past two years claiming that the main transgenic rice types used in China violate a number of foreign patents.

Yet Lin Yongjun, an agriculture professor at Huazhong University, claims almost every modern, high-tech product is connected in some way to a patent. Moreover, he says, two core insect-resistant rice patents involve methods and processes related cultivating rice that were developed by Chinese scientists now applying for domestic patents.

More than 6,000 applications for Chinese patents involving GM plant technologies had been submitted to the State Intellectual Property Office's patent department as of the end of 2009, the chief of the department's Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Invention Department, Zhang Qingkui, recently told the People's Daily newspaper. Of these, 3,395 were applicants from the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Some supporters of GM rice think China's interest in researching and promoting modified crops is aimed at national economic security.

They note that China imports 10 million tons of GM soybeans from the United States and other countries annually. These beans have a high oil-extraction rate, which makes them economically favorable to China-grown soybeans. Moreover, the oil is popular among Chinese consumers.

China apparently cannot compete with imported soybeans because it lacks GM soybean technology. GM supporters hope China can avoid a similar predicament with rice by developing and growing modified varieties of the crop at home.