GM Ice cream... (attn US & UK)

July 11, 2006

" The company, which has been making ice cream for more than 70 years under

such brands as Wall's, Magnum and Carte d'Or, and now owns Ben and Jerry's,

has sold it with the protein in the United States for three years, and has

approval to do so in Chile, Indonesia, Mexico and the Philippines. "

From the UK Independent

paper & http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1168240.ece

The GM 99: Genetically modified ice cream could be coming to Britain

A fish from the Atlantic depths has lent its survival secret to a food

giant searching for improved product 'texture'. By Geoffrey Lean and

Owen

Published: 09 July 2006

New designer ice cream, made possible by genetic modification, threatens to

set off a " time bomb " in the health of British children, scientists are

warning. The scientists, from Britain and Canada, have alerted an official

committee which this month will rule on the safety of the ice cream, being

sold increasingly worldwide by the food giant Unilever. It contains an

artificial protein copied, through a GM process, from a fish living in the

frigid waters of the bottom of the North-west Atlantic.

An " anti-freeze " protein allows the fish - the ocean pout - to survive

extreme cold. Unilever, the world's biggest ice cream maker, says using its

artificial equivalent allows it " to produce products with more intense

flavour delivery, a wider range of novel textures and more intricate shapes " .

Unilever also says it can improve the " healthiness " of the ice cream by

cutting its fat and sugar content - a claim that particularly angers its

critics.

The scientists - Professor Malcolm Hooper, Emeritus Professor of Medical

Chemistry at Sunderland University, Professor Joe Cummins, Emeritus

Professor of Genetics at the University of Western Ontario, and geneticist

Dr Mae-Wan Ho, director of the Institute of Science in Society - retort

that it risks " letting off an immunological time bomb " .

The company, which has been making ice cream for more than 70 years under

such brands as Wall's, Magnum and Carte d'Or, and now owns Ben and Jerry's,

has sold it with the protein in the United States for three years, and has

approval to do so in Chile, Indonesia, Mexico and the Philippines.

It has also had the go-ahead in Australia and New Zealand despite

objections by the health departments of the states of , Queensland

and New South Wales and the New Zealand Food Safety Authority.

Now it has applied to the Food Standards Agency to be allowed to use it in

" edible ices " sold in Britain, including sorbets, water ice, fruit ice,

frozen desserts, iced smoothies - and ice cream. The agency's Advisory

Committee on Novel Foods and Processes is due to consider the plea at its

next meeting, on 20 July.

If the committee gives it the green light, as is likely, it will then have

to go to the European Union for approval, a lengthy process but one also

expected to give it the go-ahead. The new products could go on sale in

Britain in two years' time.

The key step in making the ice cream is getting hold of the ocean pout's

secret, called an ice-structuring protein because rather than preventing

freezing altogether, it lowers the temperature at which ice crystals grow,

and changes their shape and structure so that they do less damage to living

tissues.

In theory, Unilever could go out and catch loads of the fish - an eel-like

species that lives on the ocean floor - extract the protein and add it to

the ice cream like any other ingredient. But this would be expensive and,

as the company, which has a good record in combating overfishing, points

out, would cut the population of the fish, whose stocks are already declining.

So it has resorted to a GM process already widely used to produce vitamins

and enzymes for food, including vegetarian cheese. A synthetic gene for the

protein is added by genetic modification to bakers' yeast, which is

fermented to manufacture more. The protein is then extracted so that the

final product does not contain any modified yeast cells. This has led to a

semantic battle over whether the final product is " GM ice cream " . Unilever

says that it is not; the scientists maintain it is. " This is about as

genetically modified a product as you can get, " says Professor Cummins.

The more important debate is whether the end result is safe, particularly

for children. Unilever accepts that the main danger is that people may

prove allergic to the protein. But it points out that people have eaten its

natural form in ocean pout for decades, and says that the artificial

version is identical. It adds that extensive tests on the artificial

protein for allergic effects gave it the all clear.

Unexpectedly perhaps, many of the most prominent anti-GM pressure groups,

including Friends of the Earth, GM Freeze, and Genewatch, say, in effect,

that they are not too bothered, and that it is well down their priority

list. But the scientists, who have a record of GM scepticism, are deeply

disturbed, as is The Soil Association.

The scientists insist that the protein is changed in the processing, and

may pose a danger. Professor Hooper told The Independent on Sunday

yesterday: " This is a novel protein manufactured by genetically modified

organisms and its characteristics have never been fully evaluated. It needs

to be checked out before it is widely introduced into the human diet. "

He and his colleagues also dispute the adequacy of Unilever's safety

checks, not least because it checked the protein against the blood of

people allergic to cod, not the pout fish,

The Soil Association calls the ice cream " a frivolous application of a

dangerous and unwanted technology " . It adds: " Just because there won't be

any traces of the GM material in the ice cream does not mean that the

product is safe. It certainly should not be marketed as a 'healthier

alternative' simply on the grounds that it is low fat. "

The Soil Association says research shows that " genetic engineering produces

a range of unpredictable biological side-effects " . This includes, it is

believed, " new toxins and allergens even if the original GM material is

absent " .

It points to a GM food supplement, L-tryptophan, which " killed over 37

people and disabled over 1,500 others " in the US in 1989 even though it

also " did not contain any GM material in the final product " .

Unilever responded yesterday: " This is an exciting new technology that has

potential benefits for ice cream, including the possibility of increased

fruit content and lower fat content. The process itself is widely used

within the food industry, but the Food Standards Agency process is designed

to solicit opinion from others and we would not want to influence that

process whilst it is still running its course. "

The row comes as the biotech industry is attempting a comeback with the

help of the European Commission. Modified products were swept from the

shelves in the face of public refusal to buy them, and the EU instituted a

six-year moratorium on approving new ones.

But this came to an end two years ago and biotech firms have jumped in.

Bebb of Friends of the Earth says: " Their latest tactic is to swamp

committees with dozens of applications for new GM foods. It is hard to

imagine that the scientists working for these committees will be able to

pay as much attention to their safety as they merit. "

EU governments are deadlocked on the applications but, under the rules, the

pro-GM European Commission then nods them through. Seven different types of

GM maize have been approved for food in the past two years: applications

for GM rice, sugar beet and potato are in the pipeline. But there is no

sign of them appearing on British supermarket shelves - because most still

refuse to buy GM food.

Additional research by Belgutay

How the flood of GM goods was driven off the shelves

Seven short years ago, when The Independent on Sunday began its campaign on

GM foods and crops, 60 per cent of the products on our supermarket shelves

contained modified ingredients.

Now only two GM products are left on sale: Schwartz's Bacon Flavour Bits

Salad Topping, and Betty Crocker Bac-Os - neither exactly household names.

Then, too, widespread cultivation of GM crops throughout Britain was

thought to be only a year away. No less than 53 of them were confidently

awaiting approval. Now not a single GM plant is growing anywhere in any

British field, and no one expects any to be sown any time in the

foreseeable future.

At the time ours appeared a hopeless cause. The giant biotech companies

seemed unstoppable: Monsanto, which led their charge, was poised to make a

merger that would have turned it into the world's largest corporation. It

had the full backing of the Government, fired by the messianistic

determination of Tony Blair to make the country " the European hub " of

biotechnology. Both the US administration and the British scientific

establishment were urging him on.

The Prime Minister privately dismissed public opposition as " a flash in the

pan " , and so it appeared. Ranged against the Goliaths of the boardrooms and

the cabinet rooms were a motley band of s, ranging from Prince

to pressure groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Soil

Association.

But we reckoned without the most powerful force of all, the superwomen (and

supermen) of the shopping aisles who, informed of the presence of GM

products in their foods and the arguments for and against, simply refused

to buy them. Thus the public achieved what parliament has repeatedly failed

to do - stopping one of Tony Blair's dodgier crusades in its tracks.

We started our campaign in February 1999 by calling for a pause in the rush

to a GM future, demanding a three-year moratorium in cultivating modified

crops while more research was carried out. By the end of the year we had

our wish: Meacher, the then Environment minister, skilfully

persuaded the biotech industry to agree to a three-year halt, pending

official field trials.

The trials, in true Whitehall fashion, were designed to clear the crops.

Everyone knew that the main danger that the crops posed was that they would

cross-pollinate with nearby plants, creating superweeds, So the tests

avoided this issue altogether, focusing on the relatively minor issue of

the effects of weedkiller on them.

Everyone expected this jiggery-pokery to succeed - including the

environmental campaigners who repeatedly pulled up the GM crops, in an

attempt to scupper the trails (after one protest Lord Melchett, the then

head of Greenpeace, was arrested with 20 supporters - only to be acquitted

by a jury). But when the results were published modified crops were still

generally found to be more damaging to wildlife than conventional ones,

even on these limited grounds.

Even worse for Monsanto and Mr Blair, public opinion had by then decisively

turned against GM. Both ministers and the industry had fondly believed that

the pause would allow the controversy to die down, but they were sorely

disappointed.

By the time the tests ended, 84 per cent of Britain's had decided they

would not touch the stuff. The supermarket chains fell over themselves to

clear it from their shelves - and the big food manufacturers rushed to

abjure its use.

Monsanto closed its seed cereal business in Britain and Europe, and the

industry withdrew the last of the 53 applications it had once assumed would

be granted. Anyone for Betty Crocker Bac-Os?

Geoffrey Lean

ALSO ON THE WAY...

Herbicide-resistant rice: being considered by the EU

Maize: engineered for resistance to herbicides and pests Potatoes: variety

with modified starch up for approval

Sugar beet able to tolerate herbicides is up for consideration