Information
Reports --
Reports from the Center for Science
in the Public Interest, the Pew Initiative
on Food and Biotechnology, Friends of
the Earth, Greenpeace and more.
News -- Read
news stories about pharm crops.
Links -- Links
to web sites and articles.
With "just one mistake by a biotech
company, we'll be eating other people's
prescription drugs in our cornflakes."
Larry Bohlen of Friends of
the Earth
"...we should be concerned about
the presence of a potentially toxic
substance in food plants. After all,
is this really so different from a conventional
pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical
manufacturer packaging its pills in
candy wrappers or flour bags or storing
its compounds or production batches
untended outside the perimeter fence?"
Editors of Nature Biotechnology,
the industry's leading journal, in an
editorial titled "Drugs in crops
-- the unpalatable truth."
“…it is possible that crops
transformed to produce pharmaceutical
or other industrial compounds might
mate with plantations grown for human
consumption, with the unanticipated
result of novel chemicals in the human
food supply."
“Environmental Effects
of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and
Adequacy of Regulation,” Committee
on Environmental Impacts Associated
with Commercialisation of Transgenic
Plants of the National Academy of Sciences,
National Academy Press 2002, p. 68.
"The fact that they're purposely
growing pharmaceutical drugs in food
crops seems indefensible and foolhardy
in the extreme."
Craig Culp, spokesman for the
Center for Food Safety in Wash., DC
"It's very hard to contain plant
viruses. The tobacco mosaic virus can
be very stable, and it can also infect
food crops like the tomato. We've seen
no public risk assessment of any kind
about what the potential hazards are."
Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior
scientist with Center for Food Safety
in Wash., DC
"Even food-processing corporations
are very upset about this as well, because
they know all you need is one shipment
of corn flakes that has a contraceptive
in it and there's a real problem, obviously."
Paul Achitoff, managing attorney,
Earthjustice, Hawaii
"It is impossible to know whether
these biopharmed crops present any food-safety
or environmental risk, since the whole
process is shrouded in secrecy. Even
the Food and Drug Administration is
out of the loop. What is clear is that
the biopharming industry has been given
a big green light by federal regulators,
even though there is great concern among
food producers and consumers about using
food crops to produce drugs."
Gregory Jaffe, director of the
Center for Science in the Public Interest's
biotechnology project
"When non-food crops like tobacco
can be used for biopharming, it is unnecessarily
risky to use crops like corn or rice
without a much stronger and more transparent
regulatory system. It would be a public
relations catastrophe for both the biotechnology
industry and the food industry if even
minuscule amounts of vaccines or other
drugs ended up in cereal."
Gregory Jaffe, director of the
Center for Science in the Public Interest's
biotechnology project
"We need a comprehensive regulatory
system that ensures everyone knows who
is responsible for what when the products
are being developed. Right now we have
a piecemeal system."
Stephanie Childs, a Grocery
Manufacturers of America spokeswoman.
"As a California rice farmer,
I say: Don't grow drugs in my food crop."
Greg Massa, rice farmer in Glenn
and Colusa counties
