10:00:52
ANDREW KIMBRELL:
These slides are very interesting, this is an interesting slide, what we have here, in 1982 Dr. Ralph Brinster at University of Pennsylvania said, what if I can take the gene responsible for growth in human beings and put it into a mouse.
And he did just that.
He actually was successful as you can see the very large mouse here is the one that has been successfully engineered with human growth genes to make it huge and you see the sibling next to it and this make a huge fear it was on the front on these magazines New York Times, and a few months later people said, well, this is interesting, but what you gonna do with a really huge mouse?
I mean you can scare people there are a few things you can do but its not a very practiful thing to have a huge mouse.
So then what happened is the United State Department of agriculture said what happens if we use the same experiment but to use it with pigs.
And So I went out on the USDA here and this it what they did, they took the human growth gene Dr. Vernon Pursel with tax paired dollars - not many tax pairs knew this - actually took tax paired dollars and took human genes, growth genes and put it into this pig.
As you can see there is a problem instead of like the mouse that with the human genes that grew so big the genes the human growth genes worked differently in this pig it was cross-eyed bull-legged impotent, musculature had overwhelmed it and I can only photograph it against the plywood board here because it is the only way it could stand up.
And you can imagine the suffering and how terrible is was for this particular animal.
10:02:34
This is another experiment, what happened they were actually taking the skin of a cow and see if the could genetically have a pig produce that skin probably to have it more beneficial for slaughtering that has a cow's skin. So this is literary a pig that has a cow's skin. Researchers were very proud of that.
10:03:22
One of the most important things to understand about genetic engineering is that it is really attempt to say listen no matter how unsustainable our technology is we are not gonna change the technology to fit the natural living systems we are gonna change living systems so they fit to the technology.
We honour how horrible factory farming is and one of the problems they have with egg laying chickens with hens that they have a mothering instinct- they wanna brute and here you see one of the brain experiments genetic engineered chickens to take out the mothering instinct from these brooding chickens so they won't brute anymore - they won't have the mothering instinct anymore.
So they fit the factory farm system. That is one of the cimera (?) words they are working -to take away the mothering instinct so we don't chance our factory farm system we actually take the mothering instinct out of animals so that they will fit to technology.
10:04:16
Commentary 1
In the mid-80s once again a new, supposedly golden age dawned for scientists. Genetic technology appeared to be the key to subordinating the earth and, in particular, its living creatures. All of a sudden, everything seemed possible!
They experimented with chickens without feathers, sheep without pelts to alleviate work after slaughtering, with cows producing more milk and goats making silk.
10:05:06
They even imagined animals in the role of living organ donors.
Yet most of the experiments ended in failure and never found their way out of the laboratories.
Not only did the animals fail to conform to the scientists’ visions, they were also deformed and incapable of survival.
10:05:39
Only research on fish made progress.
Here scientists could put their knowledge into practice more quickly as the animals have shorter generation times and the hundreds of thousands of eggs develop by themselves outside the mother.
A Canadian company by the name of Aqua Bounty is in the process of obtaining market approval for its genetically manipulated giant salmon. It has developed a salmon that is six times larger than the other members of its species, yet needs only half the time to grow.
10:06:15
JOHN MCGONIGLE:
Aqua Bounty Farms is a small development stage researching development Stage Company we don't have product on the market yet.
But we are researching a variety of different applications of biotechnology to fish farming. We are pretty much the only company in the field today.
This is a picture of three related fish brothers and sisters that we developed this is a fish that inherit the transgene and these are its siblings that did not, this fish is about one year old and these fish are as well. And as you can see there is an incredible exhilaration in the early life stages these fish are just barely ready going into salt water - this fish is almost ready to harvest after a year.
10:07:13
ANDREW KIMBRELL:
This is the same salmon at 18 months old here. You see the enormous difference here. And basically the salmon as it exists is not big enough it is not profitable enough it doesn't grow fast enough so we fundamentally changing with foreign genes so we can make more money of it, so that we can make more profit on it- what an extra ordinary picture.
10:07:33
JOHN MCGONIGLE:
Obviously there it a financial consideration for the farmer I mean it is much more profitable to grow the salmon in a shorter time but there is significant environmental impact it reduces the amount of time they are using the sight so you get less fecal (?) material that builds up on the bottom less uneaten feed they are in the water for shorter period of times they are exposed to native passengens (?) in the marine waters they are less exposed to disease less likely for that to occur.
10:07:45
ANDREW KIMBRELL:
And we know that this genetically engineered salmon can make this which is the salmon developed out of millennia in millions of years in nature extinct.
It is a technology that can not exist with nature it is a technology that invades, pollutes, contaminates and ultimately destroys the natural species.
10:08:27
JOHN MCGONIGLE:
But the real key here is not the salmon the salmon is just the first product. What we are really interested in and what we are working on now back in the lab is a Tilapia and a Carp.
Which are really important fish in the third world in China, In Africa for food security. We gonna have difficulties supplying an aquatic protein to people world wide and not just the high-end kind of products like Trout and Salmon but the really important products for food security like Tilapia and Carpe. And those what we are working on we should have those on the market by the end of the decade.
10:09:07
Commentary 2
That is the real point of the whole matter. The focus is on conquering the huge market in Southeastern Asia. Aqua Bounty Farms is getting ready to breed and sell eggs, manipulated with growth genes, in huge amounts.
The company conducts the scanty tests required for approval itself, and neither – independent – scientists nor consumers have insight into the approval process. It is confidential.
Occasional reports that the modified fish are more aggressive, suffer from internal as well as external deformities and die earlier – the same results reached in earlier experiments on pigs, cows and sheep – give due cause for skepticism.
10:10:01
COMMENTARY 3
Regardless of any fear harboured by consumers, the genetically modified fish are soon to land in our pots and frying pans.
Earlier than with genetically modified plants, resistance is already building up among the populace. Genetically modified grain such as canola, maize and soya, introduced 8 years ago, continues to turn up on our plates unrecognized and unlabelled.
Which means that when shopping, or eating in a restaurant, we have no chance to identify these foods.
MARC FRANZ – Farallon
I am into this boycott because to be a seafood restaurant in this time and age is saying something because we have been here for 6 years, we sell a hell a lot of fish, we do about 12 million dollars a year. So when we make a decision it affects a lot of things. And the decisions we make affect markets, we buy a lot of fish, so if we decide not to buy a particular fish and not to sell a fish that means a lot.
LARRY BAIN- Jardiniere
I think this really recognizes the fact that chefs and restaurant owners are gate keepers - their responsibility is to find out what is going on in the food world. It is very complicated especially in the United States where there are virtually no labelling was particularly around fish..
And consumers don’t have a lot of time, they are in a rush when they go to a grocery store, or when they come to a restaurant, they don’t want to read a long document and so it is our responsibility- as chefs and restaurare tourists (???) to do the work to find out everything we can about the food- how it was raised, what is in it, what is not in it, whether it is healthy, whether it is good for the environment and then after we have screened all that, after we thought about that we select what will go on the menu, and very importantly what won’t go on the menu.
10:11:56
ROSS BROWNE
Genetically engineering fish, it just seems frightening, we don’t know a lot about it now, but from what I understand, from what I have heard, there is a lot of questions.
We don’t know what effects it will have on a human population but we also do not know what effects it will have on the oceans.
As I understand it also there is a lot of farming of salmon and they are escaping into the wild. That got to be our concern and I think we are moving too fast, it is possible this is a direction to go in, but at this point I really do not think so.
You can not just go ahead and say we will find out what happens, especially in a situation when you are dealing with the ocean. It is not like you can suddenly push everything aside and suggeragate.
Once these fish get into the wild population, there is no stopping it – and that is very serious.
When you ask whether a transgenic fish is available in the market place. As far as I understand, right now the FDA is considering whether to approve it or not. The Food and drug Administration.
They are having a great deal of difficulties because there is not a lot of science that says transgenic fish is unhealthy for people to consume- which is what the FDA looks at.
There is a lot of concern about the environmental impacts. If a transgenic fish escapes, and they all escape – these animals are born to escape –if this fish escapes what kind of horrible impact will it have on the rest of the fish population.
These fish are bread to grow faster, be stronger, and they have a tremendous advantage over the wild fish population.
We do not know what it might do to us or our children or our children’s children. And the government needs to become more active and at the very least label it, so we know what we are eating. It is just so unfair for people to work in ignorance, even so they care, even so they want to know- if the government does not cooperate we are all victims of big food
10:14:00
ANDREW KIMBRELL:
One of the major problems we see with labeling – labeling is not just a right to know issue, labeling ist he only way you get trace-ability of the health effects of genetically engineered food.
If you are a mother and you have a baby that you are feeding genetically engineered soya formula, but it is not labelled, and your child has a toxic reaction, an allergic reaction. You do not know whether that reaction is because it is genetically engineered or not and there is nothing that shows you on the label. So you can not go to your doctor, the doctor can not report it. So we have not found any health effects because there is no way of tracing those health effects to genetic engineering without labeling.
Labeling is the only way that the person who is using it can say AH, this may have created this problem with my baby.
Labeling is not just a right to know, it is absolutely critical if you want help professionals be able to trace the health effects of genetic engineering and hold those corporations liable for those effects.
So the corporations hate labelling, because they do not want consumers to know- but they also know it saves them from liability and from anyone tracing potential health effects.
That is the triple importance of labelling.
10:15:12
Commentary 4 Norvay
Hardly any research has been done on the effects of genetically modified foods on humans, although – at least in America – these have been on supermarket shelves for the past 8 years and are being consumed.
Only a few researchers undertake the tedious and difficult task of conducting tests.
In Tromsö, 400 km north of the Arctic Circle, Terje Traavik, one of the few scientists worldwide who is not on the industry payroll, does research on the effects of genetically modified food on the health of humans and animals.
10:15:51
TERJE TRAAVIK
When an organism like fish is eating genetically modified feed, then we don't know what happens when the next consumer comes in, the fish is eating genetic modified food you will eat the fish. To which extent the genetically modified food has changed the fish and to which extent it is still genetically modified DNA present in the fish to which extent you will be exposed to this in the next instance. There is no experimental data to indicate what happens in a case like that.
10:16:41
We are now going into the experimental animal departments where we are doing feeding studies in rats with genetically modified ingredients food and DNA constructs.
So we are now opening a room where the rats are living they are very well fed, they have a good live here.
And here are our scientific helpers.
Its a very unique experiment in the sense that it is the first experiment we know where you have designed it so that you can detect any difference between these rat groups and then you can go backwards and find out what this difference means in terms of health for instance or in terms of malfunctions of the organs or what ever. As you may know the background for this is that many places in the world people and domestic animals are already eating genetically modified food or feed originating in genetically modified plants.
In addition to that the intended use in humans and domestic animals of course as you will know on its way from the soil onto the table or the animal house a lot of different species and animals will be in and consume all the genetically modified plants and we don't know anything about what effects this will have on any organism. The situation up till now is best described by the headline of an article in science by my colleague Jose Domingo and the headlines read: "Health effects of genetically modified food- many opinions but few data".
TERJE TRAAVIK
Now after the rats are sacrificed in the department of our experimental animals the organs had been frozen down at a very low temperature and then what we want to do is to analyse the organs and see whether our foreign DNA has arrived in those organs. And in what condition the DNA can be found there in the organs.
While in some experiments in a German group with mice this German group under which is led by Dr. Walter Dörfel in Cologne were demonstrating that some types of foreign DNA were not cleared from the organisms - from the mice organisms. It went to the internal organs and were even inserted into the DNA of the mice- if that is the case, if that happens then it may be the start of a highly unwanted process with regard to health.
10:19:58
Commentary 4A
It seems like a wide-scale experiment on humans, in view of the fact that genetically modified food has been on the market for 8 years and already eaten by millions of Americans. However, it is an experiment being conducted without test groups. No knowledge can be gained as to whether and in what form our health is affected if one group eats genetically modified foods but a test group is lacking. The entire population is simply subjected to the same, potentially harmful substances.
10:20:54
COMMENTARY 5
Do we at least know what repercussions this has on our environment?
At Purdue University in Indiana, Bill Muir and Rick Howard are performing tests and doing pioneer research work to determine what actually happens when genetically modified fish, soon to be introduced on the market and enter the food chain, mingle with wild fish. For this purpose, they are breeding their own transgenic fish to remain independent of the food industry.
A number of animals have been made transgenic, including animals that were commercially important. One group that has been studied quite a bit in terms of making transgenic individuals are fish.
Fish for commercial purposes. So 15, 20 different species like salmon, like Tilapia, like carp have been made transgenic.
And so we have the facilities and also the expertise to investigate the problem in fish but also to make our approach to answering those questions
Such as that could be used in pigs, could be used in caddle it could be used in any other type in our plants, any type of organism.
And again it involves general features of biology that is common to any organism.
RICK HOWARD:
To make the transgenic fish we get the recently fertilised eggs and usually within 5 minutes they being fertilised. We bring them over to this room and go through procedure called micro injection to literary inject into the egg thousands of copies of small segments of DNA and those segment of DNA include the gene that we are after in this case a salmon growth hormone gene as well as a promoter that turns that gene on.
And we are inserting that into a Tilapia egg that is just been fertilised. So what our student has here is eggs on a small strip with a very thin glass needle that contains the DNA and he will put that needle right up to the egg membrane. And then with air pressure shoot the DNA into the egg.
And from then on it is a matter of chance what happens. If the segment of DNA happens to be in the right place then it gets incorporated into the chromosomes of the organism and we are successful in making a transgenic fish. But that may only happen in 2 % or 5% of the times. So you go through many laborious processes of injecting the eggs.
10:23:48
ANDREW KIMBRELL:
We have this extra ordinary situation when we are taking human genes and put them into fish and we are mixing and matching that genetic make up of the entire living kingdom in the whole biotic (?) community and who is deciding?
We are changing the permanent genetic make up permanently of the entire animal kingdom and who is deciding? In our congress here in the United States and all legislation around the world we vote all these different laws, tax laws cooperate laws what can be more important than deciding on the permanent genetic future of live on earth.
But we don't vote on that. A very few scientists and regulators and corporations impose that on us but there is no referendum, there is no elections and this is one of the fundamental issues that we have a democracy.
Democracy is legislation.
Technology is legislation. Technology actually is the basis for almost all major social change but we don't vote on it.
A very few scientists and regulators and corporations impose that on us, but there is no referendum, there is no elections. And this is one of the fundamental issues that we have with Democracy. Technology is legislation, technology actually is the basis for almost all major social change. But we do not vote on it.
We vote on everything else, but whether the nuclear bomb or the automobile – but now taking human genes and put them into other animals, and mixing and matching all the genes – we do not vote on that.
That would let a few corporation scientists and regulators decide.
I think that is a fundamental question we need to answer about technology today, that we can no longer let just a few decide these questions that will last for millennia.
We need to say technology is legislation, technology is a law that will determine our future and we need to vote on that, we need to be able to decide, we need to become informed and we need to make the choice
10:25:30
Commentary 6
This is at the heart of what Ann Kapuscinski is fighting for single-handedly at the University of Minnesota. Bothered by the fact that the approval process is so secretive, she began to conduct her own experiments.
With grants for independent research, she examines the behaviour of the transgenic fish bred by Bill Muir and Rick Howard.
In an old farm building she tries to reproduce a simulated ecosystem in many tanks and aquariums, in order to conduct experiments resembling a real-life situation.
10:26:02
ANNE KAPUSCINSKI:
Well here is some fish in. Hey guys come and have some food! They are really lazy compared to trout – trout and salmon would just be jumping like crazy. But you know these are tropical fish so they are used to taking it easy.
10:26:26
Commentary 7
Her reputation as an independent scientist reaches all the way to Thailand. The industry is especially anxious to capture the Southeastern Asian market with genetically modified tilapia, a popular fish on Asian menus. For this reason it is pressing the governments with applications for approval to be able to sell its transgenic fish earlier than in America.
And the Government of Thailand became quite worried because they thought that they were not well equipped to review an application and even know what questions to ask and how to do risk assessment and be able to make a good decision about whether they should allow the fish into the country.
So they they told the researchers please do not even apply formally to introduce these fish because we do not know what to do.
10:27:17
Commentary 8
Under great time pressure, Ann is compiling a risk assessment report together with her Thai colleague concerning the possible dangers to the environment, should transgenic fish be approved for commercial purposes.
For, just as with foodstuffs, the potential consequences to the environment have so far not been thoroughly explored.
One of the things we want to know is if in the future the Thai government approve genetically engineered tilapia and if they would do escape from the fish farms, and we know they will, as the regular farm Tilapia have, would that cause more harm or will it be equal to the possible harm that the farm tilapia that have earlier escaped are posing.
10:28:05
Commentary 9
To explore the possible risk factors Ann is working with a small, fast-reproducing fish species from Japan. Many thousands of fish are measured, photographed, the eggs counted and their mating behaviour observed.
10:28:31
Transgenic male, wild female, - wild male – wild female – 2 males – 1 female – which one asserts itself, which offspring are stronger?
None of it sounds like quick fame or profit – more like hard work at weekends and overtime.
10:28:59
Last night we put this fish trap in the tank and the reason for doing that is we wanna collect a sample of the mixed population.
This is a mixed population because 6 months ago, we released some genetically engineered fish into this tank that had contained a wild population of the same species.
These are Medaka that come from Japan that's their native origin. So we imported them from Japan we are taking advantage of the fact that in these fish the generation is only about two-months rather than 70 or 80 years that it will take a human and there was enough time for 3 generations because in this species they reach sexual majority at two months.
10:28:05
ANNE KAPUSCINSKI:
The purpose of this experiment is to determine if genetically engineered fish will outcompete and mate with wild fish and if they do that whether their genes will spread in the wild population or whether they will disappear over a number of generations. And we are interested in that because that is one of the main questions about ecological risk.
If genetically engineered fish will being produced in a fish farm and if they will do escape from the farm and if there are able to mate if they are fertile the question is, they escape and if they escape into waters where there are wild relatives what will happen if they interbreed with the wild relatives? And our experiment is designed to test that question.
10:30:37
Commentary 10
To this end, Rick Howard and Bill Muir of Purdue University developed a computer model in which they created a population of 60,000 wild creatures into which 60 transgenic individuals penetrate. A catalogue of questions was compiled – for instance, are there certain survival strategies or mating advantages, and are the mixed offspring stronger or weaker?
These phenomena are observed and the results recorded.
Then the computer calculates the possible future results.
10:31:24
RICK HOWARD:
What we are doing in these types of tests is to look for mating advantages of transgenic males relative to the wild type males -transgenic males are larger than wild type males and they could have increased mating success because of that.
And they could have increased success because either the female prefers to mate with larger males or by being larger they can drive away the smaller wild type competitors that are around.
And as a result of that combined advantage with other males as well as the females preference we found that the transgenic males get more than 75% of all the matings.
So for example one thing we have also measured is if the young does survive as well. And the mating advantage of the transgenic males would drive that transgene into the population, which becomes more and more transgenic. But the survivorship of the young is less and less through time resolving in a smaller population size until quite likely the population could go extinct.
Genetic engineering to some extend is a about 400 year old mistake.
A mistake which began with the karthesian revolution and this idea that life is a machine. Descartes said that basically animals are machines.
And the karthesians would vivisect cats and dogs and when they hear the screams- they said AHA, this is like the geers shifting in the machine that is what this noise is coming from.
It was a totally mechanistic vision.
And if you trace the last 400 years you can see there is been a certain part of the scientific community, by no means all, that is contuinuing this mechanistic myth – very dangerous myth.
So now they see the entire living world as simply machines, and genes as the software, you can move around, it is pathology, it is a terrible mistake, it is not a premisse, it is a pre- miss. It misses what is unique about living organisms.
And the cruelties of the early vivisectionists are now being repeated by the genetic engineers who are literally changing the make up of the entire living kingdom based on this pathological mistake of thinking that life is a machine.
That is why they believe in genetic engineering. They are engineering life as if they are engineering machines.
That is the fundamental mistake of genetic engineering.
Commentary 10A
As a lawyer and author, Andrew Kimbrell battles his way through all the issues raised by the new genetic technology. He heads an environmental agency in Washington which vigorously campaigns for food safety.
10:34:37
ANDREW KIMBRELL
Literally, legally as an attorney I find it very important for the very first time in history in the last 20 years we defined plants, animals even humans now as machines and manufactures. Under section 101 of our patent law that is what you can patent machines and manufactures. So we have decided as a government as a policy in the United States that a pumpkin, that a beagle, that a human, a primate that these are machines and manufactures. No different than a refrigerator, toasters or a new tennis rack. They can be patented and conmodified. This is a shocking conmodification of life, and a shocking philosophical development as well
RICK HOWARD:
This is the green house that is used for a storage and so one year ago this facility had a lot of things that had been stored over the years which we had to clear out and then construct this entire facility to hold the tups and for the channels. So we have about a hundred and fifty tons of water in here right now.
10:35:59
COMMENTARY 11
Old farm buildings, converted greenhouses, improvisation and inventiveness – this is what risk assessment research looks like conducted by a handful of idealists around the world.
&