Gene-Altered Wheat Stirring Global Fears

Monsanto product years from market

Marc Kaufman / Washington Post 12mar01

Agricultural scientists have developed the first genetically engineered variety of wheat designed for sale to farmers, stirring intense controversy around the globe years before it is expected to come onto the market.

The wheat, produced by the biotechnology giant Monsanto, has been spliced with a gene that protects it from Monsanto's powerful and popular herbicide Roundup, allowing farmers to kill weeds efficiently without harming their crop.

Monsanto says it will be ready for farmers within two to four years and estimates it will increase crop yields by $6 to $11 an acre.

The company hopes the wheat will lead to other engineered improvements to one of the world's oldest and most important crops, but the international reaction illustrates just how contentious and unpredictable genetically engineered crops have become.

As news of Monsanto's wheat has spread, buyers from Japan to Europe and Egypt have told U.S. exporters that their consumers will not accept genetically modified wheat because of general fears about possible harm to the environment and human health from engineered crops.

Some have said that the wheat's very presence on American farms could threaten future purchases of all U.S. wheat. Half of all American wheat is exported, accounting for $3.7 billion in sales and almost 20 percent of all agricultural commodities shipped abroad in 1999.

"We may in the future have a biotech wheat that the world does want," said Darrell Hanavan, chairman of a joint wheat industry committee on biotechnology.

"But we need to proceed under the assumption that some markets won't want it anytime soon. The challenge will be to make sure that buyers and their customers get exactly what they want."

In an effort to respond to these concerns, Monsanto has agreed to an unprecedented wheat industry request for a system to strictly segregate the modified wheat before it is sold to farmers or approved by regulators. The company also has agreed to promote wheat biotechnology to buyers and consumers abroad.

About 55 percent of U.S. soybeans and 25 percent of corn harvested last year were genetically engineered.

Development of genetically modified wheat has lagged behind other crops because it is a more complex plant, made from the union of three wild grasses that have been improved by farmers over the millennia. Rights to wheat varieties are often publicly owned, making them less desirable to profitmaking companies.

Since last year's Starlink corn debacle -- in which an engineered corn only approved for animal consumption inadvertently made it into the human food supply -- negative attitudes in major foreign markets about genetically modified foods have intensified.

The result is that unlike the American corn and soybean industries, which quickly embraced biotech products in the mid-1990s, many in the wheat industry are approaching biotechnology more as a challenge to surmount than an immediate opportunity to exploit.