Viewpoint: That fishy stench from The New York Times

This article originally ran at Forbes and has been republished here with permission of the author.

For one brief, shining moment, I was beginning to think the New York Times had finally seen the folly of its decades-long vendetta against the use of modern genetic engineering techniques to produce food.

In a July 28 article, reporter Amy Harmon wrote an accurate, fair and well-crafted account of the desperate attempts of scientists supported by Florida’s citrus industry to develop genetically engineered orange trees resistant to the devastating plague of “citrus greening.” Environmental writer Andy Revkin has written constructively about the technology (here and here, for example).

Most satisfying of all, the paper got rid of loathsome food columnist Mark Bittman, who must have set some sort of record for corrigenda at the Times for his bizarre, profligate and serially ignorant pronouncements about genetic engineering.

Had the Gray Lady finally put an end to the inmates’ running the asylum? Would a little integrity and accuracy finally intrude on what the Times sees fit to print on this important topic?

Alas, in my impetuous hopes for better Times in the future, I had underestimated the nescience of the editorial board.  The Times ran a “Room for Debate” feature to explore whether the FDA’s approval of the farmed AquAdvantage genetically engineered salmon, which reaches maturity 40% faster than its unmodified siblings, was “too fishy.” The problem was that in seeking a spectrum of opinions, the Times invited three anti-biotechnology ideologues, along with an eminent plant scientist. (A typical Times interpretation of what constitutes “balance.”)

That wasn’t all. On December 1, the Times’ editorial, “Tell Consumers What They Are Eating,” challenged the worst of Bittman’s amazingly wrong-headed and uninformed rants against a technology that is already improving the quality of life around the world and could do so much more.

Its thesis was that following the FDA’s rejection of petitions demanding labeling of the faster-growing salmon, “Congress should overturn that decision,” because “[c]onsumers deserve to know what they are eating.”

In fact, they will know what they’re eating. It’s called salmon.

The genetic changes made to the fish–the addition to the genome of a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon and a regulatory DNA sequence from the ocean pout—were minor and confer no detectable difference in its appearance, ultimate size, taste or nutritional value; the AquAdvantage just grows to maturity almost twice as fast, a tremendous economic advantage to those farming the fish.

If consumers (and the members of the Times’ editorial board) are really concerned about what they’re eating, they should demand food labeling that discloses such things as the amounts of insect parts and rodent droppings (both of which can be present in many foods but must be below limits established by FDA), or the levels of fungal toxins (which tend to be higher in organic products).

Mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods fails every test: scientific, economic, legal and common sense.

Genetic modification via selection and hybridization has been with us for millennia. Breeders routinely use radiation or chemical mutagens on seeds to scramble a plant’s DNA to generate new traits. “Wide cross” hybridization has given rise to plants that do not and cannot exist in nature; these plants include the varieties of corn, oats, pumpkin, wheat, tomatoes and potatoes we buy every day.  (Yes, even “heirloom” varieties and the overpriced organic stuff at Whole Foods.) On average, every day we consume many servings of varieties of fruits, vegetables, and grains derived from wide crosses.

Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy & Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.  He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Follow him on Twitter @henryimiller.

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