By Griff Witte Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page E01
A small biotechnology company that mishandled gene-altered corn 1 1/2 years ago by allowing it to possibly mix with food crops has applied for four new permits to grow experimental plants that could one day yield medicine, according to a new report by a consumer group.
The company, ProdiGene Inc. of College Station, Tex., has already received approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for one permit, which involves growing gene-altered corn in Nebraska. The company's applications are among the 16 that have been filed in the past year, marking the resurgence of an industry attempting to turn ordinary plants such as corn and rice into factories for drugs and industrial chemicals, says the report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The center supports the new technology, called "biopharming," in principle, but has called for stricter regulatory oversight by the USDA. With the technique, crops used for food can be bred instead to produce special proteins for pharmaceuticals or other compounds. Biotechnology companies say the cutting-edge approach could prove less expensive than conventional means, and that could make certain drugs more accessible to the public.
But the strategy has come under intense scrutiny since November 2002, when the USDA alleged that ProdiGene had failed to take the necessary steps to keep gene-altered corn separate from nearby food crops in Nebraska and Iowa. The company was later fined, and it agreed to pay to destroy about 500,000 bushels of soybeans that may have been contaminated with the pharmaceutical corn.
Company officials said they have since put in place stringent safeguards to ensure a similar mishap does not occur.
The 2002 episode led to a drop-off in applications to the USDA for permits to grow the special crops. But according to today's report, the hiatus has recently ended and applications are once again on the rise.
The center's new report, "Sowing Secrecy: The Biotech Industry, USDA and America's Secret Pharm Belt," says the USDA has approved seven of the 16 applications received for permits to conduct biopharming within the past year. The other nine are pending.
During the year that included the growing season immediately after the ProdiGene incident, only four applications were approved. In the year before the incident, the USDA issued 25 permits.
The report also shows that of the 16 applications from the past year, about two-thirds involved a food crop such as corn, rice or barley. Many of the gene-altered crops will be grown in states where those kinds of crops are cultivated for food.
"The food industry and consumer groups said after ProdiGene that we shouldn't be using food crops and if we do use food crops, we should do it very far away from where food crops are grown for food purposes," said Gregory Jaffe, the report's author and the Center for Science in the Public Interest's biotechnology project director. "But if you look at the applications, the companies don't seem to be listening."
