GM animals on the menu

January 2022

As we enter 2022, what happened to the GM edible animals that we've been promised over the years?

Super-fast growing GM salmon have been trying to emerge from the lab since 1989 [1,2,3].

Having gained regulatory approval in America in 2015, GM salmon are now legal to produce and sell there despite being declared unlawful in 2020 due to the absence of any environmental risk assessment.

Gene edited 'healthy' bread

January 2022

One elusive, and potentially very lucrative, holy grail long pursued by the biotech industry is GM wheat. Not just any GM wheat of course, but one which is acceptable to consumers and to their food suppliers.

Realising that the ace to play in winning over a biotech-sceptical public could well be the anti-cancer card, the US market is being sounded out using gene-edited potatoes designed not to give you cancer [1] and cancer-busting GM purple tomatoes [2]. In the UK, the government is forging ahead with a field trial of gene-edited wheat which they claim, like the GM spuds, won't give us cancer. 

'Stress busting' tomatoes

January 2022

In 2021, a Japanese university start-up company, Sanatech Seed, launched the world's first direct consumption genome-edited tomato with "enhanced nutritional benefits".

The novel product was carefully chosen to minimise consumer suspicion: a popular strain of tomato was used and a nutrient that people are "already used to buying in other products" which have naturally high levels.

Sanatech Seed's president explained "This tomato represents an easy and realistic way in which consumers can improve their daily diet" ... "we felt it was important to introduce (consumers) to the technology in a way that was already familiar to them".

This cosily familiar nutrient which Sanatech Seed wants you to want more of is γ-aminobutyric acid (a.k.a. 'GABA').

If you don't recall ever putting GABA on your shopping list, that's because the "other products" referred to are things like cabbage, broccoli, spinach, soya, mushroom and peas.

GM toy tomatoes

January 2022

Genetic engineers have always liked playing with tomatoes.

The first GM food to hit US supermarket shelves was a tomato with a gene for ripening switched off [1]. This was Calgene's Flavr Savr tomato designed by science to last longer on the vine (it did), to be easier to handle during distribution (it wasn't), to taste better (it was pronounced 'mediocre') and to sell at a premium (it didn't). The Flavr Savr tomato's main claim to fame was its inappropriate (some would say absurd) use as a model GMO to set US regulations for all subsequent GM foods. Launched in 1994, the disappointing Flavr Savr finally sank into oblivion three years later.

The first GM food to hit UK supermarket shelves was Zeneca's cheap tinned Californian tomato puree made from GM tomatoes designed for lower processing costs due to their engineered reduced water content. These sank into oblivion in 1999 after two successful years and one disastrous year when consumer awareness caught up with the meaning of its "genetically modified" label.

Fast forward to 2008 when the media went wild reporting preliminary results of a GM 'anti-cancer' tomato produced by GM crop research scientists at the UK's John Innes Centre (JIC). These novel purple-fleshed, high-antioxidant ('anthocyanine') tomatoes were going to "save your life" (Martin).

Hopefully, no one held their breath waiting for their life to be saved by a tomato, because they'd still be waiting.