Puna ballot

[Amy Swift]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Nicolas Ward wrote:

> On 12/1/06, Fran Poodry <fpoodry at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>>  puna  n.  A variety of cotton grown in Peru, which because of its level of
>>  gossypol is usually grown without insecticides.
>
> Since it's the sort of unusual word that one wouldn't encounter often
> outside of agriculture, "gossypol" had stuck in my head somewhere. I
> was surprised to encounter it the other day in a short article in
> Scientific American, that someone has genetically engineered a
> gossypol-free variety of cotton that would be, among other things, an
> edible high-fiber crop for human consumption. Since gossypol is toxic,
> they're making very sure that it's actually gone.

Huh! That's fascinating.  I did a whole bunch of experiments with gossypol 
last spring/summer.  Hrm, based on TSOR, I am dubious about this edible 
cotton - I am not at all squeamish about genetic modification of 
foodstuffs to *express* foreign proteins, inserting new genes, (tomatoes 
with fish antifreeze? ok! rice that can make and store vitamin A 
precursors? awesome!) but I'm less comfortable with what they're doing, 
which is to insert a gene for an RNAi suppressor to knock down an enzyme 
that is critical for making the gossypol.

This is a really powerful tool for research in the lab, and people are 
trying to develop cancer therapies around it, but (this is just a gut 
feeling, not an opinion backed up by studies I can reference) this feels a 
lot more "fragile" and "risky" than making transgenic crops.  One 
mutation, and a toxin is back in your product (vs the fishy tomatoes, who 
end up just being boring tomatoes again).  And you have to be sure your 
suppressor is expressed at "full strength" in every phase of the cell 
cycle in 100% of cells in every growth condition of your plant, vs just 
needing to get "enough" at "some point" to have the desired effect.  Ok, 
there's a minimum dose for gossypol below which it's not going to be a 
problem - but I would be very worried about cumulative low-dose effects, 
given its method of action (it affects the mitochondria - somewhat like a 
lot of the drugs that initially appear safe but have to be withdrawn from 
the market/late stage testing because of dangerous side effects). The kind 
of thing where it would not be surprising for further research to keep 
lowering the safe exposure limit.

Even if you trust agribusiness to do really careful QC on each harvest 
(which I in fact mostly *do*), what about third party/"black market" 
cultivation?  If I was a raving paranoid anticapitalist I would wonder 
about the "time bomb" potential of such a product... it sure keeps your 
market dependent on you if your product just might turn poisonous if your 
customers don't keep buying new seed stock and services from you.  I very 
much hope it turns out to be safe and can help feed people - we grow a lot 
of cotton already, being able to use some of the "waste" as food would be 
a big efficiency win - but it seems like a much longer shot than your 
standard "frankenfoods".

-Amy