Genetic Maize

Missing Limb. American Bullfrog, Fairfield County, Ohio, July 16, 2001. Brandon Ballangee © 2009 greenmuseum.orgAnother mystery of science has been solved, which gives me hope that the origin of CCD is only a little research away, or perhaps just a flash of inspiration. Strangely, the only coverage of this discovery that I could find is at the BBC Legless frog mystery solved, even though mysteriously deformed frogs have been found all over the world. Since the late 1980s, frogs have been found with missing legs, additional legs, and other deformities (actually, hideously deformed frogs have been found much earlier than that, but the numbers seemed to increase in the late 1980s). Various causes were suggested, but most people were convinced that the cause was chemical in nature.

Amphibians, due to their moist porous skin, are particularly good at absorbing chemicals like pesticides from the environment, so the theory made sense even though there wasn’t any specific proof. Of course, environmentalists rallied around the deformed frogs as an excuse to demonize agriculture. In 1990, the chemical hypothesis was at least partially disproven. An ingenious yet simple experiment by Stan Sessions showed that the presence of small foreign bodies (whether resin beads or cysts caused by a parasite) could cause the growth of extra limbs. The most likely scenario is that over-fertilization of agricultural fields in the late 1980s led to fertilizer running into streams and wetlands. The extra nutrients contributed to larger than typical amounts of algae, on which grazed larger than typical numbers of snails. Those snails are the primary host of trematodes, some species of which carry out part of their life cycle in frogs, and those trematodes caused the deformities. In 2008, Jason Rohr (with Sessions and others) showed that four common pesticides play a role as well. Each seemed to have a negative effect on trematode larvae (which should benefit frogs) but also caused tadpoles to be more susceptible to infection, even though the pesticides (tested at maximum expected exposure levels) did not affect mortality directly.

So, the environmentalists were partially right – agriculture and pest control are partially to blame, although not in the way that was initially assumed. Happily, over-fertilization is less common today (at least in the US) – fertilizer application rates now more closely match what the plants actually need (partially because fertilizer costs have been increasing), and some pesticides are being replaced with genetically engineered crops (hopefully this will be improved upon in the future). Studies on the relationships between human activities and ecosystems strengthen the need for more research into alternatives in agriculture and pest control.

Still, the problem of the missing limbs was not resolved, and Sessions continued his research on amphibians. In the meantime, “ecological artist” Brandon Ballengee was observing amphibians in the wild for his art. Ballangee collaborates with scientists, working with them in field research to create art that engages the public in environmental issues. He became interested in the deformed limbs and wondered if they might be due to predators.

Ballangee and Sessions worked together to test this hypothesis by placing various predators in cups with tadpoles. Only dragonfly nymphs took the bait, biting off the hind legs of developing frogs (the developing front limbs are protected by the tadpoles’s gill chamber). The cause of frog deformities therefore, is natural, though man-made chemicals aren’t helping. I expect that the plight of the bees will be similar – natural causes, exacerbated by things like miticides in the hives.

Sessions, S., & Ruth, S. (1990). Explanation for naturally occurring supernumerary limbs in amphibians Journal of Experimental Zoology, 254 (1), 38-47 DOI: 10.1002/jez.1402540107

Rohr, J., Raffel, T., Sessions, S., & Hudson, P. (2008). Understanding the net effects of pesticides on amphibian trematode infections Ecological Applications, 18 (7), 1743-1753 DOI: 10.1890/07-1429.1

Someone sent me a link to some YouTube videos of Jeffrey Smith promoting one of his books. I’m not sure what this person expected to accomplish, but it gives me a great opportunity to discuss the important issues of credibility and bias. I just started reading Lies, Damned Lies, and Science, about these and other issues surrounding science communication, so these sorts of things have been very much on my mind. I’ll be posting more on the book once I finish it. Be careful if you pick it up, there are a few errors about biotechnology in the beginning, but otherwise it’s great so far.

I’m frustrated by Smith’s star status among anti-GMO activists for quite a few reasons, but the main one is: who the heck is he? His official bio is incredibly vague. I found snippets of information in comments on various sites that all seem to source back to an article by Alex Avery. The article, Jeffrey Smith – A Highest Flying Activist’s Hidden Scientific Beliefs?, says that Smith is a poor source for science information because of his belief in yogic flying, a type of transcendental meditation. Unfortunately, I’m wary of taking Avery at face value as well because he presumes to speak on topics he doesn’t have training in, but at least Avery has a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology. Smith apparently has an MBA, but I can’t find where his degree was from or what his undergrad degree was in. I also can’t find what Smith did before mysteriously becoming an anti-GMO guru, other than his being an aide for one James E. Davis, who ran for US Senate in 1996 in Illinois for the Natural Law party, earning 0.3% of the vote. According to some sites, like Smith’s bio at the Penrhos Trust, he ran for US Senate in 1998 in Iowa, but he isn’t listed in the relevant Wikipedia article (or in the Des Moines Register). He might have connections to Maharishi University of Management (is this where he got that MBA?) but doesn’t come up in a search on their site either. According to the Penrhos bio and others, Smith was VP of Marketing for a GMO detection lab, but I can’t find any details about that. In interviews with anti-GMO publications, Smith claims to have worked for various non-profits “do gooder type of things” but provides no details.

Am I just really bad at Googling? Let me know if you can find anything, I’m curious. Regardless of what he has done, it sounds like exactly zero of it prepared him to be a communicator of science. On this blog, I discuss things I know I don’t have expertise in, but I don’t claim to be an expert in them. I also have my credentials, at least my job and school history, posted clearly. What are these people hiding that they can’t do the same? I hope that people will start to be more transparent about these things, because the context of the person making a claim is often very important in interpreting the claim. How does this matter? Here’s what I replied to the email:

I have a scenario for you. Let’s say someone sends you a press release of the CEO of Monsanto making all sorts of claims that GMOs are the best, totally safe, going to save the world, blah blah blah. Do you believe him? Probably not, because you know he’s got a lot to gain from making exaggerations and even from telling complete untruths. You might not realize it, but Jeffery Smith makes a lot of money from his website, books, and speaking engagements. Do you really trust a guy that makes his living on what he says to be 100% truthful? I don’t. Let’s extend this idea to subjects other than GMOs… Would you believe a door to door salesman of Product X to be 100% truthful about the product? Would you believe a chiropractor who told you that there were no other options for back pain besides chiropracty? Would you trust a pro-life activist to give good advice on birth control? How about asking an oil executive about global warming? Of course not, because we know all of these people have something to gain by getting you to believe what they say. It’s not that everything that they say is 100% a lie. If that was the case, you’d see through them in a minute. No, they’ll tell 90% truth, as much as they need to so that they can slip in a few exaggerations or falsehoods and have them sound like truth. Not that anyone is necessarily doing this on purpose, it can be subconscious. We all carry biases on a variety of topics – those proverbial rose colored glasses can color what we say as well as what we see. We just have to be careful to take things with a little bit of caution (or a lot of caution as the case may be) and to get information from multiple sources, including sources we know are biased the other way. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. It also helps if the source actually has at least a little bit of professional training or credentials in the subject they purport to be an expert in.

The National Corn Growers Association is an important trade group. Their mission is to advocate and lobby on behalf of corn growers, or as they say “to create and increase opportunities for corn growers”. At the Maize Genetics Conference, I got to listen to their Chair of the Research and Business Development Action Team, Pam Johnson (you can find my summary of her remarks in my post Research and the Recession). She was a little overenthusiastic, but generally made sense, advocating for better cooperation between government and industry to produce more useful research. I hate to say it, but, was all that just for show?

Like any special interest group, NCGA puts out information that is biased toward their own agenda. This is nothing new, every special interest group from Greenpeace to AgBioWorld does it. I know it happens, and yet, I was still shocked yesterday when I read the report Research Shines Light on Gulf of Mexico Hypoxic Zone (full paper). The cause of the hypoxic zone has been thoroughly researched by multiple respected organizations including NOAA and USGS, but NCGA throws all that research aside in this report.

Let’s not blame nitrogen fertilization of corn, they say. Instead, it’s increased population causing more sewage and the fertilization of lawns (really, they say that). Some of their points are valid, but taken as a whole, the report may as well be an April Fool’s Joke (unfortunately, it’s not April, and I’m not laughing).

If I was expecting bias, then why does this matter? It matters because there is theoretically supposed to be collaboration between academia, government, NGOs, consumer groups, industry, and trade groups. All of these stakeholders must cooperate in order to conduct risk analysis, to decide research agendas, to form policy. Ultimately, they must all work together and compromise, finding ways that each stakeholder may benefit the most. When any one of those stakeholders goes off on their own and twists science for their own agenda, everyone loses. The twister loses status, becomes less respected. Everyone else loses because a viewpoint is effectively removed from the conversation. (Yes, I know this is an idealized view, but this is the way things are supposed to be, darn it!)

Because of bad science, or rather, bad use of science, many organizations have no credibility in my book (at least when it comes to certain issues). Every piece of information should be corroborated with several reliable sources but it gets much more difficult when sources become less reliable!

One example is UCS. They do great work on a variety of topics, but when it comes to genetic engineering, they let their agenda twist science too much. In their recent report, Failure to Yield, they apparently didn’t bother to consult any experts on biotechnology or agriculture, or only talked to scientists who were too ideological to report reality.

Now, unfortunately, I have to add NCGA to the list of organizations from whom I must take reports with a whole bowl of salt, instead of just a pinch.

NCGA would have far better served their constituents and everyone else by admitting that N runoff is a big problem. Then, they could push for more research into NUE (nitrogen use efficient) crops, alternative fertilization schemes like injection instead of spreading, rotation schemes that aid in soil fertility, prevention of fertilizer runoff with buffer strips on waterways and cover crops… there is a lot to be done! Now that NCGA has said there is no problem, who will push for research into these alternatives?

Update: I was thinking about this a bit more last night and wanted to add a few more comments about the report.

The report seems to make two claims: first, there is no Gulf dead zone, and second, if there is a dead zone, it’s not due to corn. I’ll tackle the second claim first…

Lawn fertilization is contributing to hypoxia, at least at the local level. As the NCGA report says, we actually harvest a good portion of the N applied to corn fields, while none of the N applied to lawns is harvested. In fact, there is currently a watershed protection/rehabilitation project going on right in my neighborhood. Our stream is so polluted with N and P runoff that it’s hypoxic. Combine that with tons of fecal coliform and more N from dog poop runoff and we’ve got a problem!

A collaborative of community members, the City of Ames, Iowa State and USDA researchers are working to build buffer strips of trees and grasses along the stream, along with an educational campaign encouraging people to use less fertilizer and pick up after their pets. I hope this effort is being repeated across the country, especially for golf courses.

A bit of an aside: similar problems exist along streams in farmer’s fields, as they try to plant as much of their land as possible, instead of leaving riparian buffer strips to absorb fertilizer (chemical or manure) and pesticides. Work done by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Leopold Center of Iowa State has shown that many benefits can come of riparian buffer strips, which can (among other things):  “cut nitrogen and phosphorus in runoff as much as 80%” and “cut sediment in surface runoff as much as 90%”.

In my Sustainable Ag Colloquium class, we’ve had speakers discuss using the buffer strip as an additional source of income, growing fruit trees and bushes as well as other crops that can be sold locally for relatively high prices. The area may also be used for recreation.

The report also mentions sewage as a source of N. I don’t know what is happening specifically in the Midwest, but I know sewage is a huge problem in the Chesapeake. Maryland’s sewage and water treatment systems were made at a time when they didn’t anticipate such population growth. Consequently, whenever it rains, the sewers overflow into the streets and right into the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. Not just disgusting, it’s bad for the environment and human health. I’d be surprised if other cities didn’t have similar issues.

All of that said, while lawns and sewage are sources of N that need to be addressed, it’s preposterous to say that N runoff from corn fields isn’t a factor. On a perfect field in a perfect year, little N would be lost, but we rarely get perfection. Instead, we get ill timed rains that wash away fertilizer and fields that drain right into watersheds.

As I said before the update, NCGA would be better off admitting a role in N runoff and working with other organizations to solve the problem. As for denying the existence of the dead zone, such talk completely contradicts decades of work by USGS and others. NCGA denies any correlation between hypoxic area and input of N from waterflow, but this graph by Louisiana U researchers is quite clear. I don’t know what happened every year, but here are some examples. In 1993 there was a great flood that washed extra N into the Missippi River basin, which is correlated with an increase in hypoxic area. In 2000 there was a drought so very little N was washed into the basin, correlated with a steep decrease in hypoxic area. In 2008 there were terrible floods in Iowa, so I’m surprised that year isn’t higher, perhaps the floods were local?

I wonder if I could get a guest post from one of the grad students at LA U to help explain the correlations. As for the fish and shrimp catch data presented in the report, I just wanted to point out that the Gulf of Mexico is pretty big. I don’t know how much the catch data for the whole Gulf reflects on the area that is said to be hypoxic. It would be a lot better to have research vessels do catch and release in the areas that are supposed to be hypoxic to determine a correlation between O2 levels in the water and various marine species, or at least collect information from fishermen in those areas. Maybe this has been done, but I must go do an experiment myself, no time to look this up.

This report, as is typical, shows that more studies need to be done and better models need to be made. It doesn’t invalidate all that is known about hypoxia. I just wish that NCGA had tempered their tone rather than saying that all of the other researchers are wrong. If they are wrong, then prove it! I’m not holding my breath, but perhaps the fish have to.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan tells us:

Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and, provided you know the chemical names it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and xanthan gum, read: corn. Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise and mustard, the hot dogs and the bologna, the margarine and shortening, the salad dressings and the relishes and even the vitamins. (Yes, it’s in the Twinkie, too.) There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn. This goes for the nonfood items as well: Everything from the toothpaste and cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash bags, cleansers, charcoal briquettes, matches, and batteries, right down to the shine on the cover of the magazine that catches your eye by the checkout: corn. Even in Produce on a day when there’s ostensibly no corn for sale you’ll nevertheless find plenty of corn: in the vegetable wax that gives the cucumbers their sheen, in the pesticide responsible for the produce’s perfection, even in the coating on the cardboard it was shipped in. Indeed, the supermarket itself—the wallboard and joint compound, the linoleum and fiberglass and adhesives out of which the building itself has been built—is in no small measure a manifestation of corn.

The full text of this chapter may conveniently be found at Pollan’s website. I do recommend reading the whole thing; while preachy, it is a useful overview of the commercial food system. I highly recommend Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger as a Discovery Channel type exploration of industrial food accompaniment to Pollan’s work.

Before I get jumped on for supporting the “agricultural-industrial complex”, let me say that I wholeheartedly agree with Pollan’s recent mantra “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” I just think all of the anti-processed food (anti-corn) hoopla is a bit misdirected. The producers of processed food are simply producing what consumers demand, with assistance from commodity subsidies. Instead of making books and movies aimed at the food elite, it would be far more useful to change subsidies to make healthy food more affordable at the same time as making processed food and animal products more expensive. This would change demand by default, but a public awareness campaign to make healthy food more interesting for people who aren’t currently eating it would be a great accompaniment to the changes in pricing.

Now, back to corn… By Pollan’s reckoning, 11,250 products contain corn. His estimate of 25% has recently been ratcheted up to 90% for the debut of Food, Inc. by filmmaker Robert Kenner in a PBS interview (this new number is what inspired this post). Despite the boasts by the National Corn Growers Association and the Iowa Corn Promotion Board that “thousands of products in the supermarket contain corn” (4000 products according to Iowa Corn’s FAQs), the reality is that the amount of “corn” in the grand majority of those products is minimal. Think about what processed foods are actually made of… wheat! Cookies, crackers, waffles, bread, cereals, pasta… wheat is the 1st ingredient in a far higher percentage of processed foods than is corn, and actually makes up a far greater percentage of the products by weight. Aside from a few obviously corny products like corn chips and grits, the “corn” in most products is actually highly purified compounds that make up a tiny fraction of the total ingredients.

Composition of #2 yellow dent corn. Adapted from Plymouth Oil.Corn is used to produce hundreds of useful compounds, some of which Pollan lists in the quote above. Corn is both whole food and raw material due to its composition – parts oil, starch, and protein all have their uses. We haven’t even touched the potential of corn. Right now, the public (including me) is demanding biodegradable plant sourced alternatives to to petroleum products. Today, we can buy cleaning products, bath and body products, and even plastics that were made in part with corn. Some of the corn-derived compounds have allowed food manufacturers to produce “foods” that should never have existed, but I don’t think we can blame corn for Twinkies – they would have been made regardless with sugar and ingredients from other sources. Other foods produced with corn-derived ingredients have become staples. Corn derived ingredients allow for smoother pouring, reduced caking, increased stability and solubility, and tons of other useful properties.

True, some of (if not all of) the foods in the center of the supermarket could be made from scratch at home, but this isn’t realistic for most of us. Some degree of convenience is important in households where all of the adults work outside of the home, whether we like it or not. Corn based sweeteners have been demonized as the cause of obesity and diabetes, but we would have seen the same increase in both health problems if people consumed equal amounts of sugar. The health risks of HFCS in particular were debunked in a critical review that reinforced the idea that the problem is an increase in total calorie intake combined with not enough exercise. An interesting tidbit: honey has a fructose/glucose ratio of 50/44 while the two types of HFCS are 42/53 and 55/41 (Wikipedia).

Uses of Corn. Posted at Policy Economist.As I’ve mentioned in plenty of other posts, there is certainly a negative environmental impact from the way we have been growing corn, but the amount of the total corn crop that goes into making all of these raw materials is fairly small. According to the USDA,  there were 12 billion bushels of corn harvested in 2006. The grand majority of the harvest goes to feed, fuel, and exports (most of the exports are used as feed as well). Only 1.4 billion bushels were used in food.  Any complaints about corn should be leveled squarely at grain-fed meat.

Finally, some worry that having corn derivatives in so many products contributes to allergies. This doesn’t really make sense to me, because so many of the derivatives are purified products. As I understand it, corn-derived citric acid won’t set off an allergic reaction in someone who is allergic to corn because the corn antigens have been purified out of the citric acid. Whether it is extracted from corn or any other plant source or synthesized chemically, citric acid is citric acid. It seems that the potential allergenicity of a corn derivative depends on how pure it is. That’s all I’ll say about the subject because I do not have enough education in the workings of the incredibly complex human immune system. If you have any experience in the subject, please elaborate in a comment.