| The food industry has soured on genetically modified sugar.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of bioengineered seeds for
growing herbicide-tolerant sugar beet plants are gathering
dust. The nation's sugar refiners are telling their farmers to
avoid the seed even though it has been cleared by U.S.
regulators. Sugar executives say many of their customers --
candy and food manufacturers -- aren't willing to accept
bioengineered sugar until the debate over the safety of crop
biotechnology dies down.
"We did ask farmers not to grow GM [genetically
modified] sugar beets," said John Long, a spokesman for Hershey
Foods Corp., Hershey, Pa. "It isn't because we have a
safety concern. We wanted to delay this until the issue
related to public perception of GM crops has been fully
resolved," he said.
M&M/Mars, Hackettstown, N.J., said Thursday that it
also doesn't want to use sugar from genetically modified sugar
beets.
Sugar beets, grown by 12,000 farmers in states such as
North Dakota, Minnesota and Michigan, are the source of
roughly half of the granular sugar consumed in the U.S. The
sugar beet, which can weigh several pounds, is white and far
bigger than the red table beet grown as a side dish.
The U.S. food industry's shunning of genetically modified
sugar is a setback for crop biotechnology rivals Monsanto
Co. and Aventis SA, and a major blow for the handful of
sugar-beet breeders licensed to use their genes. Monsanto's
gene gives plants immunity to its Roundup herbicide, making it
possible for farmers to chemically weed their fields without
damaging their own crops, an innovation that is creating more
farmer demand for Roundup. Likewise, the Aventis gene gives
plants immunity to its Liberty herbicide.
Sugar beets are a minor U.S. crop, grown on just 1.43
million acres this year, but the niche could be very lucrative
for Monsanto and Aventis, which are trying to recoup their
investment in herbicide-resistant genes by getting them into
several crops. Some sugar-beet breeders figured their industry
would probably pay tens of millions of dollars annually for
using the genes.
Monsanto, which licensed three U.S. sugar-beet seed firms
to use its Roundup Ready gene, had expected the seed to be in
the hands of farmers as early as 1999. A spokeswoman for the
St. Louis concern, which is 85%-owned by Pharmacia
Corp., said the food industry's ban isn't having a material
impact on earnings.
Aventis, a French pharmaceuticals firm, said U.S.
regulators cleared its herbicide-resistant sugar beet last
year. An Aventis official said it is still
"enthusiastic" about the prospects for genetically
modified sugar beets, but doesn't have concrete plans for
commercialization.
The food industry's informal ban is far more damaging to
the sugar-beet breeders that invested several millions of
dollars and years of effort to producing large amounts of
genetically modified seed that they now can't sell. A living
organism, sugar-beet seed loses its vigor if not planted in a
couple years.
"We'll probably end up having to discard a lot of
seed," said Joe Dahmer, president of Betaseed Inc.,
Shakopee, Minn., which has been incorporating the
Liberty-tolerant gene into its sugar-beet breeding lines.
"We don't see any prospects for selling it in 2002 or
anytime soon." Betaseed is the sugar-beet seed unit of
KWS Saat AG of Germany.
Likewise, the Hilleshog sugar-beet seed unit of Syngenta
AG, Basel, Switzerland, is putting off any plans for a U.S.
launch of seeds containing the Roundup-tolerant gene. "We
don't commercialize things customers will have trouble
selling," a Syngenta spokesman said.
Many of the food companies shunning bioengineered sugar
have used ingredients derived from genetically modified
versions of corn and soybeans since 1996. U.S. corn and
soybean farmers are expected to plant 66.7 million acres of
bioengineered seed this year.
Objections by environmental and consumer groups about this
first wave of genetically modified crops are making many food
firms leery about being identified with the technology. So
much of the corn and soybeans produced in the U.S. are
genetically modified that it is impractical for most food
companies to avoid bioengineered ingredients from these
commodities.
However, newer and smaller transgenic crops -- such as the
herbicide-tolerant sugar beet -- are becoming expendable in
the eyes of food executives. |