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Masterfoods to Stop Using GM Rennet in UK Candy Bars

Apparently in a move to make their candy bars GM free, Masterfoods, maker of chocolate bar brands Mars, Snickers and Maltesers said they will start using animal based rennet to make the whey in their chocolate products.

In Europe a distinction is made between foods that are made with genetically modified food products, and those that are made with the help of genetically modified organisms.

In the first case, GM food products, there is strict regulation in Europe. Most GM foods are banned, and those that are not banned must be clearly labeled if they contain more than 0.9% of any GM product. An important exception is for livestock, which is allowed to be fed GM products unless it is certified organic.

In the case of food made with the help of genetically modified organisms, there is no such regulation. There are no labeling requirements, and such food can even be certified organic. This technique involves modifying a microorganism like yeast or bacteria, which in turn manufactures the food product.

The most commonly known products that are made in this way are aspartame (the artificial sweetener used in sugar free soft drinks) and ‘vegetarian’ rennet used in making hard cheeses and whey (used in processed foods like the chocolate bars mentioned above). Recently they have been discussing if they would allow this technique to use fish genes to manufacture an ice cream additive in the UK. In addition this technique is used to manufacture a number of pharmaceutical products and food supplements like vitamins.

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Genes Used in GM Crops Can Jump Species Barrier

Evidence has been found that genes used in making GM crops can jump the species barrier into gut bacteria. This comes from a study in 2000 that seems to have yet to be formally published, or even peer reviewed, but is interesting nonetheless.

If these genes can move into gut bacteria, there is certainly the potential for them jump to other bacteria, and possibly other organisms,

This finding probably has little to do with the ongoing discussion of bees and CCD.

Gut bacteria is very promiscuous with it’s DNA, and scientists have long suspected such a transfer could take place, but proving it has always been elusive. In this case it involved herbicide resistant genes, which in themselves are perhaps not so important, but the implications are enormous.

Key to understanding these implications is knowing how GM plants are developed. It’s more complex than just inserting a new gene, and in fact usually involves a bundle of several different genes. Among the genes often inserted is a ‘marker’ for antibiotic resistance and promoter genes. It might also be more accurate to describe it as blasting, rather than inserting.

When this bundle of new genes is ‘blasted’ into the cells to be modified, it is an imprecise procedure with a limited success rate, and indeed with the potential for causing possibly undetected genetic damage to the cell. Because the success rate is not 100%, some technique must be employed to separate the cells that have been modified successfully from those that haven’t. This is where the marker gene for antibiotic resistance comes in. By exposing all the cells to antibiotics those that have not been successfully modified and do not have the marker gene will be destroyed by the antibiotic, leaving behind only those cells which have been modified.

Promoter genes can be used to ‘switch on’ an otherwise dormant trait. This is needed because sometimes the genes to be inserted contain traits that would remain dormant without these genes. It is also suspected these promoter genes have the ability to switch on other dormant traits, with possibly unexpected results.

The fact that genes from GM crops are probably crossing the species barrier into gut bacteria is much more significant with respect to the antibiotic resistant marker gene and promoter genes, than with the herbicide resistance.

In this study genes transfered into gut bacteria of bees, but there is no reason why the same thing couldn’t happen to gut bacteria in people.

Besides the possibility of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria developing, some GM crops are developed so they manufacture their own pesticides.  If these traits were transfered to human gut bacteria this could result in pesticides being manufactured in our digestive systems.

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Mason Bees?

Vancouveriste left a comment on my Bees and the Netherlands post and asked if I knew anything about Mason bees as home garden pollinators, and I must admit I don’t. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of these? Are these too experiencing CCD, I wonder?

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Inert Ingredients and CCD

An article yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle had a few more ideas about the bee crisis. Richard Fagerlund, entomologist, offered the following:

” Even though the active ingredients in the pesticides may be considered safe for bees, the inert ingredients — which compose most of the product (up to 99 percent, in some cases) — may be severely detrimental to bees. Not only are the inert ingredients not listed on the pesticide labels, but many also haven’t even been tested and are classified as ‘toxicity unknown.'”

Just as important were his observations in his own property:

“While bad beekeeping practices, such as hauling bees cross-country in the daytime and using pesticides in beehives, may be the cause of CCD in beekeepers’ colonies, they are not the cause of the decline of wild bees. We live on 20 acres, and last summer, after all of the sunflowers and other plants were blooming, we couldn’t find a single bee on the property. However, we are surrounded by cornfields that use pesticides regularly, and there is no doubt in my mind that the reason we don’t have bees is the pesticides.”

This brings to light an important question in my mind. When we talk about CCD and the bee crisis, are we talking about the financial importance of bees and what can be done to keep commercial bee hives in operation, or are we talking about looking for the true cause of the problem and fixing the associated environmental damage? It seems like these could evolve into mutually exclusive goals.