Showing posts with label Salmon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Salmon. Show all posts

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Salmon, apples and potatoes — 3 healthy and sustainable foods that you can buy now under the new “bioengineered” label

Label required by Jan. 1, 2022, on food products containing bioengineered products and byproducts. Credit: USDA.

Label required by Jan. 1, 2022, on food products containing bioengineered products and byproducts. Credit: USDA.

(this post originally appeared on Genetic Literacy Project - January 4, 2022

The “bioengineered” label for foods sold in the United States is now in effect. Any food or food ingredient that has been genetically modified must include a label that says “bioengineered,” or come with a phone number or QR code guiding consumers to more information online.

On the positive side, the national labeling law avoids the nightmare of state-by-state requirements. The major negative is that the label could well become the target for negative campaigning and marketing around the fear-based, anti-GMO narrative and misleading “Non-GMO” labeling that have permeated food-related messaging for so long.

Fortunately there are some exciting “consumer-oriented” products finally becoming available which can display that newbioengineered label that would help consumers to overcome the disinformation and embrace technologies that actually improve our food system and our ability to enjoy it. The most notable are non-browning Arctic Apples, non-browning Innate potatoes and healthy, fast-growing, AquaBounty Salmon, which I wrote about two years ago in an article in Forbes and on Medium titled: “Three Foods I Wish I Could Buy at Costco.” These novel options that are not only tasty and healthy, but also have benefits in terms of sustainability, climate-smart farming, and food waste reduction.

I’ll discuss each example in detail below, but the big picture is that consumers in some locations are now able to find these products for sale, although they are not yet in national chains like Costco or Walmart, which for now are bowing activist pressures. Supplies are limited, but there is also a hesitancy on the part of many retailers who don’t want to be “first” to step into something potentially controversial. The truth is that there is no justification for such controversy since all the safety or environmental questions have already been addressed during the extraordinarily long and rigorous regulatory process overseen by the USDA, EPA and FDA. The farmers that grow major commodity crops have been able to take advantage of biotech crops for a long time, but consumers and specialty crop growers are only beginning to have that opportunity. Let’s see what that looks like.

Arctic Apples

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Twenty-five years ago a Canadian fruit grower named Neal Carter and his wife Louisa started a project to develop non-browning apples with the vision of reducing food waste and reversing the declining consumption of that healthy fruit. With a very small organization (e.g. less than 12), Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc.(OSF) developed varieties of well known apple cultivars in which a gene for a particular enzyme was turned off or “silenced.” That enzyme is what turns the fruit brown when it is bruised or cut. Turning it off makes the fruit more robust in general and dramatically reduces the amount that is rejected from harvest through storage and processing. The other non-browning trait advantage is that Arctic apples can also be sold as a ready-to-eat, sliced product that retains the fruit’s full flavor, aroma and vitamin content.

OSF shipped me a box of these as whole apples a few years ago and I was able to take them to a potluck dinner a couple of hours after slicing and compare them with regular apples. Everyone who tried them thought they were great, wanted to be able to buy them, and didn’t worry at all about them being “GMO.” I think that will be a normative reaction once consumers can see biotech advantages first-hand instead of just hearing them demonized by notorious anti-technology groups and writers.

OSF was acquired in 2014 by Intrexon, a publiccompany where R.J. Kirk served as Chairman and CEO. As of 2020 ownership transferred to Third Security, LLC, a venture capital firm led by Kirk. Kirk encouraged a vertical integration business strategy focused on the sliced apple or “Fresh cut” market. Neal Carter continued to run the company as he still does today. Talking with him last week I was impressed by the scope of his expertise and understanding ranging from the growing the trees to the processing step, to nutritional information, food safety protocols, product distribution options, marketing and building of a solid public image. He also has a solid understanding of the science involved in the genetics of the Arctic® offering and how that technology has become ever more sophisticated over time.

OSF has purchased or leased 1300 acres of land for apple production land in Washington State where it currently grows 2.6 million trees. They have plans for additional orchards and their own dedicated slicing facility in the near future. Their apple variety options include Arctic Goldens, Arctic Grannys, and as of this year Arctic Fuji. Arctic Galas will be next. In the longer term, non-browning red skinned apples are on the list. They are also hoping to develop more robust, non-browning cherries that will avoid the stem decline or pitting that tends to occur with that delicious fruit.

Credit: Articapples.com

OSF’s apples are now being sold asstand-alone slices or as a component of fruit mix products packaged in cooperation with companies providing the other ingredients. There is also a dried version which is special because the slices don’t require sulfur products to prevent browning while they were being dried. These products are increasingly available at some regional grocery retailers; at certain convenience store chains and food service outlets. Some is now provided through military procurement. In some geographies the sliced fruit is now available for home delivery from Amazon Fresh. The convenience store and home delivery options have become even more popular during the pandemic. In the long term these slices might be found at a Costco or other national chains, but this will require expanding orchard plantings that that is a relatively slow process (4-5 years from planting to achieve full productivity).

Overall, Arctic apples address many societal needs and desires: a positive olfactory experience (flavor, aroma, appearance, and texture), convenience, health benefits, food waste reduction, and efficient use of farmland and inputs.

Innate Potatoes

In the process of harvesting, cleaning, sorting and storage of potatoes, they can get bruised leading to black spots and browning inside the potato that makes them ugly and undesirable. This damage generates substantial waste all along the food chain from the packing house, to processors, to stores and through to the consumer. Black spots and browning are also very undesirable for making something like hash browns at home.

The Simplot potato company has been using biotechnology methods to “turn off” or “silence” a PPO gene that is similar to the one silenced in Arctic Apples. They have also turned off genes to reduce the amount of the amino acid asparagine in the potatoes that can turn into the naturally occurring compound acrylamide during frying. Acrylamide is linked to various health effects so having less is a nice outcome. These potatoes have been on the market since 2015 as “white russets” and were labeled as “bioengineered” even before the requirement to do so in 2022. This has not been controversial with the consumers who have had access to the product, mainly at regional grocery chains and restaurants, not in national chains like Costco, Safeway, Kroger, etc. Again this is partly because of retailer’ hesitancy to “be first,” but as the supply of these potatoes increases it will be interesting to see whether that picture can change

Simplot has other grower- and consumer-oriented potato improvements in the development pipeline. They have moved genes from wild potatoes to make their potato cultivars more resistant to late blight – a fungal disease that caused the Irish potato famine in the 19th century and which still requires substantial control efforts by potato farmers today. That trait is “cisgenic” or “intragenic” in that it is based on potato genes being used in potatoes.

Simplot also added these resistance genes to the potato cultivars typically grown in Bangladesh and Indonesia and provided them for free to those farmers. They are also working on resistance to a virus disease (Potato Virus Y) which has become a bigger issue for North American potato farmers since an insect called the potato psyllid has moved into the Northwest. That pest movement has likely enabled by climate change in that pest can now survive the warmer winters in that major growing region. Hopefully, the anti-technology voices won’t deprive the farmers of these pest resistance traits as they did successfully with the Colorado potato beetle resistance trait developed by Monsanto and first sold in 1997. Growers saw great benefit from those “NewLeaf Potatoes,” but the controversy led to their removal from the market in by 2001.

Simplot has future plans to use CRISPR on russet varieties and even extend them on smaller, non-Russet potatoes. They recently announced they are working with the strawberry breeding company, PSI to make various consumer-oriented options in that popular fruit crop using gene editing. Simplot has also received a CRISPR license to work on browning and bruising reduction for avocado! That could prevent a lot of food waste at the consumer level.

The many sustainability advantages of Innate non-browning potatoes. Credit: Simplot Biosciences

Overall the Simplot efforts address many positive societal benefits: food waste reduction, enhanced consumer experience, health benefits, farmer pest management and land-use-efficiency.

AquaBounty Salmon

The third food is a kind of Atlantic salmon that has been improved using biotechnology so that it can grow more rapidly and require less feed while still having the highly desirable nutritional content of other salmon (e.g. the heart-healthy omega-3 fats). The US imports ~400,000 metric tons of farmed Atlantic salmon each year, around 16% of the growing global demand (Norway, Chile, Canada and Scotland are the largest producers).

AquaBounty salmon are raised in bio-secure, re-circulating, terrestrial aquaculture systems (RAS) that return 95% of the water each day and remove any sludge for use as fertilizer on nearby farms. In the tanks the fish can be carefully monitored. They are also free from the parasites and pathogens found in the ocean so they don’t need antibiotics or vaccines. Another advantage is that they are not exposed to ocean pollutants like heavy metals or microplastics.AquaBounty salmon can be raised anywhere such a facility can be built – the first one is in near Muncie Indiana so the transport carbon footprint is minimized to many US markets vs international imports.

Salmon swimming in tank. Credit: AquaBounty

While this desirable fish option is now commercially available for some Americans and Canadians, it will take time to expand the number of production facilities sufficiently to serve national food retail chains like a Costco. Unfortunately my home state of California might never be on the list for local production. There is a state regulation against raising these “GMO” fish. There is no rational reason; it isn’t that there is danger of these fish getting loose in the Pacific Ocean (they are all sterile females and the tanks are secure). I’m still trying to trace the “logic” here, but ironically there is an exception in the state law for aquarium hobbyists to buy novelty “Glofish” that are genetically engineered to glow because they have DNA from jellyfish.

It makes no sense to allow anyone to buy cool“GMO” pets and not allow local production of one of the most resource efficient, environmentally friendly, safe, healthy and delicious food production options that will eventually be available to most regions.

What’s next?

If you want to know more about the label, and which foods or ingredients will be labeled as such, check out the USDA website and hear a good discussion featured in the first part of this podcast.

If you as a consumer are excited about these options and would like to see more innovative food products in the future, I would encourage you to seek them out in stores or on-line and to ask for them at your favorite retailers. Our best hope of overcoming the decades-long, fear-based campaigns against modern biotechnology is to finally “vote with our food dollars” and let our voice be heard through the comment boxes or websites that are available.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Three Foods I Wish I Could Buy At Costco

A typical Costco store front, image STU PENDOUSMAT

(This article was originally posted on Forbes on 8/6/19)

I enjoy shopping at Costco. I’ve been a member since the days when it was called Price Club. I like the diverse and yet selective range of products they offer and of course their reasonable prices. I find the staff friendly and helpful and I appreciate the fact that the employees must be treated fairly since so many are the same folks I’ve seen working there for years. The food court is an awesome deal and I almost always get my gas at Costco because it is the lowest price option in the area.  The free sample thing is fun and sometimes educational. The store is well lighted, and its aisles are uncluttered. Their wine selection is great, and Costco is where I always get my eye exams and glasses.

Cool room image from Yelp by Greg M. Used with permission. 

I particularly appreciate the way that they keep much of their fresh produce in a walk-in cold room. Yes, it’s a bit uncomfortable, but by keeping these foods cold until sale, they are extending the shelf-life for the consumer and thus reducing food waste. Yes, the packages of produce they sell are large, but I can share them with friends and neighbors in cases where I can’t get through the whole amount in time. I think it is really cool that Costco uses the empty boxes from their produce shipments to package up a customer’s purchases to take home. It is also my understanding that Costco negotiates reasonable, long-term supply contracts with the grower/shippers who supply their fruits and vegetables. Treating farmers well is a big plus on my list.   

So, you can see that there is a lot that I like about Costco. But there are three specific food items I would really like to be able to buy there but it seems unlikely that they will become available. This is because, like many retailers, Costco does not want to wade into the controversy surrounding genetically engineered foods, commonly called “GMOs.” As a scientist who has been watching the advances in molecular genetics since 1976, I find it tragic that the opponents of this method of plant improvement have been so successful in suppressing even the most logical applications for food. In many cases the losers here are that small minority in our society that still feeds us. The even greater tragedy is the extent to which those groups have blocked even free, improved crops for farmers in the developing world. But there are three specific foods I’d like to talk about which have been specifically modified for the benefit of consumers and which have actually made it through the tortuous regulatory process that the crop biotech industry self-imposed well before the first commercial plantings of biotech crops of the mid 90s. Overall, I think of Costco as a rationally, ethically run business that values its customers and respects their intelligence. Carrying these three foods would be a great way to demonstrate that respect. 

Product 1: Arctic® Apples
Arctic Granny on the left still white while ordinary apple has started browning losing flavor, aroma and vitamins
USED WITH PERMISSION OF OSF
A seven employee, farmer-founded business in British Columbia called Okanagan Specialty Fruits (OSF) developed apples that don’t turn brown when cut or bruised. They did this by simply turning off the gene for the enzyme called Polyphenol Oxidase which is what causes the browning and also degrades things like vitamins in the process. The patent they needed to license to do this was from CSIRO, a government sponsored research organization in Australia. Some plants, especially those in the nightshade family, have that same enzyme as part of their pest defense, but it isn’t really needed for the human-tended and already quite “genetically modified” versions of those species. OSF was acquired by the brave, diversified biotech company, Intrexon in 2015 and they began commercial production of the apples in 2015, launching in test markets in the Midwest in 2017. It takes several years for new orchards to come into production, but as of today there are around 1,235 acres of several varieties being grown in the US and in Canada (Arctic® Grannys, Arctic® Goldens, and Arctic®Fujis). These apples are being sold in some grocery chains in the U.S. I once met all 7 of those employees (the company has now grown to 27) during their research phase and they mailed me a box of the apples back in 2014. They were really cool! You can cut them even as much as several hours before you eat them, and they still taste and smell like a freshly cut apple. You can keep apples from browning with something like citric acid, but that changes the taste and smell. Imagine slicing these for the kid’s lunch, bringing sliced apples to a potluck or getting them at a salad bar. These apples can also be dried without the need for sulfites so that the taste is not compromised and they are not problematic for people with an allergic response to that preservative. Costco – would you please start offering these apple products among your apple options? At least at my Carlsbad, CA Costco you only offer 2 or 3 non-organic choices of apple cultivars not including my favorites. I reluctantly deal with that limitation, but don’t your customers that care a lot about food waste and flavor also deserve the choices they would prefer?

An agricultural supply and potato processing company called Simplot has a relatively small biotech subsidiary called Simplot Plant Sciences. They developed non-browning potatoes turning off the same gene as is in the Arctic® Apples – PPO. In addition, using all genetic material from potatoes (“cisgenic”), they reduced the amount of the amino acid asparagine which can be converted to acrylamide – a possible carcinogen - during frying. They also worked with the Sainsbury Laboratory in the UK and the 2Blades Foundation to move some disease resistance genes from inedible, wild potatoes into commercially relevant cultivars. This is a really good thing for the potato growers because they have to spend far less time, fuel and money on fungicide sprays to control “Late Blight”, the disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine. This would have been extremely difficult to do with conventional breeding because potatoes very rarely reproduce through seeds. Back in 2016 I was gifted with a bag of these potatoes by Simplot. I put up a video of making hash browns with these and with regular potatoes. With the White Russets™ I was able to grate them and take my time forming them into nice shapes and to fry them without any of the browning that is normally unavoidable. They came out nicer looking and crispier. My conclusion was that these potatoes could “make America grate again.”

So, these non-browning produce options are much better in terms of the sensory experience, but they also help to reduce food waste throughout the supply chain and at the consumer level. 

The many sustainability advantages of Innate non-browning potatoes
GRAPHIC USED WITH PERMISSION OF SIMPLOT BIOSCIENCES
Today making a non-browning crop is even easier using something like CRISPR technology and the USDA has concluded that it isn’t even something that needs to be regulated. People have been working on non-browning mushrooms, and they should totally work on non-browning versions of bananas, lettuce and avocados! A way to reduce food waste and give customers a better sensory experience sounds like a good thing for a Costco to offer. Costco: could we please get these options at your stores?


Costco is a major marketer of salmon in the US and they do a great job of that. Salmon is a delicious fish and a healthy option for consumers. But there is an even healthier and more environmentally desirable kind of salmon Costco could be selling in the near future. A small company in Canada licensed a technology from the University of Toronto and the Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1996 (That’s a very innovative country, eh?). It was a genetically engineered a line of Atlantic Salmon with a growth-related gene from chinook salmon and a promoter from Ocean Pout, that allows these fish to grow far faster and with less need for food. These improved fish can gain a pound of weight from a pound fish feed making them 10 times as efficient as some wild-caught fish.

Comparing the Feed-Use-Efficiency of various meats
IMAGE FROM MARINE HARVEST, 2016. (Other sources say that the conversion rate for cattle is 6:1 and of course these and other ruminants give humans access to the huge energy supply in the form of cellulose and make millions of acres of pasture land not suitable for crops a usable resource for the production of human food)

These AquAdvantage® Salmon are raised in inland aquaculture tanks and only sterile female fish are in the tanks so in the extremely unlikely case that they escaped to the ocean they would not have any effect on wild fish populations.



What one of the terrestrial fish-raising tank looks like
PHOTO FROM AQUABOUNTY VIA GENETIC LITERACY PROJECT
This multi-layered safety protocol has been scrutinized by regulators in the US and Canada over many years resulting in FDA approval in November of 2015 and the final approval for commercial sale in Canada in 2016. 4.5 tonnes were sold in the second quarter of 2018. The first US production site opened this year in Indiana. Ideally more sites can be placed near other population centers to minimize energy use for shipping. The terrestrial production eliminates issues of water pollution sometimes associated with ocean “farmed” salmon, “wild-caught salmon” or true oceanic fishing sources. The entire salmon industry has been shifting away from fish meal and fish oil for feed and these Salmon will be at the cutting edge of that trend. By sourcing from the crop Camelina or using yeasts, both of which have been modified to produce the healthy health-promoting omega-3 fats, and even the astaxanthin pigment that gives salmon its red color. There are also some efforts to raise insects to feed to the fish.  These land-based sources can allow many more people to improve their diet without putting more stress on ocean resources. The other upside is that by using these feeds it is possible to avoid the mercury and microplastics issues that are unavoidable in ocean water. These pollutants can “bioaccumulate” in the ocean food chain having gotten there because of littering and from coal-powered electricity generation.

This is all a great example of Ecomodernism – the philosophy that technology can be a means of achieving environmental goals. Doesn’t this seem like the sort of “green,” healthy option that a company like Costco ought to be offering their customers?

If Costco would rise above the threats from anti-GMO groups and offer these options alongside of “conventional” or “organic,” I believe that there would be lots of scientists like me who would happily volunteer to come in and answer customer questions during a launch program at one of those sample carts we so often enjoy at the stores.

(Disclaimer: although I know scientists and businesspeople from all of these companies, writing this article was just something that I wanted to do and not anything they asked me to do or for which I was compensated. This article was also not written on behalf of the non-profit CropLife Foundation for which I work part time recording a podcast.)