Session: Joint Environment and Nutrition Track: Drugs in our Corn Flakes? Risks to Public Health and the U.S. Food

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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

4024.0: Tuesday, November 07, 2006: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM

Oral

Joint Environment and Nutrition Track: Drugs in our Corn Flakes? Risks to Public Health and the U.S. Food

Since the first discoveries in the early 1980s, crop genetic engineering has proceeded at a rapid pace. Today, in addition to crops engineered to be herbicide tolerant and insect-resistant, we have food crops genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals. These crops are referred to as “pharma” crops when they produce drugs, hormones, and other therapeutic agents, and industrial crops when they produce compounds such as plastics for use in industry. Pharmaceutical and industrial transgenes can inadvertently contaminate commodity crops through cross-pollination or through physical mixing of seed at various points in U.S. commodity crop production systems—including growing, harvesting, handling, storage, delivery, and processing of food and feed products. While there is a broad consensus that the transgene products of pharma crops must be kept segregated from human food and animal feed systems, it is difficult to prevent the commingling of these systems in the United States at the present time. This session will highlight various challenges and solutions to this critical issue.

Learning Objectives: 1. Identify the main routes by which pharma and industrial crops may contaminate food and feed crops. 2. Identify potential public health threats posed by pharmaceutical and industrial compounds being engineered into food crops. 3. Describe the roles of federal agencies in regulating pharma and industrial crops.

Moderator(s):

Kathleen Rest, PhD

8:30 AM

A growing concern: Vulnerability of the food supply to contamination by pharmaceutical and industrial crops